MLB 2023 Postseason Thread

And I dm’d because obviously this board needs less of this folly, but let the record show you want to keep it public so good for you! ☺️

If someone doesn’t respond to you in *checks notes* three minutes, then yeah, webmailing them does come across as weird.

“I don’t want to fight, I’m just pressing for a response in under five minutes from someone I’ve already called an idiot”

Thanks! Yet again, don’t really know what you’re trying to say here? But I’m sure it all makes sense in your head ☺️

“I don’t want to fight, I’m just pressing for a response in under five minutes from someone I’ve already called an idiot”

“Im going to quote several things I have made up in my own head as facts in order to attack another person while I continue to shift goal posts so I’m always the winner”

^^ might just quote this one for future reference. As a succinct summary of the gyac ilxor experience as I think you’ll get.

I will stop now. Look forward to more post season baseball tomorrow

Is there an argument besides regional rivalry or "Tradition" for the current divisional system?

I agree that it would be more logical, for the reasons you mentioned, to have a single table for each league. But regional rivalries are really, really important to baseball tradition and I'm not sure I want to give that up.

(Counterargument: the divisions have veen realigned many times and baseball always survived)

But as long as we do have divisions, I don't see the point in complaining about "weak" divisions. It's changing all the time, strong divisions become weak and vice versa and it usually doesn't take more than a few years. The AL East is strong most years -- but it's with different teams almost every year now (the Yanks and Red Sox finished at the bottom for the first time ever I think?)

No doubt regional rivalries are important. As an international fan I don’t get to enjoy the lived experience of that aspect as much, but I can still respect it even from this distance. Hard to shift the status quo when its benefit is so intensely personal so I’m not personally offended by the current state of things.

I’d be interested to see divisional win-loss standings since 1969 to get a better idea of your second point. The worst team in the AL east was tied with the 2nd best team in the AL central this year, 4th place (NYY) was 4 wins above and 3rd place (Jays) is 2 wins above the 1st place AL East team (Twins, though that lead is perhaps soon to be erased in tomorrows game). I think the benefit divisions have given has been undermined by the shake up of the schedule this year, which does lead one to question whether it’s doing more harm than good… I’ve only been a fan for a short 7 years, but for that whole time the AL central has been a joke which is a long time for a division to suck.

Speaking from an NL-West following perspective, There’s kind of only been 1 year in those 7 where divisional play actually effected post season results (2021 where giants had one over the Dodgers). So I’ve been pretty removed to the joy and sorrow of stealing/losing essential wins from other teams in your division. But in an hypothetical new system where overall wins were what got you post season placement, not divisional standings, I think stealing a win of a regional rival battling for post season success would taste just as sweet?

Kinda want to send an email to effectively wild to figure out how the divisions stack since introduction by cumulative win-loss. A decade by decade overview would be cool

baseball should move to a basketball model at this point imo - tear up the leagues and just do East - West as two big conferences. You could call them leagues or divisions for old times' sake but they'd be conferences. gotta be one of the top seeds to make the playoffs. you're welcome

H.P you can accuse gyac - and the rest of us - of a few things probably but "thoughtless" isn't one of them

FWIW three AL Central teams made the playoffs in 2020 (crazy 60-game COVID season, but they all had very good W-L records). Since 2015 every AL Central team except the Tigers have won the division, and many of them were very good teams. It's true that 85 wins is never good enough to win AL East but I don't think there are prolonged stretches (of say, 4-5 years) where a division doesn't produce a couple of great teams.

100% agree with that model with my head, though my heart does love that B is this strange hold out (sorry don’t care about nfl) in its divisional model. My heart also loved no pitch clock and everyone seems to love that change so hey.

Don’t remember accusing gyac of being thoughtless tbh

*MLB

thoughtless response

― H.P, Wednesday, 4 October 2023 10:23 (four hours ago)

Can’t stat pad against the basement teams in the playoffs. Play better.

continuous thoughtless response.

