This was basically the perfect year for the 2nd wild card system and there were STILL issues with it. Wait until the 2nd best team in the league gets a wild card spot and loses a 1-game playoff to a team with 10 fewer wins. This notion of not deserving a full playoff spot if you don’t win your division is absolute garbage.
Disclaimer right off the, ahem, bat.
Braves fan, was at the game, as a matter of fact in Row 13 in the section along the third base line. The dropped ball was directly ahead of where I was sitting, or actually standing in this case.
IMHO, it would have been “normal” effort for the right fielder to make that play, but not for the shortstop. Even though he had called it, he was still backpedaling before he peeled off.
He DID NOT peel off because he heard the ump call “infield fly”, he peeled off to yield to the right fielder, as evidenced by the fact that he had already began to give way before the ump raised his arm. That’s how it seemed to me real time, and replays I’ve seen online seem to jive with that perception.
I’ve played a fair amount of organized baseball in my life, and my understanding has always been that the infield fly rule exist for the sole purpose of preventing manipulated double or triple plays. A ball that eventually landed 70 feet in the outfield does not meet that “spirit” of the rule.
Okay so that said…
A, I’m embarrassed at the behavior of a small percentage of fans in attendance. I know on TV it may have looked like everyone was throwing stuff, but trust me, it was relatively small percentage. In my section (section 120) I could pick out 3 people who threw stuff. All three were 20-25 year old jackholes who had been collecting more than their share of aluminum beer bottles throughout the game. One of the future leaders of our country made the great choice of actually throwing his shoes. Yep, barefoot in a ballpark parking lot after the game, that’s a good choice. Hope a shard of broken glass left by some other beer swilling asshole completes the karma circle.
…and B. Braves did not lose because of this one bad call. They lost because they played bone-headed sloppy baseball in a sudden death game. Chipper, Uggla, and Simmons all made bad throws, and there were numerous lapses in judgement. Leaving double digit men on base is not getting it done.
Believe it or not, most Braves fans at the games are not mouth-breathing ignorant good old boys, it just looked that way on TV last night.
It would have been superhuman effort for the right fielder to make that play 
If you go 0-2 on the road, the only way to win the series is to win all three at home. When the road games occurs is irrelevant to this reasoning.
Personally I like the 2-3 format, because if the better seed wins, they’re guaranteed to do so in front of the home crowd, and the home-town fans deserve this.
Well yes it would.
I sentence myself to having to watch 5 replays of Uggla’s throw to first base. 
Nice username/post combo! 
Thanks for your post, leftfield6. From what I’ve heard/read about the game, I didn’t see anything to disagree with.
I guess this makes the second year in a row the Braves have gifted the Cardinals their spot in the NLDS.
Incidentally, I felt it was a terrible call. And the shortstop peeled off before the ump put his arm up to make the call; it’s very obvious in replay.
The definition of “ordinary effort” is not made clear in the rulebook, but my understanding of the rule, the way I was taught, is that “ordinary effort” is meant to describe a popup that an infielder would normally make - not a popup that on that particular play an infielder appears to be making easily.
If the ump can’t ascertain that it is an infield fly until just before the ball lands, it obviously isn’t an infield fly. The entire purpose of the infield fly rule is to prevent the infielder from using the situation as a way to get a cheap double play, and to clearly announce to the players that the out has been called so they know how to react. That simply wasn’t the case here; there was no chance at all of the cheap double play, and the ump did not call the IFR until the last moment, which negates the very purpose of the rule and is NOT how the call is supposed to be made.
The Braves had no basis for protest so MLB was right to deny it (playing a game under protest is not for judgment calls) and they played a shitty game anyway, but that’s a bad call.
Yes, that’s exactly what it is.
Wolff is doing everything he can to move the A’s out of Oakland without just coming out and having security guards shoot the fans. He has absolutely zero intention of staying in Oakland; San Jose is his destination and he’s going to pout and poison the team until he gets his way.
I think, frankly, the team’s success is an unpleasant surprise to him. He’s probably pissed at everyone from Beane on down.
The “Tarp the seats” thing isn’t unusual for a team trying to hide bad attendance. However, we know for a fact the A’s are now turning fans away. Oakland is a very elastic market; they’ll send thin crowds a lot of the time, but will send huge crowds to the Coliseum for big games.
See, I honestly can’t understand this.
With a single wild card, neither Texas or Oakland would have clinched a thing until the final day. With 2 wild cards, both had already clinched at least a spot in Bud’s Chili Cook-Off And Eating Competition to decide who goes to the second round.
