Monthly Archives: October 2017

World Series tied at 2-2 after Dodgers 5-run ninth inning

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The Houston Astros’ path to their first World Series title appeared to be set out following their 5-3 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game Three on Friday night.

The win gave them a 2-1 series lead and made it seven wins out of seven at home in this year’s post-season. With two more victories needed to claim the title, and two more games coming up at Minute Maid Park, the script was written for a Sunday night celebration in Houston.

The Dodgers’ five-run outburst in the top of the ninth inning of Game Four on Saturday night ripped that script up, spoiling the Astros’ plans but adding an intriguing plot twist for the rest of us to enjoy.  A 1-1 level game heading into the final regulation inning turned into a 6-1 Dodger lead that the Astros could only reduce by one run (on Alex Bregman’s homer).

This World Series is officially in a state of Desmond (2-2).

Penalties 1

MLB acted quickly by issuing the Astros’ Yuli Gurriel with a 5-game suspension after his offensive behaviour during Game Three. The length of the suspension appears appropriate, the question is whether rolling it over to the start of the 2018 regular season was correct.

On balance, I think the right decision has been made.

The gesture was offensive towards Dodgers pitcher Yu Darvish, but it wasn’t something that affected a play or the player during the game. Consequently, there wasn’t a clear need from a fairness standpoint to issue a penalty that affected the rest of the series (i.e. it wasn’t a transgression that cost the Dodgers and therefore fairly needed to be balanced out staight away).

The justified high-profile scrutiny and criticism, and proportionate punishment being issued in terms of length of suspension, also means that I don’t think it would be fair to say Gurriel was allowed to ‘get away with it’ by playing the rest of the World Series.

Penalties 2

The Astros’ closer Ken Giles and fellow reliever Joe Musgrove were the fall-guys in Game Four. Combined with watching the previously unbreakable Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen being jumped on in Game Two, it’s made me think of relief pitchers – especially in the high stakes of the play-offs – as being a lot like penalty-takers in football.

The expectation is that a good penalty-taker should score and they can do so even if they don’t strike the ball cleanly or it doesn’t go quite where they were placing it. You get no extra points for style; so long as it goes in you’ve done your job under pressure.

It’s the same with a top relief pitcher. They earn that rank and role by coming out on top time and again, so they are used to handling the pressure and you expect them to do it pretty much every time. They too can succeed even if they miss their spot. If the hitter swings and misses, or makes weak contact and makes an out, all’s well that ends well.

However, as with a penalty shoot-out, one team has to lose and that means someone has to come out on the wrong end of it. Regardless of how good the relief pitcher is and how well they cope with the pressure, the person they are facing in the batter’s box is an elite ballplayer (just getting to the Majors proves that) and are just as desperate to succeed.

As has been written many times before, if it could happen to the Yankees’ Mariano Rivera in 2001, it could happen to anyone. That’s no great immediate solace to the relief pitcher as they trudge off the field, but something for the rest of us to remember as we watch the drama unfold.

The Astros and Dodgers are two excellent teams with some outstanding players. One of them has to lose. The rest of us can just sit back, enjoy the contest and hope it goes the full seven games.

Kershaw wins Battle of the K’s in Game One

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Game One of the 2017 World Series turned into a Battle of the K’s, won by Clayton Kershaw, as the LA Dodgers earned a 3-1 victory.

Kershaw racked up 11K’s in seven innings against a Houston Astros team that led the Majors by hitting for power whilst rarely striking out. His opposing starting pitcher, Dallas Keuchel, pitched well but gave up two home runs that proved to be the difference.

They always say that you need to get to the best pitchers early and the only way Chris Taylor could have got to Keuchel earlier would have been by doing a hatchet job on him during his warm-up. One pitch, one home run made for the perfect start for LA.

The Astros’ lead-off hitter George Springer has made a specialty of homering his team into an early lead. His 0-4 performance, a 4 strike-out Golden Sombrero, summed up the difference between the two teams on the night.

Kershaw was masterful aside from a pitch to Alex Bregman in the fourth inning that the Astros’ third baseman hit into the seats to level the score at 1-1. It barely knocked Kershaw out of his stride though and Justin Turner’s 2-run home run in the sixth inning gave the Dodgers a lead that Kershaw, Brandon Morrow and Kenley Jansen were not going to give up.

The Astros will not be disheartened and, in theory, should have an advantage on the mound for Game Two as Justin Verlander attempts to continue his great post-season. Rich Hill will start for the Dodgers and he has the capacity to confuse even the best batters with his curveball, yet he hasn’t pitched as deeply into a game of late as he would like.

