Division Series: Wednesday, October 1st, 2003

Wednesday, October 01 2003 @ 09:45 AM EDT

Boston Red Sox at Oakland Athletics, 10 PM ET (game 1)

This series is perhaps the hardest to predict because the teams seem so evenly matched. I'm predicting a 5-game series, with a re-match of tonight's pitching matchup.

Because Oakland plays in a pitcher's park, its offence is better than it looks on paper. This is the right sort of offence to attack Pedro with: a high-pitch count generator. As always with Hudson, his success depends on inducing routine ground balls.

Pedro Martinez (2002/2003)

versus	AB	H	HR	TB	W	K	HBP	SB	CS	OBP	SLG	K pct	W pct
right	571	106	6	240	42	195	9	7	3	.252	.273	.314	.069
left	840	185	14	250	45	250	15	6	5	.272	.337	.278	.051

Oakland's strategy will be to get into lots of deep counts and exhaust Pedro. It's unknown how effective Pedro is after 120 pitches because no regular season game has meant enough to take that kind of risk. With Pedro scheduled to make another start in this series, I don't think he'll throw more than 115 pitches.

notes: OBP is calculated without including sac flies (H+W+HBP)/(AB+W+HBP); player in red indicates the batter is at a platoon disadvantage.

Great decision by the A's to bat Durazo 2nd. He's the most likely Athletic to get on base and it give Chavez and Tejada a chance to drive in some runs tonight. I'm a little surprised Jermaine Dye is in the lineup instead of Terrence Long or Eric Byrnes.

Just as the A's are well-suited to beat Pedro, the Bosox are going to give Tim Hudson problems. Boston has plenty of lefthanded batters who hit line-drives and deep flies. As I write this, one of them (Todd Walker) has gone deep. But Hudson is nothing if not a big-game pitcher. This may come down to a battle of bullpens.

notes: OBP is calculated without including sac flies (H+W+HBP)/(AB+W+HBP); player in red indicates the batter is at a platoon disadvantage.

Nomar Garciaparra is batting second. I don't think this is optimal, since his OBP against righties is far lower than lefty swingers like Mueller, Walker or Ortiz. I would definitely bat Mueller 2nd, Manny 3rd and follow with Ortiz, Walker and Nomar. Of course batting a superstar like Garciaparra 6th would create waves of controversy ... better to leave well enough alone.

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