Cleveland’s starting pitcher, Trevor Bauer, lasted only two thirds of an inning because his pinkie finger was bleeding from him having hurt himself repairing one of those little drone things.
Nonetheless the bullpen have all pitched by Cy Young candidates, so the Blue Jays look dead. It was fun, though; for a long time the idea of them playing October games that meant anything was kind of a fantasy.
They have got to get rid of this use of replay to check slide plays on the bag. Let the umpire make the call and have it stand.
That thing was GNARLY. I was literally gagging when the blood starting dribbling out of his finger.
Seriously, so gross.
Are the Indians being historically dominant, having gone undefeated in the postseason? Or are their opponents simply playing badly? Or is there enough game to game randomness that a streak like that is no big deal and doesn’t say much about either team?
Trivia fun: The most-undefeated team in playoff history are the 1976 Reds, who went 7-0 to win the World Series. They swept the Phillies 3-0 and the Yankees 4-0.
They actually were the worst-hitting team in Major League Baseball in September. It would appear the outburst against Texas might have been the outlier.
Still, Cleveland is playing very well. They’re playing better than the Cubs are. They are not making mistakes - not making errors, no baserunning mistakes. They’re seizing opportunities.
Curt Schilling, of all people, doesn’t want to hear about someone *else *pitching while bleeding.
It’s funny, when Bloody Sock can confines his commentary to sports he’s pretty good…
It’s the rest of his feed that makes me :(:dubious::smack:
It seems to me that they are living and dying by the long ball. That’s a bad way to try to win a series.
If they are living in any manner, it’s not very obvious.
Toronto was not, until September, just an all-or-nothing team; they had one of the highest on base percentages in the AL. Since then they’ve done nothing at all very well, including hitting home runs. It goes to show you there’s no such thing as momentum in baseball; you have a team that was in first place on Sepotember 1, collapsed in September and backed into the playoffs, then suddenly annihilated its Division Series opponent, and now doesn’t show up to the ALCS. Who the hell knows, huh?
If the Jays win today I’m not getting my hopes up, though.
It might have been a bit after 12:30. I didn’t get back to my SOs place until after 1:15 or so. It took forever to get out of the stadium as no one really left the game.
At first the chant was just a dull chant, I couldn’t tell what they were saying, then the entire crowd joined in.
I already made my case about BABIP and bad luck in the Cleveland/Boston series.
Outside of Kluber, their starting pitchers are not that good! The likes of Josh Tomlin, Trevor Bauer and a ragtag bullpen (outside of Miller and Allen) shutting down good hitting teams like Boston and Toronto is inexplicable.
But as RickJay said, they’re not making mistakes. They’re not only not making mistakes, they’re playing very smart. Terry Francona had that team more prepared for the postseason than any other team in MLB.
Toronto has struck out 34 times in three games and hit one home run. They’re missing the BIP part from BABIP.
How far baseball science has yet to go.
The Jays were 27th out of 30 teams in the majors this year in BABIP, 23rd in batting average, and 8th highest in strikeout rate, yet were 9th in runs scored this year with the help of all the walks and home runs they get. It makes for a really unbalanced offense that a certain kind of opponent can exploit.
What is the rationale for starting today’s game in Toronto at 4.00 local time, and the game in Los Angeles at 5.00 local time, instead of flipflopping them to start in Toronto at 8.00 local, after a 1.00 start in Los Angles? The announcers and players constantly complain about the sun field in those hours, yet MLB goes out of their way to start the maximum number of games at 4 or 5 pm.
Lemme guess: More TV viewers in LA/Chi than in Tor/Cle? So what is happening is that MLB is providing the talent for prime time TV shows, instead of playing competitive games and letting networks cover them. With maybe one or two exceptions, every single Yankee game in the past 15 years of post season started at 8 pm eastern, with all other markets elegated to inferior times.
Yeah, it’s almost like sports are entertainment, and MLB and the networks are trying to make money off them.
Let’s face it, there are way more viewers who are interested in the Cubs/Dodgers than Cleveland/Blue Jays. No matter how much we complain, the purpose of sports is to entertain the crowd, where “crowd” means the biggest number of people, not the small subset of baseball purists.
Well, of course.
There’s no issue of sun in Toronto - even if the dome is open, and it’s gorgeous here so it should be, the shadows in the stadium aren’t terribly bothersome. But TV rules all.
But that said, what’s a better solution? If you held the LA/Chicago game at Pacific prime time, it’d be incredibly late for Chicago viewers and later still for anyone on the East Coast interested in watching. If you flipped them then the LA/Chicago game happens when both markets’ fans are in the midst of their workday. No solution fits everyone’s needs.
Beautiful saxophone!
Play ball!
I realize that Cleveland is ridiculously short handed, but starting Kluber on short rest when leading the series 3-0 seems silly to me.
I guess they figure they can get him a lot of rest if the NLCS goes long and they wait till like game 3 to start him? Edit: I guess that doesn’t make sense since they could give him a lot of rest either way. Is the next guy available that much worse?
Are any of the Indians injured guys coming back by the time of the series?