Marco's Baseball Blog-o-roonie 2016: PREDICTION DEVASTATION OF THE DEPLORABLES!

MARCO'S BASEBALL BLOG-O-ROONIE 2016: PREDICTION DEVASTATION OF THE DEPLORABLES

Okay, so I blew it. But 2 for 6 still bats .333, right? (Before the two League Championships series. But I would have picked the Blue Jays over the Indians if I knew they were playing and I'd have picked the Cubs over the Dodgers...so I might actually be 2 for 8 when all is said and done...Oh never mind...I failed, I admit it.) But it's not my fault...the election was rigged and now you, my followers, must start the revolution and avenge me on the lying sluts who conspire against me!....no, wait a minute, I'm supposed to be contrite here.

Let's examine this mess.

I started out great with San Francisco and Bum-God-ner ascending Olympus once again and throttling the Mets in a predicted pitcher's duel classic over Thor and his fastball lightning bolts. It was epic and Zeus beat the Asgardians after the pitiful Giants batters at least ran up the pitch count by hitting some foul balls off Noah.

Bum-God-ner don't give a shit about no pitch counts. A nine inning shut out. Wasn't that a great game? And the rookie replacement third baseman Gillaspie hit one out to win it for Bum.

Toronto vs. Baltimore....and I'm one for two. I picked Baltimore because they had Zach Britton and his unhittability in the bullpen, which is where he stayed when Mr. By-the-Book Showalter refused to put him in the game even in the extra innings!

Instead, Buck brings in his starter Ubaldo Jiminez who is as high strung as an overly inbred race horse and is famous for either throwing balls in the dirt and walking everybody or grooving fastballs. Tonight was groove night.

After the first batter took a belt-high ball to left Bucky should have recognized the signs....”hmmm, 90mph fastball absolutely put on a tee for first batter....maybe rethink this.” Nope. Leave him in, he was hot in September. (But he wasn't relieving in September!)

Now Josh Donaldson (whose hair dresser must be a gay Comanche judging from what's left of his scalp) hits the first pitch, which is a 90mph fastball dead over the middle of the plate...first and third. Now, surely, Buck will bring in the closer?

Nope. Leave Ubaldo in. The Law says don't bring in your closer when you don't have the lead...or in a tie game. He might get offended that he's not in a save situation. Don't bring him in even when he is the best pitcher in the AL this year with the lowest ERA, average against, everything. He never blew a save. He has the best sinker (98mph!) ever! No, don't bring that guy in! Not even when you bring the infield in when you absolutely have to have a double play or a strikeout to continue your season. I know, Ubaldo is facing right handed hitters. But right handed hitters don't hit a sinker any better than lefties with Britton. He is a strikeout/ground ball pitcher par excellence and overwhelming all year.

So Ubaldo throws his third straight 90mph fastball down the freaking middle of the plate and Encarnacion hits it two miles. ( I even called it to my wife who could care less) Bye-Bye playoffs for Baltimore.

Worst managing sequence I've ever seen.

Cleveland gave Boston a thumping. Actually the Red Sox were competitive in two of the games but couldn't get the clutch hit. Mr. Screw-what-the-Law says Francona brought in Andrew Miller in the middle of the game to dispose of the Red Sox for two and a half innings. He knew Farrell wouldn't pinch hit for his lefties that early in the game and they didn't and lost their opportunities to score.

Of course Tito didn't have much choice since all of his starters were hurt in the last month. But he was definitely on to something. Desperation breeds Innovation.

I thought the Sox might rally behind Papi when he put a great swing on Miller's slider in the third game but the ball hung up and was caught for a sac fly instead of getting down for a single. Game of inches, folks.

1 for 3 am I. Surprised I am, Yoda. Farewell Papi...see you in the broadcast booth with Pedro.

