they can decide to take a fight and be guaranteed thateg

CHICAGO -- Jon Lester carries the 108-year hopes of the Chicago Cubs to the mound for Game 5 of the World Series.In their 177th game of the season, the Cubs are in a win-or-go home situation for the first time, trailing the Cleveland Indians 3-1 in the best-of-seven World Series.Cubs manager Joe Maddon gives the ball to his most pressure-proven pitcher with the season on the line at Wrigley Field on Sunday night.Lester has a 1.69 ERA in the 2016 playoffs with 21 strikeouts and five walks. His rich postseason resume includes 20 games (18 starts), 2.60 ERA and 8-7 record.I dont think you can really take it any different than any other start, whether youre tied or whether youre down or up, Lester said. I think you have to have the same mindset going into it. Its hard enough to pitch this time of year or play this time of year and be successful. I think if youre down 3-1 and youre going in there saying you have to do this, you have to do that to try to stay alive, I think youve kind of already been beaten, you know? Youre not worried about the right thing.The Indians can clinch the franchises third championship Sunday and end their own 67-year drought, the longest in the American League.Clevelands offense created traffic on the bases Saturday for the second consecutive game and bashed two home runs, but the Indians are being anchored by amazing pitching.While Andrew Miller looked relatively human in allowing a Dexter Fowler home run -- snapping a 16-inning scoreless streak -- Corey Kluber went six to win for the second time in four games and set up swagger-filled righ-hander Trevor Bauer to start Sundays potential clincher.The atmosphere on Chicagos North Side has been electric, but the Indians hushed Wrigley with seven runs Saturday. Bauer said he looks forward to the historical challenge before him.The best part of it is hearing them all leave silent, Bauer said.The Cubs beat Bauer in Game 2 and got on the board in the first inning. Terry Francona said he did not considering going with another starter in Game 5.Trevors been a really good pitcher for us for four years, Francona said. If we thought that the finger was getting in the way, I understand it. But hes come so far and battled this thing so much that I think his better game is ahead of him.Lester said he will put extra emphasis on getting ahead of hitters, even if he has to show more than he wants the Indians to see, because of his Game 1 first inning misfortune. A walk, hit batter -- when ahead in the count 0-2 -- and a hit cost Lester the lead.That was the game. Anytime youve got a guy like Kluber going against you, you cant give up much. Then come to find out just how locked in he was, Lester said, reliving Game 1. So like I said, I dont mind giving up hits and giving up homers. Its the walks and the hit-by-pitch that really haunt me in that first inning. So you cant give up free base runners, especially this time of year. You just give them more opportunities to see you. You have to make more pitches.Entering Game 4, the Indians were batting. 202 in the World Series. Francona said the approach at the plate will not change, but the results are adding up. The sparkplug for Cleveland has been shortstop Francisco Lindor, who is approaching Sandy Alomars postseason team record of 20 hits.But depth of the lineup, according to Maddon and Lester, is the real story when it comes to stopping the Indians.You have a lot of contact in that lineup. So that puts pressure on your defense when youre able to do that, Lester said. When you dont strike out a lot, that puts pressure on your defense, and makes you continually execute pitches. And I think thats where they wear the starting pitcher down and get to that bullpen early.Maddon boiled down the edge to two factors: Lesters experience and getting on the board first. The Cubs went up 1-0 in Game 4 and lost, but it was the first time the team crossing the plate first didnt get a win in the LCS and World Series.To have a guy in Jon thats been-there-done-that kind of a guy, and hes been very successful, been a World Series champion, he knows what the feeling is like, he knows what it takes, Maddon said. So its definitely comforting to the rest of the group for tomorrow.So the big thing again is to grab the lead somehow. Grab the lead, hold onto the lead. You dont want to try to fight from behind on these guys because that trilogy (relievers Miller, Bryan Shaw and closer Cody Allen) and theyre throwing out there is pretty good.Francona has consistently programmed a winning formula for Cleveland. Hes 11-1 all-time in the World Series and one win shy of his third ring, Clevelands first since 1948. Franconas magic touch at the lever, from the mix-and-match lineup to uncanny feel for his bullpen, was on display in both wins at Wrigley. Just dont