OK, well, I watched every minute of the baseball quadruple-header on Friday. Here are a few rambling thoughts:
ESPN: Please get rid of that stupid ticker
There are so many things that ESPN does better than anyone — but giving big games that extra gravitas is simply not one of them. We often talk here about how certain announcers through the years make a game feel important with their presence and voices. You hear Al Michaels calling a football game, you hear Jim Nantz say “Welcome friends,” at the Masters, you hear Mike Breen shout out “Bang!” at an NBA game and you just know: Oh, wow, this one matters.
And, oh, by the way, Dick Vitale used to inspire that feeling at ESPN. John McEnroe inspires that feeling at big tennis matches. ESPN’s College Gameday crew does make a game feel special.
But it isn’t just announcers who inspire that feeling. It’s also the television production. And everything about the way ESPN directed and produced the baseball games on Friday night gave an “Oh yeah, this is just another baseball game,” vibe. There are numerous reasons I can give, but let’s stick with that damn ticker. It rumbled and bleeped all day, repeating the same information over and over again, telling us incessantly how the Mets had blown a 10 1/2-game lead and how the Chiefs and Raiders are playing Monday night and other pointless information that had nothing at all to do with the game on the screen that was supposed to be the most important thing happening in sports.
Please turn that thing off for the playoffs. Please?
Cleveland 2, Tampa Bay 1
What a magnificent game. These are two super-likable teams, and you had a brilliant pitching matchup between Shane McClanahan and Shane Bieber, they each went seven marvelous innings, one terrific reliever came in for each team, and you had the perfect hero in Cleveland’s José Ramírez. Wonderful all the way around.
This game had what too few baseball games seem to have — it had a pulse, it had energy, it had an urgency. The game lasted 2:17, and by time, yes, that was the quickest postseason game this century. But, as usual, game time only tells the tiniest part of the story — it was the pace of the game, the rhythm of the game, the way each pitch mattered. When people used to say, “I love great pitchers’ duels,” this is exactly what they were talking about. And we almost never see them anymore.
By the way, this game went 2:17 even though there was a pretty significant delay in the middle when umpires broke down the video to see if Amed Rosario missed second base on Ramirez’s game-winning home run. He kind of danced around the bag while waiting to see if the ball would leave the yard.
Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash challenged, and even though that seems kind of petty, I totally do not blame him, I mean, rules are rules. One of the most famous plays in baseball history is known as Merkle’s Boner, where a rookie named Fred Merkle simply forgot to go to second base on what should have been a walk-off hit. Fans poured on the field, it was mayhem, but when Cubs second baseman Johnny Evers saw that Merkle had not gone to second he got the ball (which might have been thrown into the crowd) and touched second base, completing the forceout of Merkle.
Anyway, as far as the video review goes:
It seems from the video that Rosario did not miss the bag. It’s impossible to tell for sure, but from the angles provided, it looks to me like he touched second with his left foot. Rosario says he touched it.
There is, however, some circumstantial evidence — he looks back dubiously after rounding second, as if thinking: “Hey, did I get second base?” But he didn’t go back to touch it, which either means he remembered, “Oh yeah, I got it,” or he thought, “Nah, going back would be too embarrassing.”
Either way, the two-run homer stood and the game was awesome.
Philadelphia 6, St. Louis 3
Have you seen that they’re making some sort of horror/slasher movie based on The Grinch? They’re calling it “A Mean One.” Seriously, the world is broken.
In any case, I don’t want to come off like the more wholesome Grinch but … I thought from the very start that the Cardinals got a little bit too lost in sentiment Friday afternoon. We as baseball fans have reveled in and relished this incredible Albert Pujols season. And while some of us may poke fun at Cardinals fans for their over-the-top love for Yadier Molina, I think we can appreciate what a remarkable player Yadi has been over the years.
But that doesn’t mean that when the playoffs come around you hit Pujols second in the lineup against a tough righty and start Molina at catcher.
Of course, it could have worked out. Pujols was scorching hot the last couple of months. Molina can still have a moment or two. But hope is not a plan and Disney movies are not what you watch for game preparation. Pujols went 0-for-4 and hit into a ludicrously easy double play with runners on first and second in the sixth inning — Pujols, these days, is so slow that for a minute there it looked like Phillies’ second baseman Jean Segura might step on second and then simply run to first and beat Pujols to the bag.
Molina also went 0-for-4, with two strikeouts, including a painful one for the final out when he represented the tying run. He looked entirely overmatched.
Look, this is the no-BS zone, so we have to say that it might not have been any different if the Cardinals had rearranged the lineup … and it’s possible that Pujols and Molina will be the heroes today. But, I don’t know, it just seemed to me like the Cardinals were playing the hope game.
