2023 MLB Playoffs - Division Series Thread

Re: BAL-TEX: Baltimore hasn't been swept in a series of 3 games or more since May of 2022... how funny would it be if it happened when they finally made the playoffs.

Scherzer and Jon Gray still are both making their way from injury - you wonder who else on that Rangers staff Bruce Bochy trusts who aren't Monty, Nate, or maybe LeClerc. 

A MIN-AZ world series would also provide useful ammunition against anyone who makes the argument "even if the Red Sox make the playoffs they aren't going to compete for a championship."

MIN/AZ TV ratings would be atrocious, but I like it

I really don't care who wins as long as it is not Houston.

Ooops.  He did it again.  LOL.

The players wanted it, the owners were against it.  The owners find zero problem with it being 100% legible to everyone that their goal is to make regular season wins less valuable, so that then everyone pays less for them.  Even to the extent that they are against things that make the game better if they have an imperceptibly small effect of increasing the value of regular season wins.

I'm so torn on this TEX-BAL series. On the one hand, I resent the Orioles for their overachievement and they are an AL East rival who I want to see suffer (though not nearly as strongly as the other three); and their ownership's failure to spend on this team is very lame. On the other hand, they have an absolutely massive ballpark advantage over the Rangers. Really hard for me to choose a favorite.

The entire list of their hitters who have a 100 or better wRC+ consists of Rutschman and Henderson, 13 games' worth of Kjerstad, and then five guys who are all matching of having career-best seasons (Hicks, Santander, O'Hearn, Mountcastle, and Hays). They may just be finding their level after a whole season of defying gravity.

I reverse jinxed the hell out of that

The team with the elite bullpen loses a 1 run game to the one with the lousy one.
Playoffs baseball!

The way they lost in 2011 was horrendous. That might have been more excruciating than the way the Red Sox lost in 1986.

The Rangers were 1 strike away in the bottom of the 9th up 2 runs and a 2 run triple by David Freese tied the game and it's not out of the question that a better defender than Nelson Cruz could have caught that ball.

Then the Rangers shake that off and Hamilton puts them ahead with a 2 run HR and again they're 3 outs away and this time the Cardinals have their 7-8-9 hitters up and nobody to PH for the pitcher, so if Darren Oliver gets the first two guys out the Cards are stuck with their pitcher as their last hope.

Instead I think one of the guys or maybe both got on (I can't remember which) which created an obvious bunt situation for the pitcher. I remember Lance Berkman coming up as the Cardinals' last hope and I remember Scott Feldman was unable to slam the door and Berkman singled to tie the game at 9-9. Once that happened Texas was done. Freese hit the walk off in the bottom of the 11th and then after the Rangers scored twice in the 1st inning of game 7 everybody knew that lead wouldn't last long and it didn't. It was wiped out in the last of the first and then the Rangers bats went silent and the Cards won easily 6-2 or something like that. I remember Jason Motte getting David Hamilton to fly out to Allen Craig in LF to end it.

1986 was cruel, 2 outs and nobody on and then 3 runs scored and then blowing a 3-0 6th inning lead for an encore, but the Rangers were 1 out away (1 strike away I believe) twice, in two different innings. That's atrocious. I hope the Rangers can win one. They have gone the longest without ever winning one (Cleveland has been waiting for their next championship since 1948, punishment for depriving the world of a 1948 all Boston World Series featuring the Boston Braves vs the Boston Red Sox).