expect him to say as much, preferring to credit his players and support staff.The thing that helps me a ton is the cooperation we get with our players is phenomenal because we do some things -- weve done a few things that are a little out of the box this series, last series, and they handle it, Francona said. Im not sure you can always do that with every player and have it work. Wholesale Shoes Canada . The Cincinnati Reds remain perfect with their speedy rookie outfielder in the starting lineup. Shoes Canada Sale . He said Tuesday thats a big reason why he is now the new coach of the Tennessee Titans. Whisenhunt said he hit it off quickly with Ruston Webster when interviewing for the job Friday night. https://www.shoescanadaonline.com/ .In my heart and mind Im competing for India, luge competitor Shiva Keshavan told The Associated Press in an email interview. Every day Im flooded with messages from Indians all over the world telling me they are supporting me. Fake Shoes Canada 2020 .C. Lions has come to an end. Banks told TSN on Jan 2 that he had no interest in playing out the option year of his contract with the Lions in 2014, and he again made that clear in a conversation with Lions GM Wally Buono last week. Shoes Canada Nike . Defenceman Yannick Weber scored the go-ahead goal early in the third period and the Canucks breathed a sigh of relief with a 2-1 win on Saturday night. At The International 6, Chinese Dota 2 team Wings Gaming did more than just win. They challenged some of our deepest assumptions about Dota 2, including how the game is meant to be played and what the limits of innovation truly are. Unconcerned about solving TI6s metagame, Wings forged their own path to conquering the championship, putting absolute faith in their own strategies, their own playstyle and their own understanding of the game. This unconventional path bears closer scrutiny to identify any lessons there may be for the Dota scene as a whole.Greater draft diversityThe teams unusual drafts have been the main talking point about them for most of the year, reviving interest in dozens of heroes thought to be stuck in particular roles or used only in particular situations. Keeper of the Light, Treant Protector, Venomancer, Troll Warlord, Centaur Warrunner, Pudge: the list goes on. In truth, youd be hard-pressed to find a hero Wings have not utilized at some point in the last six months.Indeed, central to the teams identity is a willingness to draft subversively, aggressively experimenting with tools that are available to all teams but sometimes overlooked. Some of their experiments have been total disasters, Iron Talon Alchemist among them. In fact, it is fairly common to see Wings try out a draft that turns out to be a total flop and loses them the game in under 20 minutes.But it doesnt stop them from innovating. Even when a Pudge draft led to their only TI6 main event loss, they still opted to give the hero another run in the first game of the grand final itself. Again, it didnt work. But the team got back up and won the next three games to clinch the trophy.This suggests very clearly that Wings know what theyre getting themselves into with their drafts. They know that by preparing so many different strategies they open themselves up to the possibility that some of them will be exposed as incomplete or ill-conceived. But by embracing this uncertainty, they turn a potential weakness into an important strength.If youve only been practicing one strategy and that strategy turns out to be faulty, then a fundamental part of your teams identity is on the line. But if youve prepared a plethora of strategies, youve empowered yourself to be honest and critical of any one of them after a loss. Accepting the fact that one particular strategy was misguided is a lot easier when its not the only one your team depends on.Assumptions, revisitedOf course, there are many creative minds in Dota 2 and many teams that regularly innovate. What is unique to Wings is not the fact that they innovate, but the extent to which they do it. The team appears to approach the draft as a blank canvas, or at least one substantially more blank than for other teams. They seem to treat assumptions about strategic norms with great suspicion. Wings understand that most of what we refer to as the metagame is just a collection of popular ideas, not rules about the game itself. And so they test things out, seeing which tactics are actually constrained by the game itself and which only appear to be.This approach to drafting is just one facet of what seems to be their overall approach to the game. Wings constrain their own thinking as little as possible. They operate with fewer heuristics and fewer shortcuts than other teams typically do. They challenge some of the most basic assumptions about skill builds, item builds, laning strategies, rotations, and