M. Estrada vs. E. Volquez Lineups to follow..... Blue Jays- Revere Donaldson Bautista Encarnacion Colabello Tulowitzki Navarro Pillar Goins Royals- Escobar Zobrist Cain Hosmer Morales Moustakas Perez Gordon Rios
Good pitching "stops" (slows it down considerably) good hitting. Great pitching is usually in control the vast majority of the time. Great pitching = great command and control of two or more pitches. Hit your spots with great consistent accuracy and know how to "set-up" the batters. Easier said than done but, if a pitcher can hit all four quadrants of the strike zone "whenever" he wanted to, has a decent fastball, and changes speeds, the hitters will constantly be on the defensive and off balance. All you need to know is what the great Warren Spahn used to say: ......paraphrasing.... "I control the outside and inside part of the plate, the hitters can have the middle". Kinda hard for lineups to produce alot of hits and runs when all the pitcher gives them is fastballs on the lower and upper corners of the strikezone with some off-speed pitches mixed in. And it's almost always a good idea for a pitcher to throw a good fastball a bit higher out of the strikezone when he's ahead in the count with two stikes. More likely for a hitter to "chase" a fastball up out of the zone instead of a fastball a few inches off the ground- (which is how Yankee pitchers tend to operate..lol) Don't need exceptional "stuff" to do it...it comes with sound pitching philosophy and knowing how to pitch. Something the Yankee organization has alot of problems teaching and instilling in their SP "prospects". Easier said than done....but it's no coincidence pitchers like Koufax, Gibson, Ford...ect, were consistently successful in BOTH regular season AND postseason.
