Angels at Brewers; Thursday, September 18 @ 6:40 p.m.: Quinn Priester (3.25 ERA, 4.13 FIP) vs. Yusei Kikuchi (4.08 ERA, 4.26 FIP)

[treego14]

[treego14]

I don't care if he wears Gucci -- there's no hope for Kikuchi!

Even if his clothes are droopy, this is another win for QP!

[RobertCrawley]

Sweep.

[folly412]

Just noticed it's a night game.  A pleasant surprise.

[adambr2]

The Phillies are idle. If we win, the lead grows to 3. With no tiebreaker, the Phillies would have to make 4 games up on us with 9 to play.

There’s a real chance to seize control again today. 

[igor67]

That might even be a near perfect amount of lead. Far enough we can keep rotating guys to stay fresher, but not so much that we coast. Especially with the first round bye for a nice complete break.

[long ball]

This might be the game to get Hoskins a start. 
 

full day off for Yelich and Contreras. 
 

jansen catches and Vaughn/hoskins man the 1b/dh roles against a lefty starter. 

[Underachiever]

Brewers don't need to rest anyone if they get the bye. They get five days after the season ends to recharge. You make it 8 or 9 days the required "rust vs rest" discussion will take place.

[willie key]

2 hours ago, long ball said:

This might be the game to get Hoskins a start. 
 

full day off for Yelich and Contreras. 
 

jansen catches and Vaughn/hoskins man the 1b/dh roles against a lefty starter. 

Vaughn needs to play.    And we still needs to clinch.     Maybe next week

this is a bad team.   You need to win games that you should win

[Cool Hand Lucroy]

Man, I'm surprised by just how far away I am from a lot of folks relative to the number one seed. Complete respect, not arguing, but I honestly feel more and more like I'd rather be the two, especially since the 4 and 5 seeds are going to be basically identical, one of them will be the Cubs (and the other might be the Dodgers), and I like the chance of playing the Mets/Reds/Giants/Dbacks more than I fear playing LAD (or SDP if they end up taking the West).

Either way, we can all agree the division is the big target now. It comes with a guaranteed bye. Today is a relatively big swing day. Up 4 with 9 to go is safe but probably somewhere between 1 in 30 and 1 in 50. Up 5 with 9 to go is more like 1 in 100, maybe. Up 6 with 9 to go is probably more like 1 in 200. Really hoping we can knock 2 off the magic number, but 1 would be a perfectly acceptable result.

[Brian]

14 minutes ago, willie key said:

Vaughn needs to play.    And we still needs to clinch.     Maybe next week

this is a bad team.   You need to win games that you should win

I agree but about Vaughn but Jake Bauers .324 last 15 games, that is good. Both are better than Hoskins today. You mean Brewers are good team. 

[Team Canada]

Priester's pitching. We can just all agree this is a W and not play the game, right?

[willie key]

6 minutes ago, Brian said:

I agree but about Vaughn but Jake Bauers .324 last 15 games, that is good. Both are better than Hoskins today. You mean Brewers are good team. 

The angels are a bad team    We shouldn’t be rolling over for them and playing half ass lineups.   Win the games you can win

[Brian]

13 minutes ago, willie key said:

The angels are a bad team    We shouldn’t be rolling over for them and playing half ass lineups.   Win the games you can win

Eugenio Suárez will beat us in the WS anyway.  LOL wheres Bulldogboy? 

[sveumrules]

13 minutes ago, willie key said:

We shouldn’t be rolling over for them and playing half ass lineups.   Win the games you can win

Did they rollover and play half ass lineups the last two games? Or did they win by a combined score of 18 to 4?

[willie key]

3 minutes ago, sveumrules said:

Did they rollover and play half ass lineups the last two games? Or did they win by a combined score of 18 to 4?

I’m responding about someone saying this guy needs at bats or that guy etc.    we don’t need to do that anymore.    Just play the best team you can to win.    I don’t care about getting Hoskins at bats right now.    

[sveumrules]

7 minutes ago, willie key said:

I’m responding about someone saying this guy needs at bats or that guy etc.    we don’t need to do that anymore.    Just play the best team you can to win.    I don’t care about getting Hoskins at bats right now.    

Right. They played Perkins over Collins on Tuesday then Perkins, Monasterio, and Bauers all played yesterday.

Do those qualify as half ass lineups, or more like 1/9th and 1/3rd ass lineups, respectively?

[willie key]

6 minutes ago, sveumrules said:

Right. They played Perkins over Collins on Tuesday then Perkins, Monasterio, and Bauers all played yesterday.

