# MLB. And here comes the Post Season! **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [September 29, 2016, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171 "2016-09-29T00:43:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 33
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2016, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171/641 "2016-10-26T23:45:52Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > It’s not at all dubious. The dimensions of the park, the lighting, the ceiling in a domed stadium, the way the ball rolls on a turf, the backstop depth behind home plate, how to play foul balls are not insignificant. Yes, they all in theory know how to approach the game but one team is infinitely more familiar and comfortable playing in the park than the other. > > Pitching to the park is actually not an insignificant part of the game. If you have a pitcher who’s comfortable giving up fly balls in a home ballpark that is particularly spacious he’s going to be a lot more uncomfortable in, say, Houston which has a reputation for being a hitter friendly park. I would also say that Boston Red Sox outfielders know how to play the Green Monster better than outfielders from opposing teams, especially if they play in the National League and rarely get in a visit at Fenway. But as was pointed out earlier, there is actually a pretty small home field advantage in baseball. Less than the NFL, where all fields are exactly the same size, and much less than the NBA, where even things like wind and temperature don’t matter. So if there is an advantage to be gained from “pitching to the park” or “know[ing] how to play the Green Monster,” it is clearly a very, very small advantage. At best. That being said, seems like I remember reading that the Twins had the biggest home field advantage of any team during the years they played in the Metrodome. Which might indicate that there is an advantage at the extreme margins. (The Hubiedome was unlike anything else.) But that would only be at parks that were very far from the “median,” so to speak, and the effect simply cannot be very large at all (because if it were, then HFA in the majors would be up there with the NBA, if not higher). > [@asahi](#): > > And consider this: since 2003, the home team has won the WS 10 of 13 times. And the two times that the visiting team won, they swept at home. If this series continues on its current trajectory, that would make it 11 of 14. Wait, what? Since 2003 (I assume you are including 2003 or else there are only 12), seven of the World Serieses have ended either 4-0 (like Sox over Houston 2005) or 4-2 (see Yankees-Phillies 2009). In four or six games there is no home field advantage–each team gets the same number of home games. What does “the home team” mean in this context? ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2016, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171/642 "2016-10-26T23:57:21Z")
> [@Bullitt](#): > > Pete Rose says it’s Cleveland’s year. Is he right? If they beat Arrieta, he may be. You mean that funny looking guy who resembles a Batman villain? Ask him who he bet on. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171/643 "2016-10-27T01:30:44Z")
How about that Shwarber (sp?)? 2 RBIs already, halfway through game 2, after being out with an injury since April. Too bad you can’t have a DH for the games at Wrigley! ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171/644 "2016-10-27T01:47:17Z")
Yes it will be hard to keep Schwarber out of the lineup in Wrigley. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171/645 "2016-10-27T01:50:02Z")
> [@samclem](#): > > You mean that funny looking guy who resembles a Batman villain? > > Ask him who he bet on. Yeah, that guy, and right about now he’s sorry because he probably bet on the Indians. It will be downright funny (and sad) if he has a slip of the tongue about any bets he’s placed. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171/646 "2016-10-27T01:56:42Z")
The Indians finally get a hit, and score. They’re making some noise, and Arrieta was just pulled. Will there be magic at Progressive Field tonight? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c57346/32.png) [@Little\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Pig)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171/647 "2016-10-27T02:06:28Z")
> [@Peremensoe](#): > > Not actually true. The [Chicago City Series](http://research.sabr.org/journals/history-of-chicago-city-series) was a big deal, upon a time, though not directly for many people watching today. I remember the Chicago City Series when I was a kid. I also remember going to Soldier Field [to see the Chicago Charities College All-Star Game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_College_All-Star_Game) which was a game between the National Football League champions and a team of star college seniors from the previous year. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171/648 "2016-10-27T02:06:31Z")
