MLB general postseason 2020 thread

xp

oh absolutely. to me that's the main goal, the actual winner of the WS is a couple paragraphs down

ok yeah an Astros WS win would be awesome b/c it would possibly end this whole "16 teams make it" bullshit

even if manfred stays the course I just want to hear him say "expanded postseason was a rousing success, everyone loves it" like he does with everything else that sucks

https://i.imgur.com/0s8XOcu.jpg

Rays, Cleveland, Twins, A's
Dodgers, Dads, marlins, Reds

Indians, Twins
Pads, Marlins

Indians vs Padres WS with Indians taking the radioshack or w/e cup.

Forgot the Padres had some injuries. I’ll take the dodgers over them actually

i'll go with braves beating the twins at radioshack

ABREU MVP

general, huh

that's the other one

so they're gonna sell tickets for the games in arlington

11,500 tickets in a park with ~40,000 capacity

that Reds loss has got to fucking stiiiing

1-12 with RISP. lost 1-0.

there's another thread that's getting more action fwiw

FIRST-ROUND PLAYOFF CLUSTERFUCK OF 2020

Four days of lots of baseball (with extra innings and everything) and now two days of zilch is annoying.

Especially considering ZERO off-days during the LDS. This makes no sense.

i imagine it's all about trying to avoid football

yep

but there woulda been at least one unneeded Game 3 played today?

Lindbergh on in-game playoff interviews

https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2020/10/2/21498591/espn-in-game-interviews-playoffs-ramon-laureano

i like the image

Four days of lots of baseball (with extra innings and everything) and now two days of zilch is annoying.

― FRAUDULENT STEAKS (The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall), Saturday, October 3, 2020 1:45 PM (yesterday)

Agreed, no playoffs on the first weekend in the month of October is 1000% bullshit.

dodger stadium is juiced

I vote for separate threads for each series

Does the WS--does the tournament--conclude before or after the election? If the beloved Astros go on to win, I'd hate to think of that as some kind of election portent.

Before... Manfred was adamant.

wtf am i supposed to do with a yankees-astros ALCS

not gonna happen

loving this morbs optimism

rooting for the yankees might be the worst thing about 2020, if it comes to that.

I think I have a low-grade PENNANT FEVER

Astros over Yankees and Dodgers again would be hilarious though

So far in the division series:

Hou-Oak: 6 homers
NYY-TB: 6 homers
Atl-Mia: Acuña hits the upper deck in right center; Rojas reaches the train tracks

— Brendan Gawlowski (@GawlowskiB) October 6, 2020

this marlins-braves game is fun so far

i appreciate that alcantara plunking acuña cost him runs

funny how travis d'arnaud got pretty good after escaping the mets

not that funny

I don't know where this postseason Astros team came from but I'm enjoying the ride

did i just hear that 16/18 runs in TB-NYY series have scored on homers? Small ball, right A-Rod?

my lord, stanton

frightening

eat shit, astros!

A's are alive... workin on TB

have to say i like this five-days-straight thing, even though it will never happen again under normal circumstances and is a bizarre shift from the previous best-of-3 round

less excited about the eight homers in every game that doesn't involve the braves

I honestly would love fewer days off in the playoffs. Force teams to use their 4th or even 5th starters!!

How can you not like the Rays?

^^^ seconded.

^^^ 3rded

i like the a's better, but ok

anyone saw that Bellinger catch?

Yes and it hurt.

That was a good game, shame the wrong team one though.

who gets an inconclusive test, with the possibility it's positive, then doesn't wear a mask?

It's pretty funny to me the amount of Trumpian-level gymnastics Justin Turner performs to cover up his bald spot and he can't even bother to wear a mask after he tests postive for COVID.

idiots

I hope he gets a lengthy suspension.

