Houston Astros: Gerrit Cole was always going to start game five

The Houston Astros pitched Justin Verlander on short rest rather than save him for relief in Game Five. Either way, Gerrit Cole was starting Game Five.

Those fools. The Rays fell right into the Houston Astros trap. Despite Tampa wins in back-to-back elimination games, the Astros return to Houston and the comforts of home. Namely, the proper brand of orange juice, and the best pitcher on the planet gracing the rubber: Gerrit Cole.

Forgive me a moment of paranoia, but if a Game Five had to happen, this feels like the perfect circumstances for A.J. Hinch and the Astros. Maybe too perfect.

Rather than toil with the decision of whom to start in a win-or-go-home game five, Hinch orchestrated a scenario in which the decision was already made for him.

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Had he used, say, Wade Miley to start Game Four, we’d be debating who should start this decisive final game, agonizing over who to blame in the event of an upset – just as Hinch agonized over which of his co-aces should get the nod.

Hinch cleverly forestalled any of that second-guessing by starting Justin Verlander on short rest in Game Four. In starting his Hall-of-Famer in Game Four, Hinch now gets to use Cole on normal rest in Game Five. After his Game Two performance, it’s hard to imagine a situation in which Cole didn’t pitch again this series, but now it looks organic, leaving Hinch blameless should Tampa prevail in the finale.

Hinch is a clever boy. The task of helming a postseason team isn’t just about managing the ball club, but it’s about managing the narrative around your decisions. Would he have had the gumption to start Cole over Verlander?

Either decision would have cast serious doubt on Hinch should it not go as planned. Not to mention the complicated internal politics of passing over your established ace for a guy set to be a free agent at postseason’s end.

The easy decision was to throw Verlander on short rest.

If the Rays do manage to take the final game they’ll do so by defeating Zack Greinke, Verlander, and Cole in succession. If they pull that off, credit will go to Kevin Cash and the Rays for brilliant management of their mosaic pitching staff. Cash places each broken piece where it belongs, while the rest of us couldn’t replicate the work if we tried.

Hinch’s work was simpler, and ultimately, safer. Granted, it’s hard to argue with Hinch doing everything in his power to make sure Cole is on the bump for an elimination game. They’ve won each of the last 14 times he took the hill. He is 17-0 in his last 17 decisions. If there’s a sure thing in baseball, Cole is it.

All Hinch had to do to guarantee Cole would start Game Five say so. Instead, he chose to throw his other ace under the bus. This is an over-harsh assessment of the decision, but it is a viable reading of the situation. Hinch pushed Verlander before it was necessary, and now he’s gotten what he wanted: Cole in a decision Game Five.

Hinch’s decision-making was justifiable. Which was exactly the point. But managing in a way that’s justifiable is not the same was managing to win, though it most often looks that way.

It was reasonable to expect Verlander could put away the series, as it was reasonable to expect Greinke could lock it down in Game Three. Neither happened. Hinch could have started Martin Maldonado in game four and the result would have been the same: two Houston losses.

Here’s the problem with Hinch’s plan: even if Cole does as planned and sends the Houston Astros into the ALCS, it comes at a cost. For one, Cole wouldn’t be ready until Game Three against the Yankees. There’s not a lot that could have been done about this, as the series always could have gone five games, and in one way or another, that meant Cole returning in some capacity for Game Five.

But Hinch also spent a valuable weapon before it was necessary. The Verlander-on-short-rest bullet is gone, as it will be hard to justify using it again considering the results of this first time through. The 36-year-old ace was tagged for seven hits, two of them home runs while folding for three walks in just 3 2/3 innings. He clearly wasn’t sharp.

In a vacuum, it was hard to see Verlander’s performance and not come to the same conclusion about starting him on short rest: that was a bad idea.

Given the drastic measures being taken in Washington with Davey Martinez’s starting staff, it’s hard to classify Hinch’s use of Verlander on short rest as professional negligence, but if he did so only to forestall making a tough call about his starter in Game Five, then he’s done a disservice to the Houston Astros cause, and put their backs up against the wall before it was absolutely necessary.

None of which is to say that starting Verlander was unequivocally the wrong choice. From the outside, it looks like the right decision. I would have started him for sure.

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Only from the inside could we know if there were any signs that JV might not have been ready to go on short rest. Sometimes in baseball, all the right decisions still add up to the wrong result. If the Rays manage to defeat the Houston Astros and Gerrit Cole in the ALDS finale, what other possible explanation could there be?

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