2019 Playoffs Diary: Game Five

Heading into this game, we weren't sure whether D.J. would give the ball to Jose Quintana or Marcus Stroman. As it turned out, the answer was: both. Quintana got the start, but only as a "cover pitcher" for (eventually) Stroman. Luckily, we were able to get Christian Villanueva one at-bat against Quintana, and he made the most of it, depositing a 2-2 pitch into the bleachers in left to give us an early 1-0 lead.

By the time Villanueva stepped to the plate again, D.J. quickly turned the game over to right-hander Corbin Burnes. Burnes retired Villanueva with ease, but then ran into trouble -- big-time -- in the following inning. By the time that inning ended, we had put five runs on the board and opened up a comfortable 6-0 lead.

Stroman finally entered the game in the fifth inning and tossed two shutout innings before he, too, ran into trouble in the seventh inning. We caught a break when Brandon Nimmo hit a routine fly ball to center field with two outs, and ended up on first base when the center fielder slipped on the wet grass. Jose Ramirez took full advantage of that break by hitting a two-run homer to make it an 8-1 game.

Meanwhile, our starter, Anibal Sanchez, pitched one of his best games of the season. Through six innings, he allowed just one run on five hits and no walks. I nearly pulled him from the game in the top of the sixth inning when he stepped to the plate with two outs and a runner on third, but I decided to give him one more inning. That turned out to be a good thing, given how our depleted bullpen would fare in this game.

Pedro Strop immediately ran into trouble in the seventh inning, allowing a single, a double, two wild pitches, and a passed ball to the first three batters he faced. He eventually settled down, and I handed the ball to the normally-steady Taylor Rogers. He, too, ran into trouble, by allowing back-to-back singles. He, too, settled down and got out of the inning.

I left Rogers in to start the ninth, hoping that he'd keep his pitch count low enough to face pain-in-the-ass Jesse Winker. He didn't make it long enough to do so, however. After serving up a single and double to the #7 and #8 batters in the Akron lineup, I quickly yanked him out of the game and asked Jonathan Holder to get us out of this jam.

Instead, the normally-reliable Holder threw gasoline on the fire by serving up a two-run double to pinch hitter Josh Bell. That cut our lead to 9-5. Two batters later, Starling Marte made it a 9-6 game with an RBI double. That brought Joey Wendle to the plate, with Ronald Acuna on deck. If Wendle had reached, Acuna would have represented the tying run of the game. I could instantly envision a scenario where the rookie Acuna played the hero at home in Akron, winning Game Five single-handedly, and rallying his team to two straight victories back in Salem to snatch victory from the hands of defeat.

Instead, Wendle struck out. Then Acuna struck out as well.

And so now we head to the OL Championship Series where we will face off against our division rivals, the Joplin Miners. This is pretty much my greatest nightmare. I could live with losing a postseason series to just about any other team in the league. Losing to Joplin would haunt me for the rest of my life.