In recent times that hasn’t mattered much in the play-offs as managers have been quick to turn games over to their bullpen. The conventional role played by the two starting pitchers in Game One, alongside the unseasonably hot temperature and short game time (2hrs 30), was one of the things that made it unusual for recent play-off contests.

Unusual, but very entertaining. This Astros-Dodgers match-up has the potential to be a classic and Game One started things off perfectly. Let’s see what Game Two brings in the early hours of Thursday morning.

World Series 2017 Preview

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Every year we hope that the World Series will bring the baseball season to an exciting close.

After the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians served up a seven-game stunner one year ago, the Houston Astros and Los Angeles Dodgers will look to follow suit this time around and produce a classic contest that will live long in the memory.

The omens are good as, alongside the vanquished Cleveland, the two teams involved were the best in the Majors this season. That may sound like an obvious thing to say, but the short-format post-season can – and often does – throw up a surprise or two.

This time around we have two teams that put together incredible regular season campaigns. Only one can claim the ultimate prize at the end of the post-season though.

Both are due

It’s the first time that the Los Angeles Dodgers have made the World Series since 1988, whilst the Houston Astros were last there in 2005 but lost 4-0 to the Chicago White Sox in their only previous appearance in the Fall Classic.

The Dodgers have made lighter work of their play-off run so far, beating the Arizona Diamondbacks 3-0 in the Division Series and taking down the reigning champs, the Chicago Cubs, 4-1 in the Championship Series.

That’s allowed them to have a few days off and to get ready for Game One whilst the Astros were fighting like mad to get past the New York Yankees. They saw a 2-0 series lead turn to a 3-2 deficit before winning the final two games at home to book their place in the Fall Classic. They did that after beating the Boston Red Sox 3-1 in the Division Series.

Position players

The Houston Astros went through a mini-crisis in their NLCS against the Yankees when their hitherto unstoppable batting lineup suddenly started to misfire. The Astros scored 9 runs combined during the first 5 games of the ALCS, but then came back to life with 13 in the final 2 games. Given the depth of talent they have, the Dodgers will know containing the Astros bats will be a huge task.

Whilst you can pick out most of the Astros’ regulars as deserving a mention, it’s hard to look past Jose Altuve. The MVP candidate is the heartbeat of the team. At just 5 feet 6 inches tall, Altuve demonstrates better than most that baseball is a game for everyone.

The Dodgers don’t lack for impact bats at the plate either. Whether it’s Justin Turner, the rookie Cody Bellinger or the ball of energy that is Yasiel Puig, they keep on coming at opposing pitchers and offer plenty of threats.

The big unknown is Corey Seager, arguably their best position player. He’s been declared fit to play after he was surprisingly omitted from the NLCS roster due to a back injury. Quite how close he is to 100% remains to be seen.

Pitchers

Whilst the Astro’s bats returned in Games 6 and 7 of their ALCS, they also limited the Yankees to a single run combined across the two games. Justin Verlander pitched seven score-less innings in the former and the duo of Charlie Morton (5 innings pitched) and Lance McCullers (4) shut out the Bronx Bombers in the decider.

They jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the ALCS in large part due to Dallas Keuchel and Verlander’s starting pitching efforts. They’ll look to the same two pitchers to do the same in the World Series, although this time needing to do it on the road rather than the home comforts of Minute Maid Park.

That could be significant for Keuchel in particular, as he has a notable split between his career performances at home (2.94 ERA) and elsewhere (4.43). In 2017 he had a 2.26 ERA at home compared with 3.53 on the road, so he’s not exactly struggling when he leaves Houston, but considering how dominating he has been at Minute Maid Park the Dodgers will be keen to exploit any slight chink in his armour.

As for chinks in armour, the Dodgers’ Game One starter Clayton Kershaw doesn’t have many in his but there is one big one that some like to focus on.

The Kershaw play-off story truly began in 2013 (looking past his 5 appearances split across 2008 and 2009 early in his career) when he was lit-up for seven runs by the St Louis Cardinals in Game 6 of the NLCS, having also taken a hard-luck loss in Game 2.  The fact that he was outstanding in his first play-off start that year against the Atlanta Braves in the NLDS (12K’s across 7 innings) was quickly forgotten. They say first impressions count, but in baseball it’s how things end that tend to define how the story is written.

The story got worse for Kershaw a year later when those same Cardinals torched him for 8 runs in Game 1 of the NLDS and then was handed another loss in Game 4 in a 3-2 defeat.  He had a mixed experience in 2015 and 2016 with ups and downs, yet once again it ended with a negative as the Cubs knocked him out after five innings in Game 6 of their NLCS.

