Baseball 2017

[Brian]

After eight years, this might be the latest that I've started the annual baseball thread on the Montrose Peace Vigil message board.  I blame work.  Otherwise, I have been paying more attention to baseball in the off season -- squinting at six-point newspaper type to read the trades in the dead of winter -- through spring training and now the first 14 games of 2017.

Preseason pundits said that the Chicago Cubs will win the National League's Central Division and the World Series, the Los Angeles Dodgers will take the West and the Washington Nationals and the New York Mets will top the East, which is what happened last year.  If the Dodgers have fewer injuries -- they set a record for a team in 2016 -- and if they learn how to hit left handed pitching, they seem almost as unbeatable as the Cubs.  Twenty one of the 25 players on the Dodgers' postseason roster are back.  Yet I fear the San Francisco Giants, as always, and wonder if the Arizona Diamondbacks could break through.  But don't listen to me.  I picked the Diamondbacks to win the West last year.

All of the regulars at Montrose Peace Vigil who enjoy baseball happen to be National League fans.  Roberta and Bruce came from southern Ohio, and both still root for the Cincinnati Reds.  Jim from Chicago has been a Cubs fan wearing a Cubs cap his entire life, decades before it became fashionable.  Barb, who was born in the Bay Area, still knows and loves her Giants.  And Anni and I follow the Dodgers.

Above all, we are peaceniks, so we also embrace American League fans on the corner and here on the message board.  Guests are welcome to post -- you do not have to log in or register to reply to any thread or start a new one.

[Brian]

So far, the pundits are wrong.  That is, except for the Washington Nationals, who are not only leading the National League East, they're the only team in that division with a winning record.  This morning, the world champion Chicago Cubs are in third place in the Central Division, just two games above .500 and two games behind...the Milwaukee Brewers?  Just as surprisingly, the Colorado Rockies have peaked the West all season.  The Arizona Diamondbacks and the Los Angeles Dodgers are currently tied for second place, two games back.  The West is, uncharacteristically, the strongest division in the National League.

I'm not worried about the Dodgers.  Thanks in part to Major League Baseball's new 10 day disabled list -- the previous minimum was 15 days -- the Dodgers could break last season's record for number of injuries by a team.  Doesn't seem to matter, they're so freaking deep. I don't know what to make of the San Francisco Giants, who shockingly had the worst record in baseball for awhile.  But they started winning this month, especially when they played the Dodgers.  One long winning streak would put the Giants into contention.

[Brian]

This season, I've been paying much closer attention to Dodger games on television and in the newspaper than I have for years, and I've been amply rewarded.  After a middling start, the Dodgers own the best record in baseball since mid-May.

I didn't think that the Colorado Rockies would stay on top of the National League West for so long, but they finally faded in late June. Now they're in third place, seven and a half games back.  The Arizona Diamondbacks are four and a half games behind the Dodgers.  The NL West is by far the strongest of the six divisions in the major leagues.

Except for the last place San Francisco Giants, that is -- 23 games out with a .395 winning percentage.  With a record like that, they're already done for the season.  It's so weird for me not to have the Giants to worry about.

[Brian]

It's only an exhibition game, right? Doesn't count in the season's standings. But thanks to Commissioner Bud Selig, the league that won the All Star Game got home field advantage in the World Series for 14 years, and 11 times it was the American League.  Mercifully, that system is dead.  So the nicest thing I can say about tonight's result is that at least the National League team won't suffer a disadvantage in the Fall Classic.[/p]

That's the good news, I guess.  A Dodger made the final out in the 10th inning, and the American League won 2 to 1, the fifth year in a row that the National League lost what used to be fancifully billed as the Midsummer Classic.  The NL team had six Dodgers on the roster if you count Clayton Kershaw, who deserved to be there yet was not eligible to play.

This is the part of my annual post where I complain that Dodger Stadium has not had an All Star Game in 40 years -- cities have been named through 2019, when Cleveland will host for the third time since Los Angeles last hosted the game in 1980.

Let's close on a positive note:  At the All Star break, the Dodgers hold the best record in major league baseball.

[Brian]

What a strange and upsetting day it has been. An American president threatened nuclear war in front of the TV cameras. And the Los Angeles Dodgers lost a game.

Actually, the Dodgers have lost 33 games this year -- less than 30 percent -- so rare in baseball.  The last Dodger team that stellar played in Brooklyn in 1955.  The 2017 Dodgers are even better than the 2013 team that won 42 out of 50 games in midsummer.

All this winning is a little unsettling.  The natural rhythms and curses of a major league baseball season don't seem to apply to these Dodgers.

Only 50 games remain.  The Washington Nationals, who've won 13 fewer games than the Dodgers, still dominate the rest of the National League East by a wide margin.  The Chicago Cubs are a game and a half above the Milwaukee Brewers in the Central Division.  And in the beautiful NL West, the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Colorado Rockies are six games ahead of every other National League team in the wild card race -- yet 15 games behind the Dodgers.