It's so weird...It looked like the WS (and postseason in general) was going to go a long way towards restoring a botched season. The right team won, there were dramatic games and comebacks and near comebacks, and a new best-player-in-the-game debate sprung up. Instead, the WS will be remembered for two things: Turner reminding everybody of and exacerbating the game's handling of COVID, and Snell getting lifted. The second is part of the game, but it pushes a button, the takeover of analytics. I'm not down on that: a franchise like Tampa Bay would never stay competitive if not for smart use of analytics. My post last night about taking out Snell was basically me accepting that that's how things are done now--you can't ask a guy to do something he's never asked to do. But I think it's fair to say that the game has alienated and probably lost a few fans when analytics becomes rigid dogma.

anderson was tremendous during the regular season but had allowed runs in six straight appearances before last night.

he, a righty, was brought in to face mookie betts, who had absolutely terrible numbers vs lefties (like snell) this season. he was also committed to then face corey seager, who crushes righties.

and sometimes in world series you do indeed ask your cy young-winning pitchers to do things they don't normally do -- i mean it's not like he was at 110 pitches or something.

i think it's less a matter of 'too much analytics' than weighing certain analytics too heavily and considering them cut-and-dry when they're more just guidelines.

You ask players to do stuff they don’t normally do all the time in the playoffs. Doesn’t always work, but it’s common to see guys pitch on short rest, or have guy a play out of position or go an extra inning or two.
Cash, imho, was a great manager all season - but I don’t think he adjusted his thinking for the World Series.

I'm not arguing, believe me--as I prefaced my post last night, I was always the guy who was on here complaining about pulling starters too soon.

considering them cut-and-dry when they're more just guidelines = when analytics becomes rigid dogma

And maybe they should occasionally let Snell pitch deeper into a regular-season game; then they're not asking him to do something he never does. (Complicated by the fact he was coming back from something, I think.)

Sheehan:

Snell, to pick the example in play, has a 592 OPS allowed when facing batters the first time, 711 the second time, and 742 the third time. That understates his decline; Snell’s strikeout-to-walk ratio drops from 3.5 to 2.4 to 2.0 with each pass through the lineup. His strikeout rate drops from 34% to 26% to 22%. Letting Snell face a lineup a third time is a bad idea, and Kevin Cash knows this. In five postseason starts prior to last night, Cash had let Snell face 11 batters a third time. They were 3-for-10 with a homer, a double and a walk off him, roughly what Randy Arozarena is hitting. Just last Wednesday, Cash tried to get Snell through the bottom of the fifth facing the top of the Dodgers' order; a walk to Mookie Betts and a single by Corey Seager forced him to go to the pen.

In that start, as long as we’re talking about “dealing,” Snell had a no-hitter through 16 batters on 71 pitches. The next four batters: walk, homer, walk, single. Tonight, Cash went and got him after 18 batters and 73 pitches.

Every pitcher is dealing until he's not, and you literally need only go back to Blake Snell’s last start to see that.

A manager’s job isn’t to sit there and wait until his pitcher makes it plainly obvious he needs to be removed. His job, especially in Game Six of the World Series with a one-run lead, is to make sure it never gets to that point. Blake Snell isn’t handled like Jack Morris, and treating him that way is how you lose baseball games.

This was the big topic of the night, at least until events overtook it. Cash, though, made the right decision. He made the decision he’s been making with this team all year long, not letting the starters lose the game, getting them out before they deteriorate, knowing -- based on the numbers both general and specific -- that they will deteriorate, knowing that he has a deep and powerful bullpen for just this task. This is how they win games, how they won 51 of the 80 games they played, how they got to within two wins of a championship on a payroll that wouldn’t cover the Dodgers’ coffee budget. This is how the Rays have won all year, and dunking on it because it didn’t work in Game Six of the World Series may not be emphasizing the second part of that clause enough.

He goes on to say what you might want to quibble with is the choice of reliever to follow Snell. But that really, what the Rays needed was for somebody to hit besides Arozarena.

Ok. That’s a fairly enlightening explanation.

Instead, the WS will be remembered for two things: Turner reminding everybody of and exacerbating the game's handling of COVID, and Snell getting lifted.

I believe the Brett Phillips hit will be remembered.

i'll remember arozarena's crazy tear

Unreal from Turner. From memory he was the leader of the Dodgers spearheading the "we are taking this seriously, no hi-5's, masks at all times, not walk off celebrations, we do not treat this lightly" public declaration in the middle of the season (if anyone wants to do the work of finding that announcement, much appreciated). I am a Dodgers fan and its really sad to have a world series tainted, especially because of all the decrying of a tainted world series in 2017 that has been done by the fan base! I know its a false equivalence, but it just would have been nice to earn one without having to apologise afterwards :\

https://dodgerblue.com/dodgers-news-justin-turner-concerned-accuracy-saliva-tests-results/2020/07/09/

Interesting read

Instead, the WS will be remembered for two things: Turner reminding everybody of and exacerbating the game's handling of COVID, and Snell getting lifted.

