It seems fitting that the two best teams in the American League, the Boston Red Sox and the Houston Astros, will meet to decide the pennant. The two best teams in the National League, the Milwaukee Brewers and the Los Angeles Dodgers, meet to decide the pennant as well. The playoffs worked, mostly, as seeded. The number-one team will open their best-of-seven series at home. The NLCS starts Friday and the ALCS starts Saturday. Eduardo Nuñez is the only former Giants player I'm aware of on an LCS roster, if you are looking for a rooting interest. Obviously it is "Beat LA" around here, not to mention that it is very hard to root against a team named for beer-makers. I not only like beer, I make it, too. So "Go Crew!"
--M.C.
18 comments:
Heath Hembree?
I missed him! He's listed on the active roster on the BoSox website.
The Oddsshark website lists LA as -165 favorites. That means you have to bet $165 to win $100. On the flip side the Brewers are listed at +135, which means a $100 bet will win you $135.
Houston is favored (-155) over Boston (+125).
Five Thirty Eight gives the Astros a 32% chance to win the Series, the Sox 30%, the Dodgers 25%, and the Brewers 13%.
I guess I prefer the Brewers are playing the bums, instead of the Cubs, but the former Brewer owner who later became the commissioner, (Bud Selig) turned me off to the Brewer for quite some time. Because Braun is from Calif. but played locally for me at U.Miami, I have rooted for him, except of course when he plays the giants. Good luck to the Brewers.
David Pinto at Baseball Musings takes a look at the LA-MIL matchup. He gives the Dodgers a 65% chance of winning.
Dan Szymborski of FanGraphs has penned an Elegy for 2018 Giants. Nothing new here, we all know the reasons for the team's fall, but there is an interesting bit at the end where he tries to project Buster's production over the next several seasons.
My takeaway from the injuries discussion is that the injuries to the 2018 Giants did have a significant impact. Mr. Szymborkski's Elegy supports that, I think but it leads me to the conclusion that the 2018 Giants were probably not deep enough to get to the playoffs, although the injuries made them not close to the playoffs. Maybe they could have been like the Cardinals, close but not close enough. The management tried to do the right thing - in fact, they have done what we all thought obviously needed to be done for the last couple years - shore up the bullpen and particularly sign a closer in 2017 and find some hitters in 2018. They tried to get Stanton and Ohtani, but were rejected by both players (maybe they should have used that Buster hug commercial in their pitch). Failing those names, hey got some hitters, but Andrew McCutcheon and Evan Longoria did not come through at their average performances. It is outcomes like these that tend to make general managers lose their jobs.
But one sentence stood out for me: But a disastrous 2017 campaign exposed the cracks in the organization. "While the early parts of the Giants run were initially driven by an impressive crop of homegrown talent — that pipeline largely dried up." That suggests that the scouting and farm system once produced major league talent, but now don't, and the question is why not and whom is at fault? Development doesn't happen overnight and pouring money into scouting and development now pretty much means that the Giants core players will be aged out by the time their talent is ready. That doesn't sound good.
Wait, aren't the 'Strohs also named after a beer?
Dude I never realized that!
Go, 'Stroh's!
Interesting read on the trend towards more bullpen usage and quicker hooks for starters. I remember many years ago thinking that in the future we'd see three guys for three innings apiece instead of a starter and three or four relievers. Now we have "openers" and "bullpen games" and whatnot. The gist of the article is that the traditional starter model gave each game more of a linear narrative, that the profusion of switches and the chasing of matchups has made the "storyline" of games a different thing, maybe not so appealing as before. I don't know, I still like the game whether they use one pitcher or six pitchers. I do suspect, however, that momentum for an official pitch clock is building and we will see those installed and enforced in MLB in the very near future. One of my favorite things about baseball is the lack of a clock, and I don't want to see that. But I can certainly, after watching Sox-Yanks marathons, see the need to tighten up the gaps. Lots of dead time with pitching changes and mound visits. Speed those up (or reduce them) and give the umps more authority to regulate pace-of-play and they could dispense with a pitch clock.
Boston loses Vs. Verlander. Probably one game that they wish they had a healthy Pablo Sandoval. Sandoval owns Verlander.
Well, he did. Once.
The problem with making every guy a short (or a couple innings) reliever is that you introduce more opportunities for failure. That drove me nuts about Felipe Alou. Bring in Scott Eyre, but only for one batter, no matter how good he looked or how few pitches he threw. Keep yanking your relievers to play righty-lefty until you find one that fails. Also, you're going to use all your pitchers several times a week. If they're all Madison Bumgarner and Justin Verlander, great. If it's Spahn and Sain and pray for rain, you're going to get wet a lot. Also, go Brewers.
I think everyone wants to be the Astros or the Indians with a plethora a big arms who can chew up innings. But the reality is that some teams just don't have that kind of talent and have to go with pitching-by-committee now and then. The Indians of course are out, their vaunted "four guys with 200K apiece" couldn't cope with the Astros, at least in the short series format.
Just in case you want to stay on top of the Giants GM rumors.
I am concerned that Milwaukee's collapse in Game 2 will come back to haunt them - they had that game won. Now, things could go either way. Miley has a lot of pressure on him in the match-up today. Aside from the obvious, it's easy to root for the Brewers, when they have people like Cain & Moustakas (lovable losers to the good guys in 2014, Champions in 2015).
The TV commentary team is so hyperbolic, it's ridiculous. Among other instances, as great a catch as Bellinger made last night, it was a floating soft liner, & Taylor was backing up, so ... no ... it would not have been a triple or inside-the-park HR, if he didn't make the catch.
And, what's Smoltz's deal w/ 'firm pitches' & 'spin'? Why does he insist on re-using those terms over & over again, when everyone else is fine w/ 'a hard fastball' & 'a breaking pitch'? It's really annoying.
We've been listening to Bob Uecker on the radio. I keep thinking about that old Miller Lite ad with him hollering "he missed the tag!" from the upper deck. He's goofy and of course the very definition of 'old school' but at least he keeps you informed and calls all the counts, plays, etc., and does only a little pointless jabbering. Plus the radio is so much more pleasant, I can read a book or do some things around the house while the game is going on. Some of the Wisconsin ads are pretty funny, too.
One of the things I like to say is that you are not watching a ballgame, you are watching a TV show that happens to be about a ballgame you are interested in. That makes it a little easier to swallow the constant stream of inanities by the babbling heads.
Well, the baseball season so far has worked out just as poorly as possible. I guess it's just as well that I'll miss the remainder. I do have a strong rooting interest in the series, though. Go Hiroshima Carp!
Is it a coincidence that the NL pennant has been won by the scumiest team in the league both years since the scumiest person on Earth became President?
David Bell is now the Reds manager. Bell was the Giants VP of player development. I suppose he saw handwriting on the wall what with the looming regime change.
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