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We are inching ever closer to the two of the most expensive payrolls meeting in the World Series. An MSM slobber-fest, actually. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants?
Quick hit for those who have never known, and now may never know, what it is like for the World Series to consume an entire nation. Far, far too many competing distractions for entertainment turned extremely personal..............
Do the Day Seventeen of Playoff-Links:
A Little Bit of Angels News
Forget it. The Angels ain’t doing anything of interest at the moment Well, except for Matt Thaiss, who is drawing a few walks in AFL...........
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October Baseball
Going into yesterday afternoon’s game, the Astros in this ALCS had scored in only 6 of their 35 offensive frames against the Yankees. That is 29 times on offense leading to nowhere. And then the Yankees gave them 9 more, winning 5-0 to take a 3 games to none lead. It’s now 6 of the 44 frames with 38 frames scoreless. This is big news. The Astros were absolutely the top offense in Baseball. #1 overall in Runs, Hits, Doubles, RBIs, Batting Average, On Base Percentage, Slugging Percentage, and OPS. And second in Home Runs by only 3 (to the Yankees and their homer-happy home field). But they are getting absolutely gutted by the Yankees’ pitching approach. Humorously, Masahiro Tanaka’s ERA against Houston this year in the regular season was 43.20. Luis Severino’s was 10.57. Sonny Gray’s was 9.00. (C.C. Sabathia did not face them this season.) If my math is right, that staff is now pitching at a 1.84 ERA clip this ALCS against those same Astros. It’s witchcraft, and some Houston home cooking needs to take effect pretty fast else they are gonna get rebranded the Astr0000000000s..........
Maybe the Yankees are piping in stadium noise over the loudspeakers? Nah. It’s gotta be that the bandwagon has been recently restocked............
If you look at the Aaron Judge Playoff K tracker, it’s pretty clear that the Indians knew how to pitch to Judge MUCH better than the Astros know how to pitch to Judge. Judge has, in turn, been an active participant in the MFY resurgence.
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Over in the National League, right folks noticed that the Dodgers have yet to lose a game this post-season (Yahoo!, and CBS Sports), the Cubs pulled off a win, 3-2. That was on 5 solo home runs, an oddity. This means that the Cubs, in losing, could get more home field revenue this series than the winning Dodgers. Not the Dodgers will mind at all.........
Aside from all those home runs, the most fun was Uncle Joe getting tossed. (He’s making a habit of this. Seems kind uptight, no?) Oh, sure, he was totally in the right, but it’s not the first time that the MLB system for monitoring and adjudicating events that happen around home plate have gone totally haywire. Won’t be the last, either. Not unless MLB commits multiple angles of high-speed cameras to the strike zone and applies a rapid review system. Yeah, as if..........
Playoff managers have gotten too fancy in their pants. Lots and lots of botched decisions already...........
Jeff Sullivan wants to talk about Todd Frazier’s Cheap Home Run, because Sullivan has found ways to identify other cheap home runs hit elsewhere as a means to defend Todd Frazier’s Cheap Home Run..........
Jeez, Darvish’s RBI BB was quite the unicorn. In 1977 the only guy in the playoffs who was even alive is the AStros’ Carlos Beltran, and he was only a couple months old. (The Cubs’ Koji Uehara was 2, but I don’t think he is on the Chicago post-season roster.)..........Which brings us to the question (yet another questionable skipper decision), as to why Dodgers’ manager Dave Roberts even let Darvish up to the plate?..........
Even with last night’s momentary high, I would imagine that by this point it would be easy for Cubs players to be pointing their direction towards the inevitability of the looming offseason...........
Everywhere In Baseball
Complete Games by starting pitchers is becoming as rare as white buffalo. You are living smack in the middle of a baseball revolution, one that will part ways from the era that appears to have ended in the previous decade. The bullpenning phenomenon of the past two playoff seasons are merely a radicalized version of what’s to come, foreshadowing an age that will make your children look back on today with a sneer of condescension...........
There I am, reading this off-topic article about scandals in college football, when I get to a passage made by the tale’s hero after he had tried to hand off The Big Story to the MSM: “Absolutely nobody was interested. One thing I’ve learned about sports journalists, a lot of them wanna just go to the ballgame, get good seats, and eat free food“. That’s why those people are the pros and we ain’t. They know how to get those perks..........
Wasn’t it just in 2016 that NFL scribes and fans were using TV ratings to justify their cackling that Baseball was dying? I already linked this week to the good MLB playoff ratings, which should have shut them up. But where are those people now?............I will tell you one place they are NOT, and that would be on Wall Street..........
Tony LaRussa, having failed through 2016 and given the chance to gracefully fade into the background this season, will be allowed to depart the Diamondbacks now that his contract is over...........
Did you know that there already exists a “group” to fetch an expansion team for Portland? I did not. Now we all do..........
The Duffle Bag
So the dude who stole the bat off of the Griffey status outside Safeco Field? Did he have no plan as to what he was gonna do next?...........How is it that New York City residents can vote in as Mayor a guy who is a die-hard Boston Red Sox fan?..........Pitcher Wade Davis got a rare chance to make a Plate Appearance. And he milked it for all it was worth. (Great example for normal hitters in tough situations, by the way.)
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