Playoff Baseball

[YmoBeThere]

I never knew there were this many Nationals fans!

[wilson]

This question will carry some bias coming from a disappointed Nats fan, but after watching 3 of the 4 teams with the best regular season records in baseball fail to advance, is the Divisional Series working? I think it's broken for several reasons:

5 day layoff for higher seeded teams. I get the one game playoff thing. Originally against it as I'm a believer in valuing regular season accomplishments, those win-or-go-home games are fun as a fan to watch. I also understand that the play-in teams should be at a huge disadvantage heading into the DS as they have to burn their ace. However, using up a starter only matters if the series gets to game 5, and it seems that the 5 day break for one team - which never happens during the season - may create rust or disrupt timing. Now I'm not saying that the layoff is why the Nats lost instead the way Williams used the bullpen, or the way Bochy managed the Giants, or Giants pitchers rising to the occasion, or their playoff experience giving them the edge, or the Nats offense just not showing up, or hundreds of other reasons. But as a fan having to wonder how the layoff might have contributed is fairly unsatisfying and seems to be something that could be resolved.

5 game series instead of 7. Can't understand why this still exists. Of the four major sports, baseball has the most game-to-game variability. The best teams in baseball win right around 100 games, which is about 60% of their games. In the NFL the best teams go 12-4 or 13-3 (75-80%), NBA winners get to around 60 wins (73%), and NHL ends up around 75% excluding ties. So the best teams lose more frequently in baseball, making a short series even more susceptible to an upset. I imagine some point MLB will expand these to best of 7 just for the 8 additional revenue opportunities, but I also think it will reward the teams that assemble the best regular season records as well.

2-2-1 Format. Maybe I'm alone on this one, but if I were manager of the Nats/Dodgers/Angels and I could pick any format for a 5 game series, I would probably take 2 road followed by 3 home. I think with the 2-2-1 format the pressure is actually on the higher seeded team to win the first 2 at home. I think it is easier to start on the road with the mentality of taking 1 of 2 putting you in control of the series. Combined with the short series I think this format puts added pressure on the favored teams instead of rewarding them.

So my fix would be to expand to best of 7, cut the time around the one-game playoffs (no travel day before/after and have both games on the same day), and probably not tinker with starting 2 on the road in the seven game series although I do think there is something interesting there.

This is pretty much exactly what fans of first-round losing teams say every year (and I say that with the extensive experience of a recovered Braves fan). I largely agree with your observations, except that I think the one-game playoff is an utter joke. You're right that they're fun to watch as a disinterested fan, but they totally discard the regular season and are essentially nothing more than a roll of the dice.

[rasputin]

I'm curious how Nats fans view Harper's antics. I was fairly neutral rooting-wise for the Nats-Giants series, except that a Giants win meant home field advantage for the Cardinals in the NLCS.

Anyway, after looking at Harper's behavior post-home run yesterday, I think I dislike him every bit as much as Puig, and that takes some doing. Grow up.

[throatybeard]

Congrats to the Cards ... like the Giants, a great postseason team these days.

As for fame four today, amazing to watch Clayton Kershaw blow up again late.

I wonder what this is doing to his legacy. He's been the best regular season pitcher in baseball over the last four years. But he's also been a terrible postseason pitcher. It's not just one game or one series -- for his career he's made 11 postseason starts and won once. He's lost five times, including his last four starts in a row against the Cardinals. His postseason ERA is well over 5 runs a game.

What are we to make of that?

We are to make of it what others in this thread have, which is that small sample size is a reckless drunken mistress. Even though the team I root for has benefited tremendously from repeatedly winning the last game of the five-game format, I'm in complete agreement that the seven-game format would be better. Frankly, I'd like the WS to go back to the long-since abandoned nine-game format. I don't care if it's 40 degrees in New England, put on a darn jacket and a scarf. They play football in Green Bay outdoors in January. You can play baseball in New York or Boston on Halloween.

My college BFF is interesting in that she's a former hater of the sport of baseball who now has become the biggest Nationals fan you know. (Her husband knows Adam LaRoche, I think from High School). I was talking to her last night on text between the two games. I reported the following items the FS1 crew said out loud after STL-LAD last night. I haven't fact checked these, so I'm hoping they did. This is how statistically unlikely the Cardinals win last night was.

