After the usual post-game comments, I had one more question for Derek Holland. I was curious what adjustment, if any, he had made, since the Astros were making such hard contact in the first two innings, but less hard contact and lot of two-strike foul balls later on. But before I got to the second half of the question, tonight's winning pitcher had this to say:
"Yeah, they knew what was coming."
Was he tipping his pitches, or?
"I think it was on them. It looked like they were telling each other what was coming; that's what it felt like. I could be wrong, but we were hearing some things... for them to be jumping on fastballs inside and curveballs, it's like they knew something was coming."
Heard some things... what things?
"Whistling. They would whistle every time we went inside. It was just weird. We could hear it, big time, and it was only when I went inside. Now... that could be -- it sounded like it was coming from their dugout, but," he paused and kind of waved it off. "we could be totally wrong. For all we know, it could be fans in the stands, we don't know, so I'm not going to use that. I gotta make my pitches whether or not they know what's coming or whatever."
So the "adjustment" question just got a lot more interesting. How do you even adjust to that, if you suspect there is pitch-tipping happening?
he shrugged. "I gotta keep going after them. I have to trust myself, trust my stuff, so... I can't really get caught up in that stuff, so if they did know, that's whatever, that's fine. I still have to make my pitches."
Okay, then.
