Game Five will be a challenging game in many ways. We're playing in Akron, which has been anything but kind to us this year. We will be starting Anibal Sanchez, who has been incredibly ineffective most of this season. Thanks to the "bullpen game" in Game Four, our bullpen is completely depleted at this point.
Our two best relievers, Ryan Brasier and Oliver Perez, will be unavailable. The same is true with Shohei Ohtani and Richard Rodriguez. We will have to get by with a bullpen of Taylor Rogers, Jonathan Holder (on a very short pitch count), Pedro Strop, one inning of Trevor Cahill (our Game 7 starter if it comes to that), and -- gulp -- Jon Gray.
On the plus side, Akron has a choice between Jose Quintana and Marcus Stroman to start this game. Neither one is ideal. Quintana is a left-hander (which means Christian Villanueva and Danny Valencia finally come into play in this series) and Stroman is...well, not very good (although he pitched fine against us.)
The Akron bullpen will also be missing their closer, Josh Hader, who tossed 18 pitches in Game Four and 36 in Game Three. This plays well into our late-inning game if Quintana gets the start.
I see no issues on either team in terms of usage. We both should have enough PA's to get through this series without having to sit anyone important. I am a little worried about Brasier. We've relied heavily on him so far (although he did allow that game-deciding homer to Acuna in Game Three) and he's gotten us out of a number of jams. He threw 31 pitches in the last game, and 48 over the last four days. He may be done for the series.
It's a little ridiculous that Perez is unavailable. He is rated "Pr" for durability, but you'd think he'd be able to pitch after throwing only 19 pitches last game, and only five pitches three days before then.
We need to put Akron away EARLY or it might be a very rough ride from here on out.
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