1) Clayton Kershaw is pretty much the best pitcher in the game of baseball, and he happens to employ his left arm. By and large, the Cardinals have not been able to hit LHP worth grasshopper urine. This has unfolded in both large and small samples, and there have been moments of respite from the condition. But it's largely been the case. In a small sample, the central failure was the 2013 World Series, an event I'm sure many of y'all viewed on television. Lester mowed everyone down last year.

2) Matt Adams bats left, so the platoon advantage is conceded. Indeed, Matt Adams was hitting .190 against LHP this year.

3) Kershaw kills LH batters. I don't know if these guys were right--it sounds like science fiction--but last night they said he has given up four home runs to LH hitters in his career. Three of which occurred against Saint Louis in the post season.

Best pitcher in baseball, and the Cardinals have beaten him four times in a span of ten postseason games in the last thirteen months. Insane.

So sample size, she is crazy. And we all suffer from selection bias. (I know quite a few Dodgers fans on social media, and they're suffering, and performing amateur psychoanalysis on Mr Kershaw). I'm no different. If you had told me, at the moment in 2009 when that fly ball hit Matt Holliday in the junk, that two years later the Cardinals would begin a streak of making the NLCS four years in a row, I'd have told you to lay aside your crack pipe. The Cardinals missed the playoffs three out of four years then, and got swept out of the NLDS by the LAD in the other one. Oh, and also, LAD won that series despite Kershaw giving a HR up...to an LH batter.

The beautiful madness that is baseball.

[mkirsh]

I'm curious how Nats fans view Harper's antics. I was fairly neutral rooting-wise for the Nats-Giants series, except that a Giants win meant home field advantage for the Cardinals in the NLCS.

Anyway, after looking at Harper's behavior post-home run yesterday, I think I dislike him every bit as much as Puig, and that takes some doing. Grow up.

Grow up is definitely part of it - he's only 21 so he gets a somewhat of a pass in my book for the occasional outbursts (like yelling at the ump in game 2), and in general he seems to be a well liked teammate, hard worker, and mostly professional in his approach to the game. I hope over time he does mature a little and cut down on the antics, but at the same time want him to keep playing with passion and emotion as aside from him and Gio it is a very laid back team - Werth, Laroche, Ramos, Desmond, both Zimmermans all seem fairly stoic, so the fire needs to come from someplace.

[mr. synellinden]

We are to make of it what others in this thread have, which is that small sample size is a reckless drunken mistress. Even though the team I root for has benefited tremendously from repeatedly winning the last game of the five-game format, I'm in complete agreement that the seven-game format would be better. Frankly, I'd like the WS to go back to the long-since abandoned nine-game format. I don't care if it's 40 degrees in New England, put on a darn jacket and a scarf. They play football in Green Bay outdoors in January. You can play baseball in New York or Boston on Halloween.

My college BFF is interesting in that she's a former hater of the sport of baseball who now has become the biggest Nationals fan you know. (Her husband knows Adam LaRoche, I think from High School). I was talking to her last night on text between the two games. I reported the following items the FS1 crew said out loud after STL-LAD last night. I haven't fact checked these, so I'm hoping they did. This is how statistically unlikely the Cardinals win last night was.

1) Clayton Kershaw is pretty much the best pitcher in the game of baseball, and he happens to employ his left arm. By and large, the Cardinals have not been able to hit LHP worth grasshopper urine. This has unfolded in both large and small samples, and there have been moments of respite from the condition. But it's largely been the case. In a small sample, the central failure was the 2013 World Series, an event I'm sure many of y'all viewed on television. Lester mowed everyone down last year.

2) Matt Adams bats left, so the platoon advantage is conceded. Indeed, Matt Adams was hitting .190 against LHP this year.

3) Kershaw kills LH batters. I don't know if these guys were right--it sounds like science fiction--but last night they said he has given up four home runs to LH hitters in his career. Three of which occurred against Saint Louis in the post season.

Best pitcher in baseball, and the Cardinals have beaten him four times in a span of ten postseason games in the last thirteen months. Insane.

So sample size, she is crazy. And we all suffer from selection bias. (I know quite a few Dodgers fans on social media, and they're suffering, and performing amateur psychoanalysis on Mr Kershaw). I'm no different. If you had told me, at the moment in 2009 when that fly ball hit Matt Holliday in the junk, that two years later the Cardinals would begin a streak of making the NLCS four years in a row, I'd have told you to lay aside your crack pipe. The Cardinals missed the playoffs three out of four years then, and got swept out of the NLDS by the LAD in the other one. Oh, and also, LAD won that series despite Kershaw giving a HR up...to an LH batter.