In short, Kershaw has been handed a loss in the decisive NLCS Game 6 in 2013, the decisive NLDS Game 4 in 2014 and the decisive NLCS Game 6 in 2016.  The flip-side of this is that he was in the position to take those losses because he was the guy LA always wanted on the mound.  Regardless of the past, that’s no different this time around.

Pick a team

There are so many good things to find with these two teams, perhaps one way to make your choice as a neutral is trying to find a reason to hope one of them doesn’t win.

For the Dodgers, that argument comes from their sky-high payroll ($241m on Opening Day). For the fourth year in a row they have led the Majors in spending and, much like Manchester City in football, whilst you can appreciate the team they have put together, you can equally look at them and shrug your shoulders. Given how much money they spend, they should be winning a World Series or two.

It gives them a significant advantage over many other teams, from being able to re-sign their experienced players when they hit free agency rather than losing them to rivals (as they did with Justin Turner, Kenley Jansen and Rich Hill over the 2016/17 off-season), to being able to absorb deals that don’t work out. They’ve spent just over $47m this year on payroll commitments to players not on their roster (highlighted by the $22m owed to Carl Crawford) and the fact that three of their top four earners (Adrian Gonzalez, Scott Kazmir and Andre Ethier – combined pay of $55.5m) have missed significant playing time has barely troubled them.

They’ve got a smart Front Office and do lots of things right, but being able to shrug off a good $100m of dead money makes life much easier (the Oakland A’s, for example, had an Opening Day 25-man payroll of $82m).

As for the Astros, their rise came about through a ruthless, calculated plan that stripped the team (and payroll) of virtually all assets so that they could save money and gobble up high amateur draft picks that have enriched their team with the likes of Carlos Correa, Alex Bregman and Lance McCullers.  With no relegation threat to worry about, the rules make deliberately fielding a terrible team an eminently attractive approach to take. You might not blame the Astros for exploiting that as a result, but you equally might not like to see it rewarded so handsomely, especially after the Chicago Cubs won it all last year after taking a similar approach.

Series Schedule

Every year a few baseball romantics throw out the idea of a World Series game being played during the day-time, harking back to years ago when the ‘Boys of Summer’ would play the Fall Classic under sunny skies.  That would be great for us as it would mean a game or two taking place at a more convenient hour.

However TV rights deals and primetime viewing figures dictate that all of the games start at just gone 8.09 pm Eastern Time, making for early-hours starts for us in the UK. The first four games will begin at 1.09 am BST.  We move out of Summer Time this coming Sunday, one week before they do in the States, so Games 5 to 7 (if needed) will start an hour earlier for us, at nine minutes past midnight.

The schedule for the best-of-seven series is as follows, with each game actually starting on the following day (Game One is the early hours of Wednesday etc).

Tuesday 24th – Game One at Dodger Stadium

Wednesday 25th – Game Two at Dodger Stadium

Friday 27th – Game Three at Minute Maid Park (Houston)

Saturday 28th – Game Four at Minute Maid Park (Houston)

Sunday 29th – Game Five at Minute Maid Park (Houston)*

Tuesday 31st – Game Six at Dodger Stadium*

Wednesday 1st – Game Seven at Dodger Stadium*

* If necessary.

The games are being shown live on BT Sport1, with late-afternoon re-runs the following day on BT Sport/ESPN. Alternatively MLB.TV subscribers can watch the games live or on-demand online.

2017 British Baseball Hall of Fame class announced

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Carter, Young and Smallwood join the British Baseball Hall of Fame

The 2017 elections to the British Baseball Hall of Fame have introduced three new inductees, increasing the class to 32.

Nick Carter and Ian Young were inducted from the modern ballot, with Don Smallwood MBE being elected by the historical vetting panel that was introduced in 2016.

Carter and Young are two of the most decorated Great Britain national team players of the past thirty years. The former was a mainstay on the GB team between 1996 and 2005, competing in six European Championships, whilst twice being the starting and winning pitcher in a decisive national championship game for the Brighton Buccaneers (1999 and 2001).

Young’s Great Britain career lasted 13 years between 2000 and 2013, the highlight of which being his ‘All-Tournament’ team performances for the side that won a silver medal at the 2007 European Championship.

Smallwood’s involvement in British baseball spanned six decades, during which he achieved considerable success as a player, most notably on the formidable Hull Aces teams of the 1960s and 1970s, and even more in a wide variety of administrative roles.  Upon passing on the news of his election, sadly I learned that he passed away earlier this year at the age of 84.

