The rain in Philadelphia Monday was not a surprise. The forecast looked bad all day, so when MLB announced that Game 3 of the World Series would be postponed about an hour before it was scheduled to start, the teams were ready to go with changes.
The Astros will keep Lance McCullers Jr. as their Game 3 starter. But they had not previously confirmed a starter for Game 4, which opened up an interesting choice for them: Go with Cristian Javier, who has yet to pitch in this series, or use the unexpected day off to bring back Game 1 starter Justin Verlander? They chose to go with the former: One, because Javier is a genuinely solid option, and two, because Verlander could use the extra day.
“It would probably be to his benefit,” Houston manager Dusty Baker said of getting that extra day off for Verlander.
David J. Phillip/AP Photo
The situation was a little more complicated for the Phillies. The ideal third starter on this team is Ranger Suárez. But since he was used in relief in Game 1, they’d originally decided to push his start back a day to Game 4, meaning they would need to use a bullpen game led by Noah Syndergaard for Game 3. An unexpected day off changed the calculus there. Suárez can now go Tuesday for Game 3, and ace Aaron Nola can go on regular rest for Game 4, which should be a huge boon to them. But there’s a twist: That format might have you expecting that Game 2 starter Zack Wheeler would come out for Game 5. That won’t be happening, Phillies manager Rob Thomson said. Wheeler struggled in his last outing, getting hit early due to flagging velocity, and they’ve decided to give him an extra day off. Wheeler will instead start a potential Game 6.
“He's fine,” Thomson said. “It's just—it's late in the season, velocity's dropped a little bit, he's fatigued. I just feel like he needs more time.”
This means Game 5 will be started either by Syndergaard (if he’s not used in relief before then) or Kyle Gibson. That’s not quite an ideal situation for the Phillies—but if they’re this committed to that plan this early, well, that tells you plenty about how they currently see Wheeler.
Some other tidbits from around the Series:
• The Astros did get a chance to take batting practice and do some fielding exercises before the rain set in Monday. That was important, Baker said: Houston did not play in Citizens Bank Park this year (or last year or the year before) and does not have many players familiar with the ballpark.
“I'm glad that we took some batting practice and played some balls off the walls,” Baker said after the postponement was announced. “I think their real home-field advantage is, like I saw J.T. Realmuto hit the inside-the-park home run [in the NLDS]. It hit the wall and bounced off. And I think just their real home-field advantage, because they have a lot of angles, a lot of caroms out there, that only three or four of our players have ever been in this stadium. So I'm glad we got a chance to work out before it rained today.”
Just how long has it been since the Astros were here? Five years and change: July 26, 2017. The only Astros still on the roster who were in the lineup that day are Jose Altuve and Yuli Gurriel. The Phillies won, 9-0, off six shutout innings from none other than Aaron Nola.
Eric Gay/AP
• No one in this series has shown a more impressive ability to work the count than Phillies rookie shortstop Bryson Stott. He pinch-hit to lead off the eighth inning of Game 2 and started by falling behind 0-2—which he then worked into a 12-pitch walk. He fouled off six pitches (five in a row) to stay alive.
“You just kind of go into battle mode,” Stott says of his approach. “Hopefully, he makes a mistake and if he doesn’t, just try to spoil the pitches he is making.”
The 12-pitch walk Saturday followed a 10-pitch walk Friday, which was critical to that fourth-inning comeback for the Phillies, and a few similarly impressive plate appearances earlier in the postseason, including a nine-pitch one that resulted in a double in Game 3 of the NLDS. So far, the Phillies have generally limited Stott to facing right-handed pitching. When facing a lefty starter, Philadelphia usually plays right-handed Edmundo Sosa at shortstop instead. Any talk of changing that?
“This kid, he's put up quality at-bats for a while now, not just against right-handers, but left-handers as well,” Thomson said of Stott Sunday. “So that's something that we'll discuss as we get closer. That will be Game 6 [that we next face a left-hander], so we got a little bit of time to think about it. But he's been really good.”
Finally: Is 12 pitches the most the shortstop has ever seen in a plate appearance? In a real game, yes, he says—but Stott believes he did see 16 pitches once in spring training.
• One last difficulty of an unexpected night off? It’s tough to find somewhere to get dinner, Baker said. “I heard it's hard getting reservations, everything's full,” the Astros skipper said. “So you're hoping that the guys can get reservations, get in and eat, be with their families and be ready to play tomorrow.”
