The night Lance McCullers pitched his way into Phillies history
Was McCullers tipping his pitches? Why did Dusty Baker leave him in for five home runs? There were a lot of questions for the Astros starter.
Tuesday, Lance McCullers took the mound for the Houston Astros in Game 3 of the World Series and etched his own little piece of … Phillies history.
If the Astros don’t get back in this, McCullers will be looked back just as fondly by the local citizenry as, say, Los Angeles Dodgers closer Jonathan Broxton once did, Matt Stairs ripping one of his fastballs into the night.
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This time, the pitches were mostly off-speed and the Phillies kept ripping and ripping and ripping and ripping and, McCullers still out there, ripping one last time. Final score, 7-0, on the night the Phillies couldn’t stop hitting dingers.
“Was it [the Phillies] tonight or was it Lance not having his stuff?” said Astros manager Dusty Baker, who called the whole deal “mind-boggling, because he doesn’t usually give up homers. He keeps the ball in the ballpark.”
Why did the manager keep his guy out there? No pitcher had ever given up five home runs in a World Series game before.
“You don’t want to go through your whole pitching staff, because 4-0 in this ballpark is really nothing, the way the ball flies here,” Baker said of leaving McCullers out there when that was still the score.
Was McCullers tipping his pitches?
“We didn’t see anything,” Baker said. “Sometimes they just hit you. Like I said, who knows, they might have been sitting on off-speed pitches, because that’s what they hit out of the ballpark.”
Right afterward, McCullers stood in front of his locker and faced the questions. He still sounded a bit mystified by what he had witnessed at closest range.
“What I’m throwing or how I’m going about it is how I feel I’m going to be successful,” McCullers said. “...This had nothing to do with tipping.”
Asked about how he’d been so strong at getting ground balls this season, and then this, McCullers said, “Other than the homers, there was a lot of balls on the ground.”
He said it with a bit of gallows humor, after Bryce Harper took him into the right-field seats in the first inning, then Alec Bohm took him to left to lead off the second, and Brandon Marsh got him to right field, 4-0, still the second.
The third and fourth innings gave Phillies fans a little chance to rest up, take a breath.
“He had had two good innings — two really good innings,” Baker said of leaving McCullers out there for the fifth inning. “They hit a blooper, a homer … ”
That was the Kyle Schwarber shot to the hedges. Still, McCullers remained.
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“I couldn’t get anybody loose,” Baker said.
Rhys Hopkins was the beneficiary of that, providing an encore shot to left field, right after Schwarber’s shot.
If the Series goes to seven games, it might be McCullers vs. Ranger Suárez again.
“I still believe, if we get to that point, I’m the best guy to take the ball,” McCullers said. “I’ve just got to pitch better, that’s it.”
What, he was asked, can he look at or try to clean up?
“This is a cat and mouse game,” McCullers said. “I faced them in early October.”
He’d gone six innings on Oct. 3, giving up a single run.
“I pitched pretty well that game,” McCullers said. “Sometimes you tend to just roll with what you had last game. I’ll take a look at the film tomorrow … ”
McCullers was asked if all the home run pitches were mistakes, in his mind.
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“I don’t feel like it,” he said. “I don’t feel like the 2-0 slider was a mistake to Marsh. I don’t feel like the changeup [to Schwarber] was a mistake; I don’t feel like the 2-2 slider down [to Hoskins] — yeah, maybe it wasn’t like off the corner of the plate. It was 2-2 [count.] I’m trying at that point — I understand the reality of the game at that point. I’m trying to eat outs. I’m trying to save our bullpen.”
The wince-inducer to him came in the first inning.
“I didn’t think the pitch to Harper was great,” McCullers said. “The 0-0 to Bohm [in the second] was supposed to be away, it leaked in. So, I feel like some were not good pitches that they just did a good job hitting and some were not the best pitches that they hit out.”
Was McCullers OK with being out there to save the bullpen?
“Of course I was,” McCullers said, talking about how walking out for the fifth, “I didn’t feel like it was over. I didn’t feel like we were completely out of it. Obviously, it was going to be tough with the way Suárez was throwing the ball and the way the bullpen is throwing for them. You don’t feel like you’re out of it at 4-0. You saw what happened in the first game.”
McCullers said he’d really wanted to get out of the inning even after what he called “a dagger” from Schwarber.
As for Harper getting things going, McCullers was asked if it had reached the point the Astros were just going to have to really pitch around Harper.
“Bryce Harper has had a star by his name since he’s been playing baseball,” McCullers said. “It was a bad pitch 0-0. I understand. I told myself before the at-bat, don’t let him beat you here. ... When you have to face Harper in the first inning with men on base, especially in the first inning there, you’re not looking to throw him a 0-0 kind of up, a well-handled breaking ball.”
More a location problem than selection?
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“I believe so,” McCullers said. “Listen, I am who I am. I’m going to throw a lot of off-speed. Everyone knows that. It was not a well-located pitch. It could have been a well-located pitch and he could have done the exact same thing.”