Baseball 2019

[Roberta]

Last night Brian was proven to be absolutely right once again — spring training games don’t matter a bit and the scores are totally meaningless!

However something good came out of my futile effort to watch the Reds on MLB, the broadcast of which was foiled by the insideous reach of a local team’s broadcasting empire. We learned we can display the picture only of a game on our new big-ass TV, while listening to whatever music on any of multiple platforms, through our new excellent sound system, we want.

[Brian]

Thank you for starting the annual baseball thread, Roberta!


The Baseball Project sings the National Anthem at Fenway Park in 2012.

Pictured from left are Linda Pitmon, Mike Mills, Steve Wynn and Scott McCaughey of the Baseball Project, a supergroup that's released three albums of songs about the game, its teams and its characters since 2008 -- tuneful, opinionated and often very funny.

Several Montrose Peace Vigil regulars attended a benefit concert last month at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, where Mike, Steve and Scott each sang the lead vocal on a classic Kinks song, with Linda on drums, backed by the all star Wild Honey Orchestra. I had the winning bid in the silent auction for all three Baseball Project CD's autographed by the four of them, I'm proud to say.  Anybody want the CD's I've got without the autographs?

Founding member Peter Buck of R.E.M. appears in this clip playing bass on "Late Show with David Letterman" for the song "Past Time," the lead track of their first album:


"One thing you can say about the game is that it's not getting any faster."

Opening day is March 28, the earliest in history.

[Brian]

Time for my National League preseason picks, which will no doubt haunt me for years to come.

I could only bear to look back to my 2018 post.  I chose the Arizona Diamondbacks to win the West.  They were barely in first place in early August, when they swooned, ending the season only two games above .500.   I picked the Chicago Cubs in the Central Division, who came in second and lost the Wild Card game, and the Washington Nationals in the East, who came in second, two games above breakeven.  I mentioned the Milwaukee Brewers, the NL Central champs, as one of three possible breakthrough teams.

This season, the Los Angeles Dodgers are by far the best team in the NL West, perhaps the league's weakest division.  The Colorado Rockies could compete again.  I'm rooting for the San Diego Padres -- who improved greatly in the off season and seem to have gained a new attitude -- to place second or third.  And I'll always be afraid of the San Francisco Giants, now more than ever because of their new president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi, hired from the Dodgers, although his genius probably won't manifest until the 2020 season.

The Central Division may prove to be the strongest.  I'm going with the St. Louis Cardinals and 2019 acquisition Paul Goldschmidt from the Diamondbacks, the greatest first baseman in the game, while most are choosing the Cubs.  It's possible that all five teams could finish above .500.  The Cincinnati Reds are the most improved team, thanks to all of the Dodgers who were traded there.

Then there's the East.  Except for the Miami Marlins, all teams are contenders.  But the Philadelphia Phillies were the most aggressive in signing top talent, like Bryce Harper and J.T. Realmuto, both of whom I had hoped the Dodgers would get.

It's a 162 game season.  We will hear about every kind of injury, watch slumping veterans and surprising rookies, and wait for the blockbuster trades in July and August that will blow up almost every roster.  It's a daily drama -- with plenty of laughs along the way.  On me.

[Brian]

Every season I resolve to ignore the standings for the first month. Last year it was easier because of the Dodgers' poor start. This year, I couldn't look away -- the Dodgers reached 20 wins three weeks earlier. This morning, they have the best record in the National League.

Cody Bellinger, who continues to bat over .400, leads all of baseball in nearly a dozen offensive categories.  He broke Chase Utley's record for the most total bases in April well before the month was over.  While the team's hitting and starting pitching have been great, the bullpen blew a lot of games in the first four weeks.  They started to improve before I could start to panic.

Approaching the six week mark, the San Diego Padres are third in the National League West as I had hoped, although they were in second place before the Dodgers took two out of three games at Petco Park last weekend.  Surprisingly, the Arizona Diamondbacks are second and the Colorado Rockies are in fourth place.  The San Francisco Giants are last.  So far, so good.

The rest of my predictions are holding up pretty well.  The Central Division has four teams above .500 although I'm perplexed that the Cincinnati Reds, who have the same record as the Giants, aren't doing better.  They just released former Dodger Matt Kemp.  And the NL East is as weak as I thought the West would be.  But things will change as the season unspools.  After mostly playing teams within their own divisions, travel is expanding and the dreaded interleague games have begun.

[Sharon W]

I expected to see Brian's analysis of this when I checked here, www.yahoo.com/sports/diamondbacks-find-the-worst-way-to-lose-after-walking-5-straight-in-the-bottom-of-the-9th-161820573.html

[Brian]

Thank you so much for posting that link, Sharon!  I was watching when five consecutive Dodger batters walked with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, their team down a run, and the television announcers did not mention that their feat was unprecedented for nearly a century like the Yahoo article did, citing the Elias Sports Bureau, which is the Library of Congress of baseball.  The Los Angeles Times story the next day didn't mention it either.

