Brian
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Post by Brian on Apr 19, 2021 23:00:15 GMT -8
I love voting and I love baseball, so I was very pleased with the commissioner's announcement that the All Star Game won't be played as scheduled in Atlanta this July. I was impressed with how quickly Major League Baseball reacted to the signing of the omnibus voter suppression bill in Georgia, especially compared to other big corporations, but then I realized that MLB saved itself a lot of grief. If the game wasn't moved, we were in for months of stories about each player's opinion about boycotting Atlanta, especially the stars who led baseball's Black Lives Matter protests last summer. Imagine fans casting their All Star ballots based on which players supported voting rights -- or not.
With that, I'm done lauding the commissioner this year, if the past is prologue. Welcome to the 14th annual baseball thread on the Montrose Peace Vigil message board.
This season, MLB is continuing the rules change that puts a runner on second base at the beginning of each half inning after the ninth. MLB got the players' union to agree to that last season because of the pandemic, but it's one of the schemes that's been floating around for years to "speed up the game." Maybe if games only lasted two and a half hours instead of three, more young people would watch baseball. Idiots. If this rule persists, I fear the future.
Luckily, the wild card in each league will be decided in a single game, just like before 2020 and probably for the last time. MLB has been trying to expand the postseason to garner more TV viewers and ad revenue, so it used the 60-game pandemic season as an excuse to match up eight teams in each league, hockey style, for three rounds of playoffs before the World Series. The owners tried to get the players' union to agree to even more games than they played in 2020 by offering to institute the designated hitter rule in the National League, and here's where I'm glad they're idiots: the players didn't bite. Pitchers will bat in 2021, as God intended.
I'm wringing every ounce of pleasure that I can out of this season, trying not to wonder if we'll have another in 2022. The current contract between the owners and players expires with the last pitch of the World Series next October.
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Apr 27, 2021 23:00:22 GMT -8
Before the season, I couldn't find a pundit who didn't predict that the Los Angeles Dodgers would win the National League West in 2021, and most likely the World Series too. More than one writer compared this year's team to the 1927 Yankees, considered the most talented and accomplished team in baseball history. Could the Dodgers break the season record by winning 116 games? When they got off to a hot start early this month, I read projections that they were on a pace to win 127 games.
The last ten games have ended all such talk for now. Dodger bats are in an epic slump. Several relief pitchers are on the injured list, along with mainstay Cody Bellinger. Tonight the team lost their third game in a row for the first time since the summer of 2019.
Yet the Dodgers are tied for first place in the NL West. My problem is that they are tied with the San Francisco Giants. I had been counting on the San Diego Padres to swat the dreaded Giants away. But it's still April.
If the Cincinnati Reds defeat the Dodgers this afternoon in Chavez Ravine -- with Roberta and John planning to be there -- they'll sweep the series. Already, the Dodgers have lost two series in a row at home for the first time since I don't remember when. A long time.
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Post by voting on Apr 28, 2021 8:16:38 GMT -8
For Brian:
This episode of Broadway to Main street podcast "Ballots over Broadway"
podcast
I love voting and I love baseball
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Jun 29, 2021 23:00:27 GMT -8
Well, the Giants have owned the best record in baseball since I last posted two months ago. Tonight, blessedly, the Dodgers swept them in a two game series in Chavez Ravine to pull within a game and a half of first place in the National League West.
I saw no predictions before the season putting the Giants anywhere better than third place (and 82 games remain in the season so anything can happen). Yet I should have seen this coming. Farhan Zaidi, the Dodgers' brilliant general manager from 2015 through 2018, left to become the Giants' director of baseball operations in 2019. It didn't take him more than two seasons to make the Hated Ones a contender again.
As much as I profess to hate the Giants, I secretly admire the players. Brandon Crawford has been my favorite shortstop for a decade. When I read that he was in fourth place in the All Star voting -- behind Dodger Corey Seager, who has a broken hand -- I went online to cast a ballot for him. Others must have felt the same way because he just slipped into third place, qualifying for the final round of voting.