> [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > But as was pointed out earlier, there is actually a pretty small home field advantage in baseball. Less than the NFL, where all fields are exactly the same size, and much less than the NBA, where even things like wind and temperature don’t matter. And those “studies” are flawed. You pretty much made my argument for me, which is that the field in the NFL and the court in the NBA are the same size. There is no home field advantage in those sports. If teams win at home it’s probably because they’re better. > [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > So if there is an advantage to be gained from “pitching to the park” or “know[ing] how to play the Green Monster,” it is clearly a very, very small advantage. At best. Who knows how large or how small the advantage is – it’s an advantage. Common sense stuff here. > [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > That being said, seems like I remember reading that the Twins had the biggest home field advantage of any team during the years they played in the Metrodome. Which might indicate that there is an advantage at the extreme margins. (The Hubiedome was unlike anything else.) But that would only be at parks that were very far from the “median,” so to speak, and the effect simply cannot be very large at all (because if it were, then HFA in the majors would be up there with the NBA, if not higher). Flawed studies, flawed data. > [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > Wait, what? Since 2003 (I assume you are including 2003 or else there are only 12), seven of the World Serieses have ended either 4-0 (like Sox over Houston 2005) or 4-2 (see Yankees-Phillies 2009). In four or six games there is no home field advantage–each team gets the same number of home games. What does “the home team” mean in this context? The home team played the first two games at home before finishing the series on the road or winning the series at home. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171/649 "2016-10-27T02:07:10Z")
Kipnis second error. He’s having a rough night. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c57346/32.png) [@Little\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Pig)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171/650 "2016-10-27T02:07:37Z")
Good Grief! They found one. [Cubs fan born before last championship in 1908 hoping for World Series win](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-cubs-108-year-old-fan-met-20161026-story.html). ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171/651 "2016-10-27T02:08:10Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > Sorry, but no. > > Home field is not irrelevant, especially in terms of a loud home crowd inspiring the players to greater effort, and the advantage of batting second, but the dimensions and quirks of the park are far, far, far less significant to the issue of home field advantage. > > The idea that you would make an argument for the “ceiling in a domed stadium” or “the backstop depth behind home plate” as actual, significant factors is, quite frankly, preposterous. And the lighting? Please. Sure, the green monster at Fenway requires some experience, but that is an incredibly unusual outlier in terms of stadium dimensions and characteristics. > > Yes, a fly-ball pitcher will give up more homers in a smaller stadium than a larger one. On average, about 10 percent of fly balls go for home runs, but in larger parks that drops to about 7 or 8 percent. But park factors are far less important here than measures like the type of hits that a pitcher allows, and what type of batter he’s facing. > > As [this article](http://www.fangraphs.com/library/pitching/batted-ball/) notes, “Line drives are death to pitchers, while ground balls are the best for a pitcher.” And that is true in a small ballpark or a large one. And, as **RickJay** suggests, a pitcher will pitch to his own strengths and a batter’s weaknesses; changing that in order to pitch to some nebulous idea about park differences would be absolutely bonkers. You’re wrong. As I said, home field team has won 10 of the last 13 WS. Game over, bro. And the fact that you’re dismissing things like lighting in a stadium or the dimensions of a park shows me you’ve probably never even played baseball. It matters. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171/652 "2016-10-27T02:46:14Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > And those “studies” are flawed. You pretty much made my argument for me, which is that the field in the NFL and the court in the NBA are the same size. There is no home field advantage in those sports. If teams win at home it’s probably because they’re better. There’s not a home _field_ advantage in the NBA and NFL, but there’s definitely a home advantage. In those sports, teams win a relatively much greater percentage of their games when they play at home than when they play away. _This goes for both good teams and bad teams_, so it has nothing to do with which is the better team. (A bad team will lose a smaller percentage of its games at home than on the road.) Teams in the NBA, where all fields are pretty much equal, have a far greater home advantage than teams in MLB, where every field is different. This indicates that home advantage is primarily due to some other factor than the difference in playing fields. My personal theory is that home advantage is due to the proximity of the crowd, and the relative importance of physical effort vs. skill. In basketball, the crowd is very close, and can encourage physical effort on the part of the home team. In baseball, the crowd is relatively far from the players, and success in both pitching and batting depends on intense concentration and skill more than intense effort. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171/653 "2016-10-27T03:15:51Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > It’s not at all dubious. The dimensions of the park, the lighting, the ceiling in a domed stadium, the way the ball rolls on a turf, the backstop depth behind home plate, how to play foul balls are not insignificant. Yes, they all in theory know how to approach the game but one team is infinitely more familiar and comfortable playing in the park than the other. So why is home field advantage in baseball so small as compared to sports like basketball and football where field dimensions are identical? > [@](#): > > Pitching to the park is actually not an insignificant part of the game. If you have a pitcher who’s comfortable giving up fly balls in a home ballpark that is particularly spacious he’s going to be a lot more uncomfortable in, say, Houston which has a reputation for being a hitter friendly park. As will a Houston pitcher. Neither will pitch to the park. They will pitch as dictated by the hitter and the situation. And you can spare me the “you’ve never played baseball” line. I have. The dimensions that make up 99.99 percent of the game are the ones that don’t change depending on how far the outfield fences are. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171/654 "2016-10-27T03:34:50Z")