The beautiful madness that is baseball.

I am convinced that the Cardinals have either been stealing signs with a runner on 2nd or they've picked up Kershaw tipping his pitches with runners on base. There is no other plausible explanation for what they've done against Kershaw. Kershaw rarely gets hit hard, especially by lefties, and there were several consecutive hard hit balls in the 7th innings of game 1 and 4, including the crushers by Carpenter and Adams.

[rasputin]

We are to make of it what others in this thread have, which is that small sample size is a reckless drunken mistress. Even though the team I root for has benefited tremendously from repeatedly winning the last game of the five-game format, I'm in complete agreement that the seven-game format would be better. Frankly, I'd like the WS to go back to the long-since abandoned nine-game format. I don't care if it's 40 degrees in New England, put on a darn jacket and a scarf. They play football in Green Bay outdoors in January. You can play baseball in New York or Boston on Halloween.

My college BFF is interesting in that she's a former hater of the sport of baseball who now has become the biggest Nationals fan you know. (Her husband knows Adam LaRoche, I think from High School). I was talking to her last night on text between the two games. I reported the following items the FS1 crew said out loud after STL-LAD last night. I haven't fact checked these, so I'm hoping they did. This is how statistically unlikely the Cardinals win last night was.

1) Clayton Kershaw is pretty much the best pitcher in the game of baseball, and he happens to employ his left arm. By and large, the Cardinals have not been able to hit LHP worth grasshopper urine. This has unfolded in both large and small samples, and there have been moments of respite from the condition. But it's largely been the case. In a small sample, the central failure was the 2013 World Series, an event I'm sure many of y'all viewed on television. Lester mowed everyone down last year.

2) Matt Adams bats left, so the platoon advantage is conceded. Indeed, Matt Adams was hitting .190 against LHP this year.

3) Kershaw kills LH batters. I don't know if these guys were right--it sounds like science fiction--but last night they said he has given up four home runs to LH hitters in his career. Three of which occurred against Saint Louis in the post season.

Best pitcher in baseball, and the Cardinals have beaten him four times in a span of ten postseason games in the last thirteen months. Insane.

So sample size, she is crazy. And we all suffer from selection bias. (I know quite a few Dodgers fans on social media, and they're suffering, and performing amateur psychoanalysis on Mr Kershaw). I'm no different. If you had told me, at the moment in 2009 when that fly ball hit Matt Holliday in the junk, that two years later the Cardinals would begin a streak of making the NLCS four years in a row, I'd have told you to lay aside your crack pipe. The Cardinals missed the playoffs three out of four years then, and got swept out of the NLDS by the LAD in the other one. Oh, and also, LAD won that series despite Kershaw giving a HR up...to an LH batter.

The beautiful madness that is baseball.

Throaty, obviously you're correct that historically the Cardinals' batters have struggled against lefties. And this has gone on for decades. My memory of this, though, is that this has generally been true of the soft-tossing lefties, of which Kershaw is not one. (Remember Randy Jones of the Padres?) So, I wonder how this would compare if you could separate out the junk-ball pitchers versus the flame-throwers.

Anyway, I had this same perception this year, so I got on Baseball-Reference. Unless I'm reading the stats wrong (which is possible), it appears that Cardinals left-handed batters had a 123 sOPS+ against lefthanded pitchers this season (and righty batters had a 96 sOPS+ against lefties, which at least isn't terrible).

[mr. synellinden]

Okay. Now I'm less convinced:

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2014/10/...ipping-pitches

[JBDuke]

I'm curious how Nats fans view Harper's antics. I was fairly neutral rooting-wise for the Nats-Giants series, except that a Giants win meant home field advantage for the Cardinals in the NLCS.

Anyway, after looking at Harper's behavior post-home run yesterday, I think I dislike him every bit as much as Puig, and that takes some doing. Grow up.

Grow up is definitely part of it - he's only 21 so he gets a somewhat of a pass in my book for the occasional outbursts (like yelling at the ump in game 2), and in general he seems to be a well liked teammate, hard worker, and mostly professional in his approach to the game. I hope over time he does mature a little and cut down on the antics, but at the same time want him to keep playing with passion and emotion as aside from him and Gio it is a very laid back team - Werth, Laroche, Ramos, Desmond, both Zimmermans all seem fairly stoic, so the fire needs to come from someplace.

