Earlier this evening, ESPN televised the World Series pre-game edition of Baseball Tonight outside of historic Fenway Park in Boston. Karl Ravech hosted the show with Hall of Famer Barry Larkin, John Kruk, Curt Schilling and reporters Buster Olney and Tim Kurkjian. Chris Berman also joined the telecast from the field with analysts Orel Hershiser and Rick Sutcliffe. The Baseball Tonight team offered their insights and predictions for Game 1 of the World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Boston Red Sox. For more on ESPN’s World Series coverage, visit ESPNMediaZone.com.
Schilling on Jon Lester’s pitch count:
Jon Lester is a guy who can shut you out over six [innings] but need 120 pitches to do it on some nights. That’s a problem, if that happens. He needs to get strikes early and get through the first couple innings without throwing 80 to 90 pitches.
Kruk on hitting Lester’s curveball:
Once he established he could throw his fastball away from righties – we all know he can come inside – that makes the breaking ball so much harder because you have to go out there and get that pitch now. And then it starts breaking the same plane. That’s where you have struggles.
Schilling on Lester’s improvements:
This is not the Jon Lester of September 2011 or 2012 and there’s a huge reason for that. I think his ability to move off of the inside part of the plate is setting his curveball up. His curveball, for the most part, has been his third pitch. It always has been. Not a lot of swings and misses. If you look at the difference between the first and second half — in the first half, hitters were hammering his curveball. The second half, he had dominating numbers with his curveball. And I believe that’s because he started to throw his fastball inside and much more outside early in the count to right-handed hitters.
Hershiser on Lester using off-speed pitches:
He’s had to redevelop some things about his career. The main thing he has to redevelop, especially attacking these St. Louis Cardinals, is using his off-speed pitch. This is a fastball hitting team. Think of Molina, Holliday, Allen Craig, who is now going to be in there. He’s a cutter, four-seam fastball pitcher. But in big games – the World Series – they are going to look at charts. They are going to see that he throws a ton of those pitches and he’s going to need to use the two-seamer and the curveball to get them off of that.
Schilling on the Red Sox organization’s advance scouting:
This is where you are going to see one of the secret weapons for the Red Sox – their advance scouts. They put as much money and time and effort and talent into their advance scouts as they do any other part of the organization. Going to the World Series twice here, I was exposed to the amount of work and the depth of the work they do. They’ll have a game plan, not just for every hitter, but for every count and every situation.
Larkin on how hitters approach Adam Wainwright:
You have to adjust pitch by pitch and I think what makes Adam Wainwright so good is the fact that he is not a predictable pitcher. He has four quality pitches, he throws them all and he could throw them at any time. I think what makes him so good – what makes any pitcher really good – is his ability and his willingness to throw ball four when there’s a 3-2 count and say, ‘you don’t have the guts to stay off that pitch and not swing.’
Kruk on Wainwright facing Boston’s lineup:
The Los Angeles Dodgers are a more free-swinging team than this Boston Red Sox team. So it’s going to be a different animal for Adam Wainwright. But I still think the quality of pitches he throws at 93 and 95, that breaking ball is still a strike when it comes out of his hand on a 3-2 pitch. Boston has to be very patient and try to stay off of it.
Sutcliffe on Wainwright’s adjustments in 2013:
He is an ace once again. We know that before the Tommy John [procedure], he was one of the best pitchers in the game. In 2012, he was basically a .500 pitcher. He didn’t throw 200 innings, he didn’t have 200 strikeouts and his velocity wasn’t 96 miles per hour anymore. So in spring training this past year, he made an adjustment. He wasn’t the guy at 6’7” that could reach out at 96 miles per hour and just hand it to the catcher. He didn’t have that velocity anymore. But he knew that to be successful, he had to find a way to get people out in the strike zone. So he shortened his stride. By not getting out there with a long stride, he elevated his release point. So all of a sudden now, that downward plane and the way the baseball approached home plate completely changed everything.
Hershiser on Wainwright’s location:
He can pitch down at will and then he goes up for a purpose. When he makes his mistake now, he’s not making a mistake. He’s going up there for a strikeout and he’s getting it, especially coming off that curveball.
Kruk on Allen Craig returning from injury:
[It’s] because of his swing. It’s a short, compact swing. I don’t think he’s going to miss a beat – I really don’t.
Kurkjian on Carlos Beltran’s first World Series:
He’s played the most postseason games of any player ever without getting to the World Series and that ends tonight. It was like a rallying cry – let’s get Carlos Beltran into the World Series. And he is so good this time of year, mainly because of the calm that he shows.
Larkin on the approach against Beltran:
This is a team that in this series, they are going to say, ‘Carlos Beltran – you’re not going to beat us. Everybody else and anybody else around him is going to have to beat us.’
Kruk on the importance of Matt Carpenter in the series:
Matt Carpenter had a great game in Game 6 against Clayton Kershaw. He got on base a few times, scored a run. He needs to get on base in front of Carlos Beltran. That way, if they do pitch around him, now the middle of the lineup comes in and starts trying to produce the runs that are going to help the Cardinals try to win.
Schilling on the atmosphere for the Boston Red Sox:
They are now able to say we’ve done this before and that was different. I think, in a way, ’04 changed a lot of things. I think Boston fans became very comfortable and they had a right to with the Patriots and the Celtics and the Bruins and everything. This is a group that expects to be here now, which is very different.
Schilling on Koji Uehara’s success:
It’s one of those lessons in velocity is not everything — command and control are. When you watch him pitch and you watch his stuff, he works the four quadrants of the strike zone with two pitches that look exactly alike. He throws a fastball and a split. For numbers, complete dominant numbers. A WHIP of 0.57 is the lowest by any pitcher since 1970 who has thrown 60 innings or more. His last walk was over two months ago. He’s given up two earned runs in almost 50 innings. Just stunningly dominating numbers.