Yes to Turner, also Arozarena's HR's, the crazy game 4, Seager winning WS (and NCLS) MVP. It was a well-played series between two great teams. As for Snell, this isn't Pedro and Grady Little, nobody will remember it by next season. He threw fewer than 6 IP per start in the year he won the Cy Young. He has 21 IP in the seventh inning or later in his entire career. If he stayed in, he would have gotten two, maybe three more outs? Snell got rocked in his third time through the order against the Dodgers in Game 2. Why do people think this represents a turning point in the use (or misuse) of analytics?

Bret Phillips slipped my mind--for sure.

As for Snell, this isn't Pedro and Grady Little, nobody will remember it by next season.

I'll see you in 2029; I'm 0-1 so far.

Meanwhile, Turner rates barely a mention on mlb.com.

Of course he doesn’t. It’s the Pravda of the game.

yeah i really thought this would be a bigger story and black eye on the WS

I think it's a big story elsewhere.

All that's really left, though, is to construct a timeline and figure out if it's all on Turner. If it is, he'll have to live with the consequences both short- and long-term, but that's about it. But depending upon when the Dodgers or the league knew of his positivity, things may escalate. (The fact that they couldn't keep him in that room is already a problem.)

They all knew before G6 that he was potentially positive, and he played anyway.

What about the tests done on the entire Dodgers team after the game? Any positives?

I’ll remember Seager becoming Bonds at SS and Kershaw finally getting a championship as much as the Snell switch and Turner’s stupid decision.

And the one highlight has to be that Philipps hit.

Turner is just one more dumba$$ in a country full of them.

I'd say better armor up next season against the Cardinals and Marlins, as I guess Turner was one of the guys saying "we got to come together to make the season happen" in interviews when those couple clubs had their outbreaks.

Oh well, fxxx the Dodgers anyway.

nobody will remember it by next season

people still define buck showalter's entire career by a pitching change he made in a wild card game in 2016, no way this dies soon

people still define grady little's entire career by *not* pulling pedro in game 7 of the 2003 ALCS (which apparently david ortiz forgot about)

tbf, pedro is a hall of famer and nick anderson has a DWI conviction and felony assault charge for which he received seven years probation

Stolen from a meme: The free-spending Dodgers traded away 2x 2020 Cy Young candidates (Ryu & Maeda) and still had the best record in MLB and won the World Series.

Ryu was a Free Agent tho

awfully weird year for joc pederson -- i mean they were actively trying to get rid of him, but then arte moreno got bored, and then he sucked during the regular season, and then he was pretty great in the playoffs and won the world series

Haven't heard boo about Justin Turner. Maybe the election crowded that out, maybe MLB put it in the O.J.-searching-for-the-real-killer file.

lol bless you guys for being in here rn

(it's just a bunch of Canadians here rn fwiw)

true enough

justin turner is going to end up signing like a pro-rated 1y/$5m deal in may because the system is broken. you'll hear boo about him then

i mean, assuming a normal year, which won't happen either

okay $5m is too low but still

Randy Arozarena can do literally anything. pic.twitter.com/xozIpt5XpQ

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) November 5, 2020

I wish I could pull pink clothing like he does.

if u can hit a curveball u can wear pink

can u hit a curveball?

okay bros

Major League Baseball has completed its investigation of the events following the Los Angeles Dodgers Victory in Game Six of the World Series. The following statements from MLB, Justin Turner, and the Dodgers were released today. pic.twitter.com/cVu1E6g7lT

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) November 6, 2020

the stinging slap to the wrist echoes across dodgersNation

Hilarious--Friday afternoon, with the election election playing out.

The Bruins fired Peter Chiarelli on the day Aaron Hernandez was convicted of murder.

They fired Claude Julien during the Patriots' Super Bowl parade.

The Red Sox re-hired known cheater Alex Cora as the fate of the country hung in the balance.

Boston PR folks: *chef's kiss*

— Mark Lazerus (@MarkLazerus) November 6, 2020

huh, forgot that the Red Sox had a new manager this season. Seems like they're going to be generally forgettable for a bit.

good news for the rest of baseball: the cardinals seem intent on sucking ass next year, saving money for the future? who knows. hopefully they get last place in 2021 and get a good draft pick for once