The MLB Thread

Well, at least the Braves went out on a high note against the Cards.

But it's playoff time now! All my thoughts & best wishes go with the Astros: long as the Yankees don't advance, there'll be some chance for good in the universe.

Yeah, but if the Mets lose, I'll continue rooting for whichever team is playing the Dodgers next.

Not to mention that Shelby Miller finally got his first win since May 17, despite a 3.02 ERA!

On a related note, Cardinals utility guy Pete Kozma became the 29th player to have at least 100+ PA in a season without a single XBH. Really, given how hard the Cards had to play almost all season long, it was weird seeing the team finally having the luxury of starting Jon Jay at leadoff and having Ed Easley catch.

As a Jays fan, those NL Central teams scare the crap out of me. I mean, I'm relatively confident about our ability to get to the WC but most of the NL teams just have better numbers than their AL counterparts...

As a fan of an NL Central team, the Jays scare the crap out of me. Our division's strength has been elite run prevention, while you guys have had both that and a ridiculously insane offense since the trade deadline.

EDIT: It also helps that a lot of NL teams went into tank mode this season, though the Cards, Cubs, and Pirates do all have the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th best records in all of MLB against winning teams (the Rangers managed to take 4th from the Buccos in the past couple of days, while the Jays have a solid grip on 1st, with both teams getting a last-minute standings "boost" when the Orioles managed to finish the season at 81-81; the Royals are the only additional team to be >.500 against winning teams).

edited 5th Oct '15 7:06:35 AM by UmbrellasWereAwesome

Well, the Astros have advanced. Bye Yankees!

And there was much rejoicing.

Good luck to the Astros against KC (if only cause the Jays get home field advantage against the Astros if they play them afterwards).

edited 7th Oct '15 5:00:35 AM by Rationalinsanity

Congrats, Astros!

But even though I'll watch tonight's Cubs-Pirates game, I'm not 100% looking forward to it. I'd much rather neither of them get eliminated this early.

The three best records in the majors, and only one of those teams will make it past the division round.

Yeah, it's a huge missed opportunity that there's zero chance of an epic best-of-seven series between two of those three teams with a trip to the World Series on the line. The Mets and the Dodgers should have been seeded as the wild card teams .

No disrespect intended, the NL Central is just that good.

edited 7th Oct '15 9:02:56 AM by CombatC122

Well, we now know it won't be the Pirates. Cubs win 4-0.

Congrats to Chicago, if the Jays get beat at any stage I'll be rooting for them.

I like he added drama of the wild card and the fact that it keeps more teams relevant later into the regular season, but man, it's rough that the fates of two teams whose records would have won them any other division had to come down to a single game.

But still, here we go, Cardinals vs. Cubs for the first time in postseason history! I will be pulling for my Cards of course, but should the Cubs happen to win, they better go and make a run at it.

True, but baseball's been unfair that way for over a century. Even before divisional play, there'd be seasons where one league's top 3-4 teams were arguably better than the other league's pennant-winner.

In fact, the only really fair assignation of a ring was before the founding of the American League in 1901. Prior to that, whichever NL team had the most wins in a season was the undisputed World Champion of Baseball.

Of course, the NL wasn't the only game in town before that. This isn't on topic, but what I posted got me thinking about the American Association—the ABA/WHA of the 19th century.

Like the ABA and WHA, the A.A. was a short-lived competitor to the sport's primary major league; they played from the early 1880s to the early 1980s. Also like those 1970s and '80s leagues, they weren't a mere flash in the pan ... but neither were they successful enough to become co-equal with the main league (like the later AL) or to be wholly absorbed into it (like the AFL was).

Rather (again like the ABA and WHA!), the Association folded, but a handful of their most successful teams (the St. Louis Cardinals, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Brooklyn Dodgers) survived the A.A.'s demise and were invited to join the National League. The Cincinnati Reds are a weird case: they were charter members of the NL, but switched leagues to the A.A. when the latter was founded. They then jumped back to the NL.

Also, several of the A.A. teams that folded had nicknames that later MLB teams would revive, and adopt as their own: the A.A. was home to the original Baltimore Orioles, Washington Nationals, New York Metropolitans, Milwaukee Brewers, and Philadelphia Athletics.

Just an interesting episode of MLB history for the antiquarians among us.

edited 8th Oct '15 8:47:25 AM by Jhimmibhob

I didn't so much mean to complain about the best regular season teams not necessarily getting to advance to the late postseason. That's just the nature of having a playoff system instead of a single league table. It's just considering the large sample sizes in the baseball season, playing 162 games against teams that you usually have to play 3-4 times in a row when you match up against them, it's kind of a shame that one of those wild card teams has to end their season after one bad night even if they had the consistency to win the 90+ games to make it to that position in the first place.

Should've won the division then. Over a large sample size, the Cards proved themselves to be better while playing in the same division. WC teams are lucky to even be allowed into the postseason and a single-game elimination is the price they pay for a second chance.

Honestly, I'd like to add two teams to each league, split both leagues into four divisions, and do away with the WC altogether.

Gee, I never thought of that idea before.

True enough, the newer wild card system does place more emphasis on actually winning the division.

Huh, there's my hypothetical 32 team, 4 division setup too. In retrospect, I'm not sure why I wanted to separate out the Cincinnati Reds from the rest of the NL Central teams.

For great fun, go halfway down the next page and watch everyone have a pity party for the poor, awful, unlucky, Houston Astros.

Sorry for doublepost, but Rangers have taken Game 1 against Toronto, 5-3.

Also, Vin Scully will not be calling Dodgers game this postseason. Guess they're jinxed.

Good to see in that article that Vin Scully will be coming back next year at least. I can't believe how long he's been around calling games. Heck, he was around back when they were the Brooklyn Dodgers!

That said, I think I'm with Millardkillmoore in not particularly wanting the Dodgers to get that far this postseason. Not that I think my Cardinals wouldn't match up well against them, neither do I especially dislike the team itself (my cousin happens to be fan), but just, it seems like their online fans in particular have this seething vitriol against the Cards, even more than fans of our actual division rivals, and it just rubs me the wrong way. Win or lose, I get the sense that a Cardinals-Dodgers NLCS would get ugly, and not in a fun way. I actually kind of wish it was the Giants again out of the West. That matchup would be more chill, probably because we've been trading NL spots in the WS for roughly the last half decade .

Cards win the NL in odd years. Giants win it in even ones. If that continues, I've got no issues with the Cards remaining dominant.

I'll admit that I was hoping for the Cards to get knocked out in the NLDS last year, but that was just for the chance to finally get a postseason showdown between the Ddodgers and Giants, which hasn't happened in over a century.

edited 8th Oct '15 7:06:05 PM by Millardkillmoore

Astros took the first game from the Royals, 5-2.

I read something interesting that was noted: that home field advantage apparently doesn't exist any more, because the home team has not held a lead yet in any of the four postseason games so far.