Game 4 made this series loss harder to take. The Astros outplayed the Royals most of this series and could have easily swept them. Tough series like this can either make a club tougher and spring board them into something better or it could be hard to recover from.
If such a thing actually existed... theres no doubt that analytics would be all over it. Luckily, it doesn't.
"Analytics" don't explain everything. These type of losses can be hard to come back from. Hope it motivates them to go further though. We'll see how resilient this organization is after this.
Lol, Bill James himself said many years ago that there are unquantifiables in baseball (just like life) that will always be just that. Chemistry, clutchness, leadership, "hotness", etc.... He's a smart enough man to know not to dismiss things he can't understand.
Correct answer is "no", that would be Game 5 in 1980 at the Dome, and it was to get to the World Series.
Definitely the biggest choke in my time watching since the late 80s. The series loss to the Padres and Kevin Brown was more painful to me because I expected so much out of that team.
No, If this astros team was experienced with being in the playoffs already with a track record then yeah it would rank up towards top 10 but I can think of at least 10-20 crushing houston sports defeats before this one. Now if something similar happens in the coming years having gained the experience of a crushing defeat similar to what happened to the Rockets versus Blazers a couple years ago then there will be no excuse in my opinion. It obviously feels this way now cuz the feeling sux and the national media wants to make a stinker out of it but even the know the obvious which is the Astros were an inexperienced team that was still learning how to close the deal on the Royals and didn't know how
Biggest choke, had to be 1998 and Sterling Hitchcock. That was such a pathetic hitting performance by a loaded team. I always felt they choked game six in 1986 too though. Knepper throwing a shut out for 8 innings with Mike Scott ready to pitch game seven. Fell the hell apart in the ninth. Still bugs the hell out of me to this day.
I just heard Keuchel post game. He said they didn't have that "IT Factor" to close out the Royals. I agree. He nailed it. Next year tho I bet will be a different story if/when the opportunity presents itself again =)
Royals Review @royalsreview Lots of congratulations to the Astros and @CrawfishBoxes. That's going to be a great team for a long time. https://twitter.com/royalsreview/status/654514157547470848
I feel bad for mmp. From what I heard that place was the place to be until the choke happened. Houston was going to be an orgy if they'd have close out game 4.
MMP is gonna be the place to be for the next decade. If people want to call it a choke than fine, but I don't consider it anything more than a tough loss exposing a bullpen weakness that we already knew about.
I imagine Rangers fans are pissed today also - they blew a 2-0 series lead on the road and a game 5 lead.
But that was a 3-2 lead, not 6-2. And it was on the road. Not saying the Rangers didn't choke, but anything could've happened even had they avoided making those errors. The Blue Jays only needed one run to tie the game.
