Also, CONGRATULATIONS to Dodger pitcher Clayton Kershaw, one of the top two or three pitchers of his generation, but whose struggles over the years in post-season play have been well documented, for shedding that particular monkey off of his back by going 2-0 in this World Series. He can now call himself a World Series Champion.
And finally, CONGRATULATIONS to Major League Baseball and Commissioner Rob Manfred for pulling off a Major League season, albeit an abbreviated one, an expanded Playoff format, and being able to stage a World Series in this oh-so-weird year of 2020. Back in June, and as late as early July, I would have bet you a month's mortgage payment that we would never see Major League Baseball in 2020, but they somehow managed to pull it off.
Now, as to the Series itself, and as to the question posed in the headline above, this one is going to be forever remembered as the one where Rays manager Kevin Cash, followed the dictates of the computer nerd data geeks of the Rays front office, and yanked a cruising Blake Snell with a 1-0 lead with one out in the sixth inning of Game Six, an elimination game for his team. To recount for the record, Snell had been cruising through 5 and 1/3 innings: 73 pitches, 1 hit, no runs, 9 strike outs, including six K's of the Dodgers top three in the order (Mookie Betts, Corey Saeger, and Justin Turner), and only two balls hit out of the infield. The second batter in the inning hits a soft single, and out pops Cash from the dugout, following the Rays' analytics algorithms, and removes Snell (a former Cy Young Award winner, it should also be noted). Will Rays' fans (an oxymoron?) ever forget this scene? I know sure as Hell that Blake Snell and his teammates never will....
What followed was as inevitable as it was predictable....a Betts double, a wild pitch to tie the game, a fielder's choice RBI by Saeger that allowed Betts to score from third that gave LA a 2-1 lead and, essentially, ended the World Series. The last nine outs by Tampa Bay were a mere formality.
What followed also was an interesting conversation by announcers Joe Buck and John Smotlz. Smoltz made the case that managing by pure analytics over the course of a 162 game season is okay, and probably smart over the long grind of a normal baseball season, but in a short condensed series, which is what post-season baseball is all about, you simply CANNOT be a slave to the numbers, percentages, and probabilities. You have to judge by seeing what your players are doing right NOW, right in front of you in the moment. Buck said that managers now seem to be looking for every reason to take a guy OUT of a game, rather than seeing the reasons why a guy should stay IN a game. They all but called Cash a complete dumb-shit for doing what he did, which he was, and it may very well have cost the Rays the opportunity to be playing in a Game Seven tonight.
Here's how Washington Post columnist Barry Svrluga described in in his column this morning:
This is the part of modern baseball that just, frankly, stinks. It is built on analysis and probability, and there’s nothing wrong with that — until it strips the human beings playing and running the game of the ability to make decisions based on what they feel, what they see. Any casual fan could see what Snell was working with, a pinpoint fastball and an absolute hammer of a curve. The Dodgers were befuddled.
FYI, here is the complete Svrluga column. It's good reading:
So, once again, congratulations to the Dodgers for winning, to the Rays for winning the American League Pennant and making it an interesting Series, and to MLB for giving us a season in 2020.
Oh, and one final note: huge negative props for that Dodgers owner, whoever he is, for coming on stage to accept the World Series and reading a prepared speech that went about as long as campaign speech from the 45th President and was just about as irritating to sit through. Nobody wants to hear from the Suits on occasions like this, pal.
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