2016 MLB Postseason Thread

The '03 postseason remains the gold standard for me, at least in recent memory. No doubt 1986 was fantastic, but 2003 to me was vindication.

A lot of people were bashing the game, saying baseball was a dying sport. Then came a crazy postseason. I went to two Twins-Yankees games that year in Minneapolis, but all around was chaos. The Marlins took out the Giants and the Cubs beat the favored Braves.

Then the Yankees-Red Sox went seven and had the famous fight with Pedro and Don Zimmer. The Cubs-Marlins? Ya. Bartman.

Both the ALCS and NLCS went seven games. The networks were forced to substitute repeats of Friends and CSI on NBC and CBS because they expected 25-30 million viewers for the last game.

The cover of SI around spring training read "Baseball's Back!" as if the game had staged a comeback. I couldn't resist and e-mailed SI to say "I'm glad you think it's back. Some of us thought it never left!"

 

I'm in the eye of the storm, so there's probably some bias at work here, but I do feel like everything changes for baseball when the Cubs are involved in the postseason. Even moreso than the Yankees or Red Sox at this point. The Cubs move the needle. I don't know if they will continue to, to this degree, if they finally win it this year or in a subsequent year. Personally, I'd like to keep the drama going for a while.

 

Yep, but the Red Sox used to be the same way before they finally won it. The Cubs had a couple of near misses in the LCS (1984, 2003), but the Red Sox had them in the WORLD SERIES (1967, 1975, 1986) and had them against the Yankees (1978, 2003).

Plus, the Red Sox had all the tweedy Northeastern types writing about them all the time.

 

If Cubs fans become what Red Sox fans have, it's going to be a sad world.

 

They will.

 

@RickStain if I recall correctly (and I think I do), you were opposed to the Epstein strategy to basically bottom out in the early 2010s to get to where they are now. I believe you thought that they should have remained competitive and rebuilt at the same time, or at least believed that was possible.

Do you still agree with that? (I'm not trolling you. I'm genuinely interested.)

 

I was going to ask this as well. It seemed strange to me as I thought Rick would have been in agreement with Epstein.

 

I still think tanking was a suboptimal strategy based more on personal preferences than the needs of the franchise at the time. And sometimes that narrative is a bit overblown. They spent $100m on free agents in the offseason after his first year. They were trying to at least take a shot at fringe competitiveness, they just whiffed on some of their bets and weren't afraid to blow it up at the deadline.

But when you can develop young talent at the rate they have, it overwhelms piddling issues like optimality. Granted I've been burned on Patterson and Juan Cruzes, but a 50% bust rate on these top prospects should have been expected. Rizzo, Bryant, Russell, Baez, Contreras, Hendricks, Edwards, Almora, and Soler are all at least average MLB contributors, against the lone bust of Arismendy Alcántara. There just isn't much precedent for a top prospect hit rate like that.

I'm also really blown away by their angle-shooting. Every little thing that a stathead says a team could gain a few runs a year out of, they do well and a bunch more I never would have thought of. I've never seen a manager who could squeeze value out of bench players and manage wear on a pitching staff like Maddon does.

Only two things stand in their way now. One is the variance of the playoffs. I sometimes like to needle my Cubs fans friends by pointing out he is still behind Hendry in NLCS game wins. One of the best sustained teams of my lifetime is the 1990s Indians and they came up empty, it could happen here.

The other is the ultimate equalizer: pitching. You need a constant supply of it in baseball, and they don't have an overwhelming number of arms in the high minors.

They've made up for it by having huge hits on third-tier trade targets like Arrieta and Hendricks, and an ungodly health record (their last starting pitcher with a major arm injury was Garza in 2012. The Mets can't make it four weeks, let alone four years). But it really isn't hard to imagine a year or two in the next few where injuries and whiffs pile up on that side and they win 83 games or something.

 

The good thing is that they all only pitch like 170 innings.

 

Best starting pitcher on the 1990s Indians was Charles Nagy.

 

The Giants already get a lot of games out of him with 1b and DH. A switch would be more about stress.

The Red Sox lost game 7 in 1946, lost a playoff game in '48, and lost on the last day of the season in '49. Then pretty much sucked for the rest of Ted Williams' career because of no pitching.

 

And no black people.