With the Padres winning the Wild Card Series over the Chicago Cubs, some musings from the series:
- The series went as well as the Padres could have hoped for. In Game 1, Michael King throwing 7 innings of one hit ball, offense building a big lead, Yuki Matsui pitching the 8th inning (he’s been good this year but didn’t pitch in the postseason last year so good to give him a softer landing spot for his first postseason action) and then having Joe Musgrove return for the first time in two years and close it out (even if it got a little dicey with him loading the bases) set it up to hae a pretty rested bullpen for Game 2.
- Nick Pivetta was only able to go 3 1/3 innings in Game 2 and struggled in the 3rd and 4th innings, but this was where you were able to fully take advantage of the bullpen. Can’t ask for much more than what the bullpen did covering 5 2/3 innings with no runs, two hits and one walk.
- The offense scoring first in both games was huge as it gave them the momentum to start. The Padres are much better at home (51-30 vs 40-41 during the regular season) where the team thrives off the crowd and getting off to quick starts in both games helped amplify that.
- Speaking of the Wild Card Series roster, was surprised they went with 15 position players and 11 pitchers. I get that it’s a short series but thought they might carry 12 in case they needed long relief for the three games. Even though I heard rumblings of Musgrove, still was quite shocked to see him on the roster, though replacing Vasquez makes sense now since he had pitched Sunday and threw 68 pitches and 6 innings, considering Robbie Ray and/or Walker Buehler could cover the middle innings. You figure you wouldn’t use him as much in this round and he’d be rested and more available for the Division Series if the Padres advanced.
- Was great to see Musgrove out there. Even though he looked a little rusty and/or had the nerves, he was still getting his fastball up to 96-97 mph like before. Hopefully he’s recovering well and they can deploy him for an inning (maybe even as an opener) during this playoff series.
- Since I guessed the roster for the Wild Card Series, I’ll do it again for the Division Series against the Brewers and see the roster as follows:
- Pitchers (12): Michael King, Nick Pivetta, Walker Buehler, Robbie Ray, Jason Adam, Yuki Matsui, Mason Miller, Adrian Morejon, David Morgan, Bradgley Rodriguez, Randy Vasquez and Joe Musgrove. Since they only went with 11 in the last round, I see them adding just one more this time to carry all three catchers again and with a max of two games in a row before a day off and the bullpen being not used heavily in the past week. Starting from Sunday 9/27 of the last day of the season where only Vasquez and Griffin Canning pitched until Game 1 of the NLDS on Saturday 10/3, each pitcher will have only thrown once in the past six days.
- Position Players (14): Fernando Tatis Jr, Jackson Merrill, Dustin Harris, Miguel Andujar, Austin Hays, Ethan Salas, Freddy Fermin, Luis Campusano, Xander Bogaerts, Jake Cronenworth, Ty France, Manny Machado, Gavin Sheets and Jase Bowen. This one was a little tougher as I struggled with the last spot since I see them carrying three catchers as mentioned above. Austin Hays has been hitting lefties well and Miguel Andujar has the veteran experience, even if he’s just coming back from injury. I see both being the right hand platoon for DH as well as a pinch hitter for Salas when a lefty pitcher comes in, especially since the Brewers figure to carry 3-4 relievers from their end of season active roster. So I ended up including both Hays and Andujar over Samad Taylor as a result.
- Should be a fun series as the flukey nature of playoff baseball continues so again looking forward to seeing how this all plays out.