Game 5 delivers contrasts
Rangers veteran Hamels calm, Jays youngster Stroman excitable
Five years ago, the Texas Rangers faced the exact situation they are in now: They won two American League Division Series games on the road, lost two at home and traveled back to their opponent’s ballpark for Game 5.
In 2010, Texas sent the lefthanded ace they acquired at the trade deadline, Cliff Lee, to the mound, and he pitched a complete game to beat the Tampa Bay Rays 5-1. Wednesday, the Rangers send the left-handed ace they acquired at the trade deadline, Cole Hamels, to the mound, and they hope for the same result, this time vs. the Toronto Blue Jays.
Elvis Andrus is Texas’ short- stop, as he was five years ago, and sees a commonality between Lee and Hamels, who once were Philadelphia Phillies teammates.
“You can see it, man,” Andrus said. “It’s hard to explain how determined they are. You see it in their eyes. They’re ready to go, but they’re calm. That’s a good mix with the stuff that he’s got.”
Hamels has pitched under high-stress circumstances twice for the Rangers, pitching a tworun complete game to win the AL West on the season’s final day and throwing seven innings of tworun ball in ALDS Game 2 last week, which the club won in extra innings. Although the Blue Jays have a righty-heavy lineup, Hamels’ best pitch is his changeup, which helps neutralize opposite-side hitters. Hamels’ average against this season was .238 for righties and .237 for lefties, although righties slugged 50 points higher.
In 14 career playoff starts, Hamels is 7-4 with a 3.05 ERA. He went 4-0 with a 1.80 ERA in five starts during the Phillies’ 2008 title run, winning National League Championship Series and World Series MVP honors.
“He’s someone who’s been there before, had success in the playoffs and is not going to shy away from anything,” Rangers first baseman Mike Napoli said. “He’s a guy that wants the ball, and we have a lot of confidence in him to go deep into the game.”
Incidentally, Lee’s opponent for Game 5 in 2010 was David Price, then a Ray and now a Blue Jay who lost Game 1 and, instead of being the expected Game 5 starter, pitched three innings of relief in Game 4.
As Price entered Game 4, it became clear Toronto manager John Gibbons would opt for second-year right-hander Marcus Stroman to take the ball in Game 5. Stroman has a 2.12 ERA in five starts since returning early from a spring training anterior cruciate ligament tear.
“He’s got a great arm. He’s got great stuff, whatever you want to call it,” Gibbons said. “But there’s something different about him, too, and I expect if anybody can rise to the occasion, it would be him.”
Reminded that the visiting team had won all four games thus far, Blue Jays catcher Russell Martin said, “We’ll try and buck that trend.”
Only two teams in 29 tries have lost two games at home to start a division series before rallying to win — the 2001 New York Yankees and the 2012 San Francisco Giants — but, while the odds were long when the Jays left Toronto down 2-0, their chances sit right around 50-50 now.
“I’ll take those odds in Vegas,” Martin said.
Another precedent working against Stroman, 24, is the success rate of young pitchers in deciding playoff games: The last six starters 24 or younger to pitch a sudden-death game all lost, and the teams starting similarly aged pitchers are 4-10 in the last quarter-century.
In contrast with Hamels’ quiet determination is Stroman’s excitability and flair for the dramatic, being demonstrative on the mound and skipping across the foul line to the dugout.
“He looks like he enjoys being in the spotlight,” Martin said a day before Stroman uttered the words “I enjoy the spotlight” in a news conference. “He kind of feeds off that energy, and we feed off his energy.”
As Gibbons quipped before Stroman’s first big-league start this season, “It’s easy for him to get excited about anything.”
Stroman pitched into the eighth inning of Game 2, allowing four runs (three earned) while striking out five and allowing five hits and two walks. He says “controlled nerves” are the norm for him and that this is the perfect culmination of his arduous summer-long rehab.
“It’s going to be a lot of deep breaths out there on the mound, do everything I can just to keep my emotions in check while still being myself,” Stroman said. “I get the chills even just thinking about being in the position that I am now, just coming from where I came.”
The Rangers have noticed and hope to use that to their advantage. Catcher Chris Gimenez said he called time on a few occasions in Game 2 to slow down Stroman.
“He likes to work quick and is emotional out there,” Gimenez said, with a stated goal to “really make him think about the situation.”
Then again, every player will have the extra charge in a series’ final game, when one mistake pitch or one bad hop can be as likely to determine the winner as a club’s talent level.
“It’s amazing how much adrenaline goes through your body — I love that,” Andrus said. “Baseball is so crazy. Whoever feels the best and has the best luck that day is going to win the game, period.”