[Brian]

Aug 8, 2017 23:00:10 GMT -8 Brian said:

All this winning is a little unsettling.  The natural rhythms and curses of a major league baseball season don't seem to apply to these Dodgers.

By the last week of August, the winning spree that was nearly unprecedented in all of baseball history was over. Then the Los Angeles Dodgers lost 16 of their next 17 games.

I've been mute since August 9 because I don't know what to say. There is so little precedence and no rational explanation for either the winning or the losing streaks -- especially by the same players on the same team in the same season.

The Dodgers have won six of the last seven games.  They clinched their fifth consecutive National League West title with only days to spare.  The Arizona Diamondbacks, despite being ten games behind the Dodgers in the division, are better than every other National League team except the Washington Nationals-- and better than the Dodgers when they meet on the field.  The Dodgers will face Arizona if the Diamondbacks prevail in the wild card playoff game next week.

The division races and wild card teams are pretty well set.  The only real drama, since I'm not a Milwaukee Brewers fan:  Which league will get home field advantage in the World Series?  The team with the best season record will host.  This morning, the Dodgers are two games ahead of the Cleveland Indians with three to play.

[Brian]

I learned decades ago that I shouldn't anticipate the outcome of any baseball game, but I came home tonight emotionally prepared for the Dodgers to lose to the Diamondbacks in Arizona.  The Dodgers' two wins in Chavez Ravine were a stunning display of hitting yet the pitching was a little spooky.  I believed that the Diamondbacks were too good a team to lose three in a row.

Nonetheless, the Los Angeles Dodgers swept them despite scoring only three runs because the pitching was so astoundingly beautiful.  They advance to the National League Championship Series next Saturday.

In the other National League Division Series, the Cubs lead the Nationals two games to one in the best of five playoff.  If the Cubs don't defeat the Nationals today in Chicago, they'll return to Washington for the final showdown on Thursday.  I'm not rooting for either team, but I have a soft spot for the Nationals, who used to be the Montreal Expos.  That franchise has never played in the Fall Classic.  The Cubs broke their curse and won the World Series last year, as we all know, so they can wait another century.

[Brian]

It's been almost half of my lifetime since 1988 -- the last time the Los Angeles Dodgers appeared in a World Series, when I was an old man of 30.  That was the Dodgers' ninth appearance in the Fall Classic since they moved to L.A. in 1958.  The video clip of Kirk Gibson's home run to win the first game in the bottom of the ninth inning pops up as a perennial reminder of the long wait since.  Yet I have my own memories.  The one I treasure most is Mike Davis' walk before the injured Gibson emerged from the dugout -- if Davis had made an out, the Oakland Athletics would have won.

The 2017 Dodgers are already making memories for the ages.  For instance, Justin Turner's home run to end Game 2 of the National League Championship Series in Chavez Ravine was the Dodgers' first walk off homer in the postseason since Gibson's.  Their season of wonderment continues to astound me this October.

They won the first three games of the NLCS before losing tonight to the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field, although Turner made it close with a solo home run in the eighth.  The Dodgers need only one more victory to go home to the World Series.

[Brian]

The Dodgers return to Los Angeles today, trailing the Houston Astros two games to three.  To force a Game 7, they must win Halloween night in Chavez Ravine, where the temperature will be 40 degrees lower than the first two games of this World Series.

Game 5, which the Dodgers lost in the 10th inning 13 to 12, was one of the most epic games in the history of the Fall Classic.  Even if the Dodgers lose the series to the Astros, their spirit and abilities shined tonight.

I was among the very few Dodger fans who wanted the Astros to win the American League Championship Series.  Almost everybody in Southern California rooted for the New York Yankees, the wild card team, because of the old Brooklyn-Bronx rivalry and their antique World Series matches, the most recent in 1981.  The Dodgers probably could have dispatched the Yankees easily this year.  But I believed that the Dodgers should prove themselves against the best team in the American League.

Silly me.

[Brian]

There may be no crying in baseball, but there will be plenty of whining in Los Angeles.

Many people who did not follow the Dodgers closely this season will second guess manager Dave Roberts and blame certain players for the loss.  But not me.  I felt a thrill run through my body involuntarily when the Houston Astros made the last out tonight -- the first Game 7 of the World Series ever played in Dodger Stadium.  They certainly earned this World Championship.  This is the expansion team's first championship since its inception in 1962, when it was named the Houston Colt .45's.

These Astros are so good that I almost forgot that they are the American League team. Then again, the Astros were in the National League for their first 41 years.  Maybe for a moment tonight I thought that they just won the National League West title from the Dodgers instead.  I'm old.

One thing that I'm glad about:  I won't have to watch the Fox television network for the next 50 weeks.