Full details about the three new members of the Hall, alongside bios for the other 29 already elected, can be found on the BBHoF website: http://www.bbhof.org.uk/

I’ve been involved in the BBHoF for several years and have now stepped up to the role of Chair. I’m taking over from Joe Gray who has done a huge amount of invaluable work over the past decade, both directly on the Hall of Fame and the wider Project for the Chronicling of British Baseball (Project COBB).

Thankfully Joe’s still involved as Secretary and I’m indebted to all his support and help provided.  I’ve got a list of research topics and Hall of Fame work ready for the off-season, so keep an eye out for those here on this website and at Project COBB.

If you’re interested in getting involved in looking at the game’s history on these shores, please do get in contact either via the comments below or using the contact details on the Project COBB website.

One win away from the World Series for Yankees and Dodgers

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This year’s MLB post-season has once again brought the term ‘bullpenning’ into frequent use as teams get what they can from their starting pitcher before turning the game over to the relievers.

However, the next two play-off games will have a clear focus on two starting pitchers.

Thursday night’s game is Game Five of the NLCS from Wrigley Field. The Chicago Cubs took Game Four on Wednesday to avoid a 4-0 series sweep, but they’re still in trouble against the Los Angeles Dodgers and all the more so because tonight they face Clayton Kershaw.

Among some outstanding hurlers, Clayton Kershaw’s record over the past five or six seasons has earned him the right to be called the best starting pitcher of his generation. The play-offs haven’t been quite so kind to him so far, yet talk of ‘struggles’ is overblown.

Whatever the past, tonight is a perfect opportunity for him to put together a signature Kershaw start and to help the Dodgers book a place in the World Series for the first time since 1988.

On Friday night Justin Verlander will be taking to the mound at Minute Maid Park as he tries to prevent the New York Yankees from joining the Dodgers in the Fall Classic.

The Houston Astros left their home a few days ago with a 2-0 series lead and full of optimism; however the home-team-wins pattern continued in a raucous Yankee Stadium where the Bronx Bombers have reeled off three victories.

This scenario is precisely why it seemed so strange that the Astros didn’t augment their starting pitcher corps prior to the non-waiver trade deadline. That has to be caveated by not knowing fully how high the asking price was for them from various teams, yet given their great regular season and strong farm system of young talent it was hard to imagine a team in a better position to add one more arm to give them a great shot at their first ever World Series title.

They finally managed to get Verlander minutes before the waiver deadline at the end of August and they couldn’t have wished for anything better from their new addition since he has arrived.

Now they need him to give them one more vintage Verlander start, ideally of six innings or more given that the Astros’ bullpen hasn’t been quite as impregnable as others, to keep the series alive.

Verlander putting up zeroes has become more important due to the white-hot Houston bats mysteriously turning snow-white cold during the ALCS. Although Masahiro Tanaka had to pitch out of some jams in Game Five, he was still able to put together seven strong innings against what had hitherto been a formidable line-up.

The added bonus for Yankees manager Joe Girardi, and added jeopardy for the Astros, was his ability to send Tommy Kahnle out for two innings to complete the game. With Thursday as an off-day, that leaves him with a full arsenal of lethal bullpen weapons to throw at the Astros when Game Six comes around on Friday. Luis Severino was yanked from his Game Two start early due to a potential injury – something the pitcher felt was unnecessary – so there’s an element of doubt there for the Astros to latch on to.

However, if he gets through even four innings then Houston could have a problem.

Predictions are always a coin-toss at this stage, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we have a baseball-free weekend with both the Dodgers and Yankees earning the all-important fourth win at their next – and in New York’s case first - attempt.

When blocking the plate blocks common sense

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The Sunday night game is Game Two of the NLCS between the Chicago Cubs and LA Dodgers.

Compared with the Yankees-Astros series, this NLCS is not so easy to follow for British fans as only one game from the series is currently scheduled to start before midnight UK time and that’s the potential Game Six on Saturday 21st. It would start at 9pm BST as the opener before Game Seven of the ALCS; however if the Yankees-Astros series is over by that point then the Cubs-Dodgers game would get moved to the prime-time slot and back into ‘early hours’ territory for us.

The Cubs will be looking to even up the series on Sunday after taking a 5-2 loss in the series opener. Jon Lester and Rich Hill are the scheduled starting pitchers, landing another jab in the ribs to me and fellow A’s fans who seem to be staring at ex-Oakland players in every game this October.

