In fairness, a batter can’t purposefully avoid a double play. You can only aim your hitting so much. If the ball is hit to the SS who then throws to 2B who then throws to 1B, that’s just where the chips fall.
Not even close.
Seattle still needed 2 more wins
They made three errors - the first time in 2025 they did that - and visibly didn’t swing the bats well.
My point is that late September is supposed to be when teams are playing division games. Inter-league games should be in summer or spring, not at the end of the season.
Does it make me a crotchety old purist that I still hate the idea of interleague play, just on principle?
I know that ship has long sailed and won’t be reversed. But I always thought that the World Series was special for being the first possible point of competitive contact between the two leagues (give or take however seriously you think the players take the All Star Game). I hated the idea of interleague play when it was proposed, I hated it when it was introduced, and I still hate it now.
Also, get off my lawn.
You are not alone.
Maybe not crotchety old purist, but it means missing out on hundreds of potential interesting matchups. Also, if most other leagues (NFL, NBA, etc) do interleague play, why not MLB?
I don’t disagree, but the way that MLB is currently structured – 30 teams, with 15 in each league – means that they must have interleague games being played all season long. With an odd number of teams in each league, during any given series, at least one team has to play a team from the other league.
If they went to 32 teams, or unbalanced the leagues (i.e., 16 in one league, 14 in the other), you could get away with fewer interleague games. But, at this point, the differences between the AL and NL, which used to be an important feature of baseball, are effectively meaningless.
Yes, but if I recall right, when an MLB team wins the first 2 games of a seven-game playoff series on the road to take a 2-0 lead, its historical likelihood of winning the series is around 85-90%. I’d imagine that when the Seahawks trailed the Patriots by four points but were near the New England goal line, their odds of winning the game were also around 85%.
And, to be true, winning the ALCS isn’t the same as winning the World Series, but the Seahawks had already been to two Super Bowls before and won one, while the Mariners have yet to ever appear in a World Series, so this ALCS loss (if lost) might sting worse.
Logan Gilbert did not pitch to his normal standard. He was pretty much off all game. A lot of things went wrong, but for me that was the biggest issue.
Poor pitching, poor fielding, poor hitting. It’s true, it was against a good Toronto team. They better bring their “A Game” tonight though.
Rick is correct…I misread the box score. They made three errors.
If we are talking Seattle Sports Collapses™, what about the Sonics under George Karl being the first #1 seeded team losing the playoff series against the #8 team (Nuggets that year).
I feel like half of the recent posts are people just trying to hurt me by revisiting terrible memories.
I was in high school when that happened and it crushed me. I still remember Dikembe Mutombo laying on the court, clutching the basketball and crying as the camera zoomed in on him at the conclusion of the last game. It haunts me every time I’m reminded of it.
Like I am now.
Aways upthread this was discussed and the historical stat is the team losing the first two at home goes on to win the series 11% of the time. Which means the winner of first-2-on-the-road has won their series 89% of the time.
The historical average is in no way determinative of the outcome of any particular series. Baseball is full of dubious stats that are easily computable but have little predictive power.
But 89/11 is the relevant number.
It’s a special kind of self-imposed torment, being a Seattle sports fan.
Bois and Rubenstein aren’t making multi-hour documentaries about the Dodgers, after all.
I’m trying to remember who the two players were that Karl got at the deadline saying they would be instrumental in the playoffs. As I recall, one played two minutes in that series and the other did not play at all.
That one ended on a bloop single by Steve Bye Bye Balboni that just barely escaped the glove of a hustling Tony Fernandez.
It’s no longer relevant at all, because this series isn’t 2-0, it’s 3-3. The odds are now coin flip.
KC won that game 6-2, and Balboni didn’t have any hits. His game winning bloop single was in Game 3, and it wasn’t a walk-off.