I realize it's an emotional response, but he was one of the best rookies all year. He completely fell on his face in Sept and the playoffs, but was 118 OPS+ in the regular season. He better be back.
Montesario had a really nice stretch when Ortiz was hurt... certainly earned a couple of starts in the post season... Let Ortiz come in as a defensive replacement instead of the other way around.
So how does the DH work in this game for LAD? I'm assuming there is no DH and Ohtani hits for himself, but when they pull him as a pitcher, can they put him in the DH spot?
May his playoff pitching be as bad as his playoff hitting!
We cheer a team through 162 games of regular season baseball (and even a bunch of ST games) in order to get the playoff baseball.
Tonight is the reason.
We play the best of the best of the best. No one said it would be easy. It shouldn't be. Teams have to fight and adjust and give everything because there are generally small margins between the teams at this stage (save for late season injuries).
My head isn't in the clouds and thinking we will suddenly flip the switch and waltz into the world series. But I will continue to cheer until the last out seals the fate. Know how teams make improbable victories? They don't give up.
If they don't give up...neither will I.
Let's just win tonight and let tomorrow take care of itself.
Turang mostly looked like the fielder from last year, but there were some very uncharacteristic gaffs for him this year. Early in the season was worse.
Frelick looked about the same. I wonder how much the committee considers the numbers vs impact on the game. One thing that I noticed for Frelick this year is that very few people tested his arm. He had a couple of VERY nice throws to third base that nabbed people early... and then people stopped tagging up on fly balls or stopped at 3rd instead of trying to score from 2nd on a single.
If those two can up their offense a bit - get above 800 OPS they could be cornerstone players.