If it's truly early, you could bring Harding in and still have MacLeod come back and pitch in the next one. But it's hard to see us making a move like that before MacLeod is at least to 50 pitches or so.

If you burned both enough that you couldn't use them in the next one, you better make sure you win it because if you lose you're completely toast. I understand the argument that a win in Game 2 is huge, but the reality is that if you win Game 2 but burn both MacLeod and Harding, it's going to be tough to win on Friday regardless so you're likely looking at needing to go Saturday as well, and you'd probably bring Bednar back for that one and blow him for the championship series.

If you lose but hold Harding back, you would throw Harding on Thursday, then need to win one with an all-staff day and then have Bednar back on Saturday. So there's not a ton of difference there.

I think you play it by ear and have Harding as a possibility but only use him if you need him early and you're not already down 2-3 runs.