Into the belly of the beast

 We will now be playing the worst ranked division champion still in the postseason.  That is the good news.  The bad news is that it is the Yankees and they won 99 games this year and we will be facing one of the best pitchers in baseball at least twice, unless we happen to sweep the Yankees.

Plus, as my daughter says, we have 'beef' with the Yankees fans.  

It will make for an interesting series.

Let's talk about the roster that we put together for this series:

• We will, once again have 12 pitchers and 14 positions players.   This is an interesting choice given that the extra inning rules changed for the playoffs meaning that it is highly likely games going to extra innings would last longer.  Someone probably has stats on this but my guess is that this could be significant, like 2+ innings longer, something significant in the playoffs where every pitch matters.  Plus, in making the selections we now have only one lefty in the bullpen. While McCarty is not an overpowering pitcher he does have the potential to go all Ryan Merritt on the Yankees as sort of an x-factor.
• We have decided to go with three catchers.  Normally that would not be an issue, especially when you consider that our third catcher is such a good hitter with great pitch recognition.   That is, he could be used as a DH or pinch hitter.  But there seem to be issues with the logic:
• Bo Naylor, our 3rd catcher, has 8 major league ABs and has struck out 5 times with no hits.  Yes, he had a very good season this year but it is coming off a season last year where he was terrible.  Yes, he was very young for AA last year and appeared overmatched just due to lack of experience which he corrected this year as he became more age appropriate for AA and then AAA.  That's the issue, really.  Last year he was overmatched at AA and it stands to reason that he might be overmatched this year in the majors due to his young age.
• The injury rules would allow us to add him to the roster if one of our catchers got hurt badly enough they couldn't finish the season.  Even a concussion would probably preclude a guy from returning this season.
• The odds that we have to pinch run for our catcher are low as our catchers are both subpar hitters and not very likely to get on base, especially in a playoff game where the pitching is tougher than the regular season
• Naylor is inexperienced with our pitchers.
• Out pinchhitting options, if Brennan starts as the DH, are limited.and, at this point, don't look a whole lot better than our backup catcher, Maile.

So, basically, we have Naylor on the roster just in case we pinch hit for our starting catcher and then our backup catcher gets hurt or we want ot pinch hit for him, although our pinch hitting options are limited.  Sure, we could have Bo Naylor pinch hit for one of the catchers but that doesn't make sense.

I am still amazed we are doing this.

• Rhetorical question: How many of you remember the last out of the 2016 World Series made by Michael Martinez?  I remember sitting there thinking that there had to be someone better that Cleveland could have placed on the roster in case we needed a hit in a particular, isolated situations.  This year we decided to keep Gavriel Arias and Will Benson on the roster for the last series and this series.  Neither of them are legitimate hitters at this point.  Frankly, I would rather have Richie Palacios and Tyler Freeman.  Both, in my opinion, give you better offense with passable defense (if Kwan plays CF and Palscios in LF).  Keeping Benson in case one of your FOUR outfielders gets hurt makes no sense to me.  You don't need his defense and he doesn't provide any offense, with 1 XBH and 3 BB in 55 ABs so far (with 19 Ks).  Keeping the currently defensively-challenged Arias makes no sense in the playoffs.  Not that Freeman was much better but I like his offense better than Arias right now.  I think Arias's home run and current ML walk rate are aberrations to his expected performance this series.  Freeman's offensive performance so far in the majors is very projectable to this series.  So, you have the choice to throw Arias out there and hope for a miracle IF he has to come off the bench and pinch hit in a tight game or desparate situation or put Freeman in and hope that he extends the game and keeps the line moving.  In that case the odds favor Freeman.  Heck, if you wanted the possibility of something miraculous happening, bring in Nolan Jones, George Valera, Brayan Rocchio or even Jhonkensy Noel!  Much better chance of miracle production out of those guys when compared to Benson or Arias.

So, as we head into this series I think we have hamstrung ourselves and created potential late game or extra innings disadvantages that might be, in the end, the edge the Yankees need to win this series.

Going into any series without all the weapons you could have makes no sense to me.