This is October: 2014 MLB Postseason Thread

[tBBP]

Absolute Masterpiece by Kansas City, up 3-0 in the series now, they might as well win the pennant tomorrow night.

I'm sure the 2004 New York Yankees felt the same way...let's not get carried away just yet. Still though...go Royals.

Did anyone else catch that These O's Aint Royal T shirt Jeremy Guthrie was wearing? That was awesome. I want one of those.

[Bullsforever]

Don´t sweat it, Cards got this with the home field adv. and stuff

[kewp80]

Mike Matheny is the worst head coach or manager in all of sports. He is unbelievably bad.

That's just not true.

Yeah making to the NLCS or further in your first three years as manager is absolutely horrible!

On a more serious note, I just don't see the Cardinals having enough of their devil magic to pull this one out with Yadi hurt. You talk about a most valuable player to their lineup. Just his presence behind the plate makes our pitching that much better.

[Bullsforever]

Would have been nice to see the best teams in baseball square off in the WS, like Angels/Tigers Vs. Dodgers/Cards , insted of this "who is hot now" cinderella crap

[JayMac]

Well if the "best" teams don't win, how can they be considered the best teams? Being the best should always be measured beyond just the regular season.

[kewp80]

Would have been nice to see the best teams in baseball square off in the WS, like Angels/Tigers Vs. Dodgers/Cards , insted of this "who is hot now" cinderella crap

Stick to your boring old NBA then.

[Tigers6884]

Would have been nice to see the best teams in baseball square off in the WS, like Angels/Tigers Vs. Dodgers/Cards , insted of this "who is hot now" cinderella crap

Believe me, the Tigers played like they were far from the best. I expect a lot of offseason roster moves by them, and I'll be sad seeing Max Scherzer and Victor Martinez (potentially leaving). That sucks, because Scherzer is one of the best pitchers in the Tigers rotation. This year was the Detroit's year to win the Fall Classic, but they blew it.

[crashcarson15]

Well if the "best" teams don't win, how can they be considered the best teams? Being the best should always be measured beyond just the regular season.

It's a discussion for another day but reducing a team's performance over 165 games to a three-game stretch is such a horrible, horrible idea.

I'd have loved to live in the day where the AL's best team and NL's best team played for the title.

[JayMac]

Well if the "best" teams don't win, how can they be considered the best teams? Being the best should always be measured beyond just the regular season.

It's a discussion for another day but reducing a team's performance over 165 games to a three-game stretch is such a horrible, horrible idea.

I'd have loved to live in the day where the AL's best team and NL's best team played for the title.

Well I can agree with you to a certain point when it comes to baseball. Especially since the season is so long. But I still feel that if you are an elite team, you can beat any team in a 3, 5, or 7 game series.

[Bullsforever]

Would have been nice to see the best teams in baseball square off in the WS, like Angels/Tigers Vs. Dodgers/Cards , insted of this "who is hot now" cinderella crap

Believe me, the Tigers played like they were far from the best. I expect a lot of offseason roster moves by them, and I'll be sad seeing Max Scherzer and Victor Martinez (potentially leaving). That sucks, because Scherzer is one of the best pitchers in the Tigers rotation. This year was the Detroit's year to win the Fall Classic, but they blew it.

Exactly, they had 3 :censored:ing aces, but still lost, i don´t get it, did the nude pictures get to Verlanders head or is he not a real ace anymore ?

[Bullsforever]

Would have been nice to see the best teams in baseball square off in the WS, like Angels/Tigers Vs. Dodgers/Cards , insted of this "who is hot now" cinderella crap

Stick to your boring old NBA then.

Don´t judge a poster on his name or avatar.

[JayMac]

Would have been nice to see the best teams in baseball square off in the WS, like Angels/Tigers Vs. Dodgers/Cards , insted of this "who is hot now" cinderella crap

Believe me, the Tigers played like they were far from the best. I expect a lot of offseason roster moves by them, and I'll be sad seeing Max Scherzer and Victor Martinez (potentially leaving). That sucks, because Scherzer is one of the best pitchers in the Tigers rotation. This year was the Detroit's year to win the Fall Classic, but they blew it.

Exactly, they had 3 :censored:ing aces, but still lost, i don´t get it, did the nude pictures get to Verlanders head or is he not a real ace anymore ?

The Phillies, arguably, had 4 aces in 2010 and they lost early in the postseason. It happens.

[Lights Out]

Would have been nice to see the best teams in baseball square off in the WS, like Angels/Tigers Vs. Dodgers/Cards , insted of this "who is hot now" cinderella crap

If the Angels, Tigers, and Dodgers were truly the best teams, they would have proven it in the playoffs. All they did was compile regular season wins under significantly less pressure, that's not enough to truly be the best.