I think mkirsh said it pretty well. If you don't know him and you don't know the team, I can see how his antics would get under your skin. He's been feted on a national level for his baseball talent since he was young, and he's comfortable in the spotlight in a way that many young players are not. (The contrast with the extreme introvert Strasburg is interesting, since they both came to the team at about the same time.) The media likes to focus on him, and he's happy to promote himself. It leads to overexposure, which can by tiresome. Being young, he occasionally says stupid things, like when saying he wanted to play centerfield when coming back from injury in June. But by all accounts, he's a good teammate, and he's earned the respect of the rest of the Nationals by putting in the hard work. He wants to play like Pete Rose - that is, intensely. He still makes lots of mistakes - but they're mostly mistakes made by trying too hard. He really needs more discipline in his baserunning, for example, as he's got the speed to be a real terror, but he's not smart about when he uses it.

But his talent is prodigious. He's still learning to play the outfield, but he covers a lot of ground and has a gun for an arm. As you saw in this series, he can hit the ball a very, very long way. He can hit for average and power. I don't leave the room when he's at the plate, because I don't want to miss something spectacular, and he's a threat to do that every at-bat.

Here's a potential apt comparison - as a Duke fan, how did you feel about Corey Maggette in his freshman year? He was young and occasionally stupid. But he was a freshman in a man's body, and he could run and jump perhaps better than any other athlete at Duke. If you don't like Duke, or even if you're only a casual college basketball fan, you probably found his backboard slapping to be stomach churning. But if you were a Duke fan, did you look away when he was out running on the fast break?

[Olympic Fan]

How big a sample size do we need before suggesting that Kershaw has a postseason problem?

If it were just this year ... but we're talking about 11 postseason starts over four seasons and six playoff series -- that's not a small number. One win and an ERA over 5.00?

There have been other great athletes (in a number of sports) who have been slammed for their postseason failures. Critics have always criticized Ted Williams for his "clutch" failures -- and that's an even smaller sample size (.200 in seven World Series games ... 5 singles in 25 at bats). If you add the 1948 playoff game with Cleveland and the two final games with the Yankees in 1949 (when the Red Sox needed one win in two games to clinch the pennant) he adds another .222 average (two singles in nine at bats in those three games).

Small sample size, but it's always haunted Teddy Ballgame's legacy.

Postseason failure has been used to diminish such greats as Wilt Chamberlain (who did win two championship rings) and Peyton Manning (who has one ring). Kershaw certainly has time to change his postseason record, but right now it's a huge flaw on his resume.

PS Just watched Tony and Wilbon debate this very point on PTI and while both agree that he is a great pitcher, they agreed that his dismal postseason record is -- as of this moment -- a serious blot on his resume.

[Duvall]

How big a sample size do we need before suggesting that Kershaw has a postseason problem?

If it were just this year ... but we're talking about 11 postseason starts over four seasons and six playoff series -- that's not a small number. One win and an ERA over 5.00?

There have been other great athletes (in a number of sports) who have been slammed for their postseason failures. Critics have always criticized Ted Williams for his "clutch" failures -- and that's an even smaller sample size (.200 in seven World Series games ... 5 singles in 25 at bats). If you add the 1948 playoff game with Cleveland and the two final games with the Yankees in 1949 (when the Red Sox needed one win in two games to clinch the pennant) he adds another .222 average (two singles in nine at bats in those three games).

Small sample size, but it's always haunted Teddy Ballgame's legacy.

With whom? Anyone trying to make a case against an all-time great based on ten games isn't worth listening to about baseball. They aren't worth the two posts we've made in this thread!

Postseason failure has been used to diminish such greats as Wilt Chamberlain (who did win two championship rings) and Peyton Manning (who has one ring). Kershaw certainly has time to change his postseason record, but right now it's a huge flaw on his resume.

PS Just watched Tony and Wilbon debate this very point on PTI and while both agree that he is a great pitcher, they agreed that his dismal postseason record is -- as of this moment -- a serious blot on his resume.

As I was saying.

[Olympic Fan]

With whom? Anyone trying to make a case against an all-time great based on ten games isn't worth listening to about baseball. They aren't worth the two posts we've made in this thread!

Thanks for removing the nasty description of people who disagree with you ...

As for your argument, I think rational people can invoke nuances when we discuss greatness. Is Ted Williams a great player ... absolutely, But is he the greatest? The second greatest? The 10th greatest?

