2022 MLB playoffs

Argos beat the Lions, in a game that started at the same time, which was probably why the Bluejays were not able to pull it off in the end. Bad luck when the other local team wins right across town. But my god, a football game that is a whole hour shorter than a baseball game? Something wrong with this world.
 
Well the Mets managing to stave off end of season by evening up with the Padres was also interesting. Also "how 'bout those Mariners?' -- I think coming back 10-9 from being down 7 to stay in the mix was pretty stunning. This part of post-season is turning out to be "wild" indeed.
 
Yoused said:
It was the second biggest turnaround in playoff history, the biggest (8 pt deficit) being by a home team (IOW, biggest playoff comeback on the road).
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A 21 year drought between postseason berths could make a team pretty thirsty....

Anyway the Mariners' extended clawback period has at least landed them in the playoffs again. It also drew some attention from the NYT sports section, which put up a long piece about some of the Mariners' rebuilding architects and the challenges along the way. Maybe some of those Wall Street billionaires who read the Times will make their way to fill up the T-Mobile park seats in Seattle for division series games...

The Remaking of the Seattle Mariners (NYT, paywall removed)

It's worth the read... since it goes back to the beginnings of the franchise and some of the missteps in the late 70s and early 80s.

“We had Tom Paciorek on air with a 30-second spot, saying, ‘Come out on Saturday night because it’s funny nose glasses night!’” Adamack said. “And he puts on a pair of funny nose glasses, and a voice-over comes on and says: ‘No, No, Tom. It’s jacket night.’ And Paciorek’s answer at the end is, ‘What am I going to do with 30,000 pairs of funny nose glasses?’”

Turns out, the fans took him seriously. The Mariners scheduled a funny nose glasses night for 1982 and attracted a crowd of more than 37,000. That was great, but it underscored the finicky nature of the market: The silly giveaway outdrew, by nearly 10,000, an actual baseball milestone two nights earlier: Gaylord Perry earning his 300th career win.
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But the piece moves on quickly to later years and new strategies that would take awhile to work.

Jerry Dipoto, the Mariners’ president for baseball operations, knew what he would have to do when he took over as general manager in September 2015. He just needed to put it off for a while.

Four players — Hernández, Robinson Canó, Nelson Cruz and Kyle Seager — took up more than half of the Mariners’ payroll, like skyscrapers scattered among split-level homes. The group was signed through at least 2018 and needed an influx of low-cost, complementary players to compete. Dipoto earned a reputation as an eager, aggressive dealer.

“It was all this shell game of moving on the margins,” he said, and it almost worked. Seattle earned 86 wins in 2016, missing the playoffs by just three games, and improved to 89 wins in 2018 — with the oldest roster in the sport.
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After the season, the team’s chairman, John Stanton, met with Dipoto, Manager Scott Servais and other top lieutenants. Stanton, 67, defers almost entirely to Dipoto on strategy, and wanted to know if he could win with this core.

“The answer was no, and that was OK,” said Stanton, who made his fortune in wireless communications. “From my point of view, I had to have the willingness to say, ‘OK, we’ll take the hit.’ We thought we would take a 250,000 hit in attendance, and it was half a million. It was excruciating in a lot of ways.”

Dipoto unloaded most of Canó’s contract by packaging a star closer, Edwin Díaz, in a December 2018 trade with the Mets. He also dealt starter James Paxton, infielder Jean Segura and catcher Mike Zunino that winter, and catcher Austin Nola the next summer. The Mariners had two losing seasons but jumped to 90-72 last year — two games short of a wild card and five behind Houston in the A.L. West.

“The Astros have decided not to get old,” Dipoto acknowledged. “They just continue to be awesome.”
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Sigh... the Astros do indeed continue to prove problematic, and not just for the Mariners...
 
Hmm. Kinda sorta starting to look like the Mets didn't get the memo about how it was the Mariners already drew the long straw for a miraculous outcome in the wild card series. Being down 6-0 to the Padres in the 8th and hoping for a comeback is probably stretching credulity. The fans are trying to stay conscious...

Weird game though. Never before saw all the umpires come out and check a pitcher's ears for foreign substances. It didn't seem to intimidate the Padres' pitcher, which either means he had found something really great to amp up his spin and speed, or else that he was totally innocent and makes Showalter look like just grandstanding while losing a game...
 
Yoused said:
win 101 games in the regular season, but you have to remember to get more than one hit when the post-season is on the line
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Yeah so much for vague dreams of a subway series. "Maybe next year...."

On with the playoffs. LA Times trying to drum up drama for Padres-Dodgers games. Time will tell...

www.latimes.com

Nine concerns the Dodgers should have about facing the Padres in the NLDS

The Dodgers and San Diego Padres will meet in the National League Division Series. Here are nine things the Dodgers will need to wary of in the series.
www.latimes.com www.latimes.com
 
lizkat said:
Weird game though. Never before saw all the umpires come out and check a pitcher's ears for foreign substances.
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They were shiny. Looked like something oily was all over them.

