Video of Kimbrel

KeithLockhart said:
Not every closer can go 2 innings.

Kimbrel has not proven he can do that. I don't care about a few mop up games he did that in. Yeah there's the one NLDS 2010 game, but everyone here talks about sample size and that isn't enough to convince me he could do it.

It would have been a stupid risk to start Kimbrel in the 8th, when Carpenter has been effective all year. The people that are complaining he sucked in Game 2, I bring back sample size again. He was pretty rock solid reliable all year, so going with Carpenter in 8th for 2/3 or maybe a whole IDK, and Kimbrel in the 9th would be the right play that every manager in the league would have done.

This monday morning quarterbacking of "why leave your best reliever in the bullpen" is as lame as the "pitched 1 time in 4 games" argument.
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Sample size is actually pretty important in a short playoff series. Especially for pitchers. And even more important for relief pitchers with very little big league experience.

We should be pretty familiar when this as we have seen it first hand at least a time or two before.
 
Heyward said:
Outside of not using Kimbrel for 2, what was so bad?

We got thumped in Games 1-3.

Won Game 2.

Btw, if he was gonna use Kim for 2, start him to start the inning, not with a fast runner on 2nd.
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Not that it may have mattered, but I was pretty heavily against starting Teheran on the rd. Starting rookie pitchers on the rd in the playoffs doesn't usually bode well. Now being down 0-1 it certainly wouldn't have been ideal to start JT vs Greinke either, but at least JT would've had the luxury of playing in less pressure in front of the home town crowd.
 
This thread won't die huh? Well I guess I'll pitch my 2 cents

Fredi was a moron for not putting Kimbrel in in the 8th. I don't blame Carpenter for the loss, I blame Fredi for not managing like it was an elimination game. Kimbrel should have face Puig and Uribe. Then for the 9th you use Carpenter for 8-9 and bring in Avilan for Crawford or let Kimbrel go for the 9th. Dude is tough as nails he won't Wholers on us if he did blow it. And if you don't trust him you use your other guys for the lower level talent. Once Puig got on I knew the odds of us keeping the lead were small. Uribe was so pesky I knew he'd get a hit.
 
Carp said:
Not that it may have mattered, but I was pretty heavily against starting Teheran on the rd. Starting rookie pitchers on the rd in the playoffs doesn't usually bode well. Now being down 0-1 it certainly wouldn't have been ideal to start JT vs Greinke either, but at least JT would've had the luxury of playing in less pressure in front of the home town crowd.
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That would have been my logic for starting Medlen as our 3, it lets us do 2 things. First it allows him to be our 1 in the NLCS still, and second he gets the high pressure road start. We knew odds were series would be split going to LA and it was so that game 3 was high pressure.

In the end I think Fredi's biggest mistakes were starting Gattis against Kershaw, Gattis was solid with the bat against Kershaw, but you cannot tell me it was smart to hurt our defense that bad when we were facing an ace. Against Kershaw you should put your near optimized defense out there (would have Left CJ out there though) Almost all of the Dodgers runs but the homer came on plays the normal OF would have made.

I'm sure we still lost but I can't help but wonder what happens if Minor goes game 1 and we started Bossman in CF. Maybe we squeak out a win and that changes the direction of the series? Who knows. Of course conversely we could have lost and Medlen and Julio could have tanked still and we'd have been swept.

We lost because 2 of our best pitchers got rocked in the end and it sucks.
 
zitothebrave said:
This thread won't die huh? Well I guess I'll pitch my 2 cents

Fredi was a moron for not putting Kimbrel in in the 8th. I don't blame Carpenter for the loss, I blame Fredi for not managing like it was an elimination game. Kimbrel should have face Puig and Uribe. Then for the 9th you use Carpenter for 8-9 and bring in Avilan for Crawford or let Kimbrel go for the 9th. Dude is tough as nails he won't Wholers on us if he did blow it. And if you don't trust him you use your other guys for the lower level talent. Once Puig got on I knew the odds of us keeping the lead were small. Uribe was so pesky I knew he'd get a hit.
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Yeah except for Avilan pitched the 7th (got Gonzalez to fly out on that curveball).
 
Metaphysicist said:
And then the very next game he couldn't make it through even one inning, got pulled, and then the game fell apart in one of the most crushing games I've ever personally attended. Granted, the circumstances are not the exact same, and I probably woulda used Kimbrel here, but rightly or wrongly that risk was likely weighing on Fredi's mind, knowing that he'd probably need him for both games.
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I remember watching the second game and feeling like it was a bad decision to pull Kimbrel at the time - so while I see your point, I don't think it's directly applicable here.
 
Don't forget the day off between #4 and #5. Kimbrel could've pitched 1+ innings in both, most likely.
 
Do we know for sure that Kimbrel was only going to come in for 4 outs? it's easy to forget, but Uribe was trying to bunt Puig over. It was only a fluke (adding to the heartbreak) that he ended up failing twice and getting to 2 strikes and swinging away. Could Carpenter have been pulled had Uribe executed the bunt?
 
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