The Texas Rangers win the World Series 4 games to 1 over the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Rangers had an amazing playoff run not losing one game on the road. In a nutshell, they were the only team where their offense did not disappear for an extended period of time. The Rangers were 13-4 in the playoffs. They scored 3 runs or less 5 times and were able to win 3 of those games. In the 3 games in Arizona, the Diamondbacks scored 1 run in game 3 and 0 runs in game 5. They fell behind 10-0 in game 4 and were able to score 4 in the 8th and 2 in the bottom of the 9th to make the score respectable, but this was against the B squad of the Rangers bullpen. The Rangers deserved this title, and it was nice to see Bruce Bochy win another series. The Rangers fans get to celebrate the franchise’s first World Series title. For whatever reason, when the Diamondbacks got home, they became their own worst enemies.
It started in the 3rd game when Christian Walker led off with a double in the top of the 2nd inning. Tommy Pham hit a sharp single to right field. Walker went right through a stop sign and was thrown out at the plate. Many people were on the 3rd base coach for waving him on as he was heading to 3rd, and then putting up the stop sign, when he hit the bag. The argument was that the 3rd base coach should have anticipated that if the ball was hit to right field sharply, that he should have automatically held up the runner, because of the strong arm of Ardolis Garcia. I guess this is true when the runner on second puts his head down about 30 feet from 3rd base and never looks up again. In my view this bonehead baserunning play was all on the runner. I do not think it has been proven that you run faster with your head down compared with your head up and looking straight ahead. The Diamondbacks continued to pitch to Corey Seager even after Garcia was scratched from the rest of series. He made them pay and he made them pay big. In the final game the Diamondbacks could not get the big hit. They had 6 walks and 5 hits but could not score because they went 0 for 9 with runners in scoring position and leaving 11 runners on base. It was just like watching the Pirates and I thought I was done with that. For the second straight year, the 6th seed of the National League, screwed up the playoffs but could not pull out a championship.
The season ends and now the off season begins, with the Pirates most likely just sitting on their hands watching other teams improve their teams. This was a new era for baseball with all the rule changes and I must say they worked out marvelously. I liked all the rule changes, but I was skeptical of how much not allowing shifts would have an impact. It had a huge impact. There were many balls hit just to the left and right of 2nd base that would have been outs if the shift had still been allowed. Baseball was a much more entertaining product thanks to the rule changes, including the ghost runner on 2nd to start the extra innings. It will be interesting to see if there is any tweaking of the playoffs. I not too sure what they can do but I am sure there is going to be some talking going on to see if they can give the lower seeds more of an advantage. The only thing that I think might help is to start the wild card series the very next day after the regular season. Then start the division series the very next day after the Wild Card series ends, even if it is a sweep. This way there would not be such a down time period for the teams that have a first round bye. I don’t know if there really is anything that can be done. This is just what happens in playoff sports. However, because the baseball season is so long, people just want the regular season to have a greater significance when deciding who will make it to the World Series. My next blog will be about what baseball really should do to crown a champion, but I know they won’t. Of course, I will blog when the Pirates do something significant between now and opening day. That means my next blog about them will probably be in March.
The Goofy Game of Golf/Life Searching for the Answer 