I understand, and this thread isn't for you. I'm still interested in the Lange-game 1 camp's reasoning, beyond "always pitch your ace game-1.

Here's my take, and if you can get past the TLDR, I'm genuinly interested in yours.

I think Lange's stellar 2-9 performance has caused some to completely forget his first inning, or somehow feel that there was no possibility for that to happen on Sunday. Though it is an assumption, the closest assumption to reality has to be based on what actually occurred. Lange has the same 1st inning on Sunday in game 1 and gives up 3 runs. Morrison still pitches with a lead throughout the game and we lose 3-1. The other two runs scored were on a guy in the 8th who wouldn't have even pitched had it been a closer game-I think we can agree on that. Even with those 2 runs it's a tie to the end of 9, with Lange no longer a factor. We got away with, and survived Lange's 1st inning 3-spot on Tuesday, because the opposing pitcher was not Morrison-caliber, and the bats were just better.

Continuing... Poche is in an elimination game on Tuesday. Again an assumption, but the closest thing to reality to assume, is that he has the same outing he actually had on Sunday. He has to get pulled two runs sooner, or we tie/lose that game too, based on and abbreviated Poche outing alone. If we assume our relievers have their same outing as actually occured and give up the additinal 4 runs, we lose that way too, despite lesser opposing pitching who we get 5 runs out of.

If Lange had pitched a CG shutout, I could see the hindsight that he should have been the Sunday guy. You could assume a 1-0 win, and a more relaxed outing for Poche in game 2, though it would have been Vandy in this scenario. Win 1 and lose 2, we're exactly where we are now. But you can't change the fact that Lange gave up 3 runs in the first, and we could only get 1 run on Morrison and their closer in all but one inning(8th). To assume anything else is a much greater assumption than these stated because there's no actual or relevant results to base that off of. It's as close to fact as you can get, that 1 run is all we score Sunday with Morrison/closer.

I agree conventional wisdom is to start your ace in game one. 7/8 teams did. But remember, that only worked for 4 of those 7. Had we done it, it would have been 4 of 8. The other 3 who pitched their aces (albeit not our Lange) lost too, and went to the loser's bracket without their ace. 2 of them already went home before the current round (Miami is this round). Remember too, that 6/8 teams also scored more than 1 run on opposing starting pitching. We were on the wrong side of that equation, which made our chances next to zero, even with Lange. Lange's current ERA (if internet source is correct) is 0.91. It's another leaping assumption(though certainly possible) that he does better than his actual ERA to produce a 1-0 win Sunday against a good TCU team.

With the actual events that happened in the two games, which again is the most solid basis for any assumptions on what these two pitchers had in them imo, the fact that we're still in it is solely because we pitched Poche Sunday when we couldn't score runs, and had Lange available to win the only winnable game (based on the bats) on Tuesday. It would have been a much bigger risk to try to win with Poche in an elimination game.

When Poche was announced, 90% here liked the decision, saw it as playing to win the tournament and not just one game. Most liked the ballsy move and could readily rationalize the decision, especially feeling like Lange only had two CWS outings in him regardless of outcomes. Now it seems that the majority have swung the other way. But all I hear is "you always start your ace" as the reason. Starting our ace could very well have helped our bats, in theory. But enough to overcome Lange's 3-spot in the first inning? I doubt it.

There's been so many threads of mixed content, it's hard to find everyone's reason for which side they fall on. If you've read this far, and have thought-out reasoning beyond 'always start your ace" I'd like to hear it. And if there's anything in my resoning that's less reasonable, highlight that too