Do those qualify as half ass lineups, or more like 1/9th and 1/3rd ass lineups, respectively?

Perkins is really the only one.   And he had a good game.    And we won.   We also lost a bunch of games the last month because guys like him couldn’t hit.  Thats why we are still somewhat  trying to finish this off instead of it being done by now.     Players are back now.   They can play.   We don’t need to rest them every other day.    We still need to win games.    And Ortiz is more of a half ass lineup guy than monasterio anyways 

[Outlander]

1 hour ago, Brian said:

I agree but about Vaughn but Jake Bauers .324 last 15 games, that is good. Both are better than Hoskins today. You mean Brewers are good team. 

Bauers should really never start against a lefty. The best team gainst a lefty includes both Vaughn and Hoskins IMHO.

[Brian]

27 minutes ago, Outlander said:

Bauers should really never start against a lefty. The best team gainst a lefty includes both Vaughn and Hoskins IMHO.

I used to be a BIG Hoskins fan but now I'm convinced he is a 100% streak hitter.  He could hit .300 in the playoffs or .100 in the playoffs. Take your pick. Vaughn may be the same way but longer length streaks. 

[sveumrules]

16 minutes ago, willie key said:

Perkins is really the only one.   And he had a good game.    And we won.   We also lost a bunch of games the last month because guys like him couldn’t hit.  Thats why we are still somewhat  trying to finish this off instead of it being done by now.     Players are back now.   They can play.   We don’t need to rest them every other day.    We still need to win games.    And Ortiz is more of a half ass lineup guy than monasterio anyways 

So all it takes is one of Ortiz, Perkins, Hoskins, Bauers or Jansen in the lineup to make it half ass? Or does Murphy get one mulligan per lineup and it has to be two or more of those guys to be half ass?

[HarryDoyle]

4 hours ago, folly412 said:

Just noticed it's a night game.  A pleasant surprise.

I got free tickets to the game so I get to take tomorrow off. Three day weekend. Yay, me.

[Roderick]

Priester would be ranked 1`6th best ERA in all of baseball if you look at qualifying innings pitchers - but he needs a few more innings to get to that threshhold.

[willie key]

8 minutes ago, sveumrules said:

So all it takes is one of Ortiz, Perkins, Hoskins, Bauers or Jansen in the lineup to make it half ass? Or does Murphy get one mulligan per lineup and it has to be two or more of those guys to be half ass?

For godsakes.   This is stupid now.   Ortiz is a crappy hitter already.    We have decided to go with defense.    I’m fine either way.    So we already have a crap hitter in the lineup.    Then you can’t play the catcher every game so Jansen will play and we shouldn’t even have traded for him anyways.    Then you throw Perkins in there who has been beyond terrible since he came back.    I don’t give a **** about giving Hoskins at bats because he “needs” them.    The only guy who saved himself from being utterly useless was Bauers.   But I don’t trust that either.    We have ten games left.    I don’t see the point of throwing lineups together that suck for no reason   We’ve done that    It’s been terrible   

the manager is going all defense for what it’s worth .     Perkins over collins.    Ortiz over basically anybody else.  I will let everyone argue over that.   I can see both sides.    

[adambr2]

1 hour ago, Cool Hand Lucroy said:

Man, I'm surprised by just how far away I am from a lot of folks relative to the number one seed. Complete respect, not arguing, but I honestly feel more and more like I'd rather be the two, especially since the 4 and 5 seeds are going to be basically identical, one of them will be the Cubs (and the other might be the Dodgers), and I like the chance of playing the Mets/Reds/Giants/Dbacks more than I fear playing LAD (or SDP if they end up taking the West).

Either way, we can all agree the division is the big target now. It comes with a guaranteed bye. Today is a relatively big swing day. Up 4 with 9 to go is safe but probably somewhere between 1 in 30 and 1 in 50. Up 5 with 9 to go is more like 1 in 100, maybe. Up 6 with 9 to go is probably more like 1 in 200. Really hoping we can knock 2 off the magic number, but 1 would be a perfectly acceptable result.

I’m not going to argue too much about matchups, because there are no easy outs and no matchups have really gone right for us in recent years, but the Dodgers are still the Dodgers, so avoiding both them and Philly, and guaranteeing that we don’t have to face both, seems like a reasonably good thing to me.

Aside from that, the Phillies win 68% of their games at home and 51% on the road. The Brewers win 65% of the time at home and 57% of the time on the road. There’s your potential game 7 location of the NLCS.

Do I think it’s a huge deal? No, I could absolutely see them going to the World Series as the 2, or getting knocked out of the NLDS as the 1.

Do I think it’s clearly an advantage? Yes.