Wouldn’t it have been better if the teams hadn’t clinched a playoff spot at all? As it happened, the result would have been the same. The difference is the 2nd wild card added a net as they walked the wire. And even the tie itself should have been pretty cool, but it wasn’t because we knew the game would have been forced anyway. With a single wild card, Baltimore’s last game would have been an honest-to-god elimination game for the Texas/Oakland loser. A real one.
I live in the Bay Area, so I watched Oakland celebrating with pies in the face after clinching at least the 2nd wild card. Remember, that is supposed to be the “die” part of your “do-or-die”. You don’t celebrate clinching at least death.
And a race isn’t nearly as good when the team trying to catch up has already covered their faces with pie.
I’m talking about the single wild card rules (which I think is pretty clear since I’ve described at what point teams would have clinched the wild card under the old rules).
New rules:
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Less chance of playoff races without a guaranteed net, which is the kind I care about. 2nd wild card adds an extra net making it less likely, spoiling races for me (such as having no true elimination games on the last day of the season, when there should have been at least one).
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Extreme stupidity of the 1-game playoff. In baseball. I will not get over this, it is insulting to fans and hurts the integrity of the game.
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Extra playoff spot puts teams with mediocre seasons in the playoffs. I don’t want a team to stumble through an 88 win season, end up 6 games behind the 4th place team in their league, and get rewarded with a playoff spot and maybe a championship.
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This is the controversial one, but note that it isn’t the most important. I like that the team with the 2nd best record makes the playoffs. Any playoff system I designed would include the 2nd best record. Divisions are kind of arbitrary. So I don’t like that the team with the 2nd best record is put into the clown game with a loser team they may have built an enormous lead on over 162 games.
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Now the good. It replaces some of the potential “win or go home” races it kills with a greater chance of “win or go eat 68 hot dogs in 10 minutes” races between top teams. Yay.
The inverse of this is all the reasons I prefer the single wild card: more “win or go home” races with true elimination games, no stupidity of a single game playoff, less mediocre teams getting in and winning championships. True, less chance of synchronized sliding competitions between top teams. But I can live with that.
I’m too casual a fan of baseball to argue the details if the infield fly rule. When I googled, the Wikipedia article says that the rule is the judgement of the umpire and typically considers both the players ability and the playing conditions. The call did seem later than ideal but shortstop was not running at top speed so “ordinary effort” seems to apply.
Well yes, of course, but I still think that the team with the higher seed should have the…what’s the word I’m looking for, not “advantage” so much as “a tip of the cap” for having the better record and opening the series at home. Its a Saturday night, Great American Ballpark would be nuts right now…make the damn Giants travel first.
Yes, I understand that the call was ‘goon’, in terms of following the rule. That’s why I said the rule should be changed; although it was a ‘good’ call, it was a terrible call, and everybody knows it. If the rule specified that the ball needed to be somewhere in the general vicinity of the infield, an not halfway to the fence, then the ‘letter’ of the rule might match the ‘spirit’.
Verlander had a good night, 11 strikeouts in 7 innings. Let’s see if the Tigers’ bullpen can finish the job.
Johnny Cueto out with an injury in the 1st. Tough break for the Reds…
I fully expect there to be a Moneyball 2 that simply reuses the script for Major League.
Tell me they’re not going to use Wolff for the cardboard cutout.
REDS WIN! Yes! Although the Cueto injury could sink the team if it proves serious and he’s out for the remainder of the postseason.
Then again, they played really well without Votto for a big chunk of the season, so maybe the Homer Bailey’s of the world step up and take us to the promised land.
That was some creative management by Baker to get innings last night. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out of the series goes all 5 games.
I wouldn’t say that it was a TERRIBLE call. It certainly is the outer limits of the infield fly rule. I probably wouldn’t have called it (but I was thinking it while watching it live because I hate the Braves). The shortstop could have caught the ball with ordinary effort so I think it falls within the wording, but maybe not the spirit of the rule.
But the rule is so vague as to make that call go either way and still be correct.
I keep hoping an A’s starter comes out wearing Charlie Sheen’s wild thing glasses.
The A’s are doing exactly what I feared - striking out a ton and wilting at the worst possible time. It didn’t help that the umpire in game 1 had a cartoonishly large strike zone for Verlander. I am really worried that we might only get 1 home game, which would be a travesty for a number of reasons.
BTW, can you believe Israel knocked off Spain in the WBC?! What drama!
Edit: Josh Reddick just bunted and missed. 0-3 3ks. Might be time to pinch hit him.