Good morning.
Here are several links from the past week that will make your Monday at the office a bit more bearable:
- In the wake of a three-game sweep of the Angels, Kansas City crowned a king last night. First baseman Eric Hosmer made mincemeat of Angels pitching in the ALDS. Jeff Eisenberg of Yahoo’s Big League Stew points out how fortunate it is for the Royals that his bat, which was less than stellar during the regular season (.278/.318/.398), has come alive in the postseason.
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- Brandon Belt’s blast in the top of the 18th inning in Nationals Park on Saturday night put the Giants up 2-0 in the best-of-five series. Rick Maese of the Washington Post explains to readers unfamiliar with the Giants first baseman the concussion-related challenges he endured this summer.
- Meanwhile, Jeff Sullivan points out that every team that the Halos played in the second half, not just the Royals in the ALDS, was aware of Mike Trout’s relative weakness on pitches located up and in:
If we’ve been able to identify something, you’d better believe Major League Baseball has been able to identify that something, so Trout in the second half saw more high fastballs than anybody else, by a few percentage points. And what happened? Well, Trout remained pretty great, but after leading baseball in the first half with a 186 wRC+, second-half Trout dropped to 141, even with Jose Altuve. His walks went down and his strikeouts went up, and while he was seeing about 41% high fastballs, that means he was seeing 59% non-high-fastballs. That’s where Trout feasted. He’s going to win the league MVP, and he deserves it.
- In his new blog, DK on Pittsburgh Sports, Dejan Kovacevic looks back at the Pirates’ decision to gun for the NL Central crown, despite the odds’ not being in the club’s favor, at the expense of having their best starter available for a wild-card game.
- In “King of Three True Outcomes, Adam Dunn, calls it a career,” Jay Jaffe of Sports Illustrated looks back at the Big Donkey’s impact on the game, which helped shape an era in which fewer balls are being put in play.
- Tom Tango notes that TBS/SNY announcer Ron Darling recently expressed distaste for the quality-start statistic — Tango agrees that it has limited value — but wonders if the former Mets and A’s pitcher will acknowledge the uselessness of the pitcher win. (Darling racked up 136 victories during a 13-year career.)
- Jackie Robinson debuted for the Dodgers on Opening Day in 1947, and Larry Doby made his first appearance for the Indians later that summer, but the Hardball Times’ Joe Distelheim maintains that the true integration didn’t take place for four more years. For example, he points out that the 1950 World Series featured two teams, the Phillies and the Yankees, that had yet to field a single African-American player.
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- Congrats to both ALDS winners, the Royals and the Orioles, the latter managing to win three games against opposing starters, all of whom possess Cy Young Award hardware. Yahoo’s Jeff Passan argues that the in-game moves of Baltimore skipper Buck Showalter against Detroit, particularly his handling of his bullpen, help illustrate why he’s the best skipper this postseason.
That’s it. Have a walk-off week!
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