Armchair GM

Nice synopsis Michael – can’t argue with much of that.

I too was wary of AFs methodology at the beginning, but was won over.

However, I did not like our chances at all last night when I saw the lineup.

In fact for the first time in the 20 Post Season I did not get up in the middle of the night to watch.

This morning I see the box score. 3 hits.

I’m not gonna say any more for fear of moaning, but suffice to say I was not surprised.

I’ve read that Kershaw was not at his best. Well, not surprising considering he couldn’t pitch 2 days ago because of injury. I wonder if it might have been prudent to use May last night , or even to have pulled Urías before he threw a pitch the night before – after all, Wood and Co could surely have preserved an 11 run lead?

Julio could’ve picked up Kershaw if needed last night, or May tonight?

Anyway – we’ve all seen this script before – maybe one year things will all click into place.

Three hits won’t win many games.

You have to face facts, the results are what they are and they point to model that isn’t designed to win rings,. It is built to win in the regular season, feasting on weak pitchers. The problem is very few weak pitchers are faced in the higher rounds of the post season. I have often said for many years, this team won’t win championships following the AF methodology. Feast or famine performance will continue, with more famine in the post season than feast. I’m not whining, I have been seeing this thing for many seasons now, The Truth Hurts!

All I can say is, “Ouch!” No matter how often it happens, it still hurts. So close, and yet, so far. And to see Kersh do it again is still disappointing, no matter how often we’ve seen it before. Usually it is the “unlucky” 7th inning. This time, the 6th. No matter. Just when you thought he might redeem himself. And you have to feel sorry for him. Despite how great a pitcher he is, he’ll be remembered with a small asterisk: lost it in the postseason. Is this all his fault? No. If we’re ever going to win it all,.we need dominant pitching. And this year, we don’t have enough of it.

Nice analysis and it will be interesting to see what AF does. As for me playing armchair GM;

* Starting pitching is loaded, stand pat

*Sign JT to a contract that allows him to play another yr or two then work somewhere in the organization

* I do believe the bullpen will turn over some but not as much as you.

* There will be no need for Joc and Kike w guys like Rios and McKinstry in the pipeline.

* Jansen will just have to be tolerated and used mid innings. After next yr his contract is up and he won’t be pitching for LA. Maybe coaching in the minors for us.

* I agree there isn’t anyone I would give the QO.

3 hits. In a playoff game. 10 runs given up in a game that sets us up to be eliminated. We gave the Braves the same number of unearned runs that we scored. 0fer WRISP. Bullpen 4 earned in 4 innings. That was a total meltdown. Maybe we just aren’t as good as our record says we are. We will see very soon.

Sorry Stevie. I maybe overreacted. But it’s just baseball. See ball hit ball. Run catch throw. A 5 year old can play this game. And professionals being paid millions shouldn’t need a damm pep talk. Saber metrics math say the best managers in the game are worth 2 WAR over a 162 game season. That’s .012345678 per game. That means I could make out the lineup and the Dodgers should win. Is Roberts one of the best? I don’t know. He was in ‘16. Was in the running a few times.

The only suggestion I have for today’s game is to play with the same urgency the Braves are playing with. Those guys are having fun, jumping all over the place. Shut ‘em up and shut ‘em down. Then do it again tomorrow. If they lay another egg we will have plenty of time to talk about it for months.

If you want to make a statement after suffering a 15-3 beat down, the Braves just made it. Let’s have the rookie out pitch the first ballot hall of famer and let’s beat hit their relief pitchers like the proverbial rented mule.

Whether the Braves are a better team than the Dodgers, I’ll leave for others to argue. For 3 of the 4 games of this series, they’ve scored more runs than the Dodgers, and they’ve looked good doing it.

Last night for 5 innings the game was tolerable. I had to admire Wilson for the work he was doing. He made the best pitches at the best time. He struck them out when he needed to, and did not allow a whole lot of solid contact. At this point you would have to say that the Braves just want it more. They are playing loose, and they are having fun. Last night the Dodgers looked tight. There were no smiles in the dugout. I think Dave loaded up with power hitters because of some of the data they had on the pitcher. They even showed a graph early in the game about how bad Wilson was against LH hitters. Something like a 400 plus average. So using that, you would think those guys would not have too much trouble with the rookie. Well, sometimes the data is wrong, and last night is proof of that. Now it is suck it up time. They are on the precipice of going home empty handed again. The expectations that fans and ownership had for this team have been so high, this is going to be a hard pill to swallow. Not to mention how many times we are going to hear the word choke this winter. It is never the other team that outplays the Dodgers, it is the Dodgers choking. SF fans have to be ready to celebrate along with the Braves faithful. They knocked the king off of his throne.

