2015 MLB Season - Let's Play Two!

[Tim McG]

I was at the Giants vs Dodgers game on Thursday. Nice to see Hudson get a standing O when he came off the mound.

Then Affeldt, who also retires this season, came in for him. Pretty cool.

Sadly, the bad guys got us. Oh, well. Until next year....

Go Warriors!

Edited October 3, 2015 by Tim McG

[Brad]

Well, Dbacks aren't cooperating so looks like Astros will clinch tie for WC tonight and Angels can only hope that they and Dbacks win tomorrow or their season is over. 

[ghost of miles]

Yankees hobbling to the finish-line, quite possibly not even getting homefield advantage for the WC faceoff.  Having to go to Houston would surely increase the odds of NY being a one-and-done team in the playoffs.

[JSngry]

Truth be told, I'm just about ready to say Fuck The Rangers and let's go Astros. I can go there, legit too. For this year, anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

And really, you kids get of my Astroturf - this second wild card shit is just vulgar.

Go Astros.

[JSngry]

And really, you kids get of my Astroturf - this second wild card shit is just vulgar.

 

Why do you say that? Jim?

And really, you kids get of my Astroturf - this second wild card shit is just vulgar.

 

Why do you say that? Jim?

Thanks for asking!

I'll tell you why- because any system that allows for a team to lose Game 163 and still have a shot at winning the World Series is bullshit, that's why.

I mean, ok, I get that Main Street is dead and that Wall Street rules rule, but still...at least a veneer of clothing over those money-engorged genitalia, please, MLB - there's children watching!

Or is that the point?

 

[Dan Gould]

You lost me there, Jim. Wouldn't game 163 be a win-or-go-home game, either of the tie-breaking or wild-card playoff variety? How do you lose game 163 and not go home immediately following?

[ejp626]

I don't quite get it either.  With just a single wild card, there could be a team so far ahead of the others, that it could lose the last game of the season and still be the official wild card.

In general, with that second spot up for grabs, there are more teams that have a shot at it, and thus keep grinding it out and not slacking off.  That's definitely the case in the AL this year.

Anyway, this promises to be a fairly interesting October.

[Scott Dolan]

Yes, whichever team loses their 163rd game, be it a tie breaker, or the Wild Card game, is done. 

[JSngry]

We have a situation here today where if Rangers lose and Astros win, there would be a game 163 to determine who was the AL West champion. Both teams would finish 87-75.  The loser of that game would then be the 2nd AL Wild Card team.

Yankees and Rangers guaranteed a spot no matter what, and their opponent will only be the Angels if they beat the Rangers again today AND the Astros lose. Then there's a Game 163 between Astros & Angels, and the loser of that one does go home.

But a Game 163 between Astros & Rangers, hey, both go on playing no matter the outcome.

Am I missing something?

[GA Russell]

I have the vague recollection that one of Rob Manfred's first acts as commissioner was to declare that every game on the last day of the season would begin at the same time.

Was that today, or was that last year?

[JSngry]

Thanks to the Rangers & Astros for both unilaterally respecting the 162. Still, a system that allows for that, as this one almost did, is just waiting to get Wall Street-ed. The time was not today, but that day will come, and where will your guns be then, Mr. & Mrs. USA Inc.? (JK about the guns, but not the rest of it, y'all know I'm right about that part, if not now, then later).

Otherwise, cake, meet that good gravy icing! How the hell this happened, I still don't know. For that matter, how yesterday happened, I still don't know, probably best to not know, ever.

Brenda & I have just concluding an eternally binding contract that stipulates, without reservation or secondary clauses, that our next child, irregardless of gender and/or species, will be named "Beltre". I would urge the universe to follow suit if for no other reason than, hey, world done gone too far wrong already, let's at least have fun with it by recognizing at least one right thing.

For now, anyway, Go Astros! Go Rangers!

[Scott Dolan]

We have a situation here today where if Rangers lose and Astros win, there would be a game 163 to determine who was the AL West champion. Both teams would finish 87-75.  The loser of that game would then be the 2nd AL Wild Card team.

