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October 3, 2008 Prospectus PreviewFriday's Games to Watch
Matchup: White Sox (89-74) at Rays (97-65), 6:07 p.m. ET, TBS
Now Longoria and his mates will try to take control of the series in this Game Two battle between left-handers. As Nate Silver pointed out in yesterday's series preview, Tampa Bay's one real weakness is an inability to hit southpaws. The Rays' offense is worse against left-handers than any of the other playoff offenses, with a 726 OPS that ranked 22nd in the majors this year, and that was in evidence yesterday: after the Rays jumped all over Javier Vazquez early on, Chicago rookie lefty Clayton Richard came out of the pen to hold Tampa Bay scoreless for 3 The White Sox lineup will likely also take a different look this evening. Nick Swisher appears to have buried himself in the nether regions of Ozzie Guillen's doghouse, for he has not had a plate appearance in the past four games, having been relegated to the bench against all right-handers. However, with Kazmir on the mound, Guillen will dust off his underachieving switch-hitter tonight to replace the lefty-swinging Dewayne Wise in left field, and Guillen will likely also tap the right-handed Brian Anderson to play center in place of Griffey. This was the alignment Guillen favored the last two times Chicago faced a southpaw. Swisher's better side of the plate is the right side, where he has hit for a bit less power over the course of his career but been much more patient; Anderson has eight home runs in 85 plate appearances versus lefties this season, while showing almost no ability to get on base via any other means (he has more than twice as many extra-base hits on the season, 21, as walks, 10). Playing Swisher and Anderson has the added benefit of upgrading Chicago's outfield defense, which is shaky when Griffey is in center. Swisher's presence in the lineup also serves to give Chicago a greater chance to work the pitch count against Kazmir, who has not gone longer than six innings in any of his last 12 starts. The one thing that Swisher excelled at in a down season was tiring pitchers out, as he saw a major league-leading 4.51 pitches per plate appearance. Kazmir threw an average of 4.30 pitches per batter faced, tops among all hurlers with 150 or more innings this season, and was third with 18.1 pitches per inning. Even with an injection of discipline to go with seven righty bats in the lineup, the Sox will have a tough task in getting to Kazmir, who gave up just three runs over 13 innings in his two starts versus Chicago this year.
Matchup: Red Sox (95-67) at Angels (100-62), 6:37 p.m. PT, TBS The Angels will look to break their slide against Matsuzaka, who has faced Los Angeles just once this season. That was back on July 28, when he turned in his second-worst start of the year, giving up six runs in five innings on a pair of home runs. The Angels are not a patient bunch, ranking last in the American League in pitches per plate appearance and third from the bottom in walks, and therefore one would expect them to be a poor match for Matsuzaka, who relies on throwing a ton of hard-to-hit pitches outside the strike zone. But the Angels are also stacked with hitters adept at smacking those pitches outside the zone around the field-Vladimir Guerrero, Howie Kendrick, and Garret Anderson are all excellent bad-ball hitters-and they forced Dice-K to toss 91 pitches in that outing. The only other time Matsuzaka pitched against the Angels of Anaheim was in Game Three of last year's playoffs, when he was knocked out in the fifth inning after three runs and 96 pitches, but later taken off the hook. The Angels are aware of the need to work the count against Matsuzaka, as the free-swinging Kendrick said "He has to throw you a strike, and being patient and letting him work a little bit is going to be huge for us." If Matsuzaka pitches a typical game, then the Red Sox bullpen will be a huge factor tonight. As Joe Sheehan discussed in the series preview, Los Angeles has just one left-handed hitter on its roster (Anderson) to go with five switch hitters, so for Boston the late innings will hinge upon the performance of its right-handed middle relievers, like the side-arming Justin Masterson. Sheehan wrote that Masterson "will be more important than [Manny Delcarmen], and maybe more important than [Hideki] Okajima" in the series, and that held true in the first game, as Terry Francona brought in his rookie right-hander to start the eighth inning with the score 2-1 Boston. Francona's confidence in Masterson has risen steadily since he was first moved into the Sox pen at midseason, and Wednesday's game was the second time that the manager brought him in for the eighth inning with a one-run lead. Right-handers hit only .196 with a 572 OPS in 187 regular-season plate appearances versus Masterson this year, so he will likely be called on to attack the Guerrero/Hunter/Kendrick corridor of LA's lineup again before the series is out. Caleb Peiffer is a contributor to Baseball Prospectus. He can be reached here. 0 comments have been left for this article.
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