> [@Little\_Pig](#): > > Good Grief! They found one. [Cubs fan born before last championship in 1908 hoping for World Series win](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-cubs-108-year-old-fan-met-20161026-story.html). I think she was in the pre-game intro before Game 1. FOX had old folks from Chicago and Cleveland on it. Fun to watch. ---
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171/655 "2016-10-27T04:42:38Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > You’re wrong. > > As I said, home field team has won 10 of the last 13 WS. > > Game over, bro. > > And the fact that you’re dismissing things like lighting in a stadium or the dimensions of a park shows me you’ve probably never even played baseball. It matters. So 10 of the last 13 World Series have been won by the “home team,” despite the fact that in over half of these series there is no meaningful way in which there WAS a “home team”; and this tiny (and incorrectly interpreted) sample outweighs the results of literally thousands of games across four different sports, because…well, because it is intuitively obvious that there MUST be a huge home field advantage in baseball owing to the differences in playing fields, dimensions, and surfaces. I guess. You really don’t understand data at all, do you? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171/656 "2016-10-27T04:54:01Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > You’re wrong. > > As I said, home field team has won 10 of the last 13 WS. > > Game over, bro. > > And the fact that you’re dismissing things like lighting in a stadium or the dimensions of a park shows me you’ve probably never even played baseball. It matters. LOL. OK. You sure showed me. If you think that lighting makes a noticeable difference in the results of ballgames when played in modern baseball stadiums by professional players who are the best in the world at what they do, i submit that you’re not really approaching this issue rationally at all. I assume from your comment that you have played some baseball in your life. Let me guarantee you that the baseball you played, and the level at which you played it, and your own possible perceptions of the vagaries of lighting and park dimensions, all bear about as much relevance to this discussion as they would to a discussion of an under-9s tee-ball competition. For basically every one of us, professional baseball and the talent of actual major league players are light years away from our own experiences, and that applies even if there are people in this thread who were the best player on their high school team, and were admired by all of their friends as the guy who was really good at baseball. That’s how much of a step up the pros are from us. As for your stats, it might interest you to know that the World Series is actually an outlier in terms of home field advantage. The Wall Street Journal had an [article](http://www.wsj.com/articles/dispelling-the-myth-of-home-field-advantage-in-baseball-1443825563) about this last year, just as the playoffs were beginning. They ran the playoff numbers for the whole 20-year period since the beginning of the Wild Card era, and here’s what they found in terms of series winners: in both the Division Series and the League Championship Series, away teams had won more series than home teams. It was only in the World Series that the home team had won more often. Here are the numbers from the article: ```auto W-L PCT DS 39-41 .488 LCS 19-21 .475 WS 15-5 .750 73-67 .521 ``` Surely if home field advantage works as a function of things like lighting and park dimensions, as you suggest, then this should be as true for the DS and the LCS. Or is there something about park characteristics that affect the WS, but not the other playoff games? As the article also points out, if we zoom out from series wins and look at individual games, the home team in all playoff games over the past 20 years has won 53.5% of its games. That number is, not very surprisingly, almost identical to the home-team winning percentage across all of baseball during the regular season, which was just about 54%. No-one has denied that there is a home field advantage in baseball, but, as multiple folks in this thread have noted, it is considerably smaller than in other sports. Here’s an [article](http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1803416-is-home-field-advantage-as-important-in-baseball-as-other-major-sports#) from 2013 that looks back on 10 years of playoff games in the four major American sports. The figures they give for home-field (or home-ice or home-court) advantage are as follows: ```auto NBA 73% NHL 59% NFL 59% MLB 51% ``` As someone once said bro, game over. ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171/657 "2016-10-27T12:52:11Z")
So strange series so far in one way: who would have bet that a quarter of the runs in the series would be scored without a bat touching a ball, all in different ways? (one walk, one HPB and one wild pitch). I suppose we should be waiting for a man-on-third balk and bases-loaded catcher’s interference in game three? I don’t think it says anything other than ‘small sample size’, but funny to consider. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171/658 "2016-10-27T13:05:19Z")
