OHHHH! OHHHOH! OHHH!
OHHHOH! Let’s go Brandon!
While I was watching the Braves win the World Series
over the Astros last night, I had a
sudden thought. I went back to earlier
in the year on my blog. On April 2,2021, I picked the Braves to beat
the White Sox in the World Series. I actually got a few things right in the
post, but I really missed it on some other things. I’m not celebrating my precognitive
brilliance here mostly because I subsequently changed that pick twice, once mid-season and then right before the postseason.
I think my original pick was motivated out of a desire to
see Atlanta get some ironic revenge after the All-Star Game controversy. The MLB hadn’t even moved the
game out of Atlanta when I wrote it. I
listened to the official Braves podcast during the playoffs. They were convinced that the MLB was out to
get them and wanted to keep them out of the World Series. And this wasn’t put by the fans, it their
front office people. The Braves could
dedicate their win to Commissioner Rob
Manfred and him inspiring them to greatness. All Rob could do was nervously hand the
trophy over to the Braves over a shower of jeers, and thank his lucky stars
that he was doing it in Houston.
The sports media went into all-out attack mode against
Atlanta when the World Series started. Broadcasters and columnists weren’t going to
use the name, “Braves,” and the Tomahawk
Chop denounced. I read a piece by an
hysterical woman (a national columnist), who also linked it to anti-vaxxers and
“insurrectionists.” (Global warming
deniers were offended with their omission.)
Thankfully, most of my most dire predictions before the
season did not come to pass. I think the
Cleveland Baseball Team’s new name
announcement was about the worst thing that happened. It’s clear that changing the Braves’ name is
the media’s new goal. I’m starting to
believe a theory I recently heard that their real goal is to end baseball
altogether, because it is insufficiently dominated by people of a certain color. (These are people who perhaps don’t want to
play this game because you can’t physically dominate it and it’s not just hard,
it’s humiliating even to star players.)
When the Braves lost Ronald
Acuna Jr. to injury and Marcell
Ozuna to litigation, me and everyone else wrote them off. Credit GM
Alex Anthopoulos for the best moves at the trade deadline, as he picked up Joc Pederson, Adam Duvall, Eddie Rosario,
and, World Series MVP, Jorge Soler. These guys paid big dividends in the
playoffs. Even in the World Series, the
team lost their best starter, Charlie
Morton, early in Game 1. He came out
after his leg was broken on a line drive.
Oh, but not before he still got three outs on that broken leg. I’d give him a co-MVP award just for that
performance. Certainly the team had no
excuse for not winning after that example of playing through the pain.
I just have to say it: I really don’t think the best two
teams were in the World Series. The
Braves were obviously good, but you have to point to team statistics, rather
than players to explain how they got there.
The Astros were, I think, the highest scoring team in the league, but
they didn’t seem to have the star pitching to guarantee postseason
success. You seldom get two teams
sneaking into the World Series.
So who should have been there? You’d think that it should have been the Dodgers for the National League. Their
problem was that they lost too many starters.
They lost Trevor Bauer well
into the season to litigation.
(Apparently the charges have been dropped since he’s back doing videos
on Youtube.) Clayton Kershaw was injured right before the playoffs. Finally, Max
Scherzer came up limp again with a dead arm in the League
championship. I called the Giants a “computer-generated
team.” They weren’t as good as their
record in terms of players, but they were able to use their resources
perfectly. That said, they had no margin
for error, since sheer talent alone wouldn’t be able to carry them. I wonder if losing team “captain,” Brandon Belt, right before the playoffs
was the fatal blow?
In the American
League, the Red Sox were always
frauds this season. I don’t know how
they got as far as they did. The Yankees got hot for a couple weeks late
in the season, but then reverted to the joke they were for the rest of the
season. The Blue Jays had the talent, but not the experience or the depth. That just leaves the other computer-generated
team, the Rays. They were apparently even more smoke and
mirrors than the rest of them.
Eventually, they ran out of rabbits to pull from their hat and got
exposed. They fooled me. To this point, talent and experience will
beat the Sabrmatricians in the playoffs.
Maybe the best two teams did make it to the World Series. Okay, I’m not being entirely fair. These teams I’m calling fake really did win a
bunch of games. What’s amazing is that
everyone at the beginning of the season overlooked them. Other prognosticators and myself are still
scratching our heads as to how they did it.
Did these teams crack the code?
Is conventional wisdom about baseball just wrong? Are the teams with the best computer
programming departments the winners? Is
the talent (players and management) in baseball more level than we think and
it’s the teams with the best intangibles that are succeeding? I have no answer.
Well, I can throw this observation out: ace starters now
overvalued. Oooh. That’s edgy.
What’s overvaluing them isn’t their talent, but rather that they’re too
prone to injury. When, not if, they go
down, you have to have a Plan B if you want to be competitive. Picking up an ace in the offseason or
midseason isn’t punching the Win Button.
The Padres’
good-looking rotation faltered, exposed their thin pitching, and kept them out
of the playoffs. Gerrit Cole did not put the Yankees over the top. If the Dodgers had their aces for the
playoffs, they win. They didn’t, so they
lost. The Braves lost their best starter
in Game 1 and had to throw essentially two bullpen days in a World Series and still
won one of those contests. Quality is
better than quantity for pitching, but only if the quality pitchers can
play.
Meanwhile, I just found out that my favorite player, Buster Posey, is suddenly
retiring. He had just had one of his
best seasons and was playing on a really good Giants team. It may be for family reasons or because he
reportedly made an enormous amount of money from some stock options. In any case, I understand him doing this in
the offseason and not wanting to do a preannounced farewell tour. I will be disappointed if I don’t see him
managing somewhere in the future. There
have been few players more obviously suited to that role.
It’s a pity that Hank Aaron didn’t live to see this Braves victory. The poor guy died from participating in a medical drug test. Too bad that nobody told him how dangerous that could be. All we can do now is wait to see if there’s going to be a strike this offseason. Gee, MLB may destroy itself and save the media the trouble.
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