Rays' Game 1 Pitching Surprise: Martinez Gets the Start

Game one is tomorrow night, and a little bit of a surprise, right, Craig? They installed Nick Martinez as the starter for the Tampa Bay Rays against Mizorowski. Yeah, what do you think of that move? Yeah, surprising, yeah. I mean, you generally think the guy that goes in game one is the one prepared to go in game seven, and I would assume that you would want Rasmussen for those three. but uh you know in knowing a little bit about how this works and sort of you know being behind the scenes um you know it may be what it tells you Scott is maybe Kevin Cash uh had a conversation with Rasmussen maybe Rasmussen is not 100 you know maybe he's 92 right now and maybe the Rays think another day we'll get him to 100 so uh you know that happens a lot they talk to pitchers and they ask and they say hey you know what would you rather do i'm sure the Rays would have preferred to have him go game one but let's not let's get it twisted here they're pitching Nick Martinez i think for that reason uh it doesn't mean Rasmussen is not great doesn't mean that he's not healthy but this is the most he's ever pitched and having dealt with this before you know covering the Marlins and Major League Baseball these are real things Scott managers have talks with the pitchers and say where are you at and uh they will never admit it why would they give that away to us They'll never do that. But if you're asking me, I suspect that Rasmussen needs another day before he pitches. That's it. Simple and plain. You know, it's weird, right? You think, you know, the World Series is so far away from the ALCS in this case or the NLCS. And it is. It's like for a fan, it's like, oh, my God, I got to wait another day, another day, another day. But the dude did pitch Sunday. So normally with four or five days rest, right? I guess they switch sometimes. So this wouldn't be on just four days rest. So you're right. Maybe they just said, all right, you know what? We're going to wait one more day. It's no big deal. It does also move Freddy Peralta back to starting in Tampa. There was some speculation about how they wanted to avoid him pitching in Milwaukee since he's a former Brewer. But I don't know. I mean, he's a veteran pitcher. I forget the circumstances, why they traded him to the Mets, but I don't think it was a bad thing, right? I don't sense that he would, like, not do well in Milwaukee. Maybe I'm wrong. But they were talking about that on MLB today, about that was one of the benefits of this, having to pitch in Tampa versus Milwaukee. Yeah, I think they, you know, in these sort of situations, you can go one or two ways. And it's either you believe that Peralta is going to go to Milwaukee and have all that emotion, harness it and stick it to his old team. Or sometimes, Scott, you think maybe the other way, is it just a little too much here? Should we protect him from himself against that? and it does seem like they're going with option two doesn't mean that peralta couldn't go to milwaukee and win uh and and by the way there's no like bad blood as you said there i mean simply put peralta's contract was coming to an end and uh then they and just like they did with Burns they they traded him away before his contract was up and that was it so uh he costed himself a lot by not pitching certainly well at all he was not good with the Mets he by the way was horrible with the Rays too for about three weeks and then the Rays finally tinkered enough with him to get him where he is right now and I'm sure that they love what they saw when he pitched at home so my guess is they're just going to what works there and look the Rays are very smart so is Milwaukee so who are we I guess we can challenge it after the fact but these are two of the sharpest teams in baseball without a doubt he did pitch there one time this year and you know as a Mets not good seven runs in five and a third innings but he wasn't good all year with the Mets yeah he was horrible with the Mets how do you explain that i how do you i mean if you're a Mets fan right you got to be so frustrated agreed this guy was brutal brutal and and and yet he was phenomenal he was better than the Milwaukee Freddie Peralta with the Tampa Bay Rays his last one two three four listen he went how many starts without allowing two runs or more for Milwaukee, throw out the first two bad outing every outing after that he had two runs or less except one and that's about 10 starts i mean but he'd been like screwing up that badly that it was so easy to fix a couple of starts and we know what you're doing wrong i mean when he got when he got traded to the Rays i remember having these conversations that people thought that he was going to be good with Tampa Bay i'm like well maybe but it ain't going to be right away because that's not what happens you don't just automatically get a guy and within a week completely change what he does you you watch it you see some of the good some of the bad and of course they have this data previous to the Mets but what the Rays absolutely did is incorporate more of a change-up I mean that that's not something he was throwing almost at all with the Mets and maybe not even at all with the Brewers but this is why Scott the Rays just they haven't figured out you know they they know how to get the very best out of their guys a great example is this guy who's pitching the ninth inning this guy Baker i was talking to Joe about this last night take a look at Baker's stats for his entire career i mean how could you possibly have projected him be this good