The Blue Jays, newly inspired after Encarnacion's walk off, stayed hot at the plate and jacked the Rangers all over the field. Too long a lay off for Texas? Probably. Seems to be a consistent theme in the playoffs that teams need a day or two max. After that they forget how to hit. Pitchers like the layoff cause they're used to it anyway. Hitters, not so much. All of us were waiting for a real street fight between these two teams in a grudge match. But the Rangers didn't show up. Especially disappointing were the performances of their two “aces” (intentionally not capitalized to shame them further) Hamels and Darvish. And they lost on a bad relay throw by Odor.

Life is unexpectedly ironic at times. Actually, all the time if you think about it.

Meanwhile I'm 1 for 4 in predictions.

So I had boldly predicted that San Francisco would beat Chicago. I theorized that the Cubs would be over-confident and also would spit the bit under pressure. I said Bumgarner and Cueto would be tough on them and they were. But the Giants needed to win one of those first two games in Chicago. Javier Baez broke up a gem by Cueto with that big homer and the Cubs won 'em both at Wrigley.

Bum-God-ner's turn. Best game of the playoffs. Arrieta comes up with two on and is about 5 seconds late swinging at Bum's fastball...twice. So Bum thinks, “might as well keep my pitch count down with this guy and finish him off.” The next fastball winds up in Never-Never Land...(“I'm flying! Look at me! Way up high! Like a bird...in the sky! I'm not even trying!”)

That was a purple-paisley-jock-shock for sure. Bum gave up another couple of hits before he got his mojo back. To his credit, he shut the Cubs down after that and kept the Gigantics in the game. Then Conor Gillaspie (who can't spell either one of his names apparently) hits a beautiful triple to deep center field off a 104mph Chapman fireball to tie the game. Then Panik wins it in extras with a homer. Shock, awe and the Giant's high water mark for the year. The Cubs should have been looking for their hearts that the Giants had just cut out and left on the field. But these Cubs showed me something...

Cause the next night the Giants got a great game out of Matt Moore and were three runs up in the ninth. Bochy thinks he's safe taking out his starter. Not with the bullpen you got, Bruce! 5 pitchers...walk, hit, hit, hit, hit...truly wretched performance from the Grade F bullpen. Hard to pitch with your hands around your neck, boys.

Cubbies showed some spunk there...they could have given up on that last at bat and dragged ass back to Wrigley. Instead they made history.

Yep. I'm 1 for 5.

The Dodgers and the Nats. Two teams remarkably similar. Both of them have a leftie-heavy lineup and so are vulnerable to left handed pitching. Both of them have young star left-handed hitters to lead them in Harper and Seager. Both of them have strong closers, but are otherwise deficient in the bullpen. Both of them have underachieved in the playoffs in recent years. Both of them feature a Cy Young starter who has coughed up furballs in the playoffs. Both of them have a new manager who is renowned as a “player's” manager. And both of them have suffered major injury problems the last few years.

I picked the Dodgers in a close series because the Dodger's top pitcher, Kershaw, is a leftie and I thought he'd do better against the Nat's lineup than Scherzer, who is a rightie, would do against the Dodger's leftie hitters. (Sounds more complicated than it really is but I wanted to show off how scientific I'm trying to be about these things.)

So Kershaw throws 101 pitches in 5 innings but still holds off the Nats 4-3 and I look like a genius. Scherzer gave up a first inning bomb to Corey Seager and I am a certified Gold-Plated Genius!!

Game 2 the Nats win on Murphy's homer. 5-2. The Dodgers had the lead when Corey Seager hit another first inning homer but had many chances later in the game and couldn't get the hit. The Nats lost their great catcher Ramos to a knee injury late in the year but their backup Lobaton hit a 3-run jack to help win this one.

The Nats treated the Dodgers like red-headed step children in Game 3, an 8-3 blowout. Every pitcher the Dodgers put out there got lit up. Big homers by Rendon and Werth. The Boys in Blue look done.

The game took well over four hours. The seventh inning alone took over an hour! Something must be done! Here's a shopping list for MLB....

