2021 MLB Regular Season thread

16! With three runs in the 8th and 9th.

 

Fucking Cardinals just won’t lose. Rally in the ninth and hold off Cubbies for 16th straight. Magic number down to 1.

 

Cardinal game could have turned on one of the most egregious bad calls I’ve ever seen. Infield fly called as ball drops for second out in ninth. Runners advance, runner tagged out, game over … except the second base umpire called time. Could have been an Armando Galarraga/Jim Joyce-leve historic fuckup if Gallegos hadn’t struck out Happ. Just horrendous umpiring, perhaps the worst I’ve seen.

 

Rockies hadn’t been swept at home all year and Giants just completed their second sweep in Colorado this month. Up two with six to play and Arizona coming to town.

Edit: shoot. Mixed up magic number with games left. Fixed.

 

I get the sentiment but it's not their fault they are in the same division with the two best records overall, not just the NL, and the expectations for a 60-game sample were probably way overblown. The fact that they are likely going to have their first winning record in a full season in a decade should count for something

 

This is the 5th time since 1969 that a 100-win team won't win the division.

These teams won 100 games ... and finished 2nd

 

I thought it happened in 2019 but that year there nearly every division winner had 100 and the closest second place was 96 wins. But that’s a fantastic pull.

 

Thanks in large part to the Orioles, four American League East teams will win 90 or more games. This will be the first year that four teams in any division will win 90 or more since the AL East had four 90-game winners in its seven-team membership in 1978. In other words this is the first time since the reformation of the divisional structure for the 1994 season, which created divisions of no more than five teams, that a division will have four teams at or above 90.

 

I get wanting to beat the shift, but having a red-hot power hitter try to bunt in Coors Field might not be the best idea. It worked out very badly for the Giants when Brandon Belt took a 93-MPH fastball to the hand. The Giants chose to wait until they got home today to do the X-rays, but that could be a killer injury a week before the playoffs.

 

Benches clear in Detroit, over pretty much nothing