Blocking the plate

The big talking point from Game One came in the seventh inning when the Dodgers’ Charlie (‘not Corey Seager’) Culberson was initially called out at home plate before the replay crew called him safe on review, judging that Cubs catcher Wilson Contreras blocked the plate illegally.

As soon as the play was challenged, commentator Ron Darling (one of the best around based on his SNY Mets work) was fearing that “the silliest of rules” was about to ruin an excellent fielding play. He called it right when reviewing the footage that Contreras clearly put his leg across to block Culberson’s path to the plate before he received the ball, but in doing so wasted little time in putting across the players’ view that the rule is wrong.

When the rule on what a catcher can do in that situation was changed in 2014, it immediately gained the informal name of the ‘Buster Posey rule’ given that it was the injury suffered by the Giants’ star in 2011 that many feel was the catalyst to it.  Joe Maddon’s opinion that had it been a third-string Atlanta Braves catcher nothing would have happened unfortunately is probably true, but fairly or not rule changes often only come about when a high-profile incident occurs.

Whether you like the rule or not is a personal choice. I never understood why it was acceptable for a base-runner to be able to smash into the catcher to try to dislodge the ball, so I’m fine with the rule as it is now, although I’d be inclined to defer to the wishes of the players when it comes to making a rule changed based on player safety, given that it’s their bodies that are on the line, and it’s not only the ex-players that don’t like the rule.

However, what can’t be debated is that the rule is clear and what Contreras did contravened it.

You see it a lot in football where former-players on TV criticise off-side decisions or ‘hard-but-fair’ tackles and then brush away the laws of the game as a mere technicality getting in the way of their opinion.  The job of the officials is to call the game based on the rules as they are, not based on what some people think they should be.

The replay review unquestionably led to the right call being made and the commentators generally struck a fair line in acknowledging this point whilst expressing their disagreement with the rule that the umpires have to uphold.

However, the exception came when Cubs manager Joe Maddon came onto the field and started screaming at the on-field umpires.

“Joe Maddon, rightly so, is out of his mind but by the letter of the rule book you’ve got to give him a lane, he didn’t”.

In one sense I understood that, as Maddon clearly was not alone in thinking the rule is stupid and that it had therefore cost his team. Yet to say he was “rightly” out of his mind is a bit of a stretch.

Maddon’s response to his antics after the game was to say: “I have to stick up for my boys … I’ve got to stick up for everybody that plays this game. I thought it was inappropriate”.

The run made the score 5-2 to the Dodgers in the seventh inning, so the Cubs were still in the game with a couple of innings still to be played. Where is the sense in getting yourself chucked out of the game at that point to scream in the face of the on-field umpires who hadn’t made the call and who would have been right even if they had?

Maddon was entitled to rant all he liked about it in the press conference after the game; that’s fine if that’s how he feels. But at that moment his job was to keep his composure and help mastermind a way to lead his team out of the hole, not to “stick up for everybody that plays this game” in some ridiculous display of honour.

It was then no surprise that Contreras’s response after the game was to double-down on his manager’s own self-righteousness:

“I think that was the wrong call,” Contreras said. “I will not change anything. If I have to do that again, I will do it again. They have to change everything. Not me”.

Well, Wilson, if you want to cost your team again then that’s up to you. It wasn’t the wrong call, however much you may disagree with the rule. If the series is on the line in Game Seven, presumably Maddon will be more than happy for his catcher to do the same thing. They can walk off the field defeated but with heads held high that they ‘played the game the right way’.

What a load of nonsense. It’s no different to someone deciding that the ball hadn’t gone over the fence, but it should be called a home run anyway (in fact, the Yankees’ Todd Frazier cheekily tried that one on in yesterday’s Game Two of the ALCS when the ball got lodged in the fence before the umpires called him out of the dugout and back to second base – nice try though, Todd).

Like it or not the players and managers know the rule and so long as it is in place they have to play with it in mind. The aim is to win a World Series, not to win a battle against the rule-makers.

Three sweeps to come, or the start of three comebacks?

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After Saturday’s NLDS games, we have played two games in each of the four MLB Division Series contests.

Three of the teams now can’t afford another loss.

Red Sox need to rally

The first two games of the Boston-Houston series have been early starts. That’s been a blessing for UK-based Astros fans and a curse for Red Sox followers.

Boston are 2-0 down and have been comprehensively outplayed at Minute Maid Park. The pitching’s not been there as hoped, the batting line-up hasn’t fired and they’ve even dished-up some fielding miscues, such as the bizarre ‘where’s the ball gone’ non-throw by the normally excellent Mookie Betts in Game Two.