I don't think it's invalid to suggest that when we get to that level, we're looking for fine distinctions. And postseason failure -- even if it is a small sample size -- has to be a factor.

Clayton Kershaw is a great pitcher. I've seen commentators suggest that he's a greater lefthander than Sandy Koufax -- and, indeed, some of his numbers are better. Koufax also had a small postseason sample size -- eight games. He won four of them and had an 0.95 postseason ERA. He was the MVP in two World Series triumphs (1963 and 1965).

Small sample size or not, Koufax's ability to step up his performance in postseason certainly gives him a credibility that Kershaw has so far failed to demonstrate.

The greatest thing any athlete can do is to win championships. Of course, no athlete can do that by himself. But the greatest can lift their teams when it matters.

You can be a great player without doing that. But when you talk about the greatest, that's got to be a part of the equation.

[throatybeard]

How big a sample size do we need before suggesting that Kershaw has a postseason problem?

If it were just this year ... but we're talking about 11 postseason starts over four seasons and six playoff series -- that's not a small number. One win and an ERA over 5.00?

I don't know, but for darn sure, a heck of a lot bigger one than this. Eleven starts is a very small number.

Eleven starts? He probably made eleven starts in two months this summer, and went like 21-3 this year with a sub-two ERA, but no one is talking about that, anymore. I suppose because they think the postseason is somehow fundamentally different, in some sort of causative way. Me, I've got too much faith in the science of SABR.

Glavine and Maddux were totally mediocre in the postseason. I mean not the night when when Glavine one-zipped the Indians, but over their "post-season careers," which were tiny sample sizes compared to their careers. No one seems to remember Maddux got his butt kicked by Cleveland the game before that, which is also a very small sample size. Everyone was talking about Maddux and Glavine being vulnerable in the post season for two news cycles after the Braves completed every postseason except 1995. Now, no one is, and I stood in a field in July at their HOF inductions.

I listened to an interesting convo today between 2006 WS MVP David Eckstein, and Colin Blowhard, I mean Cowherd. Cowherd is very interesting to me, because of the central fascination in his life, which is demographics. He loves talking about the demographics of fanbases, and ridiculing people in college towns for being volatile and over-reactive, like Alabama fans, according to him. He loves talking about the demographics of regions. Mind you, his best bits are pretty astute. He had, from my perspective, a terrifyingly accurate assessment of why people in the former Confederacy were more likely to condone Adrian Peterson's recent behavior. I'm not saying he's always off. But sometimes he's not on.

Cowherd loves talking about the Cardinals, because he's very interested in culture and in a team in a market with 2.8M people continually competing with the likes of LA and NY and Chicago, with a 10th-12th ranked payroll. They're not the Oakland Athletics, but--now really think about this--the four-year, approximately $52M contract doled out to Peralta was the largest the franchise has ever given an FA who wasn't already with the club. He likes to compare them to the San Antonio Spurs, and suddenly, the San Francisco Giants. Of course, when the Cardinals missed the playoffs in 2007, 2008, and 2010, he wasn't doing this, but this week, it's on, obviously. He has this idea that the coasts "make stars" and that players get selfish in New York and Los Angeles while here in the "heartland," guys are bunting and taking the extra base to the detriment of their own next FA contract. Even as he uses guys like Derek Jeter as counterexamples to his negative examples like Mello and Bryant and Bryce Harper.

So basically, Cowherd tried to get Eckstein to agree to the notion that the Cardinals are somehow special, with access to mysterious intangibles, clutch hitters (which basically don't exist at all, from a statistical perspective), lineup protection (which scarcely exists, from a statistical perspective), and the ever nebulous "doing things the right way." Eckstein heartily agreed out loud with all this, of course. Now, I'm a fan of the team, and I still was standing around in my basement saying, in solitude, out loud, "oh that's crap" and "okay, I could see that," in alternation in response to individual sentences they said.

I can see Adam Wainwright being an effective mentor to the likes of Wacha and Miller. I can't see this team having an intrinsic knack for clutch hitting, or an intrinsic knack for selflessness that leads to sac bunts. Especially when the roster has turned over like 66% since the World Series they won three years ago, during which some clutch hits occurred. People who don't watch 2011 Game Six like it's the Bible have probably forgotten this, but if you've seen the DVD twenty-five times, like I have, you know this. Pujols was, largely, a mess in that WS. But he went off in Game Three like a ninja pterodactyl on crack, and he only had one other hit in the whole entire seven-game WS, a double during the crucial rally in in regulation in Game Six. If Pujols doesn't get that one hit while he's busy going something like 4 for 24, the Rangers all have rings. Sample size.

