***Official Division Series other games thread***

[mr. tegu]

Discuss the other division series playoff games here. The game times are central times.

10/8
ALDS game 1 - TOR vs TEX, 2:37 pm, FS1

10/9
ALDS game 2 - TOR vs TEX, 11:45 am, MLBN
NLDS game 1 - STL vs CHC, 5:45 pm, TBS
NLDS game 1 - LAD vs NYM, 8:45 pm, TBS

10/10
NLDS game 2 - STL vs CHC, 4:37 pm, TBS
NLDS game 2 - LAD vs NYM, 8:07 pm, TBS

10/11
ALDS game 3 - TOR @ TEX, 7:10 pm, FS1

10/12
ALDS game 4 - TOR @ TEX, 3:07, FS1
NLDS game 3 - LAD @ NYM, 7:37, TBS
NLDS game 3 - STL @ CHC, 5:07, TBS

10/13
NLDS game 4 - STL @ CHC, 3:37 pm, TBS
NLDS game 4 - LAD @ NYM, 7:07 pm, TBS

10/14
ALDS game 5 - TOR vs TEX, 3:07 pm, FS1

10/15
NLDS game 5 - LAD vs NYM, 7:07 pm, TBS

[tk13]

I didn't realize Donaldson almost started a fight in extra innings over a quick pitch. Those nice sweet Jays that the punk Royals played dirty against. The Jays don't have an anger problem at all.

[Pablo]

Ferguson takes game one. Cool.

[KC_Connection]

Originally Posted by Hootie 2.0

I understand baseball ... I get it. The best team rarely wins the World Series. It's a totally different season once postseason hits ...

I just never bought into the Blue Jays hype. They are the very definition of a paper team. Easy to pick on shit pitching to bolster your HR numbers in hitter friendly parks in the regular season ... let's see what kind of BASEBALL team they are now that the stakes are at the highest.

The 2015 Jays have the 9th best wRC+ since 1960 in MLB. Awful baseball team, though.

You've let the hate blind any kind of rationality on this one.

[SPchief]

Originally Posted by tk13

I didn't realize Donaldson almost started a fight in extra innings over a quick pitch. Those nice sweet Jays that the punk Royals played dirty against. The Jays don't have an anger problem at all.

It was hysterical. Yelling at the pitcher after **** you **** you

[tk13]

I almost expect the Cardinals to rock Arrieta, because Cardinals. That's just the kind of nonsensical thing they do in the playoffs.

[KC_Connection]

Odor was almost certainly out, but when your replay system is built around the presumption that the umpire's call was right, it can be hard to overcome it. In this case, that original call and the presumption could very well have cost the Jays this game (and their season?).

As for this play itself: it doesn’t seem like you can know anything for a fact. What the umpires seemingly didn’t have was a clear angle showing Tulowitzki’s glove on Odor’s leg, with space visible between Odor’s cleat and the base. That would be conclusive, but this review asked the umpires instead to infer. They had to figure out what the other side of the base looked like, based on the action of Odor’s lower leg when he slid. My guess is they couldn’t rule out the possibility that Odor had a spike on the base. So they stuck with the original call, not seeing enough evidence to go the other way. Me, I think there’s enough evidence, and I also think that, had Odor been originally called out on the field, the umpires would’ve stuck with that after review. I think they just wound up in that horrible gray area, and then psychology kicked in. Odor was probably out, but the original call is powerful. In theory, at least in my ideal world, replay reviews should result in calls based on the preponderance of the evidence. In reality, it seems like that’s not what we see.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/rougn...nstant-replay/

[WilliamTheIrish]

Originally Posted by SPchief

It was hysterical. Yelling at the pitcher after **** you **** you

Keep in mind, that was after a ball that Donalson hit a mile. But foul. The camera is right on him yelling "**** you, **** you"!!!! to the pitcher.

What a clown.

[Hootie]

Originally Posted by tk13

I almost expect the Cardinals to rock Arrieta, because Cardinals. That's just the kind of nonsensical thing they do in the playoffs.

While I see what you're saying, no one is touching that guy. He's ****ing unhittable

[KC_Connection]

Originally Posted by tk13

Jays also lost Brett Cecil today, one of their best relievers. Torn calf muscle, out for the postseason.

Their best reliever. Such is the luck of Toronto sports.

