Baseball and Ballantine. Somehow the advertising jingle from the days of my youth keeps popping up in my head as the playoffs keep turning up surprises. The most interesting things to me about these playoffs break down to two propositions: 1) the startling fact of how grossly undervalued middle relief and bullpen depth are proving to be in the race to the World Series; and 2) how two teams from Missouri, widely assumed to lack power and punch have caught veritable fire with their bats and, in the course of the playoffs to date, completely reversed what would be all rational statistical expectation. In particular, the Cards four solo home runs the other night (remember this coming from a team which hit a TOTAL of 123 home runs over the course of a 162 game season) has to mark a volte face worth an impress. Finally, and alas, the fate of my Tigers - the team of my youth. Here I can say that while a number of dumb managerial decisions contributed to their sweep by the Orioles (not pinch running for Cabrrera in the eighth inning of game two being the most egregious example), the real culprit was the trade for yet another ace to add to the rotation around the July 31 trade deadline. What idiocy! It looked, of course, like a good deal at the time (who wouldnt trade Austin Jackson to get Price), but in hindsight it is all too painfully clear that the RIGHT move would have been to trade for middle relief to keep the Tigers in the game until the bats might get unwound. Alas and alack! youtube/watch?v=BCHYMetwyhM
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 13:08:46 +0000
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