You have to be at your best when competing against this Astros lineup and in both games Houston have jumped out ahead in the early going to put the Red Sox in trouble immediately. Even when they were able to level it at 2-2 in the top of the fourth in Game One, the Astros hit back straight away with two runs in the bottom of the inning.

Houston couldn’t have hoped for better from the first two games, whilst Boston will need to rely on the switch to Fenway Park to help start a comeback. It sums up the Red Sox’s season that their must-win Game Three starter is Doug Fister.

Yankees hoping for a Bronx bounce

The Red Sox’s bitter rivals, the New York Yankees, are in the same predicament in the other ALDS as their series moves to the Bronx with Cleveland winning the first two games at home.

If Boston can bemoan how they’ve been outplayed to be 0-2, the Yankees can be similarly downcast based on the knowledge that they should have been heading home with a 1-1 split.

An 8-3 lead was chucked away and whilst attention inevitably will fall on the two replay review situations that contributed to the deafeat – Joe Girardi not checking the hit-by-pitch that lead on to Francisco Lindor’s grand slam, and Ronald Torreyes being picked-off at second base after a review in the eleventh inning – they were linked to more traditional mistakes (poor subsequent pitch to Lindor, Torreyes straying at all when in scoring position with no outs) so that technology can’t take the blame.

Cleveland can look at Game Two and brush off Corey Kluber’s poor performance. When your ace gets hit around, you trail 8-3 and still end up coming back to win in extra innings, you’ve got every right to have confidence that whatever else this post-season throws at them they can find a way to deal with it.

D-Backs down

Confidence is also flowing for the team that won the most games during the regular season. The Los Angeles Dodgers followed the leads of Houston and Cleveland by winning the first two games of their series at home against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The D-Backs gave them a fright in Game Two on Saturday night, firstly with Paul Goldschmidt launching a two-run homer in the first inning off Rich Hill and secondly when the battle of the Brandons was won by Arizona’s Drury hitting a three-run homer off the Dodgers’ Morrow (the first homer he had given up in 2017) in the seventh inning. The latter brought Arizona back into the game at 7-5 down, but the Dodgers tacked on another run in the bottom of the frame and Kenley Jansen pitched 1.2 innings to shut the game down.

Game Three takes place on Monday night and will see Zack Greinke taking the mound against his former team. The Dodgers reportedly thought that they had a deal to bring Greinke back when he hit the free agency market in the 2015/16 off-season, only for the D-Backs’ owners to jump in and slap a six-year, $206.5m contract on the table that unsurprisingly diverted Greinke’s attention their way.

He will be determined to ensure that even if the Dodgers do make it through, they have to do it the hard way rather than via a three-game sweep.

All to play for between the Cubs and Nationals

The one series we know won’t end in quick order is the other NLDS between the Washington Nationals and Chicago Cubs.

It looked like the Cubs were going to fly out of Washington with a 2-0 lead; however Bryce Harper and Ryan Zimmermann completely changed the complexion of the series in the eighth inning of Game Two on Saturday, turning a 3-1 deficit into a 6-3 lead.

When you factor in that the series is now heading to Wrigley Field, and the Nationals’ much-discussed Division Series woes (their three play-off appearances over the past five seasons prior to this have all resulted in a DS defeat), Washington’s eighth-inning rally was as important as they come. They simply couldn’t afford to lose the first two games at home.

What’s to come?

The odds are that at least one of the 2-0 series will end thanks to the result of Game Three. Based on what we’ve seen so far, the most likely opponent to fall victim to a sweep is the Boston Red Sox and they are first up on Sunday with a 19.30 BST start.

However, it would be just like this MLB season for the Red Sox to rally and show that – once again – we should expect the unexpected.

BGB Fantasy League 2017: Finals

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The final of the BaseballGB fantasy league is here as the Maltsters (1st) took on Norwich (2nd). There could only be one winner, so who would be crowned the 2017 champion?

 

Team R HR RBI SB AVG OPS W SV K HLD ERA WHIP Score
Cheshunt Maltsters 30 6 29 2 .301 .818 1 4 33 1 6.51 1.63 6
Norwich No II 25 4 16 4 .237 .681 1 3 56 3 4.96 1.41 5

The Maltsters were the cream of the crop during the regular season and have converted their top form into a championship title after defeating Norwich 6-5. Cheshunt’s hitters did most of the heavy lifting in the final as McCutchen scored six runs, hit two homers, knocked in nine and hit .500 for the week. Nicasio and Osuna had two saves each. Marte stole two bases for Norwich, who had the better of the pitching stats. Tomlin helped take ERA and WHIP while Gausman struck out 14 and Vincent had two holds. Norwich fell a win shy of taking the final into tiebreaker territory.