Yankees and Rangers guaranteed a spot no matter what, and their opponent will only be the Angels if they beat the Rangers again today AND the Astros lose. Then there's a Game 163 between Astros & Angels, and the loser of that one does go home.

But a Game 163 between Astros & Rangers, hey, both go on playing no matter the outcome.

Am I missing something?

Ah, now I see what you're saying. 

It's simply a question of seeding. Both teams had already earned their postseason berths. 

If the Blue Jays and Yankees were tied for the best record in the A.L., they'd have to play a tie-breaking game to determine seeding as well. 

It's not as though someone was given a free postseason pass even though they lost that last game. They were already in. 

Edited October 5, 2015 by Scott Dolan

[JSngry]

Yeah, I get how the numbers work. Don't like how they're set up. Don't like the second wild-card. Don't like a Game 163 to determine who a second wild card team will be. Don't like participation trophies. Don't like "you can do anything". Don't like imbalanced schedules. Don't like inter-league play on every day of season. Don't like stats being slowly but surely rendered meaningless as anything but bargaining tools.

Other than the game itself, what has always made baseball a superior sport for me was the notion that performance over the course of a season generally reflected ability. Fixed number of games against a fixed number of opponents, every year, world with out end, at the end of the year, you pretty much saw how everybody stacked up relative to each other. You still get that to a certain extent, but it's eroding. Look at this year's AL, compare intra-division records relative to final division standings, etc. etc. etc. Rangers win their division this year with a losing record against every team in it except the Astros. How many teams in either league play the exact 162 game schedule in a season?

You can't stop progress, etc. But MLB is rapidly becoming yet another facet of our lives where numbers don't "mean" what they used to, because the system used to creat tehm is becoming increasingly inconstant. And yes, the inconstant factor has always been there, even in the days before divisional play. Injuries, hot streaks, expansion, trades, etc. the game has never been 100% predictable, of course it hasn't. But now, the inconstant factor is being built into the premise.  AFAIC, that devalues the significance of overall W-L record, but....it is what it is. Context being made more nebulous, Numbers within being made more an end product than a reflection of value within any context other than themselves.

Wall Street. That's ok if you like that kind of thing out of your baseball. I don't, not particularly.

[Dan Gould]

I can't believe the Cubs won 97 games and I won't see their play-in game.  Who knew back in August when I scored tickets that the John Cleese - Eric Idle show in West Palm Beach would end up sharing the night with the NL Wild Card game?

Of course Cleese & Idle are a once-in-a-lifetime chance but the Cubs are situated to get into the playoffs pretty regularly in the coming years.

What was their net increase over last year? 30 wins??  More?

 

[Scott Dolan]

Jim, you're ignoring the example I gave. 

The 163rd game could happen between two teams from the same division tied for the best record in the league. 

As for the second Wild card, whatever. I don't have a problem with it, but I think the single game elimination aspect of it is kinda silly. 

And really, MLB still allows less teams than any of the Big American Four sports into the postseason. 

[JSngry]

No, I didn't ignore your example, it was just not relevant to my beef with the current system. There's a big difference between playing a game to see which of two teams is going to be division champion or a first Wild Card team and playing a game to see which of two teams is going to be a going to be a Game 1623-losing second wild card team who can still go on to win the World Series. Same setup on paper, not same result as far as "meaning" to me, which is admittedly a projection of personal social values onto a non-personal sporting event that produces predictable-enough long-term results but wildly random and arbitrary individual events, but hey, it's America and it's baseball.

If the Rangers had lost yesterday AND the Astros had won AND the Rangers lost Game 163 AND then gone on to win the World series, as a Rangers fan, I would be ecstatic. As a rational human who still likes the notion of some kind of intrinsic worth that lies apart from statistical flukes and the last quarter's earnings, I gotta say, I'd be somewhat ambivalent about that whole thing. Of course, the Rangers fan in me would take some, but not all, precedence.

