There’s Crying In Baseball
It’s OCTOBER ladies and gentlemen, and while to me that means scoping out the latest and greatest in pumpkin innovation at my local trader joe’s, to the TRUE AMERICANS (white men whose fathers chose to throw a ball rather than teach them emotional intelligence) out there it means it is time for the World Series. Why is it called the world series if baseball happens, and is popular, and is maybe even better, in other countries? Take that up with the bossman, it’s above my pay grade. As real fans of the blog will know, your girls are not baseball fans. We do not know who Babe Ruth is. I couldn’t tell you where the shortstop is supposed to be on the field. The pitch? The diamond? I honestly know more about curling than I do about baseball. HOWEVER, we’ve promised to be there for you, to gently guide you into the sports world, and in today’s gosh darn climate I hate to break it to you but people will be talking about baseball. So let’s cover it.
The MLB Playoff Structure
Baseball is unique in that, unlike every other sport, they’ve actually been trying to keep their playoffs boring. I kid! But really, they like keeping it a cute little exclusive club. This isn’t the NFL, where all but 2 teams (this is what it feels like to me) are headed to the playoffs. This isn’t the NBA, where they’re so worried about teams tanking that they’ve made shit up like the Play In Tournament. It is arguably comparable to the NHL, where 50% of the time you get what you expected and 50% of the time it goes crazy and 100% it’s some of the best play you’ve seen all year. It goes like this: Baseball has 2 conferences, the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). There are some notable variations between the two (which also differentiates MLB from other american sports), like a whole Designated Hitter thing and a home run record holder thing but, tbh, it’s not really important right now. In each of those there is the additional division into EAST, CENTRAL, and WEST. Three categories??? Why!!! Three is one of the worst math numbers!!!! Anyway from there each League gets 2 Wild Card spots, 2 Medium teams, and 2 Top ranked teams who get a bye from the first round. This is familiar territory, EXCEPT for the fact that the Wild Card round is a Best of 3 series (played exclusively on the higher ranking team’s turf, on back to back to back days), the Division Series (second round) is a Best of 5 Series, and the World Series is a best of 7 series. Katrina will tell you the whole Best Of Series thing is bullshit, and in a way I agree, BUT if you’re going to do it I think this whole Escalating the Number of Games strategy is fun.
The Wild Card Rounds
Let me just say, you’re doing great so far. Now, let’s talk about some Wild Cards. The biggest and brightest star here is Seattle, who qualified for the Playoffs by the skin of their gosh dang teeth for the first time in A MILLION YEARS. Ok actually it was 21, but that is a long damn time! As mentioned, the Wild Card rounds are RAPID FIRE NO BREAKS, (tbh say what you will about baseball, they have way more games than everyone else I think, and they’re not afraid to work 2 days in a row, or sometimes 2 times in one day!), so for a team that feels like their opponent ain’t a tough one, there’s an important rest-your-pitchers strategy to consider. Actually there’s kinda always a resting your pitchers strategy to consider, that’s kinda like the MAIN part of baseball. People will try to tell you it’s about scoring points, but if you’ve ever watched/been to a game you know that’s not true! Especially in this era of baseball (home runs are lower on average, probably because people aren’t allowed to do steroids anymore). I digress! The wild card match ups were as follows:
Seattle Mariners vs Toronto Blue Jays
Sweethearts of the Playoffs swept the pundit favorite in Toronto, which is a little surprising (the Jays are good!), but very indicative of the kind of momentum the Mariners bring into this playoff season. Could they win it all? No probably not, but they’re here!
Cleveland Guardians vs Tampa Bay Rays
Dubbed as the most boring wild card match up ahead of the games, Cleveland is a vanilla team from a gray midwestern city and though the Rays should have been better than they were, we’re not sad to see them go.
Philadelphia Phillies vs St. Louis Cardinals
I know enough to know neither of these teams should be in the playoffs, so I couldn’t care too much about who wins or who goes home, other than the fact that I do fear the Phillie Phanatic (that mascot is no doubt a cold blooded killer), so I guess cheers to philly!
San Diego Padres vs New York Mets
Someone should have taught New York the Heimlich, because these boys CHOKED SO HARD. You might have heard the Mets were good this year, which was true mostly, but they fell off a little midseason (baseball season is long! many of their players got injured! it’s tough out there!), and got swept by BOTH the Cubs and the Braves in late season series, so here they are in a wild card round they shouldn’t have gotten themselves into (arguably this is just as much of the Mets messing up as it was the Braves going straight GOBLIN MODE on the second half of the season and doing a crazy run and sealing themselves the first round bye, but that’s not what Met history will remember). And then they came out here and LOST THE FIRST GAME MISERABLY. Me, personally, I predicted this (because I am a tactical genius who went to 1 (one) Mets game this year, and it was against the padres, and guess what they lost and that was BEFORE the padres added Juan Soto). Not much to say about the overall performance that could be summed up better than this:
Division Series Round (ALDS, NLDS)
Atlanta Braves vs Philadelphia Phillies
Many reasons not to like the Braves (personally I don’t think you should get to win 2 World Series’ in a row, they’re a rival of our dear Mets, they do a racist tomahawk chop chant at their games, their name is literally the Braves, etc etc), but the first game here was a THRILLER. The Phillies came out to a CRAZY strong lead (7-1), and then let ATL slowly chip it away until the end became a real nail biter. Had they known what would happen to the Mariners, they’d probably be sweating even more, but they snuck a win in.
Houston Astros vs Seattle Mariners
The Astros cheated once and it’s all anyone will ever remember! They’re the Chicago Black Sox of our time! They also still manage to be good without cheating, which is always frustrating imho. We’re supportive of Seattle on this blog because we want everyone to get chances to win! Sadly that’s not the way the world works. Seattle led for the ENTIRE GAME until the bottom of the ninth inning, when Yordan Alvarez hit a home run that resulted in 3 scores and a walk off win. Tough one. Kind of unfair that in baseball if you go first then your fate really do be in the hands of the gods at the bottom of each inning. And by the fate of the gods, I do mean fate of the pitchers.
New York Yankees vs Cleveland Guardians
Start spreadin da NEWS! New Yawk is here and idk if you heard, but they’ve got this one dude who has scored a LOT of home runs (It’s Aaron Judge! Please weigh in on whether or not he’s hot, it’s a mystery to me I could go either way). He didn’t score any last night in the game 1 win, but the Yankees did a good job shutting down the Guardians, despite Cleveland having a pretty good on base percentage. Actually idk what the percentages were but I did watch the last 4 innings of the game and it felt like they were getting on base a lot more than any baseball game I’ve ever been to. They just weren’t scoring (see I told y’all, no one scores in baseball!). Game 2 is thursday (WEATHER DEPENDING, something they could not shut up about on the broadcast btw. I don't come here for a weather report honey!)
Los Angeles Dodgers vs San Diego Padres
The thing is that the Dodgers are kinda impossible to beat. Between superstar Mookie Bets (ridiculous name, I expect to see this man in the back of a seedy prohibition speakeasy in a big pinstripe suit fixing the 1919 world series) and the rest of this billion dollar team, the Dodgers have a depth and strength that is truly unmatched. They showed this in game 1, coming out to a 5 run lead by the 4th inning. The Padres got a few back, but also made some mistakes and just don’t look good enough to beat the Dodgers imho.
Next Up:
Winner of Yanks/Guards faces winner of Mariners/Astros
Winner of Dodgers/Padres faces winner of Phillies/Braves.
Now let’s go do some baseball!!!!!
