13 November 2017

No More Third Time Through

Remember how crazy it was in the World Series when Rich Hill was pulled after 4 1/3 shutout innings?

The Dodgers had established a policy on Hill never to let him see the opposing order a third time. Previous experience suggested that he fared significantly worse when batters started to size him up.

Of course, that put an awful strain on the bullpen and maybe prevented Dave Roberts from yanking Yu Darvish in Game 7 after five pitches. We'll never know.

What we do know is this: most pitchers suffer this effect. 

There is a lot of justification for going to the pen the third time through when many starters are on the mound.

In other words, get used to it. 

The revolution in pitching is already underway, so it wouldn't be surprising to see teams double-up on starters. Starter A goes 18 batters, starter B goes 18 batters and the bullpen cleans up if there's anything left. Fewer LOOGYs and more long relievers/short starters. 

Or maybe it won't be fewer LOOGYs; it will be fewer backup catchers. Teams will continue to value defensive flexibility, making the Evan Gattises of the world more valuable as double-backup catchers, thereby allowing for yet another arm.

In any case, if you thought baseball as you knew it was nothing like 2017, wait 'til 2018.

12 November 2017

Nothing Has Changed for the Mets

Before the 2017 season started, I noted that the Mets had the widest array of possible outcomes in 2017 of any team in baseball. 

I mean, no one was projecting the Padres to win their division, or the Indians to finish last. We knew more or less what the Reds were, and the Twins too. And while we missed by a mile on the Twins, they still won only 85 games, not 95. That would have shocked us more than passage of a coherent tax code.

But the Mets, they were such a wild card. They had the most intriguing starting staff in baseball, six deep, but their health was a major question. They had some real assets at the plate, to the point where all the talk in Spring Training was which valuable outfielder was going to sit on the bench.

But they also had a suspect bullpen, a dearth of team speed and a pile of iron gloves. And then, the arms all fell off, Matt Harvey's psyche imploded, Cespedes got hurt again and the Mets were mathematically eliminated by the trade deadline (if you use that new math.)

So now what for 2018? With the late season sell-off, the roster is holier than the Pope and the rotation is a big guess. The young players mostly haven't panned out -- but still could. There's even uncertainty at the skipper's post. The one constant -- David Wright -- doesn't move the needle on the field in either direction.

There are plenty of bad teams in baseball, but few worse owners than the Wilpons or worse training staffs than the Mets, evidently. Sandy Alderson will be severely tested this off-season.

The bottom line, at least this early in the process, is that the Mets are right back where they were -- a total wild card. If the starting rotation gets healthy, Conforto and Cespedes can play, a couple of useful free agents join the team and hell doesn't break loose in Queens, they could challenge the Nats for the division. 

If none of that comes to pass, well, the Phillies are getting better and may not be there to cushion the fall.

02 November 2017

The Worst of Baseball on Display in Game 7

It breaks my heart to observe it...but that was an awful game.

Game 7 of a great World Series wasn't just devoid of drama, it was a showcase of why baseball is turning off a lot of people. 

Talk about pace of play, this game loses a footrace to a sloth, a snail and Brian McCann.

The bottom of the 5th inning, in which Houston twice replaced the pitcher, and the catcher instigated roughly 11 visits to the mound, an inning that featured two hit batsmen but not a single run -- that half inning alone obliterated a half hour of your life. You can never get it back.

Ah, but it was heaven for advertisers. For that half inning alone, including just prior and just after the frame, you were subjected to twelve 30-second ads, not including all the announcer reads and the lovely innovation of short in-frame spots during lulls in the play.

Not to be outdone, the 6th inning, top and bottom, wasted away another half hour of your life. No pitchers were removed mid-inning and only one run scored. 

There were 284 pitches thrown in a game that produced just six runs, two of them on a single swing. Lance McCullers recorded seven outs, held L.A. scoreless and needed 49 pitches.

Y-a-w-n.

I mean that literally: the game was nearly three hours old with a third of the way to go. 

I went to bed. In the middle of Game 7 of the World Series. I have never done that before.

I would have stayed up all night to see the World Series play out. But it wasn't playing out; it was droning on, withering before our eyes. This was basically a series of advertisements punctuated by mound conferences. 

Evidently I didn't miss a thing. The combined 14 innings of one-run ball pitched by the two teams' "relievers" would have been exciting to start the game, but with the score already 5-0 it was a snoozefest. So I decided to snooze for real.

There is plenty of time in the off-season for deeper thoughts on the underlying causes of this and how bad it is for baseball. I've long advocated for a rule preventing a pitching change if the pitcher on the mound hasn't yielded a run in that frame. But this isn't the time for that.

It should be the time to celebrate the Astros and their first World Championship in 56 years of existence. It's exhilarating to see a team dogpile in ecstasy at the conclusion.

But I was deep into REM sleep by then.