Guys our only hope last night was for a shutout from James for 6 innings, and we all knew that was extremely unlikely. We just went 8 games, and IMO faced only one elite starter (Lester) and won them all. In the postseason, at some point if you make the World Series, you'll face a great pitcher, and that was last night. Once we were down 3-0, it was going to be a rough go of it. A couple non-Shields things really disappointed me though. First, Hosmer's swing in the 1st was the hardest hit ball off the Giants all night (more than Salvy's) and for it not to fall gives us a taste of what that's like. If that falls, a run scores, runner on 2nd with Billy up, and Billy swung the bat well all night and could've changed the game, like he did in the Wild Card game 1st inning. Hos's ball gets caught, that's bad luck and that's baseball. Also, Escobar had been so much better at pitch recognition in the post season, and in his 1 key AB (3rd inning) both he and Aoki failed to swing at good pitches, and killed our last real hope of staying within striking distance long enough to get to FHDH. Hopefully tonight Escobar and Salvy (my God I know he hit a homerun but my God Salvy please stop swinging at pitches in the dirt)at least work counts to the point where they are seeing good pitches.
The Giants are playing really well, and we could be in trouble, but I expect us to get some runs tonight and Ventura will be better than Big Joke James. We win game 2 tonight, win either games 3 or 4 in SF, take our beating in Game 5, and hope for the best if it comes back to KC. That's not an unreasonable expectation or hope. win 2 of the next 3 and hope for magic at the K next week.
Finally, I hope this ends the "James Shields changed the culture of the team" narrative. I'm sure there is a little truth to that, and he's a big part of the last 2 seasons, but he was getting much more credit than deserved. The young players were ready finally, Gordon became the best LF in the AL, Salvy became a stud, bullpen was nails, and Shields was a good (not great) veteran pitcher. This was not like when Huggins rolled into Manhattan and everything changed.
And Hunter Pence signs are stupid.
