Some Random Thoughts

 The World Series

The Toronto Blue Jays bounced back from what had to have been a gut wrenching loss in that 18 inning Game Three by winning Games Four and Five in Los Angeles,  thus taking a 3-2 lead in the Series, which could end tonight in Toronto.  This Series has proven to be notable in a couple of regards.  One, is the remarkable performance of Shohei Ohtani.  Another is that remarkable eighteen inning game on Sunday night. And the third is the performance of 22 year old rookie Jays pitchers Trey Yesavage.

If you've followed the Series, you know the story.  He pitched for four different teams in the Blue Jays minor league system this season (Rookie, A, AA, and AAA), arrived in Toronto late in the season and has now started more post-season games than regular season games.  In Game Five, he went seven innings, gave up one run, no walks, and struck out 12 batters.

What I came to learn from my niece, Jill, is that Yesavage graduated from Boyertown High School in 2022 with her daughter, Cale, and played on the same Boyertown American Legion and high school teams with her son, Gavin.

The Boyertown Bears, circa 2019:

Top row, fifth from left, wearing number 6, is a 16 year old Trey Yesavage, now a genuine World Series hero.  If you watched Trey pitch in this post-season, you can see that he has experienced a significant growth spurt  since 2019. (My great-nephew Gavin is also in this photo, but without having the permission of either he or his mother, I am not going to identify him here.)

Baseball Royalty and the Other Kind of Royalty

On Pardon the Interuption last night, both Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon expressed how thrilling and awe-full it was to see Sandy Koufax - SANDY KOUFAX!!!! - sitting in the stands at Dodger Stadium watching the World Series games this week, and I couldn't agree more.  Koufax will turn 90 in December, and he looks at least fifteen years younger than that.  It is also true that it has been fifty-nine years since he last pitched in a major league game, so most people watching have never seen him play, and cannot possibly have any idea just how Capital G Great he was.  Much has been made that Dodger pitcher Clayton Kershaw, a sure fire first ballot Hall of Famer is retiring this year (and didn't he go out on a great note by retiring one batter with the bases loaded in that extra inning game on Sunday?).  Kershaw was a great pitcher, no doubt, but, and trust me on this, kids, he couldn't hold Sandy Koufax's spikes when it came to greatness on the mound.  So, yes, when you see a shot like this on your TV screen, it really is thrilling to old guys like The Grandstander.

And while Sandy Koufax represents baseball royalty, we were also treated to a screen shot of these two during Game Four:

Yep, that is Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, taking in the ol' ball game.  I have seen several posts on social media in the days since then of people, mostly Dodgers fans and hide-bound traditionalists expressing their outrage of Sandy Koufax being forced to sit in the second row behind a second string British Royal.  To those folks I say this:  If your life is such that THIS is what gets you "outraged", then you have a lousy sense of what is important in life.

Steelers Lose Second in a Row

The Steelers laid a colossal egg this past Sunday night in losing their second game in a row, this time to the Green Bay Packers.  In these last two losses, the Steelers defense, which is the highest paid such unit in the NFL, has surrendered sixty-eight (68) points.  They are now 4-3, still in first place in the AFC North, and improbably, still have a legit shot at winning that division, only because that division has shown itself to be incredibly mediocre this season.

This week they face the surprisingly good Indianapolis Colts, who are 7-1 and have the highest scoring offense in the League thus far.  The possibility of the Steelers getting boat-raced on their home field on Sunday is a very real one.

Let's just say that things aren't looking good for the Steelers at this point in this season.

"Only Murders In The Building"

Last night Linda and I finished watching Season 5 of "Only Murders In The Building", a series that we have enjoyed throughout its five season run, but I have to be honest in saying that perhaps they pushed the envelope a bit too far in producing this fifth season.  Has the show jumped the shark?  Maybe not, but we didn't find ourselves compelled to watch the show this season as we have in the past.  A couple of weeks went by between our watching some of the episodes.  This tends to take some of the excitement out of watching as you, or at least me, tend to forget just what happened last episode, and just what is the crime that the crew is investigating right now?

Still, the show did have its moments, and the chemistry among the three stars remains kind of charming, so, yes, we will be watching when Season 6, which will be set in London, debuts next year.

Only Two and One-Half Grandstander Stars for Season 5 of OMITB.

