Playoff baseball

So, time for my annual playoff rant (though I mean it less this year than most years b/c the Astros team hasn't played as well this year as it has in years past).

I love baseball b/c it's like the sound track of the year for me. There is a game every single day (more or less) for 6 months. You can always count on it. It's always there for you. It's not appointment viewing, but you know it's always an option. I'm not pissed off if I miss a game, the way I am with a college football Saturday if I miss, because those are so rate. The ubiquity is it's specialness, not the rarity. It's comforting.

Because of that, baseball is a war of attrition. You just don't see a ton of flukes in the game. You assemble your squad, hope you stay more or less healthy, know you won't be perfect or even good every day, but you know that with 162 (or 161 for us this year) opportunities, for the most part, water will find it's level. Are there bad breaks that happen in any particular game? Sure. That swing the outcome? You bet. But with 162 that more or less levels out, and we know who the best team is.

But, after a marathon of 162 games where team strength is tested, organizational acumen is tested, willpower, the ability to get up day after day and put one foot in front of the other and trudge about at a difficult job all comes into play, the calendar turns to October and it's a different sport. Instead of a marathon we are in a sprint. Instead of one bad game eliciting a shoulder shrug it all matters. More than everything else that's come before it. And in the sport that is the fairest (major American division) in grinding out an aggregate winner over the course of 6 months it becomes the least fair sport in determining any particular one game winner. Most good football teams will beat bad football teams, over and over and over. You can pretty much tell which NBA teams are going to the playoffs after about 15 games (look at the schedules and be amazed at how little they change from Christmas time to the end of the year), and it's almost always the case that the better team wins a best 4 out of 7. But baseball? you can have historically terrible teams like the Tigers win series against the Yankees or Astros and nobody bats an eye or notices. Why? Because that's just baseball.

So, here we sit on the precipice of another run and your local 9 is facing a team that they are just flat better than. But, they have the best pitcher in the game (maybe 2nd best after the LSU kid in Pittsburg whose name I won't spell right) and any one day the starting pitcher exerts more control than any other position in any other sport (even QB in football) on the mound today. Ours? He's merely going to finish like 3rd or 5th in the CY Young. Our biggest of big bats, the guy who can single handedly swing entire playoff series by throwing a team on his back is hurt- and questionable to play in this series. Tomorrow and Thursday we have the pitching advantage, but bad days are always possible and some brilliance from Skubal today and one bad day for the Astros can end this whole run after 2 or 3 games. It's basically at the point in time where anything is possible and randomness starts to overwhelm the system.

This Astros squad though- we are going on a decade now of not being done in by randomness. I think it's still the case that in every Astros playoff year since 2015 we've either lost to the WS Champs or been the world series champs (KC, HOU, BOS, WAS, ATL, HOU, TX) yes- there's nothing in there about 2020 b/c that wasn't a real thing and the fact that it's the only year the Dodgers ever won it is glorious and sort of proves that. 7 ALCS in a row. Randomness never gets us (at least early- **** we were so much better than WAS in 2019) and we just keep grinding away playoff W's year after year after year. Some day, the script will have to change. We will come up short and those that haven't followed the game for a long time will be stunned to see the Astros not get it done. Those of us who follow the game our whole lives will know, that's just baseball. Unfortunately, and what's cruel about playoff baseball is instead of saying- oh well- lets get them tomorrow, there is no more tomorrow for 6 months. The longest and most cruel 6 months of the year. The half a year that sucks b/c there isn't a baseball game on every night.

Now- when you win playoff baseball games? Pure nirvana. But, it's such a mess and jangle of nerves I almost can't take it.

Excuse me while I go throw up the meager breakfast I was able to choke down. Playoff baseball is here and I will be a neurotic mess for somewhere between 2 and 33 days.

Good luck out there.

 

Beers scored on 3 ground balls in a row with 2 outs. Bregman hit a ball off the yellow line that was a HR
Astros had a 680 xBA ball that would have tied the game and a .570 xBA ball that would have won the game. if Bregman ball was a HR we’d have probably scored what would be the tying run in the 9th on the Caratini fly ball (we didn’t run because it wasn’t the tying run).
It’s what I was talking about in my original post about the random vagaries of a best of 3 (or even 5 or 7) series deciding tingles after 162 games.
Ugh.

 

I’d say their excuse this year is they are pretty banged up.