2016 ALDS Game 1 Preview: Let’s Get It Started

Cleveland Indians fans have waited over nine seasons for Kenny Lofton defined playoff baseball to return to the Burning River city. Starting tonight, the Tribe and Boston Red Sox will get the American League Division Series started with the all-important Game 1.

The field will be freshly painted and the house packed so let’s unpack the first game.

Red Sox As Road Warriors

There was much hype surrounding the Indians claiming home-field advantage during the ALDS. What’s interesting is that the Red Sox play incredible on the road and look like some of the other great teams in recent memory that have gone on to win the World Series. The following table shows the home and road winning percentages for each of the last five World Series champions, plus the 2007 and 2004 Red Sox.

Team	Home Winning %	Road Winning %
2016 Red Sox	.590	.582
2015 Royals	.640	.543
2014 Giants	.556	.531
2013 Red Sox	.654	.543
2012 Giants	.593	.568
2011 Cardinals	.556	.556
2007 Red Sox	.630	.556
2004 Red Sox	.679	.531

There are a few factors that play into it as far as I can see. The first is that the offense is very deep and so balanced that it’s not really built for any specific ballpark. They can get on base from just about every spot in the lineup and guys like Hanley Ramirez and David Ortiz can hit it out of every ballpark. This is simply a dynamic lineup, not one tailored to succeed in the weird dimensions of Fenway. More importantly is that this is a young team. They have an average age of 29, and that’s obviously brought up by having a 40-year-old playing every day. Much of their core is still in their early twenty’s. Obviously, it’s much easier for the young players to play through the long grind of a season and late-season road trips than those that are up there in age.

Andrew Miller vs. David Ortiz

This will be an important match-up for both sides. Since Miller transitioned from a struggling starter into a viable reliever in 2012, he has faced Ortiz on five occasions. The future Hall of Famer is hitless with three strikeouts in those at-bats. On May 6th this season, both Red Sox manager and the slugger were ejected for what they believed to be a very bad call. Here is the video:

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This was the pitch sequence of the at-bat:
Pitch 1: 93-mph fastball, foul
Pitch 2: 83-mph slider, ball
Pitch 3: 93-mph fastball, ball
Pitch 4: 83-mph slider, ball
Pitch 5: 82-mph slider, called strike – Big Papi voiced his displeasure with this call and Red Sox manager John Farrell was ejected for sticking up for Ortiz.
Pitch 6: 83-mph slider, called strike

Ortiz was ejected for voicing his frustration with the strike calls. As you can see, it was pretty animated. Expect a similar sequence from Miller in tonight’s game if these two square off.

Red Sox Starter, Rick Porcello

Rick Porcello, a leading contender for the Cy Young Award, earned the right to start Game 1. He is 22-4 with a 3.11 earned run average. Over the last month or so of the season, he went from fringe Cy Young candidate to a legitimate possibility. Chris Sale is the only AL pitcher with a higher RA9-WAR and FIP-WAR than Porcello.  You could probably make the argument that Porcello’s ERA was more a product of good fortune than performance by pointing to his .269 batting average on balls in play, which is 33 points lower than his career mark, but then you also have to consider that his career mark’s probably unfairly inflated by his being a ground-ball pitcher in front of Detroit’s defense for so many years, and that the BABIPs of his strongest Cy Young competitors are similarly depressed.

While the two-strike fastball was an early-season development, it hasn’t been until recently that Porcello’s started going to the four-seam fastball early in counts, too. Going back to that September 14 start against Baltimore, in which Porcello threw eight innings of one-run ball, here’s how he started off the 12 lefties he faced:

• Changeup
• Four-seam
• Sinker
• Four-seam
• Curveball
• Four-seam
• Four-seam
• Four-seam
• Four-seam
• Changeup
• Changeup
• Four-seam

This is not the Rick Porcello we’ve grown to know. This is a new Porcello, with whom we ought to become acclimated to. Especially in Game 1.

The current Indians roster have had relative success against him, hitting .290/.340/.454 in 238 at-bats. Here is a highlight video of his only start against the Tribe this season:

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In this start, which Porcello won, he went 5.2, faced 25 batters, striking out 5 and giving up 2 earned runs.

Bullpen Matchups

The return of  set-up man Koji Uehara from a strained pectoral muscle has put the pieces of this bullpen back in place. Since the beginning of September, the Red Sox pen ranks second in the AL in ERA (1.81), and first in opponent average (.198) and strikeout rate (10.4 K/9). Although there are concerns about their left-handed relief, Craig Kimbrel has also raised concerns, mostly because of his 15 walks in his past 20 innings.  But if the biggest worry in this bullpen is a man with 83 strikeouts and just 28 hits in 53 innings, that doesn’t sound like much of a crisis.

There are several intriguing bullpen matchups to keen an eye on. Uehara has had moderate success against current Indians batters. The Tribe, as a whole, are only hitting .189/.218/.302 in 53 at-bats. He has not given up a home-run and has struck out 15 batters. At age 41 and a heavy workload already under his belt, Uehara can only be counted on to provide 1 inning at the maximum.

If a situation comes up where Uehara comes up in a high leverage situation, Carlos Santana would be the best option to have up at the plate. Although he is only batting .222 against him, Santana has hit two doubles with an RBI in his career against Uehara.

Craig Kimbrel has the ninth inning and Uehara the eighth. Both were outstanding in the month of September. Brad Ziegler and Robby Ross Jr are co-owners of the seventh inning.

Here is Kimbrel earning the save against the Tribe from earlier in the regular season:

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