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In a game that features a pass of defensive jewels, a crazy race at the right time, an improbable hero and some of the most flawless throws out there, the Colorado Rockies beat the Chicago Cubs 2-1, winning the title longer playoff in the 104-year history of Wrigley Field.
The controversy has been the story of the day, even before the game begins. At the end of the regular season, Kyle Freeland, a sophomore, scored 202 1/3 innings, the fifth-highest total in the National League. It was 40 times more runs than Freeland had ever pitched at any professional, minor league or major league level. In addition, he had recently launched on September 28, which, according to quick calculations, would tell you that it was four days earlier.
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Rockies manager Bud Black had all the information needed to make a decision. While his young southpaw passed a career career, with only three days of rest on his big book, Black decided to throw Freeland to the wolves, allowing him to launch a confrontation to excess with blank cards. pressure cooker to Clark and Addison.
You could at least understand the element of the performance decision. Freeland has emerged as the Rockies' team co-star this season alongside right-hander Mark German. When Marquez took his turn against the Dodgers on Monday in a match to decide on the West of the NL, Freeland was the next player to get up the next day. In the last 12 starts of the regular season, Freeland had 75 innings in two innings, eliminating 74 batters, leaving just four points and posting a microscopic ERA 2.14. Perhaps, just maybe, could he keep up the momentum against the Cubs even in short rest even long after the point where you would normally feel comfortable extending a youngster Pitcher still green enough.
Freeland is gone, dramatically. He spent the whole night in the zone of the strikes, realizing 60 of his 82 throws (73%). He shot at the first step against 75% of the batters he faced, while provoking 11 shots. He spewed his worries about fatigue, only finishing in seven innings. Better yet, he completely dominated the Cubs' batters, scoring 6 2/3 in a shutout, while allowing only four hits, a walk and hitting six.
Observers disagree about the exact nature of Freeland's repertoire. We know that he throws a fast four-seamed ball and that he rarely throws a change. The pitch grading systems are split on what will follow – its two-sided hybrid, fastball / cutter, or its slider. Knives and sliders have many similarities and some throwers launch a terrain that contains the elements, making classification a difficult task.
What counts here are not the details, but rather this: whatever the hell Kyle Freeland throws at any moment, it'll be hard. By Brooks baseball, Freeland averaged 93.5 miles per hour on his four sailors Tuesday night against the Cubs, surpassing the 95.5. Waiting for her the slowest the height was his change, which was sitting and was just above 87 mph. It was not so long ago, a pitcher could very well get out with a fastball averaging nearly 87 mph. Now, we're 25, a 25-year-old who's starting his team's playoff season and still has 87 more turtles.
Pitch experts like to talk about the separation between the fields as a key to success. Most of the time, we hear about pitch separation when we talk about speed. If a fastball and a change of direction are thrown from the same position for the arm with the same apparent level of effort, and the fastball zooms 10 mph faster than the change, then 39, is an impressive separation. Since Freeland does not offer this kind of speed separation, he must find other ways to spoil the batting timing. The good news is that Freeland became a master of separation in his second season in the major leagues, not with a raw ball speed, but rather with the location. If you ever want to watch a pitcher paint the inside and outside corners and then toss high when a batter is expecting something low (and vice versa), you should watch Freeland at his best.
We had it at its best Tuesday. And Freeland and the teammates who followed him seemed to have saved their meanest thing for Kris Bryant. To learn more about how the Rockies have neutralized a former MVP and one of the most dangerous Cubs hitters, invite our friend Nick Pollack, an Elite Pitcher Analyst on the Cubs. excellent site PitcherList.com.
As Pollack explained, Freeland's mission is to stay away from the center of the plate all night, with efficiency comparable to that of a machine, especially against Bryant. Check out the first two Freeland offers against Bryant, one upstairs and the other downstairs, the other downstairs and the other downstairs.
An extra inch in each direction and these two throws could easily have called balls – that is the precision with which Freeland was with his throws. Indeed, Freeland did a great job in blocking the right-handed hitters with a heat from the bottom to the mid-90s, coupling that ground with … yes, we'll call that a slider. Freeland continued to seduce Bryant alternately alternating inside and outside angles, before completing it at the seventh height of the attacker by blowing cheese at 94 km / h right next door.
That explosive pitch would have been Bryant's best chance of scoring something all day, as it was the rare offer that did not cut one of the two corners. Blame Bryant 's ill shoulder, or maybe just the sheer confusion that accompanies Freeland facing the sequence of his not – so – melting step that night. Anyway, he breathed.
Facing Bryant again in the third goal, Freeland started by adding another wrinkle by placing two fastballs on the outer edge, rather than up and down. Freeland's location change as well as the troubling break from the left in the middle of his fall.
After wisely removing a heater a little further, Bryant had another surprise. Rather than challenge him with another fastball inside, Freeland chose a slider. When you can rub that slider up to 90 mph and leave it plenty of time to blow the plate inside and to the right of Bryant, good things will happen. … from the launcher's point of view, anyway.
After only two clashes, it looks like Freeland has already thrown everything out of the kitchen sink against Bryant. So what does he do in their third fight, in the sixth inning? He breaks the kitchen sink, in which case a fastball is sinking at 92 mph at the bottom of the area. The result? A weak pop-up that makes Bryant visibly agitated as he prepares to go home.
The good news for Bryant is that his right popup has become a blow, after the Rockies player, David Dahl, has missed the game. The bad news is that Anthony Rizzo has signed a double play, ending the game with his team and on one occasion to register his team in the match. These results aside, the most telling figure was 11. As in, 11 shots thrown by the Rockies starter potentially tired and overworked against one of the scariest hitters of the game, and not a single solid shot made by Bryant on none of them.
These three at-bats and 11 at-bats did not decide the game, per se.
On the one hand, the Cubs would rally to equalize the game in the eighth. After a single leading Rizzo, Cubs manager Joe Maddon called Terrance Gore, the only player not recruited by Charlie Finley in the history of the MLB, which had more stolen bases than appearances on plates . The result provided another data point in the argument for managers carrying a designated speed demon at the end of their bench instead of a 93rd taker: Easy Stolen Base, Javier Baez RBI, Single, 1-1, is headed to the ninth.
For another, the Rockies needed a Tony Wolters single (Tony Wolters' Tony Wolters !!!!) to finally break the tie and win for Colorado in the 13th. On the other hand, the combination of the opponent Adam Ottavino …
… Brooks Robinson reincarnates Nolan Arenado …
… and underestimated Rocky rightist Scott Oberg …
… crowned the night of Bryant's frustration.
Check out the final table of Bryant's six bat-at-bats.
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