LCS roundtable: Inside scoop on Nationals-Cardinals, Astros-Yankees

The division series are in the books, with the Washington Nationals, St. Louis Cardinals, New York Yankees and Houston Astros making up the MLB playoffs' last teams standing.

With the National League Championship Series beginning Friday and the American League Championship Series starting Saturday, ESPN.com's Buster Olney, Bradford Doolittle and Sam Miller set the stage for the next round.

What we've seen so far ...

Coming out of the division series round, what has surprised you the most about this year's postseason -- and do you expect it to be a factor in the LCS?

Buster Olney: The willingness of teams to aggressively reach for their primary starting pitchers in relief roles this early in the postseason. Two years ago, the Astros leaned on Lance McCullers Jr. and Charlie Morton, and last year, Red Sox manager Alex Cora had David Price, Chris Sale and Nathan Eovaldi working out of the bullpen. But just about all of that occurred in the LCS or the World Series, when the finish line was coming into view. Already Stephen Strasburg, Max Scherzer, Blake Snell and others have come out of the bullpen. This is like watching marathoners increase their pace in Mile 8 of 26, and you wonder if there will be a cost later in the month.

Sam Miller: How many fly balls I thought were gone off the bat dying on the warning track. This was something that I had been considering only anecdotally -- supported by some batters' giddy reactions to what turned out to be not-quite-enough fly balls -- but Baseball Prospectus' Rob Arthur, an authority on the juiced ball of the past few years, argues that there's real science showing more air resistance on postseason balls this year. (Major League Baseball issued a statement Thursday saying the balls used in the postseason were pulled from the same batches used in the regular season.) In almost every close game so far there has been at least one fly ball that had me wondering whether the equipment was flipping series outcomes -- Arthur estimates 24 "lost" homers -- and if the ball's physics continue into the LCS, I'll keep wondering. Which team that benefits is harder to say, but it might be the Yankees and Astros -- two extremely talented teams whose main/only weaknesses are allowing home runs. Of course, they also hit a lot of home runs, but I suspect they'd take the trade-off if it makes games less volatile.

Brad Doolittle: Like Sam, it really felt like balls weren't carrying as much as during the season, and all five games I've been to have been indoors, so you can't blame the weather. Home runs have still been germane to many of the game outcomes but haven't been the only thing that mattered -- i.e., the Cardinals' 10-run inning without a homer. The thing is, I'm not sure how much it matters from a competition standpoint, given the teams that have moved on to the LCS round. They all can beat you in multiple ways. If the balls in play right now are indeed from a new, less-lively supply, we can get into the implications of that after the postseason. For now, it could actually enhance the quality of what we are watching from here on out.

In exactly five words, how would you define the 2019 postseason so far?

Olney: The super powers are mortal.

Miller: The past is never dead.

Doolittle: Great starting pitchers still matter.

ALCS

How will Astros-Rays going to a Game 5, while the Yankees come in rested after a three-game sweep of the Twins, affect the ALCS, if at all?

Olney: It could be decisive, because it means that Zack Greinke -- and not one of the Astros' two best pitchers, Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole -- will have the responsibility of starting two of the first five games in the series. And the simple fact is that the Houston pitching staff will go into the ALCS much more taxed, much more stressed, than the Yankees' pitchers -- and for New York, which is so reliant on its bullpen, having fresh arms might have a big impact, especially by the time Games 3, 4 and 5 test their depth.

Miller: It's not a huge deal because of how the Astros' pitching staff is set up. Verlander and Cole will still be able to make two starts each on full rest -- they'll just be Games 2 and 6 and Games 3 and 7. For some teams -- the Cardinals and Nationals, for instance -- that's still a disadvantage compared to having an ace go in Games 1 and 5, because in the 1-5 scenario the ace is then available in relief for a Game 7, or maybe even a Game 6. But the Astros don't have the same bullpen deficiency that the Nationals do, and they don't have the same disproportionate reliance on a single ace like the Cardinals do. I would expect they have simpler, more conservative intentions of using Verlander and Cole in traditional ways: four total starts of 110 or so pitches apiece. The exact order of the starts wouldn't really affect that.

Doolittle: Going five games scrambles the Astros' design. It seems unlikely that AJ Hinch will be able to get by with three starters again, though that probably would have been the case anyway. But the next round, with his first three pitchers likely to be Greinke, Verlander and Cole in that order, if the Astros get behind, Hinch will be faced with constant decisions on whether to bring pitchers back on short rest. And Houston doesn't have enough relievers dominating right now to comfortably scheme out a bullpen game. The Yankees still had guys working their way back to full health, so in that respect, maybe the rest helps. But in October, I'm kind of leery about momentum-interrupting layoffs.

When the Yankees and Astros met in the ALCS two years ago, they played an epic seven-game nail-biter. Will that sort of series happen again? Why or why not?

Olney: Oh, yes, and in no small part because whoever survives the AL Championship Series will be viewed as the heavy favorite to win the World Series. The drama of this series will be about whether the Yankees, fully rested and as healthy as they have been all year, can take control in the first five games -- early in the series, as the Astros recover from their extended set against the Rays -- because if the ALCS gets back to Houston for a Game 6, New York would have to beat Verlander and/or Cole on the road to close it out. The Yankees will be trying to run up the pitch counts of the Houston starters while Hinch will maneuver to get as much as he can out of Verlander, Cole, Greinke and Will Harris. It's a fascinating matchup because of the stars, but also because the pitching staffs are so different but perhaps equally effective.

