Podcast: Stupid Lucky Ugly Royals
Matthew Carruth · October 16, 2014 at 11:15 am · Filed Under Mariners
Jeff and I muse a bit on our nature of fan-hood and what we want our of sports. Then lament the Royals for a bit, insult the National League (as always), and finally address the one bit of Mariner news since the last pod.
Podcast with Jeff (@based_ball) and Matthew (@msea1): Direct link! || iTunes link! || RSS/XML link!
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This sent me down the rabbit hole on Jarrod Washburn’s personal life. What “creepiness” are we referring to?
Hey, the Royals are in the World Series. Gosh, it must be great to be in K.C. right now. They haven’t lost a game in the postseason… It’s kind of like a fairytale. I wish it was my Mariners… but you just got to love baseball.
MLB has definitely rendered the season meaningless. Used to be you played 154 and the best team from each league went to the Series with the National League team losing to the Yankees, but at least they had won a Pennant.
I too love the Royals, not only because they are winning, but because they play baseball. Not to piss a bunch of folks off around here because I realize this game is about playing percentages and the metrics used now are definitely way more meaningful than BA, Fielding Pct. and ERA. What the Royals do is put the ball in play, play defense and pitch.
Last night the last two outs the Cardinals made were called third strikes. I get tired of working the count and gee that was a great at bat because he saw 12 pitches. Taking strike three in the 9th inning just doesn’t cut it. The Royals may not beat the Giants, another team I love because of their play and the fact that we both come from NYC and Willie Mays was my all – time favorite growing up. The point is the Royals attack, attack, attack. They made the Angels and the Orioles look like AAA teams the way they forced errors. The Royals may not win but they are not going to sit back and lose. It is a little premature to put the Giants in the series, but if they play the Royals I will really look forward to that.
The Giants also have been stealing runs, it could be great.
GO M’s
It’s ironic that about three years ago it was a pretty common refrain here that Dayton Moore was an idiot, and as long as he remained Kansas City’s GM they were never going anywhere except to the bottom of the standings. You can look it up.
Giants v Royals -Travis Ishikawa gets meatball on 2-0 pitch, talking heads saying take. Either try to win or try not to lose. Love these two teams.
PS Sometimes around here suggest to change a players position it’s like huh! Learn to play PosX at the MLB level. Ishikawa career 1B goes to LF and gets some ABs and voila! Will it always work? NO, but ….. either Taylor or Miller needs a position. Keep both play both, worth a try!
The juggernaut that is masquerading as the Royals was only a game or two from watching someone else in the playoffs, and only 2 games better than the Mariners over 162 games. They are baseball’s Hot Team at the best possible time (so far).
It’s a little bit silly.
So on the podcast you guys were talking about ownership and steroids, but completely ignored the big elephant in the room.
If the owners are against taking on known steroid users on principle… why did they allow Zduriencik to acquire Michael Morse in 2013?
Also, I’m rooting for the Royals. Their fans have had to put up with a crappy team for so long… it’d be nice for them to see some reward for their patience.
Awaiting to watch Vargas pitch to Morse.
Nelson Cruz got a better deal from the Orioles (More money and no 2015 club option), a better team and a more batter friendly park to play in. The Mariners front office vetoing a deal worked out really well for him.
Packbob – really agree see my early comment about how the season is almost meaningless. BUT I do like their style of play and am glad to see them advance along with the Giants.
Two walks and a dinger is great for some people and good for them. There is a lot of that kind of baseball around. I prefer to watch teams that just keep pushing the issue. It doesn’t always work but so far I have seen a lot of standing a screaming at the ballpark.
Go M’s
How would the regular season be more meaningless now? When it was two teams that went to the World Series there couldn’t have been more than four or five teams that actually had a shot. So for those other teams the regular season was meaningless. Also, how would the Royals getting hot at the right time in 2014 be any different than a team getting hot late in the season in 1920?
I guess point of view. Now if you play an entire season and have the best record, you get to play the wildcard winner in a 5 game series which is a crapshoot. Right now 5 teams from each league have a shot and entire season’s work can go away in an inning.
In 1920 if a team played mediocre for 5 months and got hot in September, would they catch the team that played better over the first 5 months? It would depend, but baseball especially is subject to a lot of weirdness. The team that plays best tonight might not win more than 60-70% of the time. A full season is a “fairer” test. It goes back to the old Small Sample Size.
The 2001 M’s won 116 and did not make the Series, sort of made the 116 meaningless.
August/September. Just. Great.
But … as far as the climax:
The AL wildcard this year was three teams buzzing like flies around a pile of whatever it is you want to use as term to define their final season stretches. Or their last week. Or day. (NL much the same).
I’m not implying POS seasons. They were all pretty OK seasons. Especially in Seattle in comparison with what we’re used to. But none of which were glorious in grind-it-out stability in comparison to the dominating teams. Flash in the pan … Emotion … High-five adrenal. Whatever.
The Series should be, c’mon, the Orioles or the Angels against either Washington or the Dodgers. Everything else is silly.
But, hey… baseball.
And, I’m going to go on ahead and say it: Yes, if Seattle had gone onward like KC, I would have felt it was great fun and all that … but, frankly, also silly. Somewhere.
Sorry, LongDistance, but I couldn’t disagree with you more. If sports, any sport, only went as expected and the “best” teams always won then why would anybody have any interest in them?
Why bother with the playoffs? Hell, why bother with a championship game or series. Just award the team with the best recored.
The 2001 Mariners were great, but terribly flawed. Their starting pitching was shallow. If you lose in the playoffs you’re not the best team. If you or anyone else thinks it’s silly that the Royals are in the series than I think you’re missing out.
And the idea that all the anti-saber crowd is throwing around that this disproves everything the “nerds” are saying is ridiculous too. If you play against the percentages you’re going to lose most of the time, but sometimes . . . every once and a while . . . you win.
To me, there’s nothing more fun than seeing an underdog win.
The Royals deserve to be in the World Series as much as any team that has ever played there. No team that gets there doesn’t deserve to be there, whether you think it’s silly or not.
Sorry that the Royals have ruined your little party.
Grit: my party’s OK. I’m rooting for KC.
If every team played the “percentage smart play” the team that was best statistically would win over the long haul. The beauty is that there are teams like KC and SF that have to play “against the odds” because of the way they are built.
KC only beat the M’s by a narrow margin during the season and got by the A’s in what had to be a 1000-1 shot being down 7-3 to Lester in the 8th.
The play-offs this year were as exciting so far as any in recent times. The Giants are a prototype National League team and quite frankly so are the Royals. The only problem I have with “smart” or “saberball” is that it is dull to me.
The contradiction is while I love play-off baseball, I know in my mind that it does not identify the “best” team.
I know my friends think I am anti-saber also, I am not, I believe the validity of many or most of the metrics. I just find it produces a dull style of ball