The fact that the NBA has such an extreme home advantage, frankly, pretty much kills the “field dimension” element. Of those sports, the NBA is the one where there is no difference at all in the nature of the playing area; everything about the court, backboards and net in San Antonio is the same as in Oklahoma City. In the NFL there are no dimensional differences, but there could be differences in playing surface and weather. The NHL does have some mild differences in rink dimensions and the way the boards play. [QUOTE=mhendo] For basically every one of us, professional baseball and the talent of actual major league players are light years away from our own experiences, and that applies even if there are people in this thread who were the best player on their high school team, and were admired by all of their friends as the guy who was really good at baseball. That’s how much of a step up the pros are from us [/QUOTE] This cannot be emphasized enough. There is no comparison between an MLB player and the kind of baseball anyone has played unless they played professional baseball. None. Major League players are unbelievably good, and the difference among them is very small. (I think I should throw in the point that the differences between MLB parks aren’t as great as people seem to think they are, either. Its not like the Green Monster is just 240 feet out there.) Let me use a quick example; in “The Only Rule Is It Has To Work” a couple of sabermetricians take over an independent league team and try to build a winner by using pure data. (I won’t spoil it for you.) One of the things they discover, in examinaing their players, is fascinating; they’re all young guys and really good athletes, but all of them would be slow in the major leagues. Not some, all. The guys on their team who are fast, who in real life you’d be like “That guys is fast,” are very, very slow as compared to MLB players. You don’t notice this, though, when you watch a professional baseball game, because _they’re all fast_, and so they all look the same. So you see a guy like Carlos Santana or Kyle Schwarber, and you think, well, that guy is kinda slow. Sure, in MLB he is. But if you had him come screw around with your softball team you’d be blown away by Kyle Schwarber’s speed. Unless you happened to have a former high school sprinting champ on your team Kyle would be the fastest man on the field. This applies to basically any area of skill; they are impossibly good as compared to the experience of most people and they are all very close to one another. A very sure handed outfielder makes over 99% of all plays; a very poor one will be around 98%. (I’m counting plays that are not credited as chances if successfully made.) But if we bring this back to the issue - I mean, I’ve been a student of baseball pretty much my whole life and watched more MLB games than I can count. If you’re an MLB fan, ask yourself an honest question; how often do I see a visiting player fail to make a play because he was unfamiliar with the nature of the stadium, and that play made an impact to the outcome of the game? If I ask myself that, the answer, to be honest, is that I cannot remember a single incident of that happening. I am sure it has happened, because almost anything that can happen in a baseball game has, but it’s INCREDIBLY rare. I challenge anyone to go through the boxscores and recaps of their favourite team to find two examples of it happening in an entire season. To speed things up, you can eliminate all blowout games (one play can’t be said to affect a 14-2 ass-kicking) and then just take an honest look at the recap. You’ll find it’s astoundingly rare. Effectively all ballgames are decided by plays that would not matter who the home team was. A perfectly placed slider on the outside corner cannot be hit effectively; a flat slider on the inner half is going to get crushed. All MLB infields play pretty much the same, and an excellent shortstop will get to a hard grounder in the hole and a poor one will not. Mookie Betts will catch many fly balls that most center fielders will not, no matter the park. What is absolutely for sure is that at the MLB level **you aren’t going to change the way you pitch based on the park.** A pitcher cannot “pitch to the park” because the manner in which a pitcher pitches is not subject to any unnecessary room for error. An MLB pitcher is pitching at the absolute extreme of his own abilities at all times, maximizing his efforts on every pitch and every at bat, and if he falls off in effectiveness even a little bit, MLB hitters will crush him. Deviating from what works for a pitcher in an effort to “pitch to the park” is a ridiculous idea; a pitcher who pitches high in the zone cannot decide tomorrow to completely change his way of pitching to put the ball low in the zone so as to avoid fly balls. If you’re a fly ball pitcher you have to live with it if you’re visiting a homer-happy park. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171/659 "2016-10-27T13:39:02Z")
Results and (Likely) Starting Pitchers G1: **CHC 0 @ CLE 6** ; CHC LHP #34 Jon Lester @ CLE RHP #24 Corey Kluber; WP Kluber, LP Lester G2: **CHC 5 @ CLE 1** ; CHC RHP #49 Jake Arrieta @ CLE RHP #47 Trevor Bauer; WP Arrieta, LP Bauer G3: CLE RHP #43 Josh Tomlin @ CHC RHP #28 Kyle Hendricks G4: CLE RHP #24 Corey Kluber @ CHC RHP #41 John Lackey G5: CLE RHP #47 Trevor Bauer @ CHC RHP #49 Jake Arrieta ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171/660 "2016-10-27T13:46:45Z")
> [@Bullitt](#): > > The Indians finally get a hit, and score. They’re making some noise, and Arrieta was just pulled. Will there be magic at Progressive Field tonight? Not enough, alas. The Cubs take it, 5-1. Now on to Chicago! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171.md?page=32) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mlb-and-here-comes-the-post-season/767171.md?page=34)