Let’s face the music.
It’s time to review my pre-season preview (3-30-17). The Red
Sox did win their division, but were as “soft” predicted. I was all wrong about the Blue Jays, and the Yankees weren’t on my radar.
I did have the Indians and Astros winning their divisions. Those were easy picks. Oopsie.
The Mets sucked, but the Nationals did turn out to be
post-season losers again. The Cubs and Dodgers were also easy divisional picks. Though a completely off-handed comment, I do
give myself credit for calling it with the Dodgers ending up with the best
record in the baseball. The only thing I
got right in my post-season predictions was calling the Astros “my backup pick,”
but I was really convinced this going to be the Indians’ year. The Astros had burned me last year (3-25-16), so I was going to be reluctant to pick them outright again.
This World Series
was the battle between two Sports
Illustrated cover jinxes. Let’s
start with talking about them.
I finally read the
Dodgers article in this issue the day after the season ended. My reading pile has been huge this summer. I just never got to it and didn’t care about
the Dodgers, regardless of how good they were.
(This was also the last issue of my free SI subscription.) The story
inside was actually mostly about Justin
Turner. It was about his
relationship to the team, and theirs to him.
This article was mostly remembered for its bad timing. The Dodgers were experiencing an abysmal
losing streak when it came out and asked if they were the greatest team ever.
I re-read this now famous, 2014 Astros article right after reading the Dodger article. I remember seeing this issue on the newsstand
and now regret not buying it (since it’s worth serious money), but I did
download an online copy of the article at the time instead. This article was more in-depth about team, as
it was trying to explain why the Astros were so bad (three 100+ loss seasons in
a row). The players did not “tank” for
those seasons; management did, by putting a Triple-A level team on the
field. There was a plan, characterized
as an Astros’ version of Moneyball,
and it detailed how it could potentially result in a championship. I think the cover and the hypothetical 2017 season
in review were mostly to get attention, if not tongue-in-cheek. They were close on calling the Astros’ record
for the year, but had them beating the Cubs
in the 2017 World Series (which also came close to happing).
George Springer
and Carlos Correa were prominently
mentioned, but it was striking how many other prospect names were highlighted,
who did not make the team or stay with them.
Jose Altuve was a “diminutive
second baseman” with a good batting average, and Dallas Keuchel was a “maturing” pitcher. They were just nice little pieces in the
puzzle, not potential stars. (Alex Bregman wasn’t even on the
radar.) The Astros’ plan was by no means
foolproof. Their plethora high draft
picks were not guarantees of future big league stars. It was a good strategy in retrospect, but
could have been a compounding disaster if they’d had any bad luck or poor attitude
with their core guys.
I’d like to think that that audacious SI cover actually inspired the team into a self-fulfilling
prophecy. That was nearly the only media
prediction about the series that came true.
It seemed like the Dodgers should have rolled right over the Astros,
even with their close records. The
Dodgers had just stomped on the World Champion Cubs, while the Astros had barely beaten the upstart Yankees.
In team composition, the Dodgers had the edge in the relief
pitching, but starting pitching, hitting, and fielding were actually a
toss-up. Still, the Dodgers had the
celebrities, the bigger media market, and a much bigger payroll. These are critical elements in building a
championship-winning team, so they would be the favorites. (I don’t know what the sarcasm emojj is.) It’s worth noting that the Astros beat the
three highest payroll teams in the majors (the Dodgers, Yankees, and Red Sox) in the playoffs. We can at least breathe a sigh of relief that
the championship this year wasn’t outright purchased.
Looking back on the Series, I really can’t quite find a
pattern to discern the path to victory for the Astros. I don’t see the instrument of the Dodgers’
downfall either. (No, don’t say
“Darvish” or “Dave Roberts,” unless
you’re a bitter Dodgers fan grasping for straws.) Two of the seven games (2 and 5) were
absolutely back-breaking for both teams’ pitching, while being totally clutch
for their hitting. The other games were
fairly normal by comparison.
The day after Game 7, I listened to ESPN Radio to see what they had to say. (Why do I keep listening if I hate these
guys? Mostly because they provide me
with endless fodder for this blog.) The
two dummies I heard started off their show expressing disappointment. The wrong team had won and Game 7 wasn’t epic
like the earlier games. Pshaw. The hosts then went so far out of their way
to take a shot at Papa John’s Pizza,
they had to take a bus to get there. As
a major sponsor, Papa John’s isn’t happy with the NFL taking a knee and driving
down ratings, so the company and pizza in general must now be targeted. (Really, they thought all pizza itself was
now tainted.) It was a “great” 10-whole-minutes
of World Series analysis before they went back to their endless loop
programming of talking about LeBron
James and the NFL.
Somewhere in the middle of their bored tirade, they took a
shot at Dodger manager, Dave Roberts,
for starting Yu Darvish instead of Clayton Kershaw. No matter how well one team plays than the
other, there has to be a scapegoat for the losing team. A team can’t just be beaten, that’s not
controversial enough. There was no doubt
in my mind, Darvish should have started.
What was more likely: Darvish having another career-worst outing or
Kershaw flaming out on short rest in the playoffs again? Clayton Kershaw had two great outings in the
Series, sandwiching one really bad outing.
Even in one of the good outings, he basically had no pressure on him
pitching those four scoreless innings in Game 7.
Yu Darvish did have two of the worst starts of his
career. There’s little sugar-coating
that. I didn’t hear anybody mention
this, but he was the only Dodger pitcher that the Astros were well-acquainted
with from his time with the Rangers.
Also, the coaching staff did extensively tinker with his throwing motion
when he got to LA. Add some World Series
pressure to that and maybe that’s why Darvish started coming apart.
Astros’ star starting pitching wasn’t that great
either. Dallas Keuchel lost his first game to Kershaw and didn’t last in
his second outing (but it wasn’t like anybody else did in Game 5 either). Justin
Verlander got a loss and a no decision.
Verlander also complained that the balls this season were juiced. It’s hard to argue against that
possibility. I saw him throw back
several balls in his last game to the umpire.
Manager AJ Hinch didn’t want
to use either of these guys in Game 7 on short rest out of the bullpen.
Relief pitching was a notable difference. Kenley
Jansen seemed so automatic this season for the Dodgers, but overwork may
have done him in as the Astros found him quite hittable. Houston went into the series having already
basically lost their closer, Ken Giles. Hinch had to go away from inning-by-inning
specialists and two-inning closers. He
went long with Brad Peacock and Charlie Morton going several innings to
finish games. I don’t think this will
start a trend, but it worked here in a pinch.
On the hitting side, I’ve seldom seen better hitting and
less effective hitting out of the same two teams playing each other. The Dodgers seemed like the better hitting
team overall in the series, while the Astros lost games going nearly stone-cold
(but never shut out). Had Games 2 and 5
played out in a less epic fashion, surely the Dodgers would have won the Series. Los Angeles wanted those two games really
bad, but Houston wanted them more. Who
can really explain the motivation of players in such events?
The MLB lucked out with another great post-season. Hopefully, this will be the norm and fans
will keep watching in October, even if their favorite team has been
eliminated. Maybe someday, the league
championships will be back on over-the-air TV, instead of a three-digit cable
network. We can forget pace-of-play
improvement in baseball. Fox was
monetizing dead time with micro-commercials.
When do we start getting the epilepsy-inducing Max Headroom Blip-verts?
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