It would be unfair to call the Padres a disappointment -- although they're in third place in the NL West, only three games behind the Giants, as things stand tonight they're the other wild card team after the Dodgers. The NL East is made up of mostly losing teams while the Central division race has been a jostle among four breakeven teams throughout the first half of the season. As Jim Morrison prophesized, the West is the best.
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Aug 24, 2021 23:00:08 GMT -8
Trea Turner scores from first base in Philadelphia on August 10.
It may appear that I'm posting a lot less this year because I've been waiting for the Dodgers to take first place in the National League West for the first time since April. The Giants have maintained the best record in baseball since then. Actually, I had to restrain myself from kvetching endlessly about the dominance of the Hated Ones and the inability of the Dodgers to catch them. Tonight, the Giants lead by two and a half games, which is still a blessing -- on August 13, the Dodgers were five games back. They needed to gain a game per week in the standings to prevail by the end of the season next month, and they cut the gap in half in just nine days.
The Dodgers beat the Padres at the trade deadline July 31 in securing the services of two key players, shortstop Trea Turner and pitcher Max Scherzer of the Washington Nationals. Both NL West teams were plagued by injuries to key players. The trade allowed the Dodgers to close in on the Giants, while the Padres have faded to 14 games back. However, they are still in the wild card race, one game behind the Cincinnati Reds for the second wild card spot.
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Sept 19, 2021 23:00:19 GMT -8
After 150 games, the Giants lead the Dodgers by just one game with 12 left to play. I can't remember a season when I checked the scoreboard every day before this one, incredulous that San Francisco was better than this L.A. team despite the Dodgers' many injuries and the failure of the 2019 National League Most Valuable Player Cody Bellinger to hit over .160. But they clearly are so far. If the Dodgers and Giants are tied at the end of the regular season, the Giants will be the home team for Game 163.
The Dodgers clinched the first wild card spot last week, which means that if they end the season where they are now -- the team with the second best winning record in both leagues -- they could be eliminated in one game. Suddenly, I'm in favor of a multi-game playoff system. Ignore the first post in this thread.
Four teams are vying for the second National League wild card spot. The St. Louis Cardinals, by far the hottest team in baseball, are suddenly three games ahead of the Cincinnati Reds and three and a half over the Philadelphia Phillies and the San Diego Padres, who are sputtering badly. But the Padres can still be spoilers -- they play three games against the Dodgers and six against the Giants in the final days starting Tuesday. Go Padres! Except when they're playing the Dodgers, of course.
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Post by Brian on Oct 4, 2021 23:00:14 GMT -8
Alas, there was no Game 163. Although the Dodgers ended their season by winning seven games in a row, the Giants kept pace, leaving the boys in blue one game behind. The Dodgers won 106 games, tying their franchise record in 2019 when they finished 21 games ahead of the second place team in the National League West and at least nine games better than every other team in the league.
The Dodgers are now the best second place team in the history of baseball, surpassing the 1909 Chicago Cubs and the 1942 Brooklyn Dodgers, who each won 104 games in 154-game seasons long before the major leagues had divisions.
Ironically, the Dodgers would have advanced immediately under the system implemented when the National and American Leagues expanded to three divisions in 1995. The Wild Card Game was added in 2012 for various reasons I endorsed at the time, never thinking that a team like my Dodgers would be subjected to the first Wild Card spot with 106 wins and possibly be eliminated in one game. No doubt things will change again with the next contract between the MLB and the players.
The Dodgers will host the St. Louis Cardinals Wednesday evening. If they win, they'll face the Giants in the Division Series -- another first.
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Post by Brian on Oct 14, 2021 23:00:15 GMT -8
Everybody knew that this National League Division Series would go all five games. The Dodgers chased the Giants until the last day of the season for the National League West title. After their first 18 games this season, each team had nine wins and exactly the same number of hits and runs. Including the postseason games, both teams were tied at 109 wins apiece when they met Thursday night in Frisco for Game 5.
