Welcome to the inaugural postseason of this article series. In this article series, I am going to break down each playoff game on the slate based purely on pitch profile match-ups. The goal of this series is to locate the gems for our smaller slate/single-game slate contests that can provide an edge and lead us to some GPP takedowns! My name is Eric aka @Razzle11Grinds on Twitter, make sure to give me a follow as I’ll occasionally make updates to the advice in the article out on Twitter as well as inside our coaching forums. With that said, let’s get it started!
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Before I get started. Let’s take a look at the colors that you will see below. When you see numbers highlighted in red, they are numbers that benefit the pitcher. Numbers highlighted in blue are ones that benefit the hitter, while the ones that are left white are in a middling range that might give a very slight edge to the hitters.
New York Yankees @ Tampa Bay Rays
Game 5, a win or go home situation, gives us Gerrit Cole vs Tyler Glasnow. Glasnow is making his start on just 2 days rest while Cole will be making his start on just 3 days rest. Glasnow should be limited to around 40 pitches or at least that is my assumption at this point. I don’t think Cole has much of a limitation but I think the Yankees would be thrilled to get him into the 6th. Cole and tye Yankees are -146 favorites and the game has a low total, sitting at 7.5 runs.
We see plenty of red above for Glasnow. We see that Stanton has done a lot of damage in a small sample against him. The problem with this situation is that we see just 1 AB per guy (I assume) against Glasnow. After that, we have to try and piece together the TB plan with the bullpen and/or Snell usage. Looking above, I think it’s Stanton, Voit, and Hicks as our top options against Glasnow. Below is a quick look at the Yankees bats BvP wise against the TB bullpen arms.
Like it says in the image, that doesn’t include postseason ABs in this series. When trying to piece together how the bullpen will work, we really need to learn if they expect to throw Snell or not. That is something that we might not know until shortly before the game. The top arms out of this bullpen are Fairbanks, Anderson, Castillo, and Curtis. Guys like Loup and Richards haven’t seen the mound in this series (Richards hasn’t pitched in the postseason yet). Castillo is an LHP but he’s almost as nasty against RHBs as he is against LHBs, so we don’t have to worry about him having to be brought in at a special situation. When the Rays go with openers, they have used Curtiss, Thompson, Fairbanks, and Slegers as those guys. That means each of those pitchers is at least familiar with pitching early in a game.
Let’s say that Glasnow goes 2 clean IP (6 up/6 down). That most likely brings up Urshela-Gardner-Higashioka in the third. Looking at the options, I wouldn’t be shocked to see Loup used to try and steal an inning that would have an LHB coming up. I also could see them turn to either Fairbanks or Curtiss in that spot.
The Rays are striking out a TON but they get to see Cole for the second time in this series. For every Trevor Bauer performance on 3 days rest, there are multiple forgettable ones. I know that Cole is a damn good pitcher and he’s definitely one of the guys around baseball that I would trust making this start on short rest. We know that Ji-Man Choi literally owns Gerrit Cole. He has adopted him and Cole now is required, by law, to refer to Ji-Man as Daddy. Randy Arozarena has been rolling during this series and he smacked Cole around in game 1. The Rays absolutely NEED Meadows and Lowe to wake up for this game. Below is a look at the Yankees bats against the Rays RPs.
We get a larger sample size here for the Rays bats. We have seen Ottavino and Green struggle in this series but then Green came back and looked sharp. The goal for the Yankees is to get the ball to Britton and Chapman’s hands. Ultimately for the Yankees, they are going to hope that Cole can get them 6 IP (ceiling at say 90 pitches) so that they can finish it out with Ottavino-Britton-Chapman. If he only goes 5, we could see Nelson or maybe Green again. If we think that Cole is off and he only goes 3-4, we have to consider guys like Cessa and Loaisiga as ones who have the ability to give the Yankees multiple IPs.
There you have it ladies and gentlemen, the debut of the Pitch Profile Breakdown article! If you have any questions make sure you tag me in the chat. We can discuss thoughts on individual match-ups! As you can see, there are paths to success for each team playing today!
