All the baseball games are literally at the same time. (Expect for the doubleheader.) I don’t understand this reasoning. Do they think FIFA is involved?
I don’t know if this is the reasoning behind the simultaneous starting times, but having a late afternoon or evening game would be a distinct advantage for some teams today. For instance, if the Astros lost an afternoon game, the Rangers wouldn’t have use Cole Hamels in a later start.
It can also be exciting for the fans. Remember a few years back, when the Orioles beat the Red Sox in the bottom of the ninth, and the Rays came back from a 6-run deficit against the Yankees to win in extra innings? All happening at the same time. It was awesome. There were some similarly exciting NL games at the same time.
At the Giants game today they celebrated retiring LHP reliever Jeremy Affeldt. He had a good career, was great in the postseason, and man what a class act of a guy. Thanks Jeremy, you gave us some great years in San Francisco, and you were one of the Core 8 players for the three recent championships. Now, only six are left.
Jeremy Affeldt, retired
Pablo Sandoval, in Beantown
Madison Bumgarner
Santiago Casilla
Tim Lincecum
Javier Lopez
Buster Posey
Sergio Romo
Affeldt had a middling 3.97 career ERA, but a tiny 0.86 ERA in 33 postseason appearances. Pretty cool.
Matt Williams fired as GM of Nats.
Interestingly enough, in the last week of the season, Trout has distanced himself a little bit from Donaldson in WAR, both in baseball-reference and Fangraph’s calculations. In BR, Trout has 9.4 WAR vs. 8.8 for Donaldson. In Fangraphs, Trout has 9.0 to Donaldson’s 8.6.
However missing out on the playoffs will probably kill Trout’s MVP chances even though he apparently had a better season.
Actually, it turns out they fired the entire coaching staff of the Nats, not just Williams.
MVP has historically not meant best player, so I expect Donaldson to win it easily. And you can make a strong argument that he is the best player anyway.
NL Cy Young will be a close one. Arrieta and Greinke are very close in almost every category. Seems crazy a guy could have 22 wins, 1.77 ERA, over 230 Ks and leading his team to the postseason and not win the Cy Young, but I kind of expect that to happen to Arrieta.
The Angels were officially eliminated on the last day of the season-I don’t think that will count against him much. And raked during the month of September, 1.078 OPS.
I wonder if Bruce Bochy will finally get a Manager of the Year nod, since he managed to keep a roster with only one quality starting pitcher, and half composed of whichever AAA players they could find who weren’t concussed, in the running until the last week of the regular season.
It’ll cost him the award; Donaldson will win by at least a fair margin. Like it or not the MVP voters have an extremely strong preference to give the award to a player from a playoff team if they have any reasonable alternative. No non-playoff candidate has won in a decade and that was Barry Bonds posting an OBP above .600. Bryce Harper is being considered only because there really is no one close (among position players; a pretty good argument can be made for some pitchers, but the big three Cy candidates are close so they cancel each other out.) Donaldson was basically just as good as Trout - .4 WAR is statistically nothing - so he’ll win.
Just as crazy is that a pitcher can put up 301k, the best k/9, k%, fip and pitcher War in the mlb and not win the Cy. Or that a pitcher can throw 2 games with 100+ game score including arguably the second best game ever pitched and not even finish in the top 3. Pitching has been nuts this year.
And that ball that got stuck in the second baseman’s glove turned out to be the difference between the Astros and Angels making the playoffs.
I sure hope so. He is well deserving of the award. Of course, I’m not biased at all.