I'm really not a fan of the imbalanced schedule, though, not even. Or second WC game. Or anything else than plays toward the devaluing of of the 162 game season as being the ongoing measurement of both individual and team performance and excellence. We ain't there yet, a long way from it, but if the long range trend is towards the regular season becoming essentially "exhibition games that count", then that is a  core shift in values (and valuations, the more that statistics lose that tightly controlled context, the more they become gaudy "numbers")) that I'm really not on board with. Not that it matters.

The one thing - the ONE thing - that I still dig about the NFL is their tie-breaking system for the playoffs. They prioritize correctly, I think, and the team that has the most obvious head-to-head advantage gets the spot.

Here's what I want to know about MLB - if you're going ahead with the imbalanced schedule AND the everyday Inter-league thing AND the second WC thing, why even bother with divisions? Or, for that matter, leagues? Money, of course, but, you know, sell your product differently, forget about the "tradition" and "continuity" and all that. If/when the Padres play in Fenway in September and they're both battling it out for their division, all that is pretty much gonna be over.

At some point, they should just reboot the entire sport. Abolish divisions/leagues/etc.restructure the schedule into "units" vs "series" and start the record books over. I'd be on board with that, actually, because the game itself remains the most perfectly devised team sport that I know of.

[JSngry]

wow...

CC Sabathia checks into rehab, will miss Yankees postseason run

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2015/10/5/9454905/cc-sabathia-rehab-yankees-mlb-playoffs?_ga=1.10148338.63955067.1442335336

[Scott Dolan]

 

The one thing - the ONE thing - that I still dig about the NFL is their tie-breaking system for the playoffs. They prioritize correctly, I think, and the team that has the most obvious head-to-head advantage gets the spot.

 

Wow!

Brother, I could NOT disagree with you more. 

When they only had 6 divisions, yes. But now that they have 8? Absolutely not!

There are plenty of examples, but let's look no further back than last year. 

The Panthers won their division with a record of 7-8-1. The Eagles finished 10-6. 

Which one made the playoffs? 

This was something I noted to friends of mine back when re-alignment took place. And it has happened multiple times since. 

I would argue MLB has MUCH better playoff seeding than the NFL right now. 

Now, I have only been a MLB fan since 2002, so I will defer to you, and others, who abhor even one Wild Card team. But, I've been a fan of the NFL since 1978, and I find their current system of playoff seeding to be an abomination. 

wow...

CC Sabathia checks into rehab, will miss Yankees postseason run

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2015/10/5/9454905/cc-sabathia-rehab-yankees-mlb-playoffs?_ga=1.10148338.63955067.1442335336

Sending positive vibes your way, C.C. 

Get well. 

The game means nothing when compared to your health. 

[ghost of miles]

wow...

CC Sabathia checks into rehab, will miss Yankees postseason run

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2015/10/5/9454905/cc-sabathia-rehab-yankees-mlb-playoffs?_ga=1.10148338.63955067.1442335336

Yes, quite a surprise, evidently even to the NY beat writers... nobody really saw this coming (the Toronto nightclub incident seemed like an aberration that could have happened to any player).  He had been pitching much better lately too, ever since getting the brace put on his leg.  The Yankees have been playing so badly that I don't expect them to make it far in the playoffs (hell, I'll be happy if they can just manage to beat the Astros in the WC faceoff), but if they do, they can muddle through to some extent with a Tanaka/Severino/Pineda/Warren rotation. 

[JSngry]

NFL playoff system...yeah, fucked up when applied to the NFL, but when applied to an MLB situation, as could have happened with Astros/Rangers this year, or in any other Game 1963 scenario, I think it works. Put the two teams up against one another and go down the line, head-to-head record first, then Run Differential in head-to-head games, run it on down the line. lord knows, there's stats, it's baseball. If two teams have played each other enough during the regular 162 game season, the Game 163 should not be necessary, it's a cheap circus move.

But oh, wait - the imbalanced schedule tends to incentivize the cheap circus move. Let's say that the Rangers & Yankees would have been tied for whatever. They've played each other 7 times this year (and went 5-2, end of line as far as hypothetical tie-breaker) . That's right, two American League teams met only seven out of 162 games. Even allowing for the imperfect math of 162/15, divisional rivals play each other a total of 76 games a season, 19 games per opponent. That leaves more than half the season to play the rest of the teams in your own league.

