MLB Playoff Notes And Quotes: First Games Maintain Status Quo

The Major League Baseball Playoffs provided us no sense of shock and awe on Wednesday when all three home teams won fairly comfortably. They Dodgers had the slimmest margin of victory for the home teams. After taking a 2-1 lead in the bottom of the first they never trailed the Cardinals again and went on to a 5-3 victory. The Yankees fell down by 2 runs to the Twins in the top of the 3^rd but outscored Minnesota 7-0 from there. In the early game the Colorado Rockies couldn’t find any offense in their 5-1 loss to Philadelphia.

“I had him 0-2 and I stepped off and wanted to give myself a chance to absorb it all. Then I threw three straight balls and allowed a double in the gap. Maybe it cost me a run. Whatever, we had a five-run lead.” – Philadelphia pitcher Cliff Lee on Troy Tulowitzki’s RBI double with two outs in the bottom of the 9^th.

“He was aggressive, he had good tempo and rhythm and he handled the whole flow of the game real good.” – Philadelphia manager Charlie Manuel on Cliff Lee’s 113 pitch performance.

“Up until the fifth, it was one of the better games he had pitched over the course of the month” - Rockies manager Jim Tracy on pitcher Ubaldo Jimenez.

“It felt just like the old place. We couldn’t have drawn it up any better for us.” – Derek Jeter on the first playoff game in the new Yankee Stadium.

“This is what you come here for. It was electric tonight.” – CC Sabathia on the atmosphere in New York.

“You get a two-run lead quick, and as soon as you go back out, it’s a 2-2 ballgame with a homer. That’s a little deflating.” – Minnesota manager Ron Gardenhire on Derek Jeter’s 3^rd inning homerun.

“A lot of people believe they have one of the best bullpens in baseball. They kind of shut us down. They shut the door.” – St. Louis’ Ryan Ludwick on the Dodgers relief pitchers.

“It was a little sinker down the middle,” Kemp said. “We haven’t done too well against him, but we came tonight with the confidence. We were trying to make him battle and got him out pretty early and got to the bullpen.” – Dodgers’ Matt Kemp on his 1^st inning two-run homerun off Chris Carpenter.

“We had too many chances, too many chances. Their bullpen came in, and inning after inning, we didn’t get the big hit we needed.” – Mark DeRosa on St. Louis leaving runners in scoring position.

“I wasn’t making very many good pitches and they put some bats on the mistakes I made. I was either right down the middle or out of the strike zone and that’s not a good way to pitch.” – St. Louis pitcher Chris Carpenter on his pitching performance.

Three Questions About The NLDS With Purple Row

We are literally just minutes away from the beginning of the MLB Playoffs with Colorado and Philadelphia leading the way. In a match-up between one of baseball’s best pitching teams (Colorado) and hitting teams (Philadelphia) we’ve invited the Colorado Rockies blog Purple Row to share some insights with us.

In 2007 the Rockies swept this series on their way to the World Series. Is there anything that either team can bring from that series into this one (confidence, tendencies, revenge) or is that ancient history by now?

PR: I'm gonna go ahead and say no to this notion. There's a big difference between the 2007 Rockies and the 2009 Rockies. The 2007 Rockies were a relatively young team, roughly no playoff experience (I mean, like Matt Herges had some with SF, but nobody really substantial). The were probably a legitimately 83-85 win team, but they caught fire at just the right time and had that unprecedented run into October, capped with the miraculous play-in game vs SD.

The 2009 Rockies featured some young players as well, but the pitching staff had far more major league experience, basically the Rockies have really started playing to ability and were able to sustain success from June through the end of the season (with a couple of hot streaks to help recover from their early struggles). Essentially, the team has arrived and is nicely poised to sustain this successful season.

In terms of bringing something into this series from 2007, Colorado swept Philly, so we have no ill will there. Philly won the WS last year, so they've more or less forgotten 2007, or at least it's greatly diminished in their minds. The differences will be that the guys who were young and fresh, such as Hamels, Jimenez, and Tulowitzki, are more seasoned and have those 2 extra years of veteraniness about them.

Colorado has a deep rotation with five pitchers registering 10 wins or more. Conversely the Phillies have a pretty stout lineup as well with a combined 224 homeruns and four players with 30 or more homers. How confident are you in either Colorado’s pitching or Philadelphia’s hitting?

PR: I'd be more concerned from Philadelphia’s end! Out of the 8 teams in the postseason, only St. Louis and LA's pitching staffs rank ahead of the Rockies in terms of HR prevention (and even then, Busch Stadium played as a very home run suppressing park as compared to, say Coors or The Cit - which makes Pujols that much more impressive).

However, on the flip side of the coin, the Rockies are 2nd to Philly in home runs hit, but Philly's pitching is 2nd to last in the NL in terms of HR prevention (3rd in the majors). Don't play your "but the Cit" card, Coors Field still is a more homer-friendly park!

So to answer the question, I take our pitching over their hitting.

Colorado pitcher Jorge De La Rosa (4.38 ERA) won’t be a factor in this series due to injury. What does that mean for either team?

PR: Well my initial response was going to be "Strong LHP gone" but Philly has hit lefties and righties relatively the same this season - actually lefties a little harder. What this does to Colorado is it takes a pitcher who's been absolutely awesome this season past the first 2 months of the season (can we just strike April and May from the record? That'd clinch Home Field for Colorado, I'm pretty sure...). He's set franchise high marks for strikeouts per 9 innings, and if you saw the 4 innings he was able to muster in his final start vs LA before he got hurt, he has just disgusting stuff (.597 OPS allowed in Sept/Oct).

Prediction time. Tell us who’ll win and in how many games.

PR: I'm so awful at this part. I've been saying Rockies in 4 (steal one from Hamels in Philly, sweep Coors), but with the loss of DLR, we'll be seeing some combination of Contreras and Marquis in game 4, and that just doesn't make me comfortable at all. I'll stick with Rockies in 4, but a Game 5 isn't out of the scope of reality to me.

You can follow the Rockies through the Post Season at Purple Row. Our guest blogger today posts there under the name, RockiesMagicNumber.