This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.
You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95
using your PayPal account or major credit card. (Zelle users, please email me for details.)
I’m torn on Joe Espada’s decision to ride Hader until he broke. Big picture, I always want to see teams lean on their best pitchers in big spots, especially at this time of year. In a vacuum, asking Josh Hader to pitch the bottom of the ninth in a tied game, then go out and lock down a one-run lead in the tenth, is proper usage.
Watching the game, though, it was clear that Hader, who had been asked to pitch in separate innings just twice all season, was buckling in the tenth. He couldn’t throw his sinker for strikes, leaving it above the zone in non-competitive spots. He walked Randy Arozarena, throwing three sinkers out of the zone. He got a bonus strike on a sinker well above the zone to get ahead of Dominic Canzone 0-1, then left one up on 0-2 that Canzone was able to ground out on, advancing the runners. Hader walked Cal Raleigh on six pitches, including four sinkers sprayed all over the place.
It was clear at this point that Hader, 35 pitches in, had lost it completely. It was just as clear -- ESPN cut to a shot of the Astros’ pen that had tumbleweeds rolling through it -- that it was his game to lose. I can get on board with sending Hader out for the tenth, but after so many non-competitive two-seamers, you have to go get him.