Both teams have been outstanding this year. I’m sure Norwich will be disappointed but they pushed a very good team very close right to the end. Massive congratulations to the Maltsters. It’s ridiculously hard to be good at H2H every week, but they managed it. The Maltsters lost in week one to the Bombers but then reeled off 24 straight victories – a streak so impressive that the Cleveland Indians would no doubt tip a cap in their direction. Well played.

 

Team R HR RBI SB AVG OPS W SV K HLD ERA WHIP Score
Beckenham A&E Dept 26 3 13 3 .251 .673 5 2 58 0 2.25 1.10 4
The Cheddar Chasers 29 7 21 4 .256 .851 2 2 42 1 4.33 1.27 7

In the 3rd place playoff it was the Chasers who emerged victorious, defeating the A&E Dept 7-4 thanks to an offensive sweep. Lucroy and Gyorko each hit .500 or better but it was Dozier who was the star, batting .615 for the week with an OPS over 2.000, seven runs, two homers and six RBIs. Upton swiped two bases.

On the mound, Kahnle picked up the lone hold. Lester and McHugh each won twice for the A&E Dept, with Jon posting great ERA and WHIP stats and Colin racking up 14 strikeouts. Both teams can be very pleased with their seasons, as top four places are some achievement in such a competitive league.

 

Team R HR RBI SB AVG OPS W SV K HLD ERA WHIP Score
Batteries Essential 21 9 30 3 .314 .889 1 2 21 0 5.68 1.42 3
Mighty Slugs 24 10 33 1 .266 .832 4 3 40 1 3.48 1.16 9

The Slugs ended the year with victory in the 5th place playoff, defeating Batteries Essential 9-3. Trout led the Slugs with five runs, four homers and six RBIs. Archer and Lackey each had a win and helped take ERA and WHIP while Treinen also picked up a victory and two saves. Paxton struck out 14 and Kela had the lone hold.

Batteries Essential fell an inning shy of the minimum limit, forfeiting all of the pitching categories. Blackmon hit .455 to help take average and OPS and he also stole a base.

 

Team R HR RBI SB AVG OPS W SV K HLD ERA WHIP Score
Orpington Isotopes 27 9 28 3 .328 .917 2 2 46 3 5.91 1.67 2
Richie’s RBI’s 33 14 30 6 .295 1.075 3 3 59 0 5.73 1.43 10

The RBIs finished the season on a high with a thumping 10-2 win against the Isotopes to finish 7th. Unsurprisingly, Judge was the star man, scoring six runs, belting four homers and driving in nine. Harper stole two bases, so I guess that means his knee is fine.

Tanaka was the pick of the pitchers with a win, 15 strikeouts, no earned runs allowed and a miniscule WHIP. Chapman had two saves. The Isotopes salvaged average thanks to Arenado (.421) and Herrera had two holds but the patchwork pitching staff struggled once again.

WRAPPING UP

Thanks once again to you all for playing this season, I hoped you enjoyed it. We can all sit back and watch the playoffs without fretting about what our ERA is going to be at the end of the night. Special thanks go to Matt for posting the roundups on the site each week. I will be back in touch next year when Yahoo opens for the 2018 season.

MLB 2017 Final Day: Everyone gets to play in October

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It’s always a shame when we get to the final day of the MLB regular season and there is nothing significant still to play for.

Looking through the standings, the only potential thing to ‘win’ would be the first draft pick in next year’s amateur draft, which goes to the team with the worst win-loss record.

The San Francisco Giants (63-98) are one loss ‘better off’ than the Detroit Tigers (64-97) in the race to the bottom. If the Giants foolishly go and win today against the San Diego Padres and the Tigers lose then they’ll be matched on 64-98.

Normally with tie-breaker situations you look at the results of the games the two teams played against each other, but I’m not sure quite how that works here.

The Tigers won their inter-league series 2-1, which should mean they finish higher, although in the circumstances they might feel that the victory should result in them finishing last so they get the number one pick. Such is the weirdness that creating an incentive to finish last leads to.

Anyway, despite the Tigers’ protestations, I suspect that the Giants do have the worst record sewn-up already on that tie-breaker (I was going to look it up, but thought better of it), so we are where we are and can enjoy the final day as simply a day of baseball with not much riding on it.