I'm sure the board could do with less of us sparring over your thoughtless/bad-faith posts (for clarification, thoughtless in this instance)

― H.P, Wednesday, 4 October 2023 10:46 (three hours ago)

(three hours ago)

I’m not sure the AL Central has produced a “great” team since 2016 (wish they won it). But I’m splitting hairs. Totally forgot about 3 in 2020! That’s wild. Also shows how much I think about the AL central, was blown away to see it was the Tigers in 2nd place I was comparing the AL East bottom feeders to. Hope the tiger rose keeps coming!

fwiw i find yr beef incredibly inconsequential and tiresome but the personal nature of your condescension H.P unfortunately is pretty consequential and that's the main thing in this thread the board could do less with imo

Where do I call gyac thoughtless in those posts?

Agreed Tracer

🤨

If gyac can apologise for posting about my wife divorcing me (categorise under: personal nature of condescension) I’m happy to not call out any thoughtless posts by her in the future.

Would also like to clarify, would love to not be doing this on the mlb post season thread of all things lol or be talking to another poster through a mediator! But hey, you try your best and apparently sending webmail’s is weird 🤷🏼‍♂️

xp when did i ever do that? You brought it up, not me? If you are in fact getting divorced, i promise i didn’t know about it, and if you scroll up you’ll see the dig i made was about the incident where you told the board you sought her opinion about whether Glen Kuiper should have been fired for using a racial slur?

Hey gyac, I won’t webmail you because you’ve said you’d rather not, but you know we don’t have to do this here? you can go ahead and scroll up on the “posts you’ve had second thoughts about” (a treasure trove of gyac toxicity) and cross reference it with the “cancelled” thread if you’d really like to

dog can you not

not what?

don't think this thread is what j0rd had in mind

xps you can webmail me the links because I’m pretty sure i have no idea what you’re referring to and I’ll respond the same way

Kids, kids, can we stop fighting and concentrate on what's important here which is LET'S GO O'S

Sorry but I’m on the Diamondbacks train now, and when the train inevitably meets its destination of failure, I’m here for bad umpiring and chaos

No!! That's the wrong train!!! Get off before it's too late!!!!

sadly choo choo
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eu_n_fIUUAEdqX6.jpg

Let's
Go
O's

We’ll see how it goes with the Jays and Brewers, but there is def a road to me jumping on teams O’s

Frogs has moved me onto the Brew Crew, this train might not leave the station but it’ll have a lot of cheese

Home town team > alcohol themed teams from cities I enjoyed > surprising second-worst to first teams loaded with young talent > anything that’s not the Yankees or Astros

i've already prepared myself for the inevitable dismissal of the braves in the divisional series.

If the Jays lose I may switch allegiance to the Twins, continuing my late-80's/early 90's fandom that began when they smashed the hated Tigers back in '87.

rooting for the O's or the Twins this postseason.

i-94 series imo

xxp Who hates the Tigers???

oof vladdy

To jimB: there was a wild rivalry between the Jays and tigers innthe late 80s before they got moved into different divisions.

They seem like one of the least hate-worthy teams in the majors, but I guess from that perspective it makes sense.

Motorcitykitties is the best subreddit handle ever. That’s my regular verbiage for those tigers, making it impossible to stir up any negative emotions for them

Motorcitykitties is the best subreddit handle ever. That’s my regular verbiage for those tigers, making it impossible to stir up any negative emotions for them

I have good early childhood associations, having been born there. I always want to see them do well, but that's about it.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Sure, but Baltimore's problems in the ALDS had nothing to do with Bautista's absence. In two of the three games, they never got within spitting distance of needing a closer

I mean, the big problem was obviously that starters who had been good the whole second half (and who didn't really show signs of being gassed in September) got lit up and knocked out early. But if you need to get 7 innings of relief, and you have Bautista to pitch the end of the game, maybe you don't have Bryan Baker in a key spot walking the bases loaded. Losing your best guy means innings for your fifth or sixth best guy, especially if you have a lot of innings to cover.