I don't know if it's new, but I love the new ESPN pitch location graphic. It shows a 3D image of where the ball passes through the zone.
 
Travelled back down to Virginia so was online is short bursts. Only thing I kept my eye on was the MLB playoffs. Home team 3-6 is sad. So much for me thinking it was unfair to the visiting teams.

And the Mutts really disappointed. I know another Subway Series was not likely, but damn!! Dad is so disappointed. Guess he'll root for Atlanta since he's relocated to Georgia.

Can't wait for my Yanks to enter the fray. Just hope Cole doesn't give up a bunch of HRs. Especially early as I have little confidence in the Yank bullpen. The 1st game will be electric against The Guardians.
 
This is why I dislike the current playoffs. The Mets won 101 games during the regular season, the Padres 89. If they were in the same division the Padres would have finished 12 games behind the Mets so why should they get to play them, especially in a best of three series.

Any team can lose two games in a row. The Dodgers, with the best record in baseball, did it over ten times during the season. It just all seems to diminish the importance of the long, regular season.
 
ronntaylor said:
Can't wait for my Yanks to enter the fray. Just hope Cole doesn't give up a bunch of HRs. Especially early as I have little confidence in the Yank bullpen. The 1st game will be electric against The Guardians.
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If they get by the Guardians, how much confidence do you have they can do the same with the Astros?
 
mac_in_tosh said:
If they get by the Guardians, how much confidence do you have they can do the same with the Astros?
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Well first they have to get by the Guardians, and the Asterisks have to get through the Mariners. Not taking anything for granted after the home teams were 3-6 during the wild cards with all games at home.

I think the Yanks got back into stride for the end of the season with Stanton and LeMatheiu back at full strength, the rookies Cabrera and Peraza contributing greatly, and pitching coming along. My only concern is Cole for Game #1 given his last few starts and his propensity to give up HRs. I seriously think the Yanks can win against any team right now.
 
mac_in_tosh said:
This is why I dislike the current playoffs. The Mets won 101 games during the regular season, the Padres 89. If they were in the same division the Padres would have finished 12 games behind the Mets so why should they get to play them, especially in a best of three series.
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An even better example is now before us - the upcoming Padres/Dodgers series. The teams are in the same division and the Dodgers finished 22 games ahead of the Padres with a 14-5 record against them !! By what logic should the Padres be on the same field as the Dodgers in the post season if the regular season is to have any meaning? All that for home field advantage?
 
For the series, Dodgers and Yanks would be fun to watch. Guardians and Phillies too...
 
mac_in_tosh said:
By what logic should the Padres be on the same field as the Dodgers in the post season if the regular season is to have any meaning? All that for home field advantage?
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By the logic that sports are interesting and worth betting on because the outcomes can be unpredictable. The Mets done screwed the pooch when it came down to the brass tax.

If you want to make it interesting,
  • add 1 team each, to make an even 16 in each league
  • play a 102 game pre-scheduled regular season, with divisional focus
  • divide the league into cross-seeded groups – the 4 best teams in one, down to the 4 worst in the last group
  • the groups play 30 games only against each other – the results establish the seeding level of the qualifying groups (number of series wins are a tie breaker)
  • the winners of each group go into the seed-1 group, the last-placers into the seed-4 group (traditional top-to-bottom seeding)
  • after the last 30 games, the winner of each group goes to the playoffs (hence, a last-place team still has a shot at the post season in at least part of September, and top-rank teams still have to play like they really mean it late into the season)
  • only 4 teams from each league make the --DS / --CS
 
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Must be past my bedtime, how can even have

16 teams with 3 divisions
 
Yoused said:
In 1996
there were 14 teams in 3 divisions in each league.
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Hah, see I knew it was past my bedtime. Also in 1996 I was preoccupied by my own version of a 'bicoastal series", i.e. supporting IT groups in LA and NYC, both remotely. If there even was a WS that year it could have been played by pairs of the worst or best, and I'd not even have read about it. Didn't even make room for politics that year past being amazed at Perot's performance.

But back to the current playoffs. I loathe how the wild cards work now, and not least the 2-of-3 scenarios. Still, the only thing that might make the so-called beancounters stop tinkering with "fan friendly" formulae is to keep messing around until they finally end up giving us a World Series between the two worst teams in the country... which would mean whole teams full of players making $$M annual pay just watching TV by mid-October. How DO they count the beans in moneyball any more anyway?
 
lizkat said:
How DO they count the beans in moneyball any more anyway?
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My understanding is that a losing team is more profitable than a winning team. For the owners, at least. I think it has something to do with player salaries.
 

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