Miller: If we learned something from the Dodgers' and Astros' series in the LDS, it's that any two playoff teams are closely matched enough to play an epic max-game nail-biter. There just isn't that much separating even 96- and 107-win teams, let alone 103- and 107-win teams, to reliably tilt a short series. Neither the Astros nor the Yankees revealed, during the LDS, some heretofore unknown weakness, and if the consensus around baseball is still undoubtedly that the Astros are the more talented team, the Yankees might have closed the gap by crushing the 101-win Twins. Their OPS in the LDS was nearly 200 points higher than any other team's, and their ERA was the lowest of any team. I'll take epic.

Doolittle: My answer to this has changed since the postseason began. I would have said that I just see the Astros as the better team, enough so that the most likely outcome is a five- or six-game win for them. However, against the Rays, we saw a team that is pretty reliant on a top-heavy pitching staff, while the Rays have the nimbleness that comes with a deep, reliable bullpen. The Yankees have that too, but in tandem with top-level talent that isn't quite on par with the Astros but isn't far off. I think this one will go the distance.

Can the Yankees mix and match pitching to hang with the Astros' aces or is turning the ALCS into a slugfest their best chance at winning?

Olney: I don't think it's going to be a slugfest; the pitching will control the series -- the Astros' rotation vs. the Yankees' relievers. As with the Rays in the AL Division Series, the theoretical pendulum of advantage will swing the late innings because of the Yankees' bullpen edge, especially with New York's rested relievers performing well late in the season.

Miller: I probably trust the Yankees' rotation more than the average ball fan, but even if Luis Severino and James Paxton aren't the aces I think they are: Yes, the math works out for the Yankees. Their five best relievers should throw more than half the innings in the series, and we just watched those five hold Minnesota's powerful offense to two runs per nine. The thing is that the Astros have some great relievers too -- and great starters, and a great lineup, and a great manager, and they could probably lay down great sacrifice bunts if they didn't disdain the idea of doing it. I don't think these two pitching staffs are likely to allow slugfests; if there's slugging going on, it'll probably be on only one side or the other.

Doolittle: Yeah, I kind of already answered this, but the Rays laid out a blueprint that the Yankees can follow just as well, if not better. There are enough dynamic hitters and pitchers on both teams that we could see a low-scoring game one night and a slugfest the next. Most games will fall somewhere between and it'll be about who executes in high-leverage situations.

Who will be ALCS MVP?

Olney: Yordan Alvarez, who will be targeted for left-handed matchups by Yankees manager Aaron Boone -- and Alvarez has demonstrated he can hit left-handers (he hit .307 against them this season); that he's fully capable of making in-game adjustments; and that he will take advantage of the Yankee Stadium dimensions.

Miller: The only way to avoid answering "Gerrit Cole" is by realizing that, in a series that goes six games or fewer, he'll probably start only once. That's reasonably likely, so: Alex Bregman. He looks in control of every game he plays right now.

Doolitte: Gerrit Cole. Did you see him in the previous series? Have you seen him for the past five months? He's doing historical things and only seems to be building momentum.

NLCS

If the underdog Cardinals are going to make this a series, what will be the key factor for them?

Olney: Carlos Martinez has to be better. He's never going to be a wipeout closer, but eventually, the high-wire thing he did against the Braves would take them down. In 3⅓ innings over three games of the division series, he allowed six hits, three walks and a couple of home runs. Mike Shildt has demonstrated loyalty to his players and deep faith in Martinez, but that late-inning performance has to change, or Shildt has to borrow from Hinch's strategy of 2017 and look for alternatives.

Miller: Well, either Shildt needs to keep getting great results from his starters or he needs to start trusting his bullpen. Shildt has really distinguished himself from the rest of the postseason managers by giving his starters very long leashes. Long by postseason standards, but even long by regular-season standards: Jack Flaherty's 117-pitch outing in Game 2 was one pitch from his season high, and when Adam Wainwright threw 120 in Game 3, it was only the second time this season he topped 110. Shildt also let Dakota Hudson hit for himself with two runners on in a close Game 4, so that Hudson could then face the top of the Braves' order a third time.

These moves would have looked normal in 2009, but in 2019 they're outliers, and hooks that slow have been the surest way to turn modern managers into postseason goats. Shildt has avoided that blame so far, though you wouldn't necessarily say it's because his moves have worked: Wainwright left after loading the bases in a one-run game, Flaherty left after allowing a two-run homer in a one-run game, and Hudson's final inning turned a 3-1 St. Louis lead into a 4-3 deficit.

Doolitte: The Cardinals have been inconsistent on offense, but they do have a lot of grinders who make pitchers work for their pudding. The Nationals have expended a lot of energy to get through the wild-card game and the LDS, and Dave Martinez deserves a lot of credit for getting the most out of his stars. But if St. Louis can get the pitch counts of Strasburg, Scherzer and Patrick Corbin up early, I'm not sure Martinez has the arms to cover enough innings over a seven-game series.

The Nats defeated the Dodgers in part by squeezing the most out of their three aces in a short series. Particularly with their shaky bullpen, is this doomed to fail in a seven-game set?

Olney: Unless heroes emerge in the bullpen -- and this happens all the time in the volatile world of relievers -- it's hard to see the Nationals advancing another round. They almost certainly can't get through back-to-back seven-game series while relying so heavily on Scherzer, Corbin and Strasburg and relievers Daniel Hudson and Sean Doolittle, who've already combined for 43 innings just six games into the postseason. Whether it's Tanner Rainey, Fernando Rodney, Hunter Strickland or somebody else, Martinez is going to have to get at least some outs from The Other Guys -- especially in Games 3, 4 and (if necessary) 5, when the back end of the pitching staff will inevitably be tested.