Today's Lineup

…or nine stories from around the Majors you may have missed today.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist says Giants fans need a moment to breathe before the World Series begins.

St. Louis Post Dispatch: No finessing Cards' ugly demise

Steven Goldman at Pinstriped Bible – that's one of my favorite blogs, by the way – makes a good argument for the Yankees keeping Swisher over Ichiro.

Justin Verlander's grandfather confirms his grandson is dating Kate Upton, gets media training (or something like that).

The Twins aren't moving fences or planting trees.

The Padres, however, are bringing in the fences at Petco Park.

The World Series will have a Venezuelan accent.

The Rangers are in the mix to sign another pitcher from Japan. This one is 18 years old.

Is the honeymoon over for Kirk Gibson in Arizona?

Three "Pence" Hits and the Cards are Out

At first glance I thought Pete Kozma was slightly out of position.

Then on the replay of the Hunter Pence's three-run, seeing-eye double in the bottom of the third inning, I thought Kozma got a bad read on batted ball and broke the wrong way, toward third, from his short stop position.

Neither of my observations was correct.

As you can see from the 5,000-frames-per-second super-slow-motion replay and the MLB's animated GIFs, Pence's bat hit the ball and broke. The severed portion of Pence's bat slapped the ball twice more, the third time creating a hellacious spin that sliced the ball slice from Kozma's glove.

"The read I got was that it was going to the hole," Kozma said.

Three runs scored on the play – the runner from first went home on center fielder Jon Jay's throwing error – giving the Giants a commanding 5-0 lead over a Cardinals team, whose hitters over the past three games, became very Yankee-esque.

Pence, whom we learned yesterday rides to work 20-mph on a motorized scooter, of course, didn't see or feel the bat break.

"That's in super-slo-mo. I didn't even feel that," Pence noted. "You couldn't see that with your eye. It broke my bat and I thought I had just stayed inside it. I guess fate just found a way."

So, here's a question… and I'm just thinking out loud here, but… if Major League Baseball had a more extensive replay system, and let's say the Cardinals had coaches in the booth or somewhere looking at the Fox broadcast replay, could the Cards' Manager Mike Matheny had then, to borrow terminology and practice from the NFL, tossed a challenging red flag out of the dugout?

I'm all for replay in baseball, but I'm wondering if that's where we eventually want to go with a replay system.

It turns out, as my good friend (ok, I've never, ever met the guy) Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated explains, MLB rules would have upheld Pence's triple-batted ball.

Verducci explains:

Rule 6.05 (h) states that a batter is ruled out and the play is ruled dead with no advancement by the runners when the batters hits a ball a second time in fair territory. But the rule does include a comment specifically to address the circumstance of a broken bat causing a double hit. It states, “if a bat breaks and part of it is in fair territory and is hit by a batted ball or part of it hits a runner or fielder, play shall continue and no interference called.”

Going Back to Cali

No comeback for the Cardinals this Friday night! Barry Zito just made sure of that. The San Francisco Giants' hurler threw 7 2/3 innings of shutout baseball to keep his team alive with a 5-zip win in St. Louis in Game 5 of the NLCS.

Zito also had an RBI in the Giants breakout 4-run fourth inning. Pablo Sandoval, who was 2-for-4 at the plate, hit a solo homer in the top of the 8^th.

Game 6 is Sunday night in San Francisco. The Cardinals lead the best-of-seven series, 3-2.

One Week Ago Tonight, Nats Fans…

Tonight at roughly midnight will mark the one-week anniversary, if you will, of the night Nationals fans had their hearts ripped out of their chests and got their Natitude stomped on by a gritty bunch of postseason-savvy Cardinals.

You've read all of the accounts, the woe-is-us stories from Nats fans. And, heck, it's a week later. You know the story, so I'll spare recounting the details.

Baseball is new to D.C. and many Nationals fans are new to the sport. But I have been a baseball fan for the past 34 years, and at no point during the six-run lead was I ever comfortable. How could you rest easy when every time the TV cameras flashed to Gio on the mound, you could, as members of the Cardinals would say later, see the fear in Gio's eyes?

Holy cow, that was rough night. And baseball will do that to you. There's no clock to watch countdown, hoping it hits zero before your team loses its grip. Before they snatch defeat from the jaws for victory.

You just have to sit there and watch, with no foreseeable end. Watch as the other team, having done this sort of thing before, chips and chips away. Someone said this week, it's like having your head cut off with a toothpick. That's a little drastic. It's just baseball, after all, but you get the point.

Wait! You Were Watching Football?

If you were one of those people who chose to watch football over the National League Championship Series Game 4 last night, Kung Fu Panda says shame on you.

UPDATE:

Quote of the Day: My pal Chad in Johnson City, Tenn. – hey, Tim McCarver mentioned the JC on the Fox broadcast last night – asked about the photo above: "Can I get that as a Fathead?"

Tigers Can Rest After Sweeping, But Is That A Good Thing?

If the St. Louis Cardinals fail to wrap up the National League Championship Series in Game 5 tonight, making Sunday the latest the NLCS can end, the inevitable rest vs. rust questions will emerge.

The Detroit Tigers, having swept past the New York Yankees and their slumbering bats in four games, now have five days to wait and prepare for its next contest, Game 1 of the World Series on Wednesday.

If the Cards can slay the Giants tonight, then there's no debate. Both teams will have, relatively, the same amount of rest.

However, if the Cardinals are stretched to Sunday, or even a Game 7 on Monday, I'm guessing it will be tough for the Tigers, with more rest than they may need, to re-ignite against the momentum-fueled defending World Series champions, on the road in Busch Stadium, no less.

In 2006, the last time the Tigers advanced to the World Series, they had to wait six games before playing the Cardinals in Fall Classic opener. And you remember what happened to the ferocious Tigers back then, right? That's right. They were ousted in five games.

UPDATE: I thought I heard Tigers' skipper Jim Leyland say in an interview last night that his team would not stay idle "this time" while waiting for the World Series to begin. I assumed he was talking about the long layover during the 2006 series. I tried to find the actual quote this morning, but this "real world" work thing I have going on Monday-Friday started kicking my pants.

Well, I just found out, through Hardballtalk.com, that Leyland was on ESPN Radio with Mike and Mike this morning discussing plans to keep his Tigers sharp.

Leyland said:

"We actually have our instructional league team coming to Detroit and we’re going to play a couple of actual games Sunday and Monday and have a workout Saturday as well. We’re going to have our pitchers throw to hitters and we’re going to have our hitters face live pitching. So hopefully we’ll be a little more prepared this time."

In Stitches?

In a quick, first glance at this photo taken during the rain delay of Wednesday night's NLCS Game 4, I thought I was seeing an abstract image of a baseball. Can you see the St. Louis Cardinals' grounds, decked out in red jackets, appear to be forming the stitches of a baseball on the background of the white tarp? You can see that right? Am I just a little baseball nuts right now?

The photo, which you can see a larger version of here, is from Mercurynews.com.