I can see Mike Matheny being a calming presence. I can see the organization having great scouting. I can't see anyone "taking the extra base" at a rate that's any higher than people do in Kansas City or Baltimore or San Francisco, much less on the LAA, LAD, or NYY, as he was arguing.

In short, I can see culture mattering, some. It's pretty clear to everyone on this board that doing football right mattered less to the administration at Duke between 1966 and 2008 than it did before or after. I think there might be something to this "Cardinal Way" business when it comes to keeping yourself eligible to play for the team. But I think there's nothing to it where one freaking at-bat by Matt Adams is concerned. Synellinden's pitch-tipping hypothesis is fascinating and plausible. Kershaw may have some mysterious psychological block when it comes to pitching to guys with red birds on their shirts, but I really, really doubt it, and I really doubt it even more when it comes to the whole postseason. Sometimes you're Clayton Kershaw, and it's not your best day.

Eckstein was openly bagging on the SABR guys. He agrees that the Cardinals have some magical combination of clutch hitting, mentoring, juju, and garlic that turns Clayton Kershaw into a sap. Okay, that last one is an exaggeration, but Eckstein sounded like a total homer.

Cowherd, OTOH, probably has no actual convictions, and is just trying to increase earlobes and eyeballs, but if you think he actually believes anything coming out of his mouth, he thinks some mystical combination of "The Cardinal Way" (which is a literal paper document that gets passed out to minor league guys in this system about standard operating procedure), the lack of season-long national attention that you have in NY and LA and maybe Chicago, clutch hitting, lineup protection, "taking the extra base" whatever the heck that actually means, and ten other intangibles have combined to explain the Cardinals winning seven postseason series and a WC one-game in the last four years. Of course, when Lester is metaphorically hitting the Cardinals with a John Deere lawn tractor, we don't hear these arguments.

I would love to think that the team I root for has some special access to doing it better than almost all the other teams. But I'm ether smarter than or more skeptical than Colin Cowherd, and the data convinces me more.

Which gets me back to Kershaw. Eleven games is nothing. Exactly one play could have changed that game entirely, which was either one or two hitters before Adams, I forget. A line drive eluded the grasp of an an LAD infielder by about one inch. Two or two pointfive milimeters, seriously. Anyone running would have been out on a DP throw back to their base. But the ball gets to the outfield, and now poor Kershaw is the goat.

And I say all that as a fan of the team who won. I'd kill to have Kershaw on my team. Wainwright's on my team, and he's gotten his butt kicked in the postseason too. No one is throwing eleven games at him, because he has a ring, on a team on which he didn't pitch because he had Tommy John surgery before the season the team won the WS.

[throatybeard]

I'm a bigger fan of my own response to OF than I am of Duvall's, but in the time that it took me to write and proofread it (probably), I see that OF made another post that kind of doesn't tally, not at all, with statistical reality if you consider regular seasons.

Everyone forgets this, but Koufax was completely so-so for his first six years. In his own autobiography, which I read when I was in middle school, he admitted that his control was awful, early on. "Sandy Koufax" is the Koufax of his last six seasons, not his first six. Given sample size, comparing Kershaw to late Koufax while ignoring early Koufax is methodologically suspect, to say the least. Additionally, Koufax only made the post-season if his team went to the WS. He wasn't exposed to multiple rounds where you could run into an [allegedly] scrappy team like these Cardinals with [allegedly] weird awesome postseason magambo. All you had to do was beat the best regular season AL team a few times. During which he could not, by rule of math, have more than three starts.

Look, I'm not bagging on Koufax. That insufferable guy who is or used to be on the sports radio station in Raleigh, the guy who repeated himself constantly, not like Jim Rome, in a totally unfunny way because he had nothing else, Morgan something, he had a great segment about a dozen years ago, where he asked callers, if you were going to spend like $300 on a throwback jersey, who would it be? He let you have two guys, instead of one. I got on the air, and mine were Aaron and Koufax. I mentioned them as civil rights pioneers. Aaron is obvious; Koufax refused to pitch on Yom Kippur.

