On the matter of Altuve's HR and West.....Fair enough.
Well.... I just leave it as we'll have to agree to disagree.
Have a real problem with pulling the starter in the 1st inning...unless the pitcher knew that he was just a pawn in a major play.@DCPatriot
How in the hell could the guy ever pick up the ball again, after being yanked on the world stage after 5 pitches.
I mean...W. T. F. ?? :shrug:
With the importance of these games, why doesn't MLB have cameras configured along the periphery of the stands to prevent what I call "field of vision" mistakes. In any case, Altuve and the team were robbed, and it probably cost them the series.Your question is an excellent one.
And I'll just leave it at that.
Where they really got "robbed" was Andrew Benintendi's catch---he kept the Astros from winning the game right there, robbery of the finest kind, snatching what might well have been a three-run hit, and saved the Red Sox from having to face Justin Verlander with the series tied at two games each.
I know a lot of purist, including me sometimes dislike the interuption in the game, but overall it corrects 90%+ of the missed calls.@catfish1957
@EasyAceOh, that'll be up there on any future highlight film of earth-shattering catches.
See, I wouldn't call that being robbed at all. I would acknowledge that Benintendi made an awesome play. It was honest. It was disappointing to me as an Astros fan. But it was an outstanding catch that should grace the highlight reel for some time to come. Only in the athletically colloquial sense of the word did we get robbed. Not in the cheating sense.
@AllThatJazzZ
Good thing, you weren't a fan in the days before play review.
, and I like Cole's chances on Saturday, if he can get over what plagued him in game 2.
@catfish1957
You may not remember (or believe), but when the replay debate ramped up in earnest a few years ago, one of the most outspoken advocates in favour of replay was . . . Don Denkinger himself.
The best argument in favour of replay that I can remember (and I was all for it from the word "go"; like Whitey Herzog once said, "This is for the championship, let's get it right") was during a game between the Rockies and the Dodgers. A Dodger fly to center was first ruled a trap; Rockies manager Jim Tracy hustled out to argue the call. Here was Vin Scully calling that argument, after the umpires confabbed before ruling trap (there was no replay then, of course), including his hilarious bid to translate Tracy's expletives . . . and how Scully knocked out of the park the argument that replay would "delay" the game unconscionably, as if rip-roaring arguments with umpires don't:
! No longer available (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44L0vIBcZjY#)
That was interesting. Scully made a good argument for reviewing plays, but he missed the call re the catch. The ball hit the ground and into the glove.If you saw the quick replay closeup of the catch, you heard Scully say yes, it looked like the ball hit the glove, not the grass. When the play actually happened (I was watching it on television), Scully couldn't be any more sure that it was a catch than I could until replays on television showed it was indeed a catch. It was a paper-thin margin but the ball did hit the web of the glove and go into the glove just as the web hit the grass. An extremely tough call, which is why the umps confabbed on it right away.
I know exactly what plagued him. Big fat juicy flat pitches that mimicked batting practice.That'd be the key. If Cole can't get his breaking balls to move properly, he's vulnerable. He's still got good movement on the fastball but his breaking balls are his key.
I know he won't but if I was AJ, I'd review Gerrit's pregame warm up, and pull him if the breaking ball still doesn't have the bite we expect.