Atlanta 1 - 2 Philadelphia
Los Angeles 0 - 3 Arizona
Baltimore 0 - 3 Texas
Houston 3 - 1 Minnesota
Houston makes the AL Championship Series for the seventh year in a row -- which is, of course, a record for either league. They will face Texas, where Bruce Bochy turned around the Rangers in only one year. Meanwhile, the Dodgers finally get to go on the vacation that they seemed to want from the time the playoffs began. I've never seen a team look less interested in playoff baseball than this year's Dodgers. In three games, against a team that won only 84 games all year, the Dodgers were outscore 19-6.
So far the higher seeds are 4-9 in this round, and you have to wonder if that will start to affect how teams are put together. In some ways, the old Moneyball model is outmoded. You don't need guys who can score a bunch of runs off of a third-string pitcher in Pittsburgh -- you need guys who can perform when all the money is on the line. The Astros have those guys, and that's why the Astros dominate modern baseball, while the Dodgers, Yankees, Red Sox, Giants, and Cardinals are all sitting at home.
Anyway, we're back to night games. The Phillies and Braves will start at 7:07 PM Central Time, and let's hope that the pitch clock makes it possible to end the game before the 10 o'clock news.
Just because I was curious, here were the game times for the 1977 World Series:
Game 1: 3:24 (game ran 12 innings)
Game 2: 2:27
Game 3: 2:31
Game 4: 2:07
Game 5: 2:29
Game 6: 2:18
Here were the game times for the 2022 World Series:
Game 1: 4:34 (10 innings)
Game 2: 3:18
Game 3: 3:08
Game 4: 3:25 (Astros threw a no-hitter in this game)
Game 5: 3:57
Game 6: 3:13
Here were the game times for the Phillies and the Braves:
ReplyDeleteGame 1: 3:03
Game 2: 3:08
Game 3: 3:19
Game 4: 3:08
So it doesn't look as though the pitch clock makes that much of a difference in the post-season.