NL Wild Card: St. Louis Cardinals vs Los Angeles Dodgers

i thought bellinger or pujols might cover 1B tonight, but they're going with Matt Beaty instead. i assume pujols is fuming because he believes he would dominate tonight.

could be his last game tonight? i guess i don't really know if any team would be interested in him, maybe they will next year

kind of amazed that bellinger is starting

yeah, me too. bellinger has been ICE cold in september/october, too, even worse than before

ah, i see edmundo sosa is starting over paul dejong tonight. there was some question about who it would be. dejong basically lost his job to sosa this season, right there at the end when he got injured. just in terms of watching games, too, in terms of entertainment value, dejong is a below-replacement player (tied with goldschmidt and dylan carlson in the 'we have no emotions' style of playing), and sosa seems to get excited about playing well, has excellent range and a strong arm as SS, but he frequently chooses to make impossible, silly throws to 1B that fly straight into the dugout.

btw, the cardinals almost doubled the second place team in OAA (outs above average), and the cardinals broadcasting team is so incredibly averse to advanced stats that they didn't even mention it all year. they didn't know their own team was by far the best defensive team in baseball!

OOA relates to team fielding?

check it out!

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/outs_above_average

one thing that's cool about it is that you can take a glance and see which directions they tend to be better at (toward the plate or away from it, left or right)

Outs Above Average (OAA) is the cumulative effect of all individual plays a fielder has been credited or debited with, making it a range-based metric of fielding skill that accounts for the number of plays made and the difficulty of them. For example, a fielder who catches a 25% Out Probability play gets +.75; one who fails to make the play gets -.25.

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

i don't even recognize some of you

but this is where the devil magic is born. it comes from failed recognition of best fans in baseball. it comes from the pain that we have to face when that's not recognized

can we play future hall-of-famer bingo / drinking game?

every time an announcer references the hall of fame with:

drink 1
pujols
molina
scherzer

drink 2
arenado

Bye,bye Joe West

lol, it's a Joe West game at home plate, excellent

xp!

Bee are you rooting for the cardinals? i'm assuming you'd rather not play the dodgers, with their rotation

if you face the cardinals, they will have to face the likes of proven veteran Jon Lester

but i could understand wanting to face the rival, just to beat them for good

Of course I'm rooting for the Cards

One of four apparently

there are only 2 others. all of the others saw los angeles dodgers as an option and then chose it, which is just unbelievable

wow, really excellent play from Betts there

Didn't think that would be how the first run would score

couple defensive miscues there, surprising.

man, i didn't realize that dodgers fans hated yadi too! i forget their reason

(for being a whining asshole, probably, lol)

Only one run out of that mess, hope it doesn't cost them

Who is this fumbly guy at SS?

check this guy out

https://i.imgur.com/3Olf5JF.jpg

xp that's sosa

he's a rookie, first off and he only became the starter over the last month of the season or so. dejong was bad this year and got injured in september/october, and right when sosa took over he played very, very well and the team went on a 17-game winning streak. but when dejong came back, there was a question of who the starter was. seems like it's sosa, now!

despite appearances, he's actually very, very good with the glove. overall, an equal to dejong defensively, which is impressive because dejong is one of the best defensive shortstops in the NL at least. they have very different styles, though. Dejong's defensive value comes in the form of his strong and accurate arm, his consistency. Sosa has very good range and a very strong arm as well. that first hit to him that he bobbled wasn't exactly an easy play, either - it was 99 off the bat

Going back to Ozzie and Tom Niedenfeur - the Cards have kinda had the Dodgers number in the playoffs. Got to say, I would rather the Cards continue this as I have an eternal loathing of the Dodgers.

also: sosa is very, very fast. fastest on the team at 29.8 mph sprint speed, good for 13th in MLB.

faster: trea turner, 2nd, 30.6
just slightly slower: tyler o'neill, 14th, 29.7, harrison bader, 20th, 29.5

very glad to get up to 35 pitches on scherzer, still going in the 2nd.

my nightmare scenario was one of those class scherzer games where somehow it's the 8th inning and he has 10 strikeouts and seems to be getting stronger

Hi-five earlash

anyone watching on TBS hear those tones in the background of the audio? kind of sounds like an ice cream truck?

wainwright is a low-key _excellent_ bunter

I'm still pissed at the Giants over that grand slam though by Posey against the Reds though.

Can't hate Johnny Cueto though...

Even when I am not drinking I still post like I am...

IXLOR is cruel like life, you get no chance to edit.

also, re: sosa: as a prospect he has long been seen as passable with the bat, but as a reliable defensive replacement. he's gained the starting spot recently because he's had some luck hitting this year. he's so fast, though, and makes consistent enough strong contact that it seems like he may be underrated as a hitter. he's one of those guys that makes routine plays close and forces some "errors"

xp IXLOR!

That was such a huge moment for Posey

Several Xpost

I'm sure Posey and Gene Tenace have a good laugh whenever they get together.

Tenace also won a 4th ring with the Cardinals to complete the chain.

Where is the strike box TBS?

Annoying

Circa 1982 my father had a dream in which Gene Tenace held a bat as if it were a mic and sang "My Way."

Growing up in St. Louis was weird, circa 1982

i always forget tenace was on that '82 cardinals team!

his fangraphs stats are kind of insane for that season, surprisingly so. he only got into 66 games, 165 PAs, and somehow put up a 168 wRC+ and 2.1 fWAR!! over 600 PAs, that would be like a 8 WAR season!

They're also not showing MPH

i said "wow!" out loud at the tommy edman play, and then the announcer yelled "wow!"

they show the strike box in the replay sometimes, after a close pitch

unnnnngh

Reyes making a habit of doing this

dodgers are pretty good!

good luck giants

go brewers

Sorry Karl.

I love the cards fwiw

Would love to see the brewers win it all.

matt carpenter never got to hit again

but he sucked extremely badly the last few years so

cardinals didn't deserve to be in the playoffs this year, overall. really though, the team they were over the last month could have won the WS - they're excellent, i'm excited about next year

I sort of don't understand. Like, in hockey, the tea.the wins the president's cup usually does not win the Stanley's. It's about not peaking too soon and staying healthy

Was a reference to "didn't deserve to be. . ."

yeah, it's different for sure. i think in hockey they don't start "really playing" until the playoffs, right?

baseball is tilted toward luck a lot more. it's not a total crapshoot, but the best team against the worst team will win maybe 70% of the time. two decent teams against each other will usually be 60/40%. the variability is high with baseball, that's what keeps it fun

the Cards could have easily won this game but they are just not that good

realize that with all those short stop miscues

lol ok

That variability (or parity) in baseball is why it's good to keep the playoffs small and make the division titles mean something. It's not about just getting a spot in the tournament like the NHL.

That was a really good and tense game. Dodgers-Giants NLDS felt kind of inevitable but the Cards couldn't have been much closer to pulling off the upset.

all the shortstop miscues cost them 0 runs (this game), and over the season they came out ahead!

dodgers came out ahead and were the better team for sure, but they'll be the "better" team through this postseason (including against the giants)

looking at the video, reyes barely even flinched after taylor's swing -- just started walking toward the dugout

only thing i have to say about this game is that it was cute and good that juan soto was there cheering on scherzer and trea turner

ya – seeing Soto there was great.