David Adler

When you see a guy like Hunter Brown, granted it was only his second start back from the IL, but a guy who is that good and stuffs that nasty, how important is it to you that this team shows consistently against guys like that

that you can get the pitch count up, and even if you're not going to put a big number up, better a small number over five than a small number over seven.

There is also, in a series, a cascading effect where the Astros come into this series, and they're running one man short in the bullpen because they're running a six-man rotation right now.

Brian Abreu is on the restricted list due to a personal issue, and now you got to the bullpen early.

A.J.

Bluebaugh is almost certainly down today after throwing 40 pitches yesterday.

Brian King's now pitched in back-to-back days.

So while Josh Hader still looms back there, you now get into game two of the series where their bullpen is, you know, a little thinner than they came in and a chance to kind of...

roll that one game into the next um what is the like i talk about a bunch on this show because like we can see it and you can see who's red and yellow and try to play through what the game's going to look like um how much on the team side is that uh something that gets talked about or something that's emphasized particularly early in a series like getaway day whatever it's still better to pitch to hit against a middle reliever than a start a starting ace right but you're not going to get the carryover effect the way you are that if you do that in game one of a series

And then you're definitely red Wednesday if you do a third game in a row.

I mean, playoffs, but there's off days in there.

I'm sure Louis Varlin would like to, but even they're not going to ask Louis Varlin.

So, naturally, Peter Lambert will shove today.

We'll talk Peter Lambert a little later in the show.

So, look, I don't want it to sound like we're doing backflips about the Blue Jays' offense in that game.

They only put up a four spot.

And, yeah, that's against Hunter Brown, but they chased Hunter Brown early and then didn't put up big numbers against the bullpen.

They just kind of chipped away at it.

So...

Again, there was a lot of positive in running the pitch count up, getting the starter out, the carryover effect.