The World Series and Madison Bumgarner

I cannot let any more time pass by without a salute to the Giants historic, or at least quasi-historic, World Series victory, their third such title in the last five seasons (see The Grandstander of October 11, 2014).  It is a remarkable feat in this era of wild cards and multiple tiers post-season playoffs.  A dynasty?  Yeah, I would say so.

I will also point out this quote from The Grandstander's World Series preview from October 21:

Okay, you want a prediction.  I'll give you the Giants to win in six games.  The biggest reason for that will be the ace pitcher of the Giants, Madison Bumgarner.  He has been completely dominant in the post-season, and I believe that he will be the difference between the two teams.

Well, it took seven games, not six, but otherwise, as the saying goes, I believe I had that.

And how about that Game Seven?  Really, it was everything you would have wanted in a seventh game, and when you tie in the performance of Series MVP Madison Bumgarner, pitching five innings of near flawless relief on only two days rest, you have, as Sam Spade might put it, the stuff that dreams are made of.

Much was made off the World Series performance of Bumgarner, not only in his other worldly 2014 Series, but of his total World Series performances when his 2010 and 2012 records are included.  That got me to thinking, so I decided to do a little comparison shopping to see just exactly how Bumgarner compares to some of the greatest pitching performances in the history of the Fall Classic.

I make no claim that this list is all-inclusive.  I just picked some of what I knew, without giving it too much deep thinking, to be among the greatest pitching performances in World Series history. I am sure that there are many that I have left out, but I think this is a pretty good list.  In some instances, I included just one World Series (a couple of the pitchers were only in one Series), and in some cases, I included both a single season, and a pitcher's complete World Series record.  I also confined this ONLY to the World Series and did not include Divisional and LCS records.

Here you go:

Pitcher	Season	Games	IP	W-L	Save	ERA	K	BB	WHIP
Madison Bumgarner	2014	3	21	2-0	1	0.43	17	1	0.476
	Career (3 WS)	5	36	4-0	1	0.25	31	5	0.528
Christy Mathewson	1905	3	27	3-0	0	0.00	18	1	0.519
	Career (4 WS)	11	101.2	5-5	0	0.97	48	10	0.836
Babe Adams	1909	3	27	3-0	0	1.33	11	6	0.889
Mickey Lolich	1968	3	27	3-0	0	1.67	21	6	0.963
Bob Gibson	1967	3	27	3-0	0	1.00	26	5	0.704
	Career (3 WS)	9	81	7-2	0	1.89	92	17	0.889
Sandy Koufax	1965	3	24	2-1	0	0.38	29	5	0.750
	Career (4 WS)	8	51	4-3	0	0.95	61	11	0.825
Lew Burdette	1957	3	27	3-0	0	0.67	13	4	0.926
Randy Johnson	2001	3	17.1	3-0	0	1.04	19	3	0.692
Whitey Ford	1960	2	18	2-0	0	0.00	8	2	0.722
	Career (11 WS)	22	146	10-8	0	2.71	94	34	1.137
Mariano Rivera	Career (7 WS)	24	36.1	2-1	11	0.99	32	8	0.963
Babe Ruth	Career (2 WS)	3	31	3-0	0	0.87	8	10	0.935

You can draw your own conclusions form this, but here are some of mine:

• For a WS career, that 0.25 ERA of Bumgarner's is the best.  Ever.
• For one single WS, I don't think anyone is ever going to top Matty's performance in 1905.
• But if you're an "analytics guy", it needs to be noted that Bumgarner's WHIP in 2014 is better than Matty's of 1905.  In fact, it is the best such number on this particular list.
• It was hard to choose which single Series of Koufax' to select here.  He was the MVP in both the '63 and '65 Series.
• As a Pirate fan, I am glad that Whitey Ford didn't get a third start in 1960.
• That Babe Ruth guy was some ball player.  I heard that he could even hit a little.

So as to the original premise, I think that we can presume that if Madison Bumgarner never throws another pitch, or if his career fizzles out beginning in 2015, it is safe to say that he most definitely now belongs in the pantheon of All-Time World Series Greats.

All that said, if you were a manager, and had to pick ONE pitcher to start ONE game with everything on the line, who would it be?  

I'm still picking this guy:

Happy Birthday, Sandy Koufax

76 years young today....