It doesn't involve the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, Phillies, Mets, Angels or Dodgers, but the 2011 World Series has been better than any of those teams could have provided.
Quite simply, through five games, this has been one of the best World Series ever. Four games have been close, the type of game you had to watch to the finish because it felt like both teams had a shot to win it. The one game that wasn't close, game 3, was an extremely entertaining 16-7 slugfest in which Albert Pujols went absolutely bonkers and made history with three home runs. If the entertainment and intensity level of these games continues for two more games in St. Louis, in my mind this would go down as one of the greatest World Series ever.
What's a shame though is how I keep reading about how the losing team's mistakes cost them the game. How Ron Washington's inability to manage a game cost the Rangers game 1, and how Tony La Russa's mistakes cost the Cardinals in games 2 and 5. Really? Give me a break. Managers just don't sway the game that much. And the fact of the matter is, at least in both cases with La Russa, his "mistakes" came in games that were tied, so you can't say the Cardinals were going to win if he doesn't make that move.
What's more, is that even with leaving the wrong pitcher in the game, the advantage is still to that pitcher. The big complaint about La Russa in game 5 was that he left in lefty Mark Rzepczynski to face Mike Napoli instead of bringing in closer Jason Motte (and this was possibly due to a miscommunication with the bullpen so Motte wasn't ready). Whatever happened, the numbers don't lie. Jonah Keri of Grantland.com wrote that Napoli is a much better hitter against lefties than righties, hitting .294/.400/.555 vs lefties and .253/.343/.498 against righties. So was the right-hander Motte the best option against Napoli in the eighth inning? Absolutely. But try and keep it in perspective that Napoli is still hitting .294 against lefties. That's a great average, but in the grand scheme of things, that means he only gets a hit 3 out of 10 times. And in the situation Napoli came up in, with the bases loaded, a single is all he would have needed to score two runs (he hit a two-run double, as it turned out). So even with a lesser option in the game at pitcher, La Russa and the Cardinals still had the advantage on Napoli.
At a certain point in time, you just have to start giving guys their due for making plays. The Cardinals got unlucky with a grounder bouncing off Rzepczynski that would have certainly been one, perhaps two outs. But after that, Napoli came up and delivered a hit. It's that simple. To say he wouldn't have done it if he'd been up against Motte is ludicrous. You can't possibly know that. Napoli has been one of the hottest hitters in baseball since the All-Star break, so he's got a great chance of getting a hit off just about anybody.
Give credit where credit is due. This has been an awesome World Series, and that is because for the most part great baseball has been played and the games have been close. Have both managers made less-than-ideal or head-scratching decisions during the series? Yes. But that happens in just about every game of the the 162-game regular season. Quit nit-picking and enjoy a phenomenal series.
I agree, this World Series has been a thrilling one. And I too think that Napoli should be given much more credit than he is being given. Dude has been on a tear all series, and without him St. Louis might've already won by this point. And all that from the seventh or eighth spot in the order! And as much as Tim McCarver rubs a lot of people the wrong way, he said when Rzepczynski came in that he would not be surprised if La Russa let him pitch to a righty. Lefty-righty matchups are not set in stone.
ReplyDelete