This year, we played the freakin' Padres 6 games. What kind of relevancy does ANY cumulative league/divisional record have when the Rangers played the Padres only one less time than they did the Yankees? We played the Dodgers only two less times than we did the Twins, and it was looking there for a little bit like the Rangers & Twins might have a Game 163 waiting for them. If they had played each other enough times is a sensibly scheduled regular season, then that NFL-type line 'em up and compare thing would've had some serious validity. As it was, we finished 3-3 against them with a -3 RD. Advantage, Twins. But the difference in sample size between 6 & 19 is > 300%, so...significant. Hell, between 6 games and 12 games, double the sample size.

I get that the bottom line is "entertainment" (i.e. -$$$$$), and no, I don't "abhor" the one wild card team, it's a logistical necessity borne of the "need" to have three 5-tem divisions within each league (and let's ask why these symmetrical divisions are so important if the scheduling is so freakin' asymmetrical!).

But a second WC team is an entertainment $$$ ploy, pure and simple, and I'm one of the possibly vanishing number of MLB fans who was "entertained" by the way the whole season played out withing a stricter set of controls than just sneaking in with the 5th best record in your league, especially when that record exists both within and outside of your league, and especially if you have to play 163 games to get that 5th best record of a 162 game season.

It ain't the same thing. It's an attempt to redefine things like "logic" and "sanity" and "value" and "success", not to accommodate expanded horizons but to fatten some wallets at the expense of emptying (many) others.

OTOH, it's the best game in the history of the world, known and unknown alike, ever. But those are two different things.

 

[JSngry]

NY Post is Rupert Murdoch's paper, correct? The same Rupert Murdoch who owns Fox, the same Fox that carries the majority of the post-season, and the same Fox would would glad take all the money that comes in from the Yankees going deep into it, especially to the WS. This is the same guy, right?

I can only say "Fuck you, Rupert Murdoch" really effectively in one language, but anybody else who can expand on that, please do.

 

 

[Scott Dolan]

Jim, deep breath time. 

Even without a second Wild Card team, sometimes a 163rd game would be necessary. 

Some times teams will play each other to an even split. It happens. 

As with many things, you are overthinking it (no worries, I do the same thing all the time). 

Yes, the second Wild Card spot does exacerbate the situation, but not to the extremes you're painting it. 

[Dan Gould]

Few thoughts Jim:

1.  The Cubs won 97 games, a better record than everybody but the two teams they are (barely) looking up at.  Personally, in this extremely rare circumstance, I'm pretty damn glad they get a chance at the post-season raffle.

2.  Football is too different to have playoff games to determine seedings.  NFL plays once a week. MLB plays more or less 6 out of 7 days for six months straight. NFL relies on scouting and new game plans/defensive wrinkles predicated on who the weekly or playoff opponent is.  There's no point to take an extra week for a seeding-playoff game because every game thereafter is a one-and-done, do or die.  You're both in, let the tie-breaker decide who plays at home because eventually the winner is going to go on the road anyway.

Baseball only has one do-or-die game outside of a Game 5 or a Game 7, and that's the wild card play-in.  To me its appalling that either Pittsburgh or Chicago is going to be heartbroken after a single 9 inning contest. It should be a best of three series between the WC teams, so that there's some sense that the right team moved on.

And as for that headline, I'd assume that CC said it or something pretty damn close for them to go with that.

[Dan Gould]

Fascinating piece on the last two months of the Nats disastrous season:

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nationals/trade-for-jonathan-papelbon-had-disastrous-results-for-the-nationals/2015/09/30/0aef1564-66ee-11e5-8325-a42b5a459b1e_story.html

 

[Scott Dolan]

Nice post, Dan. 

I agree that it's shameful that either Pittsburgh or Chicago will be done for the season after Tuesday. 

Either the second or third best regular season record will be absent from the true playoffs. That's just fucking stupid.