Friday, October 23, 2015

Marco's Baseball Blog-O-Roonie: Playoff Ruminations 2015

Marco's Baseball Blog-O-Roonie:

PLAYOFF RUMINATIONS

95% of playoff teams down by more than 4 runs after the seventh inning never come back to win”.

Well tell it to the Astros and the Rangers. Everybody got in a tizzy about the “Cuteness Cubbies” and the “Amazins” when those two lovable loser types made it into the playoffs. “Not since 1986, 1984, 2000 etc. etc. blah blah insert your meaningless latter decade year here.

Hey...down here in Texas no team has EVER WON THE WORLD SERIES...EVER!!! We're 0 for 3 in the Series since the Houston Colt 45's came into the National League in 1962. In over 50 years the two Texas teams have managed only 17 playoff appearances: 7 for the Strangers and 10 for the Disastros. Why?

Because God punishes us!!! Diabolical disastrous ill luck and ineptitude clobbers Texas Teams over the head with alarming regularity. If it's not Nelson Cruz lurching helplessly after a fly ball so he can turn it into a triple off the wall it's the Astros giving up 5 runs in the 8th inning of Game 4 of gthe 2015 Divisional Series and turning a 4 run lead over Kansas City to an eventual 9-6 loss.

The Astro's bullpen gave up 14 runs in that playoff series. Read that again...14 runs! I think they may have an area of concentration picked out for next year's team.

An unprecedented comeback by the Royals? Not really. This kind of stuff happens all the time in baseball...it's just so much more dramatic when one team is about to win a playoff series and move up to the ALCS like Houston was about to do.

Here's the story of the greatest playoff comeback of all time. We take you now to the year 1929:

The Philadelphia Athletics are playing the Chicago Cubs in the 1929 World Series. (Yes...those Chicago Cubs...the “Goat-Curs-ed”. I swear, they ought to put Bartman headphones on a herd of goats and let them graze on the Wrigley Field ivy for about a week just to mollify the Goat Demons. But more on that later.)

Philly...under legendary manager Connie Mack...was just beginning a three year pennant romp behind future Hall of Famers Jimmy Foxx (.354/33/117), Al Simmons (.365/34/157), catcher Mickey Cochrane (.331) and Uber-Pitcher Lefty Grove (league-leading 170Ks and 2.82 ERA in one of the highest scoring years of all times). They won 104 games that year, leaving the Ruth/Gehrig Yankees in the dust.

The Cubs were no slouches either. They scored an epic 982 runs in 156 games behind Hack Wilson (.345/39/159), Rogers Hornsby (.380/39/149) Riggs Stephenson (.362/17/110) and Kiki Cuyler (.360/15/102)

The Athletics are up 2 games to 1 in the 7th inning of the 4th game with Chicago about to tie up the Series with an 8-0 lead. In the bottom of the 7th the Athletics are up and this happens:

*starter Charlie Root pitching for the Cubs
*Simmons homers onto left field roof
*Foxx singles to right
*Bing Miller singles to center when Hack Wilson loses the ball in the sun
*Jimmy Dykes singles to left
*Joe Boley singles to right
*George Burns pinch hits for the pitcher and pops to short for the first out
*Max Bishop singles over pitcher Charlie Root's head
(this is the same Charlie Root who would give up Babe Ruth's famous “called shot” homer 3 years later... a man of destiny for sure)
*Art Nehf comes into pitch for Root (about time)
*Mule Haas hits 3-run inside the park homer when Hack Wilson loses the ball in the sun AGAIN!
*Mickey Cochrane walks
*Sheriff Blake replaces Nehf on the mound
*Simmons singles over third
*Foxx singles in the tying run
*Pat Malone comes in to pitch for Chicago
*Miller is hit by a pitch, loading the bases
*Dykes doubles to the wall
*Boley strikes out
*Burns strikes out

Final score: Philadelphia 10 Chicago 8. Philly now leads the series 3 games to 1 and polishes off Chicago the next day.

That was some half inning.

The Texas Rangers had themselves one of those in the 5th game of their division series against the Toronto Blue Jays.

The Rangers looked great knocking off the Jays in the first two games in Toronto but coughed up furballs in their two home games back in Arlington. In the 5th game back in Toronto it's 2-2 in the top of the 7th, Odor scores from third when Toronto catcher Russell Martin hits Choo's bat with his throwback to the pitcher. The ball trickles down the third base line and Odor alertly runs home.

Not even the umpires have seen this play before and when they finally figure out it's a live ball (with help from the Umpire Gods who sit on Olympus back in the New York control room), the Toronto fans litter the field with beer cans when Odor's run is allowed, giving the Rangers a 3-2 lead going into the bottom of the 7th.

One of the weirdest plays ever.

