Whenever the topic of the playoffs comes up in baseball circles, the first thing fans address is the pitching matchups. Therefore, it's only fitting that I start this set of matchup posts with the pitching staffs of each team.On the Dodgers front, the starting rotation has been much maligned, and the bullpen has been called into question for most of the year by national media and local media alike. All of this despite the fact that the Dodgers have the best team ERA in the league. The Cardinals are on the opposite end of the spectrum, as they enter the postseason with a heavily lauded rotation and a rarely mentioned bullpen.
Hype and perception aside, the aim here is to get down to the reality of the situation, and that's exactly what I intend to do.
Rotation
To tackle the rotation comparison, i'm going to look at the four best starters on each team.
As many already know, the hype about the Cardinals rotation is not at all unwarranted. They have two of the three Cy Young contenders in the National League in Carpenter and Wainwright, Piniero has been a huge surprise this year, and with the inclusion of Smoltz, that group has combined for a total WAR of 17.6.The Dodgers rotation is not as bad as the fans or media seem to think. While it's clear that they are inferior to the Cardinals best, the Dodgers have still accumulated a competitive total WAR of 12.6 from their best four. Wolf has been a pleasant healthy surprise and Kershaw has emerged as one of the best pitchers in the league. Unfortunately, Billingsley has had a nightmare second half in 2009 after looking like a staff ace in 2008 and the first half of this year, while Kuroda's neck injury has been a huge blow to the playoff rotation. Padilla likely represents the best remaining of a shaky back-end of the rotation, but he's still a respectable fourth option in the series.
Overall, the Dodgers prove inferior in the Wolf/Carpenter and Billingsley/Piniero matchups, but the Kershaw/Wainwright and Padilla/Smoltz contests are basically tossups. It's not the complete blowout that everybody, including me, thought it was.
Bullpen
Next up is the all important bullpen, and to measure their respective strength, i'll take the five best relievers from both squads and compare their numbers. I suppose you could examine either four or six guys if you wanted, but I feel five is the number of relievers that should have a significant impact on the series.
The relatively unknown bullpen of the Cardinals is a lot better than I think most people would expect, me included. Franklin has had a great year, albeit a relatively lucky one, and the rest of the bullpen have held up well despite generally mediocre careers.For the Dodgers, the bullpen is the strongest part of the team, and it might be the best in the league. Broxton's skills are arguably the best of any reliever in the majors, and the 8th and 7th inning duo of Sherrill and Kuo may well be the best in the bigs as well. Belisario and Troncoso were both setup options at some point during the season, and both probably would still be on different teams, which reflects the depth of this pen.
The skills of the Dodgers relievers outclass the Cardinals at every turn, but that difference should be expected. In fact, from the Dodgers perspective, that difference needs to exist considering the skill disparity beteween the rotations.
11 Comments:
Good points.
Winning both games against Carpenter and Wainwright will be tough. However, it's certainly not the impossible task it's being made out to be.
I'm not too worried about the Dodger pitching. As good as Carpenter and Wainwright are, I think Wolf and Kershaw could go toe to toe with them. Yes, Piniero has been a huge surprise this year, but Vicente Padilla has been a pleasant surprise in since joining the Dodgers. Watching Padilla work yesterday was very encouraging. His curveball was breaking beautifully. I know a lot of Dodger fans would like to see Chad Billingsley take the mound for game three, but I think Torre needs to ride the hot hand, and right now Padilla is that hot hand. If a fourth starter is needed(I don't think Torre will need a fourth starter) then he can go to Bills.
I think this series is very winnable as long as the offense shows up. The offense in the last two games of the season was promising, and I hope to see that same fire in ther playoffs.
What people forget about the series is that it's not Carpenter/wolf and Wainwright/Kershaw,
It's Carpenter with his bullpen vs the dodger offense as compared to wolf and his bullpen vs the cardinal offense.
We have edges in the bullpen and offense, that, IMO, negates the SP advantage.
If you take the difference in ERA between Wolf and Carpenter and factor it in over 6-7 innings that they will possibly pitch, it amounts to less than a run.
It's an advantage to the Cards, but not a an insurmountable one. If the Dodgers somehow win game 1, the Cards will be in trouble (just as is the case in reverse). The key for us is to neutralize Carpenter as much as possible...beat him if you can otherwise match him run for run and get to the pen. We actually almost did that when we had Haeger go up against him.
Also, for all the hype of Carpenter and Wainwright, what is forgotten is that if those 2 are not pitching for the Cards, the advantage in pitching goes to the Dodgers, as we did lead the majors in team ERA. The Cards will want to have them pitching as many innings as possible, of course, and we will want the opposite.
Too many superficial analyses throw the series to the Cards just because of their top 2 pitchers, but if our pitchers hold the Cards offense down, that advantage is totally neutralized...and that's exactly what we did when they came to DS in August.
Make no mistake, the Cards 5-2 advantage in the regular season means absolutely, positively nothing (sorry legions of Cards fans who hold on to this fact as if it means something...it doesn't). 7 games is a very small sample size, then you have decades of history that show the regular season has no correlation to the playoffs whatsoever.
Going to be a good series, we can only hope (as I firmly believe) that our problems from the last 10 games were mainly due to fatigue, a poorly timed East Coast road trip, and just plain nerves...notice how on Saturday once we scored the first run, the floodgates just opened up? I don't think that's a coincidence. The Cards have an advantage in game 1, but it's not huge.
I think the fact that we've already faced Carpenter and Wainwright twice this season helps us....also notice how we improved against them the 2nd time we saw them. The Phils, OTOH, haven't even faced them at all IIRC, they got the ass end of the Cards rotation the both times they faced them and only played 5 times.
I would say it comes down to the Dodgers have more depth as a club and Cards have more quality in the starting rotation. Its probably a draw.
The series will come down to how well the bats are swung.
Brandon-Yeah, I think people forget that Wainwright against Kershaw isn't a mismatch. The Dodgers have a decent chance of getting 1 of the 2.
Penos-The thing i'm worried about is the Dodgers offense scoring runs. :o
telciram-Yes, bullpen is important, but the Dodgers hitters have to work the count.
Bayareadfan-Yup, less than a run per game.
Regular season head-to-head matchups always mean nothing.
Barnut-Basically, yes.
Let's put it simply, if we were to lose 1 and 2, do we really want Padilla in 3?
"Let's put it simply, if we were to lose 1 and 2, do we really want Padilla in 3?"
Either way, he'd still end up starting game 4. Either way he'll get a start.
telciram-That's not necessarily true.
telciram- If we lose 1 and 2, and it's Padilla in 3, the chances are there won't be a 4.
:o
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