My Exhaustive MLB Postseason Report

Ahem.  Nudge.

Huh?

Ahem.  Hey, Jdh417 remember that World Series thing?  Do you remember that whole baseball thing in general?

Oh!  Shoot!  Yeah.  I’m all over it.  Take two.

Hello, I’m Chet Jdh417 and here’s everything you needed to know about the World Series and postseason baseball. 

Sigh.  Take three.

Hi, my name is Jdh417.  “Hi, Jdh417.”  I haven’t written about baseball since September.  I am a bad baseball writer. 

I doubt anything I write here will disprove that statement.  Baseball starts disappearing for me later in September when football starts.  This isn’t because I stop caring about one sport for the other.  It’s because baseball starts disappearing off the radio at that point.  In early and mid-October, baseball goes into a witness protection program that creatively shuffles their playoff games between irrelevant cable channels. 

MLB, why do you not have an Internet package for the playoffs?  Seriously, when your current TV contracts expire, let them go.  FOX is about to relegate your World Series to late night tape delay on FS1 at the rate they’re going.  They’ll also go picture-in-picture to show full commercials during the game.  (Right now, they’re only doing little micro commercials whenever there’s a break in the action.) 

So, I was sort of cutoff from sitting down an enjoying the coverage except for a couple of games.  My excitement level wasn’t there to begin with, since I wasn’t really rooting for anybody.  When the World Series started between the Astros and the Nationals, the sports media attempted to generate some controversy with a couple of stories, but they really didn’t catch on in the mainstream.

There was something about a Houston executive yelling at somebody during their ALCS celebration.  A baseball reporter had been tweeting out a domestic violence hotline number every time accused abuser Roberto Osuna entered a game.  (That’s journalism today for you.)  I think the executive got fired.  Osuna and the reporter are still employed.  Also, an MLB umpire tweeted out that he’d support a revolution if Trump were impeached.  Obviously, he has to go.  We can’t have anybody expressing “wrong think” opinions in the media.

Houston was being painted as the villain initially I think.  I had my own personal animus against the Nationals.  Max Scherzer, who I assume is a Player Union rep, went on this little tirade last year about the slow movement of MLB free agents (3-22-18).

As players, we need them to secure the biggest and longest contracts.  We need this class to push the market higher and higher as revenues go higher and higher.  When revenues are at all-time highs, increasing to historic levels, that warrants historic contracts.  We don’t need to hear more excuses about teams not spending actively this year to make sure their resources are available next year.  Things better start acting normally. 

It was almost poetic justice when he got scratched for neck spasms from the biggest game of his career in Game 4 of the World Series when his team desperately needed him.  I actually kind of felt bad for him.  Then Scherzer went out in Game 7 and gritted his teeth and pitched his heart out.  It was hard to root against him there. 

Nationals reliever Sean Doolittle is a virtue-signaling prick.  He was probably chanting from the bullpen with the Washington DC crowd, “Lock him up!” when President Trump made an appearance in Game 4.  Still, he’s a Star Wars nerd (that has a lot less cache with me than it used to) and is somewhat clever.  When he picked a catcher, Kurt Suzuki, in Spring Training, he told the other catcher, Yan Gomes, “But I’ll be thinking of you the whole time.”

When the Nationals lost three games at home and they looked to be done, some conservative commentators chimed in by calling them “the Deep-Staters” and that they deserved to lose.  (There was no comment when the Nationals went ahead and won, of course.)  That moniker likely applied to their fans buying those expensive playoff seats.  However, departed conservative commentator, Charles Krauthammer, wanted the Nationals to win a World Series more than anything in the sports realm before he passed.

In Game 6, there were a few incidents for water cooler talk.  These were, of course, hyped up to raise interest in Game 7.  When you get this deep in a series, any little event, even if it didn’t really concern the outcome, is going to be magnified.  I have no idea whatsoever what was going on with Alex Bregman and Juan Soto carrying their bats to first base after hitting home runs.  “Let the kids play,” right?  “Bat flips are cool.”  This was just an extension of that.  Are you still wondering why there are “unwritten rules” in baseball?  This will get worse until it is corrected.

