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Art Deco · 07-16-2020, 09:42 AM

Well it's a surprise and it's not a surprise. It's a surprise because the Rays were the best team in the AL and they were the clear favorite in this series. It's not a surprise because the Rays lost this exact matchup in Game 1. Once again the offense couldn't find a way to solve Jordan Romano, who with all due respect, is not exactly an ace pitcher. Meanwhile Tyler Glasnow can look like an ace at times but often doesn't pitch like one and today allowing single runs in the first three innings to put your team in a hole is not what an ace does. The bullpen didn't staunch the bleeding either, but a key run scored when they would have been out of the inning except that Wander Franco booted a groundball. As you can see from the story above, Wander won the series MVP, and he did hit a 3-run HR in the 9th (the irony here is they finally got to Keith Ginkel but the deficit was too large to overcome) to make the final score respectable, so I'm not going to be too hard on him. No, my ire is reserved for Josh Bell, who hit .211 in this series with 0 HR or RBI and grounded into two double plays today to kill a couple of budding rallies. They had 13 baserunners in all so they had their chances, but just couldn't get the big hit or as in the case of Bell, hit into a double play. As the manager and GM, I'm not really sure I could have done any more putting a team together - there was no glaring weakness except for perhaps the inconsistency of the starting pitching but given the group's track record there was reason to believe they'd snap out of it. The epitome of this problem came in Game 4 - when the series was really lost - after the Rays put 4 on the board in the first and Max Fried helped turn it into a 9-4 deficit before you could blink. In the end I just have to chalk it up to the vagaries of a short series (ask the Mets about that, they trotted out 3 20-game winners and lost). Meanwhile, congrats to the Jays as they face Seattle in the ALCS in a matchup of the two 1977 expansion teams. The Mariners are looking to make their first-ever World Series while the Jays want to get back there for the first time since 1993.

07-16-2020, 09:42 AM	#85
Art Deco Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2020 Posts: 6,930	October 12, 2022: Divisional Series Round Well it's a surprise and it's not a surprise. It's a surprise because the Rays were the best team in the AL and they were the clear favorite in this series. It's not a surprise because the Rays lost this exact matchup in Game 1. Once again the offense couldn't find a way to solve Jordan Romano, who with all due respect, is not exactly an ace pitcher. Meanwhile Tyler Glasnow can look like an ace at times but often doesn't pitch like one and today allowing single runs in the first three innings to put your team in a hole is not what an ace does. The bullpen didn't staunch the bleeding either, but a key run scored when they would have been out of the inning except that Wander Franco booted a groundball. As you can see from the story above, Wander won the series MVP, and he did hit a 3-run HR in the 9th (the irony here is they finally got to Keith Ginkel but the deficit was too large to overcome) to make the final score respectable, so I'm not going to be too hard on him. No, my ire is reserved for Josh Bell, who hit .211 in this series with 0 HR or RBI and grounded into two double plays today to kill a couple of budding rallies. They had 13 baserunners in all so they had their chances, but just couldn't get the big hit or as in the case of Bell, hit into a double play. As the manager and GM, I'm not really sure I could have done any more putting a team together - there was no glaring weakness except for perhaps the inconsistency of the starting pitching but given the group's track record there was reason to believe they'd snap out of it. The epitome of this problem came in Game 4 - when the series was really lost - after the Rays put 4 on the board in the first and Max Fried helped turn it into a 9-4 deficit before you could blink. In the end I just have to chalk it up to the vagaries of a short series (ask the Mets about that, they trotted out 3 20-game winners and lost). Meanwhile, congrats to the Jays as they face Seattle in the ALCS in a matchup of the two 1977 expansion teams. The Mariners are looking to make their first-ever World Series while the Jays want to get back there for the first time since 1993. Last edited by Art Deco; 07-16-2020 at 09:58 AM.