But Koufax wasn't even really "Koufax" the way people hold him up as an icon if you take the early half of his career into consideration. And it's totally unfair to compare Kershaw to the real Koufax, or even him of his last six seasons, given the differences in playoff format.

That has got to be the most time I've ever spent defending a guy my team just beat twice in a week.

[throatybeard]

Okay. Now I'm less convinced:

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2014/10/...ipping-pitches

That is a great analysis. I could go either way on that. Thanks for the link.

BTW, a propos of that frame-by-frame analysis, I contend that at least two strikes Yadier Molina framed last night weren't strikes by any reasonable measure, and I kind of have a Yadi jersey and I love it when Yadi frames balls as strikes, and I punch the air when he does it and it works. I'm biased and yet I'll still admit that Yadi's pitch-framing probably benefits the Cardinals. Balls and strikes have always a bit of an unscientific mess, for like a century and a half. The strike zone keeps, uh, let's say evolving. Volving? Changing, certainly. The horizontal shoebox Maddux and Glavine and Livan Hernandez hit three inches outside the plate (no one who doesn't hate the Braves remembers the last one) has gotten less horizontal and more vertical recently. I don't even blame the umpires, because they have to continually adjust to lower and higher levels of steroid abuse by hitters, and even pitchers, and wind, and their own heart conditions. What's important is that the umpire at home be consistent all night on a given night about the way he's going to call things. If he's calling strikes at the hitter's belt as balls while he's giving Maddux and Livan Hernandez the outside strike two inches off the plate, he needs to do that for both Maddux and Livan Hernandez all night. Plus, those guys threw out there because they couldn't get anything called a strike inside without plunking the hitter.

Your job as the hitter is to calibrate that stuff during the first two pitches. (Ironically, in comparison to my other arguments tonight, based on a low sample size). Or maybe you're first at bat in total. Note that the Cardinals couldn't do anything with Kershaw...until the seventh inning, when everyone had seen him twice. If you're the hitter, that's part of the cost of doing business, especially given that the league has done all sorts of idiotic things to suppress pitching and augment offense, like the lower mound, the DH, and the decade and a half of silently condoning PED abuse. If you're the batter, and the first "strike" you see happens to be three inches below your knee, and Yadi quickly pulls it up to your knee, it's your job to blast the next such pitch you see between third and short. Maybe not over the wall, but if you're good, you can make that into a single, and singles are very underrated.

Given the incentive structure the umpires and the league have created, it's also Yadi's job to frame that pitch. Shane Battier isn't a "flopper." He adapted to incentives created by people who had more power than he did. NCAA refs prior to maybe last year simply would not call a charge unless the defensive player fell down. They wouldn't. You had to go down.

In summary, I firmly stand by four positions I've taken in this thread.

1) Kershaw's legacy is not harmed by the events of the last week, unless you're being unreasonable. He's one of the best of the era, and post-season sample size is a silly way to evaluate him. Synellinden's linked evidence only strengthens that position. Maybe he missed during the rally on a couple, three pitches that would have changed everything. Like I said, if one hit is one inch lower last night, we're probably talking about Game Five between STL and LAD tomorrow night.

2) Kershaw's legacy is not negatively impacted by nefarious doings of the home plate umpire. Throw harder or curvier in whatever he thinks is the strike zone that day. And I say that as an outspoken advocate for pitchers rather than hitters.

3) The Cardinals have made the NCLS four straight years, but not for any quantifiable reason Colin Cowhered or David Eckstein think they can identify while chewing the rag.

4) I'm still very happy that the Cardinals somehow made it past this Kershaw Ninja four times in October. I'll take it.

[throatybeard]

Let me say one more thing tonight. You guys filled me with nostalgia, and I just plugged in the DVD of Game Six (2011), because I do that now and then anyway a lot, late at night. People in this town watch Game Six on DVD like it's the most titillating thing that ever happened. I have a young lady in my classes right now, and just I learned from word of mouth that she is an active, um, dancer in, like, what do you call these places, not strip clubs. But like, burlesque? I was curious about that, but I'm watching a three year old DVD of a baseball game because I sort of try to be a gentleman, and I love baseball.

Inches. David Freese's triple (who hits a triple, anyway?) in Game Six. Inches over Nelson Cruz's glove. Cruz makes that one catch, one, and no one is talking about the Cardinals being alleged chokers like Kershaw, now, three years later. The recent Cardinals would be the 1990s Braves. Actually, the 1990s Buffalo Bills. Make it all the time, don't' win. People, who tend to be nasty, still don't even give the Braves credit for that 1995 WS. They treat them like the 1990s Bills, not that the 1990s Bills should be treated like that.