1/CUT BACK THE BETWEEN INNING TIME THAT YOU FILL WITH MORE COMMERCIALS YOU GREEDY BASTARDS! These playoff games always feature so many pitching changes that you'll let the networks make up the difference there anyway. With four hour, even three and a half hour games you start to lose the kids and that's your future audience you stone-brains!

2/Want to intentionally walk somebody? Wave at the umpire. We will all surely miss the sizzling excitement of watching the pitcher try not to throw the ball over his catcher's head on four wide ones.

3/Limit everybody's trips to the mound...coaches, managers, catchers. Every trip counts...Only the starting pitcher in each inning can get two before he must be lifted. Every other pitcher comes out on the next visit from anybody. If there's a runner on second you can figure out a way to go to your alternate set of signs without going out to talk about it. Most catcher's trips are to kill time while the next reliever warms up anyway.

4/5 warmup pitches between innings...not 8. It was enough for Grover Cleveland Alexander.

5/Speed up Replays. Hey! New York umps on the game feed! We just saw the replay eight times and you still can't make the call?

6/ Get creative. It's no use trying to change the game and use less pitchers. That's how they manage these days. A new pitcher for every batter who switches from right to left or vice versa. And they'll whine about hurting their arms.
Enforcing a clock between pitches? Yes! Limiting batter's step outs to adjust their f###ing batting gloves? Yes! Umpires must limit step-outs...even on the big stars like Papi...that loveable bat slappin' time WASTER.

There. I just saved you bums twenty-thirty minutes a game.

So in Game 4 the Dodgers finally get to the Nats' bullpen and Chase Utley does something with runners on base besides strike out.

Game 5. All you will remember is the Kershaw relief job after he won the fourth game on short rest, giving up 5 earned. The Big Guy came through for LA. The Nats played honorably but find a way to lose another one.

So now it's the Championship Series of the Leagues. You probably didn't pick Cleveland to get this far and you probably didn't pick them over Toronto.

Toronto had the hitting mo after rattlesnaking the Rangers, but Cleveland didn't play fair. Instead of leaving their weak second string starters in so the Jays could pound them, Tito Francona just brought in a new no-name relief pitcher every other inning and made the Canadians look silly. Francona even started some kid from Texas named Ryan Merritt who was pitching his second major league game. This baby boy may be the new Bird Fydrich. He was squinting to see the catcher's signs and kind of smiling and then calmly,politely and kind of endearingly shutting out the big boys for 4 key innings. He's from my Mama's home town of McKinney,Texas and I love the kid!

This series was essentially a walkover. Toronto got shut out at home in their last game of the year! So now they lose Bautista and Encarnacion to free agency...and don't try to tell me they can resign them. As I've said before, NOBODY stays in Canada and pays higher taxes when they get to their walk year. The Jays still have a good core...they'll be back.

In the NLCS the Dodgers are the roadblock between the loveable Cubbies and baseball redemption. After 5 games of this series, it is apparent that the Cubs can hit anybody on the Dodger's staff not named Kershaw, Hill or Jansen.

So Roberts has saved those guys back and is going to try to win two games in Chicago with those three main arms. He better not put Blanton or Baez or Stripling out there anymore. Those guys helped get Addison Russell and Rizzo off the schneid.

The Cubbies feel better about themselves after two blowout wins at the Stadium...but they weren't facing Kershaw. I see the Dodgers squelching the Cubs in Game 6. Somebody will light up Hendricks with a long ball...I predict Utley or Gonzalez. Kershaw will only need a run or two.

If there's a seventh game at Wrigley, better check the dugouts for albino squirrels or other unlucky creatures that might crawl out on the field and die at home plate or something. There will be a moment when the Cubs will feel the Chill Wind of the Curse feathering up their necks. Then they will either succomb, as so many Cubs teams have before them, or some new baseball legend will arise. Arrieta vs. Hill...a game Dodger squad vs. the New Darlings of MLB.

I don't know who is going to win but I am definitely looking forward to it.

I guess I'll drink a cup of coffee and ask the wife if I can stay up that late....

Enjoy the weekend!