"To my knowledge," Vin Scully tweeted, "tonight's game between the @dodgers and @sfgiants is the most important game in the history of their rivalry." The score was tied 1-1 until the ninth inning, when the Dodgers added a run. Giant dreams of a 1951 Bobby Thomson-style homerun finish in the bottom of the ninth -- with a man on first, two out and two strikes -- ended instead with a called strike by the first base umpire on a check swing that really was checked beautifully, as the TV replays show.
I would have felt bad for the Giants no matter how they lost. Indeed, I was mentally and emotionally prepared (as best as I could be) to embrace them if they had won. Throughout the four decades I've pretended to hate the Giants, I've always admired many of their players (if not some of their fans). And this is one of the best teams I've ever seen play baseball.
The Dodgers head to Atlanta for the National League Championship Series starting Saturday. They also faced the Braves in last year's NLCS, dropping three of the first four games before winning three straight elimination games to advance to the World Series. This year, the Dodgers won 106 games and the Braves only 88, but you never can predict what will happen in seven games in the postseason. And this year, the Dodgers don't have home field advantage because they're a Wild Card team.
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Post by Brian on Oct 19, 2021 23:00:27 GMT -8
In Atlanta, the Dodgers lost the first two games of the National League Championship Series in the bottom of the ninth inning. In Game 3 Tuesday afternoon at Dodger Stadium, they gave up a 2-0 lead when the Braves scored four runs in the fourth and another in the fifth inning. Anni asked me if I was going to cry. "No," I said, "because if I start now I won't be able to stop." Only one team in the history of baseball ever won a seven-game postseason series after dropping the first three -- the 2004 Boston Red Sox, who went on to their first World Series victory since 1918.
I can save my tears for one more day, at least. The Dodgers scored four runs in the eighth and Kenley Jansen retired the Braves in order in the ninth to prevail 6-5, the third game in a row decided by one run. If they can win both of the remaining games in Chavez Ravine, they will only need to take one more in Atlanta this weekend.
The team looked beaten up after defeating the Giants in the Division Series. Following the two losses in Atlanta, they admitted to reporters that they were tired. At least part of their fatigue was a result of the injuries to starting pitcher Clayton Kershaw and first baseman Max Muncy. I haven't read this anywhere or heard anybody say it, so I'll post my analysis here: If Kershaw was healthy, the Dodgers would not have used Max Scherzer and Julio Urias in relief roles that ruined their subsequent starts. And if Muncy was playing first, Cody Bellinger would have been in center field instead of Gavin Lux, who played only his tenth game in that position Tuesday, losing a ball hit to the wall. I've never been one to offer what-ifs, but it's easy to imagine how the Dodgers could have owned this postseason without those two injuries.
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Post by Brian on Oct 24, 2021 23:00:09 GMT -8
As I watched Kenley Jansen masterfully pitch the bottom of the eighth inning of Game 6 of the Championship Series before the Dodgers' season sputtered to a halt in the top of the ninth, I realized that might be the last time I see him in a Dodger uniform. Jansen, Clayton Kershaw, Chris Taylor and Corey Seager -- who contributed mightily to Dodger winning teams over the past eight years -- are now free agents. I hope the Dodgers keep Taylor, at least, because of his versatility as well as his leadership. Last year, the Dodgers lost Kike Hernandez and Joc Peterson to free agency. Now they're among the biggest stars of the 2021 postseason.
The what-ifs are filling the hole in my head where hope used to reside. If the Giants had defeated the Dodgers in the Division Series, would they have prevailed over the Braves in the Championship Series? We'll never know, of course, because anything can happen in baseball. But the Giants presumably would have had a full roster of well balanced players against the Braves, superior to the Dodgers' decimated squad. Yet the Braves have proven again that teams with fewer than 90 wins in a season can rule the postseason.
Will the Braves continue to be hot against the Houston Asterisks when the World Series starts Tuesday?
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