But in true Texas-team tradition, the Strangers find a way to turn this good fortune into a macabre death spiral. They make 3 bad errors in the bottom of the inning...shortstop Andrus dropping an easy grounder and an easy force out at third...and allow the Jays to tie it up. Then they serve up an inside fastball to Bautista who deposits the ball in the left field seats. Bautista struts his stuff and flings his bat at the Rangers bench...celebrating his greatness while conveniently ignoring the fact that he shouldn't even be batting because the inning should have been over.

The Rangers start milling around as if they are offended but nothing happens except somebody pats Troy Tulowitzski on the butt and somebody pushes somebody. Then the Rangers lie down quietly and die, accepting their unchanging loser-fate.

Thus expires another Texas team.

The Dodgers find another way to die. They hook up with the pitching heavy Mets. I picked them to win this series because of Kershaw and Greinke...two of the top three Cy Young candidates along with Arrieta of the Cubs...are set up to pitch 4 games of the 5 game series. They won 3 out of 4 all year.

But not this time. Kershaw wins once but the Dodger bats are melted by the Mets' young pitchers and especially their lights out closer Familia. On top of that  the Mets second baseman Danny Murphy suddenly turns into Bat-Beast and starts hitting everything into the seats and off the walls and stuff. This character hit his all time high homer total in the 2015 regular season...14 bombs. Then the sonuvagun hits 7 in the playoffs (so far) and homers in 6 games in a row...last 2 Dodger games in the Divisionals and then all 4 in the sweep of the Cubs. Unreal.

So the Dodgers flame out again. They could never get a settled batting order and Utley sliding hard into second in game 2 and breaking the leg of Met second sacker Ruben Tejada motivated the Metskies. (Tejada was woefully out of position on the play but was helpless. As I argued earlier in the season, the rules should be changed to prevent this kind of contact at second base, just as it's prohibited at other bases.) Manager Mattingly is now kaput in Dodgertown.
He was no genius but he was at least an honorable baseball warrior. I doubt the Dodgers will do better.

The Cubs went down too, but at least they made some noise before they folded.

First, they dispatched the poor Pirates in the Wild Card game. Arrieta shut out the Pirates for the third straight time in a month. The Buccos just couldn't hit the guy. (However, Arrieta finally used up his mojo and was not as effective the rest of the playoff run. The Cubs burned out their Ace in the Wild Card which illustrates the point that it pays to win your division.)

Cubs-Cardinals turned on the injury bug. The Cardinals were hurt more by the loss of catcher Molina and starter Martinez than the Cubs were hurt by the loss of shortstop Addison Russell.

The key game was game 3 at Wrigley...the wind was blowing out that night...(pure poetry, I know) and for some reason the Cardinal pitchers...starters, relievers, whoever...decided to keep throwing sternum-high strikes to the Cub hitters. Hey, any pop fly was going into the seats! A pop foul behind the plate went foul behind the screen and blew back onto the field where Molina (trying to play with a broken thumb) had to make a circus catch. Anyway, 6 homers later, the Cubs had thoroughly spanked the Redbirds. I believe only 1 homer was legitimately not a factor of wind...Schwarber's blast to right field that landed on Mars somewhere. The Cards needed somebody out there throwing sinkers or at least staying in the low part of the zone. Too late!

The Cubbies triumph and those ever-optimistic Cubs fans thought the Prophecy of Back to the Future was coming true. (The movie sarcastically predicted that the Cubs wouldn't win a series until 2015. Almost!)

Unfortunately for the cute little Bears, the Mets spanked them in New York and then spanked them worse back in Chicago to take 4 straight and win the ALCS. Arrieta had shot his wad and Lester wasn't as good as whoever the Mets put out there. DeGrom, Syndegaard, Harvey, Matz...clean sweep. The Cubs only scored more than 1 run in just 1 inning the whole series.

But Mets haters can relax...The Mets have 5 days off now, waiting for the ALCS to be over. That's been the Kiss of Death for playoff teams in recent years. Whatever mojo they had goes stale. Do you think Danny Murphy is going to sustain his Cosmic Clutch hitting? The pitchers can use the rest but the hitters always lose their timing with long layoffs.

Their opponent in the 2015 World Series will be either the Toronto Blue Jays or the Kansas City Royals. The Royals are up 3 games to 2 at this writing with the series going back to Kaufmann Stadium. We've had a couple of blowouts but it's been a pretty good series. The Jays bullpen has been exposed but the Jays lineup has scored enough runs on the Royals starters to win those 2 games and make it a contest. The Royals have 2 games in their home park to win the one that takes them back to the WS for the second year in a row.

I stand by my preseason prediction: THE KANSAS CITY ROYALS WILL WIN THE WORLD SERIES.

YOU GUYS ENJOY THE REST OF THE SEASON!!