[STL FANATIC]

Mike Matheny is the worst head coach or manager in all of sports. He is unbelievably bad.

That's just not true.

Probably not quite, but he's bottom 5 in a sport in which pretty much all managers are not good.

Please don't confuse the success of the rosters he's been handed with being a good manager. Please don't confuse comebacks with good managing, though I have no doubt Mike is a good Leader of Men™. But he's as bad as anyone I've seen this side of Ned Yost at in-game decisions. (And clearly baseball is a sport in which you can rather easily get away with that. But there are times—especially in win or go home series in October—when it will kill you.)

Matheny's managing is based on small sample sizes and players he really likes (or players he simply doesn't). He tends to have a plan for a game and doesn't react when something deviates from it. He's a terrible, terrible in-game manager.

Unfortunately, he'll probably continue to ride the coattails of a very good GM, and as such, the Cardinals will probably never be willing to let that GM upgrade at manager.

I love Mike Matheny the man. And I would love nothing more than to see him become a good manager. But in three seasons at the helm, he's shown absolutely no improvement and has perhaps regressed. That's what they get for hiring a guy with absolutely no managerial experience (short of one or two seasons of little league), and now they're stuck with it.

Make no mistake, the primary reason the Cardinals lost that game yesterday was the guy in the dugout. He accounted for 4 of the 5 Giants runs.

[TheOldRoman]

It occurred to me on Saturday after the Royals won again - this Royals team is just like the 2007 Rockies. Both had to win a play-in game in extra innings to make the playoffs, then proceeded to win every game through their league. After sweeping to the pennant, they sat and got cold while the other league played a 7 game series. By the time the World Series started, whatever momentum the Rockies had was gone, and they didn't win another game.

No matter what happens in the series nobody wanted to see, it'll definitely go seven games, and I think the winner will likely sweep the Royals, who will look like just another team and not the world beaters they've been thus far. I like this Royals team, and don't care to see either the Cardinals or Giants win another championship, but I fear this is setting us up for a boring and forgettable World Series. I hope I'm wrong. And I hope the Orioles can at least win one game to give us some kind of something out of the ALCS.

[Kramerica Industries]

I've been on this subject about postseason randomness and yada yada yada for so long now that I've completely worn myself out talking about it. Anyone who wants to promote this idea that various small sample sizes are better indicators of who the best teams are rather than a 162 game season? Go ahead. Whatever.

My only real comment is that, in a twisted sense, SSS randomess + excess parity = it actually, kinda, sorta makes sense for this to happen. 6th/7th best team (in terms of WP%) facing the 8th best team, in all likelihood. That sounds like a cracking World Series matchup.

P.S. - as Old Roman was kind enough to post while I was posting - yes, the parallels between the 2007 Rockies and 2014 Royals are uncanny. Don't forget that both teams had to erase multiple deficits, including an extra innings deficit, to win their play-in games. Even more, both play-in games were 9-8 finals. Both teams went 89-73 during the 162 game regular season. Of course, in the NL in 2007, 89 wins was good enough to tie for the second best record in the NL because, well, the middle-'00s NL, between the 2005 Cardinals and 2008 Cubs, was a tire fire of suckage.

(anyone know if Matt Holliday has tagged home plate yet, by chance?)

[TheOldRoman]

Well if the "best" teams don't win, how can they be considered the best teams? Being the best should always be measured beyond just the regular season.

It's a discussion for another day but reducing a team's performance over 165 games to a three-game stretch is such a horrible, horrible idea.

I'd have loved to live in the day where the AL's best team and NL's best team played for the title.

Yeah, the Yankees got all the best players, had the Athletics explicitly acting as their farm team, and won the pennant practically every year. 6 of the 8 teams in each league had nothing to play for past mid August. Sounds like a hoot!

[Phils Phan]

What a bunch of nonsense, yeah screw a team that was by far the best in the league for 162 games because a team with 80-something wins won one more game against them in 5 games.

[JayMac]

So basically it should be a BCS version of the World Series? We should just choose NL and AL representatives? Lesser teams win in every professional sport. Except for the NBA, because that league is all about the opposite of parity?

[STL FANATIC]

I think most people would recognize that division play and uneven schedules due to the larger field of teams makes it almost impossible not to have a playoff system. Some of us just wouldn't have mind seeing the era in which playoffs weren't necessary due to a smaller field of teams, and pitting the NL's best vs. the AL's best was as easy as best record wins the pennant.

Today's game can't do that, and that's okay with me actually. Playoffs are fun. It's enjoyable to see teams in September start thinking "just get in" and then go on runs in October.

There's positives to both ways. It's just silly to automatically consider the team that does finish the run in October the best team in baseball in that given year.