Come Chat With Us As We Watch Two (!) Potential Pennant Clinching Games Today
Come Chat With Us As We Watch Two (!) Potential Pennant Clinching Games Today
If the Phillies and Astros win, they will accomplish something that hasn't been done since 1992.
Come Chat With Us As We Watch Two (!) Potential Pennant Clinching Games Today
Hi friends-
Since the League Championship Series began in 1969, both pennants have been clinched on the same day only ten times. The last time this happened was on October 14, 1992 when the Blue Jays beat the A’s, and the Braves defeated the Pirates in one of the first playoff games I vividly remember watching. (aka the epic game Sid Bream beat Barry Bonds’ throw home to win the pennant by an eyelash):
(You’ll have to excuse me for rooting for the Braves in 1992. They were on TBS at 4 pm after school every day, and the Dodgers lost 99 games that season.)
Anyway, we’ve got Padres vs. Phillies at 11:37 AM PT/ 2:37 PM PT
Then Astros vs. Yankees at 4:07 PM PT/ 7:07 PM ET
I have faith the Padres can pull themselves off the deck to force game 6 in San Diego tomorrow. The Yankees, however, look deader than Julius Caesar. But, they get nine more innings to prove me wrong and save their season.
So come join us! We’ll also be talking about the NFL because it’s Sunday. So many sports!
As a reminder, these chats are for paying subscribers. You can upgrade your subscription by going here:
And if you can’t afford a sub, email me and I can hook you up.
Talk soon!
One more comment on The Day After...
Since Fox is doing the World Series, we likely will have to endure more of those disgusting anti-immigrant (and anti-Dems) ads - but we will absolutely have lots more of Joe Davis (yea!) and John Smoltz (oh no!).
And since Smoltz has offered us a number of, um, interesting ‘insights’ over the past two weeks, I thought you all might enjoy a very nice Baseball Prospectus article inspired by Mr Smoltz (there’s a paywall, sorry - but if you do not have access BP is well worth a subscription): ‘John Smoltz Made Me Write This Article’, from Rob Mains. The inspiration here was Smoltz’ rant about the ‘third time through the order’ argument for replacing a starter, which Philly manager Rob Thomson has just made when asked about replacing Suárez with Elfin.
Smoltz immediately went off very hard, this way:
‘I hate talking about third time through because it’s a moot point. Nobody ever does it. So you can tell me all the numbers you want, third time through. If you’re not trained to know how to pitch, then you’re showing the hitter everything you’ve got in the first two times so you’ve got nothing to give the third time. So elite pitching, take Musgrove, will figure it out. He trains well, he’s big, he’s strong. There should be no issues. But we just don’t give guys the opportunity to do it. So that stat, to me, means absolutely nothing. Because there’s just not enough opportunities to gauge it right.’
Mains responds with a detailed analysis of this question from the ‘nerds who never played the game’. He starts by noting that when Smoltz was going off like this, ‘big strong’ Musgrove was being taken out after surrendering successive doubles during his third time through the order (an irony apparently lost on Smoltz). But Mains proceeds to show the real world data nerds like him have compiled about the question. And of course he shows the facts (the truth, you could say) that Rob Thomson -- who btw did play the game in the Tigers organisation from 1985-88 before they made him a coach -- knows quite well.
This data convincingly makes -- if we still needed more convincing -- the case. Of course, if a starter is mowing them down the first two times through the order, none of this is to say that he should not be left in the game. I often think this is the right move. The data shows probabilities about that ‘third time’ and those odds are just that: the odds overall, which do not prove one way or the other what will happen in any particular game or with any particular pitcher (although all teams have data on the ‘third time’ results for each of their own particular pitchers, but again that is all just the probabilities, the history, not what is happening at this moment with this pitcher and these batters).
Anyway - the article can be found on the BP website.
Thanks, J. I've enjoyed his podcasts with MK. I will check out his blog. From one J to another.