[Hootie]

Originally Posted by KC_Connection

The 2015 Jays have the 9th best wRC+ since 1960 in MLB. Awful baseball team, though.

You've let the hate blind any kind of rationality on this one.

It was driven purely by offensive numbers and home runs ... Awesome against regular season opponents half checked out / not so awesome against playoff competition.

Evidence : every year in the playoffs

[tk13]

Kershaw vs. DeGrom about to start. Could be a lot of wind produced at home plate this evening.

[WilliamTheIrish]

Originally Posted by KC_Connection

Their best reliever. Such is the luck of Toronto sports.

I didn't see how he was injured. Pushing off on the mound?

[mr. tegu]

Video of that Toronto play at second base is in the link.

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/153861...-plays-in-14th

[tk13]

Originally Posted by WilliamTheIrish

I didn't see how he was injured. Pushing off on the mound?

Hurt on a rundown.

[KC_Connection]

Originally Posted by Hootie 2.0

It was driven purely by offensive numbers and home runs ... Awesome against regular season opponents half checked out / not so awesome against playoff competition.

Evidence : every year in the playoffs

You've really got to stop talking about a sport you know nothing about (or at least stop repeating ridiculous myths while you do it).

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/ml...ths-to-ignore/

Myth: In the Land of Decreased Scoring, Small Ball Is King

Frustrated by the oft-repeated claim that the 2005 world champion White Sox won because manager Ozzie Guillen was a master of small ball, BP’s Joe Sheehan concocted a stat to capture the club’s true reliance on big-ball tactics: the Guillen Number, which tells us the percentage of a team’s runs that came via the homer. It confirmed that the ’05 Sox, who ranked fourth in the majors that season at 42.4 percent, weren’t limited to the little things.

For a few reasons — colder weather, better defense, and a more selective pool of pitchers — scoring decreases in the playoffs. It’s a common misconception that to succeed in that low-offense environment, teams need to play more small ball, because when runs are more scarce, hitters have to try harder to “manufacture” them. In 2012, I looked into what happens to home-run-oriented teams in the playoffs, prompted by then-broadcaster Terry Francona’s comments that “as you get towards playoff time, it’s harder to win that way.” I found that Francona was wrong: While all lineups tended to score less often in the playoffs, the ones that lived and died by the long ball from 1995 to 2011 lost a lower percentage of their regular-season scoring than the clubs that couldn’t sit back and wait for the big blow.

Here’s a comparison between the teams in the top and bottom halves of the Guillen Number leaderboard from 1995 to 2013:

Teams Avg. Guillen Number Reg. Season R/G Playoff R/G Decrease
More Reliant on HR 40.1 5.12 3.97 -22.4%
Less Reliant on HR 33.0 4.93 3.62 -26.5%

The lesson is the same as it was in 2012: Not only do teams that rely more heavily on home runs score more often during the regular season, they also retain a bigger chunk of their offensive ability in October. That makes sense, because against a good defense, there’s value in keeping the ball out of play. A power-driven team that tried to switch to a small-ball approach in the playoffs would be throwing good outs after bad.

This year’s ripest targets for the home run reliance fallacy are the Orioles, who have the highest Guillen Number in the majors in 2014 (48.1 percent) and the second-highest of any playoff team in the wild-card era (behind the 2012 Yankees). “I’m probably stating the obvious here, but the Orioles are too reliant on the home run and they need more variety from their offense,” MASN’s Steve Melewski wrote on Tuesday. “Reliance on home runs has traditionally been a formula for failure in the playoffs,” the Carroll County Times asserted last week. While the Orioles would benefit from a higher walk rate (at 6.5 percent, theirs is the third-lowest in the league), their second-best Isolated Power makes up for much of that impatience. The approach Baltimore has employed so far won’t work less well when the calendar turns to October.

In 2012, Carleton tackled a related playoff myth: that “three true outcomes”–heavy hitters — those who walk, strike out, and hit home runs often — are at a disadvantage in October. He found that those batters’ TTO tendencies grow more pronounced in the playoffs — they walk and go yard even more often — and that overall, they become slightly more productive. This year’s presumptive playoff teams’ TTO rates range from the Nationals (31.8 percent of their plate appearances) to the slap-hitting Royals, who are last in the league (24.0 percent). Carleton’s findings suggest that the Royals’ extreme contact tendencies don’t necessarily give them a playoff edge over more deliberate lineups.