Oh, then there was also in Game 6 some controversy over some obscure rule and the umpires’ ruling on it.  “This rule will have to changed in the offseason to prevent this kind of travesty from happening again.  Thank goodness, at least it didn’t affect the outcome and right team won.”  I have no opinion on the play.  I don’t care.  This was a minor call that was blown all out of proportion.  Then there was an absurd escalation and outrage over the call by the media.  Nauseatingly, a bunch of commentators, who didn’t have a clue about the rule beforehand, started speaking on this self-generated issue endlessly with mock authority.  I really could have lived without that.  

To tie all this together (hopefully), all of these attempts at controversy, politicization, off-the-field player actions and statements, and even on-field foolishness only dulled my interest in the series.  I didn’t appreciate this nonsense getting mixed into my sports entertainment.  Attaching a moral component to a secular activity almost assuredly ruins it.  

This doesn’t even get into some intrinsic issues that baseball has now.  The home run/strikeout/walk dynamic of the current game is diverging too far from the way the game should be played in order to be entertaining.  One ESPN Radio commentator went off on a rant during his World Series coverage about the length of the games.  In this case, I have to agree.  The host wanted a pitch clock and for the batters to stay in the damn box.  I like that, but it’s the extra commercials that are making these playoff games run long.  Constant pitching changes don’t help.  At least, the limit on mound visits has helped.  Pitchers and catchers in the World Series were consulting on every pitch two years ago. 

My pure sporting interests were already conflicted.  I like the Astros and their players (especially Bregman), but the Nationals had a pretty good underdog story.  Here was a team that had lost their star player in the offseason and had underperformed at the beginning of the year (19-31).  They came back to get into the playoffs.  They came back on the Brewers in the ninth inning in the Wild Card game and then got rid of the Dodgers.  Thank you for that on behalf of everybody (except for Dodger fans obviously).  There was a 24-game regular season winning differential between the Astros and the Nationals.  They were definitely underdogs.     

This series was over three times before it finished.  After Washington took the first two games, Houston had a very low win percentage.  After Houston took the next three games, Washington had an even lower win percentage, if not historically zero from losing three home games in a row in the playoffs.  After Washington took Game 6 though, Houston was thought to be done and that was correct, except that the Astros still had a slim lead late in Game 7. 

Between the Astros’ theoretically much better bullpen and Gerrit Cole on standby, not to mention a better offense, the win percentage had probably swung to Houston again.  It wasn’t until the Nationals blew it open that prognosticators could finally feel fairly confident picking a winner.  The Nationals had come from behind to win five elimination games in the postseason.  The stats would have said that was nearly impossible.

For an unprecedented seven-game series (in any sport) where no home team won a game, nobody offering an opinion was going to be looking smart.  I stopped making predictions or having any expectations, probably after Game 2.  I learned my lesson early.  For others, I’ll recap.  Win Percentage is another BS stat like WAR.  WP is basically meaningless when applied to any specific game you’re watching.  It only has historical value, if that. 

For that matter, “Experts” don’t know who’s going to win a specific game or series either.  Just because someone is paid to give sports opinions and study the stats (or pay their staff to do it or just read other people’s analysis), that doesn’t mean that they can tell the future.  Anybody could make a sports prediction and have about as much chance of being right as an expert.

I’m okay with commentators making predictions for light-hearted fun (unlike the NFL where there’s serious betting money involved), but I’d prefer they’d use most of their time to set up the matchup and discuss strategy.  Unfortunately, expert guesses on the outcome are the centerpiece of the coverage.  Guys sitting a bar can do that for themselves.  Nobody needs to be paid a bunch of money to mouth off on who they think is going to win.

I just loved listening to Stephen A. Smith before Game 6.  “THE ASTROS ARE GOING TO FINISH THIS TONIGHT!  JUSTIN VERLANDER IS ON THE MOUND TONIGHT AND HE CAN’T LOSE!  THIS IS JUST AS I PREDICTED: THE ASTROS IN SIX!  IT’S GONNA HAPPEN TONIGHT!”  Meanwhile, everyone listening was thinking the same thing: Hey, dummy.  The game is tomorrow night. 

