MLB 2022: The Long and Winding Thread

No doubt, but sometimes the hyperbole gets to be a bit much. Also, it isn't just the 62 home runs that work in Judge's favor. He plays the field every day and plays it very well. Ohtani is only a DH on the days he doesn't pitch.

 

Hell is too good for some people.

 

One of my favorite fluky races (it was 1987, hitters ruled, no one flirted w/20 wins) that got 100x stranger just by looking at the balloting on Baseball-Reference:

Bedrosian 57 votes: Led the league with 40 saves for a team that finished 80-82. Great season but WTF.
Rick Sutcliffe 55 votes: Led the league with 18 wins but had a 3.68 ERA and 1.39 WHIP for the last-place Cubs, who came this close to sweeping the MVP & Cy. Again, WTF.
Rick Reuschel 54 votes: Led or shared the league lead with a 1.10 WHIP, 12 complete games and four shutouts and helped the Giants win the NL West following his mid-season acquisition, all while being 38 years, throwing roughly 82 mph and looking like the foreman at the local factory who regularly bowled 300s and hand-delivered to the local paper the hand-written results from his league. Should have won for this alone.
Orel Hershiser 14 votes: Went 16-16 but led the league with 264 2/3 innings pitched and finished with a 3.06 ERA. He did this in the year he turned 29 so I'll just assume this was the best season of his career.
Dwight Gooden 12 votes: Missed the first two months of the season for a team that finished three games out of first. Was pretty good after that (15-7. 3.21 ERA in 25 starts) but not nearly the Doc of old (only 148 strikeouts in 179 2/3 innings), whom we'd never see again despite Doc being only 22. I guess even in 1987, people were yearning to see that again. If any Mets pitcher should have gotten votes, it was Terry Leach.
Nolan Ryan 12 votes: Would love to see how he'd fare with this type of season in the modern era. Led the league in ERA (2.76) and strikeouts (270), so nobody was better at run prevention. But he went 8-16. I remember people being surprised he even placed in the balloting in real time. I bet he'd win the thing today.
Mike Scott 9 votes: Led the league in starts (36) but was otherwise not nearly as dominant as he was in winning the Cy Young the year before. Legacy votes, apparently.
Bob Welch 3 votes: Ending with the wackiest tale of all. Welch was really solid (15-9, 3.22 ERA, 1.15 WHIP with four shutouts, tying him for the league lead) over 35 starts and 251 1/3 innings for the 89-loss Dodgers. But he led NL pitchers in WAR with 7.1--which was more than two times as high as the WAR he posted in 1990, when he rolled to the AL Cy Young with 27 wins and 2.9 in WAR even though Roger Clemens had an ERA more than a run lower (1.93 to 2.95) and a WAR of 10.4. Ten point fucking four! That was 1.6 more WAR than he accumulated in winning the Cy Young & MVP in 1986. Obviously, Welch's peripheral numbers were obviously far superior in 1987, especially his K/9 (7.0-4.8) and K/BB ratio (2.28-1.65). And back then, everybody probably thought his 1990 season was the much better one.

 

Back when Girardi got fired, I really thought there was a good chance Leyland would end up in the Phillies' dugout next year.

 

Are teams doing more "contact hitting" in the post-season rather than the "one-true outcome" stuff that seems to be the rage in the regular season? The games have been a lot more exciting, bloop hits etc. more contact. It's almost like the GMs have turned the teams back over to the managers in the post-season. I just don't understand why they don't do it in the regular season, other than the GMs "want" the control then, but realize a seven game series (or less) provide too small of a sample size for analytics to be fruitful.

 

Get him on the next train to KC.
I’d take him in a heartbeat.

 

Interesting hire. Great track record of success but is 67 and out of baseball for 3 years.
I wonder if the Angels kicked the tires on him?

 

I don’t think the Angels kicked any tires. With a new owner coming, they hired the interim Nevin, who was meh as a manager, but there is no long term commitment.

 

Boy, that Phillies-Padres series sure has gripped this board! As an involved fan, let me just say this: Rooting for a poor fielding team in the playoffs is very stressful. Baseball sure gets more exciting when you take the phrase "routine grounder" out of play.

 

FTR, the GOAT Halloween costume will always be this:

 

BYH-
I thought Reuschel should have won it that year, and he kept having good years after that too.

 

It's always possible he's lost it, but his Giants exit seemed to be a mutual divorce...a new regime was coming in and rebuilding and he wasn't going to fit there. He also had a couple heart issues but he's definitely not the first coach/manager type to take a couple years off, recharge and hopefully get a little healthier. Bill Parcells was doing that in his 40s, for goodness sakes. Bochy never ruled out managing again. Still young enough to give it one more go.