Main Reason for WS Championship?

[Palodios]

For real.

 

http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/4uymvs/futurama-intro-to-blernsball

[Behindenemylines]

Bonus at Bat? WTF? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard and will never happen.

 

What? I still don't understanding NL fans wanting to see a pitcher bat and strikeout 9 out of ten times. How many pitchers get hurt either hitting or running the bases? Just adopt the DH and get with the times.

[seabeachfred]

What? I still don't understanding NL fans wanting to see a pitcher bat and strikeout 9 out of ten times. How many pitchers get hurt either hitting or running the bases? Just adopt the DH and get with the times.

 

It's a matter of ego and stubbornness BEL. You asked it yourself---why would NL fans want to see a pitcher strike out 90% of the time, and I know from visual experience how a pitcher running the bases.......San Francisco, June, 2010, Clay Buchholz trying to break up a double play, hurts his leg, taken out of game in the second inning and lost for a month. No thanks. The NL should get with the program. No one goes to a game to see a manager in action; they go to watch some exciting baseball and pitchers hitting ain't it---if you'll pardon the slang.

[jung]

UN's new thread sort of forces at least me to review the 2013 team. I know we want to sift through the numbers both individual and team and point to this, that and the other of them in an effort to parse what it was. Really it is as much an effort to try to understand how to duplicate it.

 

We can't.

 

That team was magical. At the end of the day, that is the only word for it. When you look at the confluence of events that produced it and then produced the result, what else is there to say for it. Koji for example would never have been made the closer if Hanrahan and Bailey had not failed. How much more confidence did that team play with knowing it just had to get the ball to Koji? How many more blown saves would some combination of Hanrahan and Bailey have produced? Koji might have been worth 5 games at least on his own.

 

Did the train wrecks of the 11-12 seasons produce such a resolve in the vets that lived through them that combined with just the right mix of them with vets coming in with something to prove, like Vic and youngsters that the result was a team wide resolve that lasted through the entirety of the 162? Did that carry them into the post season where their inherent strengths in starting pitching and defense just carried them past every competitor? Honestly I think they could have played those series over and over again and none of those teams would have touched them with a ten foot pole. Frankly the Cards were lucky to have even pressed them at all.

 

To me, it makes the whole notion that you can buy yourself a baseball team totally laughable. It might have been doable at some point when you could rely on a baseball team to come together naturally the way the 2013 Sox team did but you simply cannot rely on that any longer. In fact the more imbalanced your roster becomes with superstars, the less likely they will come together in any way at all. If they don't, we often end up with what we so often see now....folks looking at the gaudy stats of individual players all of them on the same team unable to win a bloody thing.

 

In truth without the solid bedrock of the starting pitching, 2013 would not have happened at all. I have to acknowledge that. But isn't it true that it all starts with the starting pitching anyway. Either you have it or you don't and if you don't, you are just passing the time in the 162....you might be fun to watch as a team but you aren't going anywhere.

 

We should cherish this team. We should not forget a single thing about it. I feel privileged to have watched every game, every pitch, every hit, every out and every error. Really the last few WS winners seem to be in some sense similar to this 2013 team. Maybe we have seen the last of the super team at least as a means to an end.....I guess we can all watch the Dodgers and see if they can turn the trick.

[Bellhorn04]

Good post, jung. The only thing I disagree with is that I think the Tigers were pretty damn close to taking us down.

[seabeachfred]

UN's new thread sort of forces at least me to review the 2013 team. I know we want to sift through the numbers both individual and team and point to this, that and the other of them in an effort to parse what it was. Really it is as much an effort to try to understand how to duplicate it.

 

We can't.

 

That team was magical. At the end of the day, that is the only word for it. When you look at the confluence of events that produced it and then produced the result, what else is there to say for it. Koji for example would never have been made the closer if Hanrahan and Bailey had not failed. How much more confidence did that team play with knowing it just had to get the ball to Koji? How many more blown saves would some combination of Hanrahan and Bailey have produced? Koji might have been worth 5 games at least on his own.

 

Did the train wrecks of the 11-12 seasons produce such a resolve in the vets that lived through them that combined with just the right mix of them with vets coming in with something to prove, like Vic and youngsters that the result was a team wide resolve that lasted through the entirety of the 162? Did that carry them into the post season where their inherent strengths in starting pitching and defense just carried them past every competitor? Honestly I think they could have played those series over and over again and none of those teams would have touched them with a ten foot pole. Frankly the Cards were lucky to have even pressed them at all.

 

To me, it makes the whole notion that you can buy yourself a baseball team totally laughable. It might have been doable at some point when you could rely on a baseball team to come together naturally the way the 2013 Sox team did but you simply cannot rely on that any longer. In fact the more imbalanced your roster becomes with superstars, the less likely they will come together in any way at all. If they don't, we often end up with what we so often see now....folks looking at the gaudy stats of individual players all of them on the same team unable to win a bloody thing.

 

In truth without the solid bedrock of the starting pitching, 2013 would not have happened at all. I have to acknowledge that. But isn't it true that it all starts with the starting pitching anyway. Either you have it or you don't and if you don't, you are just passing the time in the 162....you might be fun to watch as a team but you aren't going anywhere.

 

We should cherish this team. We should not forget a single thing about it. I feel privileged to have watched every game, every pitch, every hit, every out and every error. Really the last few WS winners seem to be in some sense similar to this 2013 team. Maybe we have seen the last of the super team at least as a means to an end.....I guess we can all watch the Dodgers and see if they can turn the trick.

 

A total gem my friend. Jung, you hit a home run with that one. I would amplify what my friend Bellhorn said, though. The Tiger series was tougher than you might have intimated, but when you put it all together look who we had to go through to win this thing this season.....Price and Moore of the Rays, Verlander and Scherzer of the Tigers, Wainright and those tough rookies for the Cardinals. To do that took a solid effort and can you or anyone else even imagine if we had to do that with the 2012 where we would have wound up? I'd say three out vs the Rays and see you later baby.

[jung]

Did not mean to take anything from those "teams". The distance between them and the Sox as a team was what was remarkable though. The Tigers for example had great individual players which in the end did not mean much. With the Tigers, the dif was most striking with regard to defense. The Sox defense was just light years better.

 

The Cards came the closest to a "team" effort but in the end they really could not compare to the Sox and their team wide resolve either. Most telling was the way the Sox worked over the data accrued during the first Wacha meeting and used it to work him over something fierce the second time around. Myself, I could not identify anything the Cards did that came close to that.

[Cocos Disciples]

To answer the poll, probably everything except the marathon stuff. Including "other," which would be luck, only in the sense that any WS winner needs luck.

[seabeachfred]

To answer the poll' date=' probably everything except the marathon stuff. Including "other," which would be luck, only in the sense that any WS winner needs luck.[/quote']

 

Sometimes I think there's something to that old adage that "I'D RATHER BE LUCKY THAN GOOD". But I think we were both lucky and good this past season. We had the best TEAM!!!! Maybe not the best individual players or the big stars but the best TEAM!!!!!