2023 World Series: Arizona Diamondbacks vs Texas Rangers

Can’t help but laugh at max getting a ring here lol.

And DeGrom!

$500k-ish bonus, fun way for Evan Carter to double his rookie salary.

"like the Senators in 2019"--not that my mind's living back in 1970.

We get it clemenza, you’re old

;)

Bottom line is I'm happy for Bochy. It's almost not fair to just show up and win it all in the first year out of retirement.

Tip my cap

Still forever Giant

Feels like he's beyond reproach at this point, but I thought he led something of a charmed life during this series at least--thought he got away with overmanaging yesterday. But I disagreed even more with some of Lovullo's preemptive bunting.

Can’t help but laugh at max getting a ring here lol. Mid season trades really just a lottery for who is going to luck into getting a ring

― #1 García Fan (H.P), Wednesday, November 1, 2023 11:12 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

tbf he did waive his NTC for the express purpose of playing on a competitive team

As mentioned nothing against it! Just funny that this hof’er rode on the coattails of this scrappy team to another ring. Good for him!

No Zona ring for Bumgarner

Lol

Ridiculous, sure (xpost)

Scrappy maybe the descriptor, but you get the sentiment

Would Arizona have been the first team to win the WS with an negative run differential during the regular season?

That came up earlier. The '87 Twins won: 786 runs, 806 runs allowed.

They're not the best team, no, but I'm a lot happier that they won than the team with 84 wins (who were lucky to win that many)

How many regular season games of theirs did you watch, just out of curiosity? Because the win total never reflected their season - they had a bad stretch that tanked their numbers but they were good on either side of that.

“Jeez, I was sittin’ in a recliner a year ago. What happened?!” 😂 @Rangers pic.twitter.com/Y17jVGIoT6

— Flippin' Bats Podcast (@FlippinBatsPod) November 2, 2023

Have to feel for ZG though, pitching a gem and his teammates not getting it done, 11 left on base and 0 for 9 in risp is horrific

so glad for Semien. and it wasn’t just today. He got clutch hit after clutch hit yesterday too.

Was invisible for most of the postseason though, Heim was more important to their chances IMO

it’s a redemption arc!

Semien has been one of the very best hitters in baseball so it’s nice to see him get his due

bWAR, 2019-2023

Shohei Ohtani      30.6
Mookie Betts       29.7
Marcus Semien      29.0
Aaron Judge        27.9
Juan Soto          25.7

Wow I would not have picked him to be even top 5 on that list. Good for him

How many regular season games of theirs did you watch, just out of curiosity? Because the win total never reflected their season - they had a bad stretch that tanked their numbers but they were good on either side of that.
― mojo dojo casas house (gyac)

I think those games count too...Anyway, you might want to direct these kinds of questions here:

but honestly i don't really care about this at all. good team, nowhere near the best team. also fuck texas
― mookieproof

I said Texas is a very credible WS winner. But if you think Texas is "nowhere near the best team," by extension, I'm thinking you have next to no regard for the team that was just convincingly beat by them in five games.

I’m not sure why I should answer for a post I didn’t make

Ya’ll are talking past each other. The bad games count, how good they are depends on what sample size you use to categorise good. Clem thinks April to November, others take a different approach. Been mulled over, new topics please!

(xpost) I don't get that...Anyway, I'm just saying that you're focussing your ire or disappointment or whatever on me for saying I didn't want a team with 84 wins to win the WS instead of someone who, I'm guessing from the comment I highlighted, thinks even less of them than that. And asking me how many games I saw them play seems really weird. I watch the Jays, don't have an mlb.com subscription--how would I watch the D-backs? I didn't see Ronald Acuna or Mookie Betts play much this year either, but I'm using their records to deduce that they played really well. And I've seen a lot of Arizona the past two or three weeks.

(I will clarify that I think your approach lacks a bit of nuance Clem, but I’ll defer that thought to your many more years of baseball wisdom and my hopeless optimism. The disagreement probably is reducible down to us using different definitions of “good baseball team”)

xp not really, but that that 84 win total isn’t reflective of their quality as a team. That’s why I asked did you watch them in the regular season. I won’t argue that they played like shit in the WS and deserved to lose.

I also don’t really understand why mookieproof’s opinion is being quoted at me.

I'm trying to point out--doesn't matter, forget it. On to awards and the HOF.

By your own logic, clem, an 84 win team who swept the Dodgers with ease are even worse their record - being 2 games over .500 - suggests? Is that really what the argument is? I just can’t understand that. If I’ve misunderstood I’m all ears.

He never said that?

Shohei Ohtani 30.6
Mookie Betts 29.7
Marcus Semien 29.0
Aaron Judge 27.9
Juan Soto 25.7

That is pretty amazing--would have guessed Freeman (24.4) for sure, and maybe one of Goldschmidt or Arenado or Machado.

Degrom being out all season and then watching his team win the world season without him has got to be so cruel for a guy as talented as he is, and is running out of time to establish his HOF candidacy. Him in the rotation dominating this post season probably improves his standing. But he also needs to stay healthy and be awesome for at least 5 more years.

His one short cut might--might--be winning a third Cy Young, if you believe in the rule-of-three as an automatic (non-PED) HOF pass. But yeah, being a core part of the this year's team would have helped him a lot there.

Yeah another cy, some post season heroics, and something flashy like a no hitter or a strikeout record of some sort is probably what it would take. But staying healthy might be even tougher for him.

didn't realize he was already 35! time def might be running out – but he's not far off from where he needs to be if you compare him to Koufax (tho it might be a little harder to make the hall now than it was back then). i think another Cy would guarantee him a spot - but maybe two more seasons of just above average pitching with 20+ starts could also be enough. tho Michael is right - staying healthy IS going to be the hard part for him. 4 seasons now he he hasn't made it past 15 starts (one because of the short season)

He's got a pretty impressive career bWAR considering all the time he's missed, I wonder if rather than getting the counting stats up if he can continue to add to that if it could put him over the top. It does feel like perhaps increasingly there is a sympathetic shift towards briefly dominant guys being considered, and not just the long-term dominant guys, or the "pretty good guys who never got injured and played 22 seasons" types.

Seager obviously helped his HOF case a lot. I'd say he's about where Bumgarner was before he fell apart: solid regular-season resume, building a storied postseason career. Semien--who's just as obviously a long shot--helped his case a little. I wouldn't count him out yet (see above chart).

if Semien has 3-4 seasons in the same ballpark as his last 3-4 (not counting the pandemic season), he'll get into the HOF. he's gone beyond the peak territory of guys like Ian Kinsler, now he just needs to extend that peak a bit longer. Seager is a few years younger and if he can avoid that injury bug, he'll be in good shape.

Turns out I was right:

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/38804549/world-series-was-least-watched-fall-classic-tv-history

The Texas Rangers 5-0 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks for their first championship on Wednesday night drew the largest audience of this World Series. However, it was not enough to prevent the five-game series from being the least-watched Fall Classic in recorded TV history.

Nielsen and Fox said Thursday the World Series averaged 9.11 million viewers, less than the 9.79 million average from the 2020 series, when the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Tampa Bay Rays in six games.

It was a 23% decline from last year's series, when the Houston Astros beat the Philadelphia Phillies in six games and averaged 11.78 million.

Any idea of how many people watch online? I'm not sure if that's tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions.