Congratulations to the Baltimore Orioles and the Kansas City Royals for defeating two behemoths in the Tigers and Angels to reach an ALCS which could have been straight out of the early 80’s. I’d like to say I saw both of these results coming, but I only saw one … and I thought the Orioles would win in five games, not three.
We spend so much time predicting and forecasting and ultimately it doesn’t matter one bit. Baseball is pretty cool like that.
— D.J. Short (@djshort) October 4, 2014
Which is my way of saying “pay no attention when I get a prediction wrong”.
If anything, the Tigers serve as a cautionary tale for the Mets. We will salivate … and with good reason … at the prospect of Matt Harvey, Zack Wheeler, Jacob deGrom and maybe Noah Syndergaard in the starting rotation. Well, Detroit had three Cy Young award winners and Baltimore racked them all up. Thankfully the Mets don’t have that rancid fruit farm of a bullpen that the Tigers have. But they also don’t have Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez. And without them, the Mets will lose a whole bunch of 2-1 games just like the Tigers lost on Sunday. Unless they do the right thing and get another bat or maybe two. They don’t even have to be a two-time MVP.
(Then again, the Angels had Mike Trout and Albert Pujols and they couldn’t win either.)
As far as the NLDS goes, Trevor Rosenthal vs. Yasiel Puig to end Game 1 felt like Bob Welch vs. Reggie Jackson at the end of Game 2 of the ’78 World Series.
It wouldn’t have come down to that had Don Mattingly taken out Clayton Kershaw during that seventh inning when he was getting smacked around. And while there’s nothing inherently wrong with riding the horse that got you to the dance, I think the result convinced him to make a worse mistake in taking out Zack Greinke too soon during Game 2, right before J.P. Howell took two batters to cough up a two run lead. Greinke was cruising through seven when Mattingly decided to overmanage and put in Howell because two lefties were coming up, and Howell gave up a hit and a dinger to give up the lead.
Greinke was at 103 pitches, but stats show that he isn’t any more hittable fourth time through a lineup as he is earlier. Jordan Zimmerman for example, who was pulled after 8 and 2/3’s in favor of Drew Storen during Game 2, is a lot easier to hit fourth time through the lineup, which is why I kind of understand Williams’ move more than Mattingly’s move, results aside. What the results prove is that the Dodgers needed only one opportunity to take back the lead, while the Nationals had nine chances to score a run to win the game and couldn’t do it. And that’s the cross the Nationals will bear if they lose this series, not Matt Williams’ move.
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