Another interesting counterfactual is whether Hyde has more ability to use starters in long relief in games 2 and 3 if Means is available.

Teams with longer layoffs are now 24-14 against their opponents.

— Eno Sarris (@enosarris) October 13, 2023

I guess if the point is, without Bautista the O's weren't a 101-win team, that's probably right. I took my son to a couple of games against the Astros in August. They lost the first one. In the second one, without Bautista to shut the door in the 9th, they would have lost that also.

_
Sure, but Baltimore's problems in the ALDS had nothing to do with Bautista's absence. In two of the three games, they never got within spitting distance of needing a closer_


I mean, the big problem was obviously that starters who had been good the whole second half (and who didn't really show signs of being gassed in September) got lit up and knocked out early. But if you need to get 7 innings of relief, and you have Bautista to pitch the end of the game, maybe you don't have Bryan Baker in a key spot walking the bases loaded. Losing your best guy means innings for your fifth or sixth best guy, especially if you have a lot of innings to cover.

Felt for him, he gave them two quality starts - 4 er across 12.2 innings - and got 1 run of support total.

From an offense that absolutely crushed the team records for hits, home runs and stolen bases--and the MLB record for home runs by a team--this season.

Yeah I was surprised they didn’t send Acuna more when he got on. They didn’t get outhit significantly in the biggest losses either, they had 10 hits to the Phillies 11 in the 10-2 loss but were far less able to convert those into runs.

Lol

David Ortiz is the best pic.twitter.com/VlRLctyqjc

— Robert Alvarez (@ralvarez617) October 17, 2023

Monday, Tuesday, Scherzday

I think Posnanski gets at why, when you step back, this has been kind of a boring postseason at the game level (i.e., putting aside all the underdog narratives):

OK, how many times in these playoffs have we had this basic plotline — Team A scores a crooked number against the starter, Team B can’t come back, game ends? It feels like EVERY game has been like that...

That’s two more games without a single lead change. There have been 25 playoff games so far. Guess how many of them had lead changes? Let’s look...*

So, again, 25 games and there have been a total — a grand total — of FIVE lead changes in the entire playoffs, only one of them was what you might call “dramatic,” and not a single game has had more than one lead change.

*And when I talk about lead changes, I’m talking about end-of-inning lead changes … in the Braves-Phillies series, for example, there were times when the Braves took the lead in the top of an inning and the Phillies came right back in the bottom of the inning. Those don’t count for me.

I rearranged a bit and took out his examples there, but you get the idea. Games have basically been decided in the first inning or two.

I'd push back against this a little. I think "one team jumps out to a big lead, the other team chips, chips, chips" is a genre of good game, with its own particular flavor of tension, especially if the tying run comes to the plate at least once.

teams have had their chances

i’m not versed in modern sabrmetrics but i feel like its not like the winning teams have been pitching no hit, shutout baseball. losing teams have produced high leverage situations (I think I’m using that term right) and those situations have mostly ended up in whimpers and not bangs, as happens in baseball.

I guess it's just the fact that no one's getting the big dramatic hit that makes the cumulative effect a little boring. As I posted last night, the ALCS could have had a really dramatic finish if Alvarez had gotten up with two on.

i think the best series we can hope for will be the likeliest one, a Texas/Philly slugfest.

And when I talk about lead changes, I’m talking about end-of-inning lead changes … in the Braves-Phillies series, for example, there were times when the Braves took the lead in the top of an inning and the Phillies came right back in the bottom of the inning. Those don’t count for me.

this is a silly caveat

I actually can’t wait. Expect at least one 20-run+ (between both teams) game if we get to that. For my money, one of the most exciting post season game I’ve seen was the (tainted) 2017 game 5 12-13 run bonanza

this was the first day in postseason history where multiple teams won when trailing by multiple runs in the 8th inning or later

BASEBALL IS THE BEST https://t.co/LBBMmqZO6n

— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) October 21, 2023

I find that very surprising.

Really wish I had switched on the diamondbacks game