As for the Phillies, that was one crazy ninth-inning comeback aided by a Cardinals meltdown. You had two walks, a hit batter, and two defensive plays that were not made by defensive wonders Tommy Edman and Nolan Arenado. This was not the way you would expect the Phillies to win a baseball game; they did not homer. They went 16-35 this season in games when they did not homer, which was actually not as bad as I was expecting.
By the way, this game was sort of the opposite of the Cleveland game in that even though both starters were good, it just lacked a rhythm and flow. Everything just seemed to move like it was underwater. It shouldn’t have taken 3:27 to play, but again, beyond the length of game, it just meandered and stalled all afternoon.
Seattle 4, Toronto 0
I don’t know how many times you watched the Seattle Mariners play this season … but can we talk for a minute about Luis Castillo? Well, before we do that, can we talk about how many Luis Castillos there are in baseball? There’s a rookie pitcher in Detroit named Luis Castillo. There was the terrific second baseman Luis Castillo, who twice led the league in steals and ended up with almost 1,900 hits and three Gold Gloves.
This is the Luis Castillo who was quietly a very good pitcher in Cincinnati and quietly came over to the Mariners at the trade deadline.
He is ridiculous. He’s got four lights-out pitches and what ESPN’s Jessica Mendoza called wiffleball movement. He’s one of those pitchers you watch and think, “How does anybody ever get a hit off him?”
And he was only the second-most impressive Mariners pitcher Friday afternoon.
That’s because he was relieved by a 23-year-old from Mexico named Andrés Muñoz … and let’s just say that Muñoz is like some sort of Terminator sent from the future. He throws 103 mph. And he throws a slider that the best hitters in the world swing and miss at more than half the time. That’s all he throws because that’s all you need to throw — if you can throw 103 mph and also throw a slider that disintegrates on the way to the plate, there’s no imperative to develop another pitch.
The Blue Jays have a really good lineup — like a REALLY good lineup — and those two Mariners pitchers made them look utterly helpless.
As for the Mariners’ offense … well, I don’t like to brag, but in my No-BS Playoff Preview, I did write this:
One fun thing you might keep an eye on — (Alek) Manoah hit the most batters in the league for the second consecutive year. He does like to throw inside. And the Mariners were hit by pitches more than any other team in the league.
Well, sure enough, Manoah hit two batters — actually, he hit Julio Rodriguez twice — and both times that run came around to score. The big blow was by Seattle folk hero Cal Raleigh, who homered in the first inning and last week hit a walk-off homer to clinch the Mariners’ spot in the playoffs. I think Raleigh is clearly among the 10 most beloved Seattle people — along with, I don’t know, Ken Griffey Jr., Ichiro, Eddie Vedder, Jim Zorn, Greg the Hammer Valentine, Macklemore, Jean Smart, help me out here, Seattle folks.
San Diego 7, New York Mets 1
Oh, Mets fans … I’m so, so sorry. This had to be so hard to watch and so predictable all at the same time. As our pal Eric Gilde tweeted:
These Mets. It seems pretty clear to me there’s something physically wrong with Max Scherzer — the guy was throwing batting practice out there. He allowed four home runs, three of them titanic blasts, and walked off the field to boos. It’s funny, my first thought as they booed Scherzer coming off the field was, “Come on, you don’t boo Max Scherzer! He’s one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history!”
But — and I say this even though I’m no fan of booing — you know what? I get it. The Mets paid Scherzer a bajillion dollars with one idea in mind: He would be the difference maker for this team. And when he was healthy this season, he was a difference maker, especially through mid-August. In all, the team went 14-9 in his starts, he had a 2.29 ERA, 173 Ks in 145 innings, etc.
But when the Mets needed to beat Atlanta in the final week, let’s be honest, he came up pretty small. And Friday night, he was awful. Yes, I do believe he’s hurt, but I cannot blame fans who invested so much hope in Scherzer for feeling let down. Mets fans already have so many scars. Today they’re going to rely on another wounded superhero, starter Jacob deGrom, who is unhittable if he is anywhere close to his best, but has struggled terribly the last month or so. It’s so tough being a Mets fan.
Yu Darvish was terrific for the Padres, which was nice to see — five years ago, we watched Darvish get utterly devoured by the Houston Astros in the World Series. It was so strange, almost like the Astros batters knew exactly what pitches were coming.
The Padres are going to start Blake Snell today, and this will be Snell’s first postseason start since THAT GAME in 2020 when he utterly overpowered the Dodgers for 5 1/3 innings — nine Ks, they couldn’t touch him — and then allowed a single and got pulled by manager Kevin Cash because that’s how the Tampa Bay Rays rolled. Cash brought in middle reliever Nick Anderson, who gave up the game.
All right! Let’s play some more ball!
In addition to the dumb ticker, let's not forget the "Wild Card" emblem in the upper right corner. Really?
Not a big deal, but I was confused for a sec. You have Cleveland playing Toronto in the headline.