CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings: Friday, October 1st
Happy Friday! Happy October! Happy Final Musings Of 2021! The final Friday of this season gives us a big 14-game slate and several playoff spots still on the line. It’s been a blast watching this Giants-Dodgers fight to the finish, but nothing is wilder to me than the fact that the Seattle Mariners are still battling for an AL Wild Card spot. It would have been unthinkable a few months ago to suggest that the Mariners would have 11 more wins than the Padres going into the final weekend of the season, but here we are. Baseball! Let’s dig in and see if we can end this season on a winning note.
Friday Night Pitching
We’ve got a pretty big group of solid pitchers tonight, but we lack upside without a single 30% K pitcher on the board. This is what could be considered the top tier:
Clayton Kershaw vs Brewers
Lance Lynn vs Tigers
Framber Valdez vs A’s
Sean Manaea at Astros
Eduardo Rodriguez at Nationals
Ranger Suarez at Marlins
Sandy Alcantara vs Phillies
Shane McClanahan at Yankees
Huascar Ynoa vs Mets
Nestor Cortes vs Rays
Tylor Megill at Braves
Steven Matz vs Orioles
Marco Gonzalez vs Angels
Right off the bat, we see playoff status coming into play in a big way. Clayton Kershaw and Lance Lynn are the standout names here, and for the majority of the season, Lynn would have been the easy call as SP1 with his much longer leash in addition to the strong matchup. However, the Dodgers have everything to play for while the White Sox are just coasting into the playoffs and may not want to extend Lynn in this final tune up. But even with the Dodgers in must-win mode, we haven’t seen Kershaw throw over 75 pitches in his three starts off the IL. I would imagine that if we see vintage Kershaw, he could still get something like 85-90 pitches, which for Kershaw could be 6-7 innings, but if I’m just guessing on Lynn (which I am), I’d also guess 75-ish pitches and five innings, which is exactly what we’ve seen from Kershaw recently. I don’t see either one of these guys being completely necessary tonight, but I would side with Kershaw and just hope for the extended start.