Kershaw would have won last night but for one or two inches. These narratives are so disingenuous. They really are. One baseball goes one or two inches somewhere else, and then the whole story is different. People amaze me.

Now please excuse me. I have to watch the extra innings of Game Six one more time.

[YmoBeThere]

Let me say one more thing tonight. You guys filled me with nostalgia, and I just plugged in the DVD of Game Six (2011), because I do that now and then anyway a lot, late at night. People in this town watch Game Six on DVD like it's the most titillating thing that ever happened. I have a young lady in my classes right now, and just I learned from word of mouth that she is an active, um, dancer in, like, what do you call these places, not strip clubs. But like, burlesque? I was curious about that, but I'm watching a three year old DVD of a baseball game because I sort of try to be a gentleman, and I love baseball.

Inches. David Freese's triple (who hits a triple, anyway?) in Game Six. Inches over Nelson Cruz's glove. Cruz makes that one catch, one, and no one is talking about the Cardinals being alleged chokers like Kershaw, now, three years later. The recent Cardinals would be the 1990s Braves. Actually, the 1990s Buffalo Bills. Make it all the time, don't' win. People, who tend to be nasty, still don't even give the Braves credit for that 1995 WS. They treat them like the 1990s Bills, not that the 1990s Bills should be treated like that.

Kershaw would have won last night but for one or two inches. These narratives are so disingenuous. They really are. One baseball goes one or two inches somewhere else, and then the whole story is different. People amaze me.

Now please excuse me. I have to watch the extra innings of Game Six one more time.

Is the takeaway really meant to be burlesque versus baseball?

[throatybeard]

Is the takeaway really meant to be burlesque versus baseball?

The takeaway is meant to be that Clayton Kershaw is still really incredible, because eleven games in the sport of baseball is next to nothing in terms of sample size.

Additionally, I managed to refrain from looking at the young lady's Facebook pictures, though she has friended me.

Additionally, this boards software's spell check doesn't know that's a verb now, too.

[sagegrouse]

I'm curious how Nats fans view Harper's antics. I was fairly neutral rooting-wise for the Nats-Giants series, except that a Giants win meant home field advantage for the Cardinals in the NLCS.

Anyway, after looking at Harper's behavior post-home run yesterday, I think I dislike him every bit as much as Puig, and that takes some doing. Grow up.

Grow up is definitely part of it - he's only 21 so he gets a somewhat of a pass in my book for the occasional outbursts (like yelling at the ump in game 2), and in general he seems to be a well liked teammate, hard worker, and mostly professional in his approach to the game. I hope over time he does mature a little and cut down on the antics, but at the same time want him to keep playing with passion and emotion as aside from him and Gio it is a very laid back team - Werth, Laroche, Ramos, Desmond, both Zimmermans all seem fairly stoic, so the fire needs to come from someplace.

Is Bryce still the youngest player in the majors? There is no question in my mind that Bryce is an unusual character. I also believe Matt Williams made a huge mistake early this year in pulling him out of a game and publicly scolding him for failing to run out a ground ball. The upshot: he returned to the lineup and played like a madman -- not in a good way. His teammates after the benching told reporters privately that Harper was totally out of control. He then messed up his thumb in a too aggressive slide into 3B and, basically, without hand strength a slugger loses his power, so he lost not only time but also productivity after he returned. When he returned to the lineup, oh my, he announced he wanted to play CF, where Denard Span was doing pretty well already.

Bryce has now regained his power, and I think he will bat fourth next season instead of sixth, and perhaps that promotion will settle him down. And Jee-zuss! What's wrong with a little emotion in baseball, especially by a guy whose slugging percentage was 0.882 during the playoffs??

[JBDuke]

Is Bryce still the youngest player in the majors? ...

Nope. He was the youngest from his debut on April 28, 2012 until May 8, 2014 when the Rangers called up Rougned Odor, who is about fifteen months younger. (I may have missed a call-up last September that isn't on a roster now.) Several other call ups this year are also younger than Bryce. He's currently the fourth youngest on an NL roster (behind the Mets' Herrera, the Cubs' Baez, and the Cardinals' Tuivailala) and there are six AL players younger.