Division winners

Looking at the almost-final standings, you can’t escape the conclusion that the teams most people thought would win the six divisions heading into the year have done so.

Neither the LA Dodgers and Washington Nationals had a strong challenger on paper and so it proved, whilst the Chicago Cubs also came through with a handy gap in the end despite the NL Central being harder work for them than we might have thought.

The Cleveland Indians blitzed the AL Central, in no small part thanks to their incredible 22-game winning streak, Boston kept the New York Yankees at bay in the East and the Houston Astros took all the fun out of the AL West (for the other four teams at least) by going 38-16 across April and May and never looking back. An 11-17 August counted for little, particularly when they responded with a 20-8 September.

Wild Cards

The above is partly the whole point of having the Wild Card round. We had predictable division winners this year because they were all blatantly going to be really good teams and were only going to be beaten if they had a disaster or two to give someone else a chance.

That’s not a bad thing in my book. Whilst surprises are always fun, ultimately you should want there to be impressive teams that rack up wins in the regular season and make their eventual clashes in the post-season all the more enthralling.

The Wild Card, especially the second Wild Card, adds something else to the play-off pot.

It creates the potential for other strong teams to get in, such as the Yankees this time around. Despite the negatives you can throw at the Wild Card play-in game from a fairness point of view, the AL East was a great example of one of the main positives.

There is a huge potential difference between winning the division and going straight through to the best-of-five Division Series, compared with flipping a coin in the lose-and-you’re-out Wild Card game. Potential is the key word there, as if you manage to win the Wild Card game your odds of winning it all aren’t all that much lower than the other Division Series competitors. However, the risk of your play-offs only lasting one game means that the division is always worth fighting for now, which wasn’t the case when there was only one Wild Card per league.

NL W(ild Card)

The second Wild Card means that if there are three strong teams in one division in a given year, they could all have a chance of making it to the post-season.

That’s happened this year in the NL West. The Colorado Rockies were a somewhat surprising third-placed finisher last year behind the Dodgers and Giants, yet their 75-87 record to get there – after losing 96 and 94 games in the previous two seasons – gave reason to be cautious about being too optimistic for their hopes in 2017.

In fact, it proved to be indicative of the potential that was there at Coors Field and they’ve fully earned their first play-off appearance since 2009.

The Rockies’ progress in 2017 is nothing compared to that of the team that will be hosting them for the NL Wild Card on Wednesday. 2016 was a disaster for the Arizona Diamondbacks after they made big moves in the off-season – spending $206m on Zack Greinke and a king’s ransom in a trade for Shelby Miller – only to lose 93 games. Various people lost their jobs as a result, but there was still some talent at the club and the potential for a quick return to respectability.

They far exceeded that and enter the final day of the regular season with the joint-sixth highest win total across the Majors with 92. No one can say the D-Backs haven’t earned their play-off appearance.

Twins and the AL Wild Card game

As for the Minnesota Twins, well, some people aren’t being quite so generous in their praise of the second AL Wild Card winners.

They’ve earned their spot because they’ve got the fifth-best record in the American League and five teams qualify for the play-offs from each league. However, they enter the final day with a win-loss record of 84-77.

In football people often say the league table doesn’t lie at the end of a season; in other words, where you end up is generally a good reflection on how good your team was.

MLB takes that further by playing a 162-game regular season. Randomness can still come into, but by and large that’s more than enough time for the cream to rise to the top, the chaff to be separated from the wheat, and the middling middlers to settle in the middle.

It is fair to say that Minnesota are more middly than creamy.

That doesn’t matter in the least for the Minnesota Twins, who can smile away any jibes by knowing there are 20 other teams that would love to be in their position. They’ve made it to the play-offs a year after losing 103 games. They’ve won 25 more games than they did last year and can make it 26 if they win on Sunday. That’s a real achievement for Paul Molitor and his team.

And as for the AL Wild Card game

The problem some have with the Wild Card game in a situation like this is that a team that has earned a significantly better record over 162 games than their opponent can be knocked out by losing one game.

There’s no escaping that this isn’t completely fair, but there’s one important thing to note about it this year.

The New York Yankees have won more World Series than any other team and broken more hearts than anyone else along the way too. The ‘Evil Empire’ moniker isn’t being thrown around quite so much now as it had been the previous 10-15 years, but there’s a reason why it became a thing in the first place. Yankees fans, like fans of any all-conquering team, understand that people love to hate them.

So if it does happen and the Twins do dump the Yankees out on Tuesday night – and it certainly could – then whilst the strict analysts may bemoan it, the rest of us can have a good chuckle about it.

#ThumbsUp