Tonight is a great matchup in the NLCS Championship with the Dodgers and Philllies in which the Phillies look to seal the deal with one more win to get to the World Series. Pitching for the Dodgers and looking to stay alive is the crafty right hander Vincent Padilla who so far has pitched well in his first two outings in the post-season. On the other side of the ball Phillies go to the slinging left hander Cole Hamels. Hamels has been less than impressive throughout the entire year for the phillies as they have pretty much won games in only half of his starts. This will be the second time Hamels has faced the Dodgers this series. His first outing he gave up 4 earned runs over five and one third innings including eight Dodger hits. Keeping last year in mind though Hamels will hope to regain his confidence and pitch the Phillies back into the World Series for the second straight year.
With the cold bats working for the Dodgers look for Torre to play small ball in the first few innings to try to get an early lead. If the Dodgers are patient and force Hamels to throw the ball over the plate they should be able to get some baserunners. With the speed they have they can force the phillies to catch up and it seems like that is the only way to stand a chance against them. The Dodgers have a great percentage of the wins coming with only a small margin of victory so they know how to hold the lead even though that was not evident in game 4 when Rollins came up with a game winning walk off with 2 outs in the 9th. My prediction in this game is that the Dodgers will jump out to an early lead possibly with a couple runs in the 1st inning. I think the Phillies will certainly get theirs but after a few innings of Padilla grinding it out the Phillies will surrender to a 3-2 lead in the series after their defeat. Final score prediction for tonight is 7-3 Dodgers. Padilla will likely continue his streak and get to at least the 6th or 7th inning while Hamels might make it only to the 4th or 5th. If The Dodgers are able to fight off the blows early they will win and they will make it much more interesting going back to the warm weather in LA where they can get a loud Dodger stadium behind them and make this a series. Look for Matt Kemp and Casey Blake to have some big at bats today. I think you will see lots of hits for the Dodgers as they bare down against the young lefty.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Great call a couple things. Dodgers scoring first and Hamels not getting past the 5th. After that, not so much haha
ReplyDeleteYeah it was a tough game to watch. The Dodgers couldn't come up with clutch hits and they couldn't come up with clutch outs. I really thought that if Padilla either walked Werth or got him out in the first inning instead of throwing a lazy fast ball over the heart of the plate the game would have been completely different.
ReplyDelete