Regrettably, a lot of the in-depth coverage and analysis wasn’t a whole lot better.  The sports media tends to create storylines before the game and will stick to them regardless of what happens on the field.  I heard any number of times how bad Washington’s bullpen was compared to the Astros’.  It didn’t matter that the Astros’ bullpen got clobbered early on, the storyline stayed the same.  You can argue my statement there a bit, but my premise is correct.  As soon as reality deviated from the storyline, the storyline should have changed.  Stubbornly insisting that the stats would revert back to their season averages isn’t a meaningful position to take in a short series.

All that said about what a waste of time predictions are, of course I did my own Preseason Preview (3-27-19) like I do every year.  It’s for fun and an excuse to talk about baseball (and embarrass myself at the end of the season).  It’s also about as accurate as anyone else’s.  In other words, I made a lot of the same obvious choices and looked bad anywhere I went out on a limb.

   

I had the AL right, except for the Red Sox.  I was too optimistic on the NL side.  This was of course the one year I didn’t pick the Nationals and neither did anyone else. Looking back on my Hot Stove Special (3-7-19), OMG!  I actually called it. 

Watch them go to the NLCS just to spite everyone.

The Nationals did just that and more. 

I was right about the Cardinals doing well, but their big acquisitions, Andrew Miller and Paul Goldschmidt, were mostly non-factors.  I did pick the Indians to not make the playoffs initially and correctly, but waffled and had them as a Wild Card.  I was right about the Twins taking the Central division. 

When I talked about the Rockies’ moves, I didn’t even mention them losing DJ LeMahieu.  I think he’d just about lost his second base job with Colorado for light hitting.  SI listed him as a Yankees’ bench player in their season preview.  Then he suddenly turned into a monster with the bat.  I was a fan of his, but now I’m angry at him for not showing that kind of talent in Denver.

 

Yep, Philadelphia did win the offseason with Bryce Harper and other acquisitions.  The Nationals losing him was thought to be their death blow.  There was even talk at the trade deadline about trading Scherzer.  The sports media then had to unanimously leap to Harper’s defense as the Nationals kept winning in the postseason.  DC didn’t finally win a postseason series because they lost Harper.  No!  No!  It was just an amazing coincidence.  How utterly predictable that the media would protect their “investment” in a star player they endlessly promoted.  Bryce Harper is a great player, but to this point, he is a team loser, a jinx.

And on that note, when I wrote about the Astros picking up Zack Greinke at the trade deadline (7-31-19), I said it was a loser move.  It was weird that I was right and wrong about him.  He pitched well, but the team did lose with him as predicted.  On an Astros’ website, the fans seemed to be blaming Manager AJ Hinch for the Game 7 loss for taking him out too early.  I also heard criticism for not bringing in Gerrit Cole.  Cole seemed pissed that he never got into the game.  Right after the game, he was already saying he was officially a free agent and no longer spoke as a team member.

 

Can I at least end this with some positivity?  I felt good for Ryan Zimmerman, the first Nationals player.  He was out with an injury for most of the series, but I was really glad for Kurt Suzuki.  He stole the bit from Elvis Andrus, but Gerardo Parra’s Baby Shark walkup was amusing.  This was the oldest team by player age in the MLB (I think).  This was a lot of those players’ last chance for a trophy. 

There were several candidates for MVP, but Stephen Strasberg, 2-0 in the World Series and 5-0 in playoffs, was an easy choice.  He was rather soft-spoken and reserved in receiving his award.  After getting shutdown, probably prematurely, in his first season and not getting to pitch in the playoffs then, this award may have been long overdue.  His adorable little girl (Reagan?) stole the show bouncing up and down off him.

Was anybody else surprised by the large number of Nationals fans there in Houston?  Meh.  Deep-staters.  I’m kind of happy that the Expos, on some level, won a World Series.  Now I feel bad for the Mariners, the last remaining team that hasn’t made it to the Series.  Like the Expos, the Mariners have had plenty of good players and teams.  It just hasn’t come together for them yet.  If the Cubs and Nationals can win in this century, there’s hope for them.