I got caught up in the excitement after the first two or three walks, and the remaining fans at Dodger Stadium were on their feet, going nuts.  It takes tremendous discipline, skill and luck for one batter to earn a walk -- let alone five batters in a row.

Cleveland rocks!  Love the logo.  If only Major League Baseball had asked Ian Hunter to sing the National Anthem.

Then I would have watched.  The National League lost its seventh All Star Game in a row.  For the first time, perhaps ever, the L.A. Times did not run a proper story about Tuesday's used-to-be-called Midsummer Classic.  Instead, the newspaper just recounted how the five Dodger players performed.  So I was spared the grief of the usual play by play reporting.

At the traditional midpoint in the season, the Dodgers own the best record in baseball.  Since I last posted in May, the rankings among National League West teams have remained the same, top to bottom, but Central Division has grown weaker while the East has gotten stronger.

The July 31 trading deadline is less than three weeks away.

[Brian]

The Dodgers lost several games recently, so the New York Yankees have edged past them for the best record in baseball by a .003 winning percentage.  But the Dodgers have already won an astonishing 67 games, one more than the Yankees.  Their lead in the National League West has slumped to 14-1/2 games from a high of 17, if I remember right.

Meanwhile, the San Francisco Giants have won 16 of their 20 games this month -- and they've been locked in second place with the Arizona Diamondbacks for days.  Naturally, I'm worried.  O.K. -- scared.  I had counted on the reliable Colorado Rockies to rule second place, like most preseason pundits.  Their tailspin has landed them in last place, where the Giants had resided most of the season.

Because of the threat in Frisco, I'm checking the National League wild card standings -- and it's only July.  The Giants are just 3-1/2 games back.  There they are among seven teams contending for the one game playoff, a ridiculous number that seemingly cannot hold up.  Or can it, if the Dodgers keep winning nearly two thirds of their games?

[Brian]

The Los Angeles Dodgers became the first team to clinch their division this year on Tuesday, September 10, with three weeks of baseball remaining this season. Tonight, they lead the Arizona Diamondbacks by 19.5 games and the third place San Francisco Giants by 24.5 games in the National League West.

The Dodgers need to continue their winning ways.  The players remain motivated to perform at peak level to guarantee their selection for the post season rosters.  And the team wants home field advantage. The team with the best season record over its rival gets to start a series -- division, championship and World Series -- at their home stadium, a big advantage in baseball. Tonight, the Dodgers are two games behind the New York Yankees and one game behind the Houston Astros, teams they would only meet in the World Series.

Looking at the rest of the National League, the Atlanta Braves of the NL East just locked up their ticket to October.  The St. Louis Cardinals lead the NL Central Division by three games.  It's still too early to pay much attention to the wild card race.

[Brian]

The 2019 Los Angeles Dodgers won the most games of any Dodger team in history -- dating back to 1890.  Of course, the 1953 Brooklyn Dodgers had 105 wins in a 154-game season.  The L.A. Dodgers cruised to their seventh consecutive National League West title by defeating mostly mediocre National League opponents, winning 106 of 162 games.

In tonight's Game 3 of their National League Division Series in Washington, D.C., the Dodgers were down to their last out with two strikes in the sixth inning, and they went on to score seven runs.  If they win one more game against the Washington Nationals, the Dodgers will be in the NL Championship Series.  I have no favorite in the other NL Division Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Atlanta Braves, although I did pick the Cardinals to win the Central Division in March.  The Dodgers have home field advantage over both of them.

Home field advantage is a statistical reality in baseball, yet I'm still haunted by the Dodgers' losses to the Houston Astros and the Boston Red Sox at Dodger Stadium in the deciding games of the last two World Series.  Right now, it's fairly certain that the Astros and the New York Yankees will meet in the American League Championship Series -- each team leads 2-0 in their Division Series.  The Dodgers would have home field advantage over the Yankees but not the Astros, who won 107 games.

Enough of that.  To hell with home field advantage.  The Yankees outscored the Dodgers 16 to 5 last August in three interleague games here in L.A.  On paper, they are the better team.  I cannot abide the thought of the Yankees prevailing over the Dodgers like they did in 1953, and doing it in Chavez Ravine.  So go Astros!  I want the Dodgers to play Game 1 of the World Series in Houston.

[Brian]

My seventh annual Dodger postseason nightmare arrived much earlier this year.

After the Dodgers lost Game 4 of their National League Division Series on Monday, I carried with me a sense of doom.  Tonight, the Dodgers led the Nationals 3 to 1 in the eighth inning of the deciding Game 5, but they lost 7 to 3.

So the Nationals will play the Cardinals in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series during this Friday's Montrose Peace Vigil.

I always try to look on the sunny side.  With the Dodgers disappearing from my television and newspapers, I will have more time to learn about the military and civilian deaths caused by our Commander in Chief in northern Syria and in eastern Ukraine in our names.