counters. This is the team whose offlane Slardar has more than once killed an enemy support with Bash at level two; it is a team that occasionally leaves lanes entirely empty, or roams cores using Smoke in the first few minutes of the game.Crucially, in most of these cases, an unconventional decision leads to a desirable outcome. What looks like a strange Smoke gank ends with an important kill. What looks like an unusual laning decision pushes enemies into an awkward position. What looks like a bizarre item build (say, Batrider not rushing Blink, a trend started by Wings) subverts the expected timing windows of the game, creating time and space for the team. But being able to understand a particular deviation in hindsight is very different from being ablle to see a pattern, or predicting one of these unusual decisions.ddddddddddddAnd the reason it is so difficult is because all of us -- players, analysts, fans -- have become attached to certain norms of thinking about Dota 2. Certain things counter other things. Certain things are more efficient than other things. A particular hero is best skilled a particular way. We need to learn these kinds of shortcuts because the game is extremely complex and there is simply too much to process in order to make each decision anew every time we encounter it.It is important to note that these kinds of norms do change, and professional players do challenge them. This is a big part of what fuels the evolution of the metagame. However, Wings appear to be the first team to have found a way to quite deliberately and consciously free themselves from as many heuristics as they can. As a result, they can take a wider range of actions given particular contexts and thus achieve more optimal outcomes a lot of the time. Certainly, they do follow rules of thumb like everyone else, but in a more flexible and intentional manner than other teams.Fearless Faith_bianOfflaner Zhang Faith_bian Ruida is a great example of the Wings approach in action. He shows extreme diversity in his skill and item builds and in how he spends his time during the early game; hell be laning, ganking or jungling depending on what the situation demands. But, more importantly, he has taken his role as an initiator one step further than any other player.More often than not, offlaners are expected to initiate fights because of the kinds of heroes they play. But initiation is often an extremely difficult challenge. Your team has decided to fight over a particular objective and you know that means you have to make a move. However, the enemy team is positioning well and you cant see a good opening. Perhaps you cant get onto the best target, or can only get onto one target when you would rather get two. Maybe youre concerned about a blind spot in your available vision. You know that if you initiate sub-optimally youre probably going to be the first one to die and cant be sure your team will do enough to justify that loss. But the longer you wait, the greater the chance that things start on the enemy teams terms. At a professional level, initiators regularly have to navigate these kinds of situations.Its a scary thing, being the initiator, but Faith_bian has entirely overcome this dilemma. He just goes in. Every single time. Even if his initiation is sub-optimal. Thus, his teammates can trust him to get something started, which gives them a situation to respond to. Of course, as with Wings experimental drafting, sometimes Faith_bians fearlessness backfires. Sometimes, hes charging into four heroes at a level one bounty rune and feeding aimlessly. But the overall approach pays off.Faith_bians mindset is completely invaluable to Wings because it means at any stage in the game they can decide to take a fight and be guaranteed that he will create some kind of opening for them, regardless of anything else. His in-game illustration that initiating is as much about setting up your teammates as it is about getting value out of your own spells, combined with his willingness to be whatever his team needs him to be, made him the most valuable player of TI6.The world will learnWings are not a team of superhumans that somehow transcend the metagame. Indeed, theyre far from the first team to revolutionize certain aspects of how we think about the game. But they are the first to make such a consistent and deliberate effort to free themselves from the usual heuristics. With all the world watching, it will not be long before others begin to learn and imitate this approach, which will likely add diversity and new perspective into Dota 2s strategic space. The lesson from Wings is not to avoid using necessary shortcuts in reasoning when solving extremely complex problems. Rather, we should strive to be aware of those shortcuts we do make use of and think about them critically instead of assuming they are correct. ' ' '