Post-season Gameday Thread, #6: Swing day

1:10 pm - Braves @ Cardinals (1-1)

After dropping the opening in stunning fashion at home, the Braves really needed to pull out something special in Game #2. But they did it, managing to beat Cardinals’ ace Jack Flaherty, and now find themselves even in St. Louis. In terms of post-season appearance experience, it’s advantage Cardinals with Adam Wainwright over Mike Soroka by a cool 25-0 margin. But it has been five years since Wainwright last started a playoff game, and Soroka - whom I keep wanting to call Sirotka! - was nails on the road for the Braves this season. He lost just once in sixteen such starts, with a 1.55 ERA, holding all batters faced there to an OPS of just .533.

4:45 pm - Dodgers @ Nationals (1-1)

Interestingly, the Nationals are not going with Max Scherzer for Game #3. This was thought to be likely, with his appearance in Game #2 so brief as to be basically a side-session. But instead, they are using Anibal Sanchez, with Scherzer going tomorrow and, I’m guessing Stephen Strasburg for any Game #5. On the Dodgers side, it’ll be Hyun-Jin Ryu, who had a 1.45 ERA through mid-August, but a 5.40 ERA over his last seven starts. Though he finished with seven shutout innings, that was against the Giants in San Francisco, so that deserves an asterisk. He was only 4-4 in fifteen road starts, though that was as much due to a lack of support. His ERA there was 2.72, though that was considerably above his home one (1.93).