Very enjoyable write-up, Bear, and I loved the picture too. Disappointed about the loss last night but I do not blame it on AF or Doc, the umpires, ball field, the announcers, although sometimes that Mr. Buck drove me crazy with his seemingly over-enthusiasm for the Braves. No, the hitters and some pitchers should shoulder the responsibility. 3 hits and 2 runs does not seem to be enough against this Braves team that also has some very good pitching and some very good hitters.

I agree with most of your comments on what new rules will be kept next year. I also think that Clayton may not have been at 100% and perhaps one more day of rest might have helped. Have I ever said that along with some pitchers, I hate the shift?

Not one to give up hope, I am hoping the Dodgers will recoup and be victorious the next few games.

Also, Bear, just wanted to say that I hope your son’s mother gets well.

Good write-up.

But my biggest question, looking ahead, will fans be back in the stands. I certainly hope so, just not the same game without them.

Obviously there is talk of Trevor Bauer, who has expressed some interest in pitching for the Dodgers on more than one occasion. But the Dodgers have a lot of good young pitchers, plus David Price back.

I agree with Bear on Kike and Joc. Edwin Rios has certainly made a statement, some serious power.

Still believe the Dodgers will be more focused on retaining the core moving forward, including Cody Bellinger and Cory Seager.

Guessing they will want Justin Turner back on a short term deal.

Then there is the bullpen. I thought they did pretty well putting it together for this season, but it has faltered lately. No easy answers. Pretty much a crapshoot.

I’m guessing Walker Buehler is better in 2021. Maybe it was the spring training shutdown or the mid summer workouts and the shortened season, but he just seemed off, walking too many, not being efficient.

Thinking Gavin Lux rises to the occasion in ’21, which much means the team in the field is set.

As to the college softball tournament rule, yah I can’t see baseball keeping that. The seven inning doubleheaders really don’t bother me if they actually play back to back games, like the old days. One ticket buys a twin bill. Loved day time doubleheaders back in the day.

Is it that big of a deal calling balls and strikes? Yes, they miss one here and there, but it’s a human game. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Anyone think the Dodgers can win three straight?

Simply put and for whatever reason we have a group who are not prime time players!

Wow, I think it’s a little premature to start talking like the season is over. I still have hope in a big comeback. After all, the Dodgers have rattled off 3 in a row many times this year. Does May step up to Walker Bueller status tonight? Will Walker out-dual Fried tomorrow? Then it’s all hands on deck for an all-time classic game 7. I’m trying real hard to keep the faith. Sure, it’s not likely, but stranger things have happened. After all, this is baseball and it’s why we love this game.

Last night was a debacle. A lot of soft stuff hit through the infield starting with Acuna’s chopper. On the flip side of Corey Seager lining two doubles just foul on each side of the field in the same at bat. The Gods were kind to the Braves last night.

I don’t want to go on an end of year rant on who to fire, release, trade just yet. I’ll save that for when the Dodgers’s season is over, hopefully in a couple of weeks.

I’ll leave this with one thought. Does anyone think Clayton Kershaw will ever carry a team during the post-season? Last night was typical. Pitches well, then loses it all of the sudden. He seemed to go a little mental after the horrible Acuna play to start the inning. A chopper that should have been an out, but Kike makes a bad throw and Muncy let’s it bang off his glove. You know the rest.

The game would have gone a lot differently with a little luck. Baseball is weird.

We have been owned by three rookie pitchers. Why? Analytics. It’s less see the ball hit the ball and more guess which pitch is coming and when to swing. This is why Joc is our best and most clutch playoff hitter, and also why they want to move him, because he still operates the old way, see the ball hit the ball, as evidenced by how many big hits he gets on pitches out of the zone. Unless the opposing pitchers we face in the playoffs are NL retreads that we’ve seen a hundred times this strategy will result in continued failure in the postseason

We do have a chance to win three in a row. We are substantial favorites today, and if we win, we have Buehler, though they have Fried. The last game would be Gonsolin vs. Anderson. I don’t even know if Urias can pitch at all the rest of the series, because Roberts let him throw over 100 pitches with a 14-run lead. And our bullpen is in terrible shape, which is something that i had suggested earlier. Last night, everyone we used in relief did a poor job. Still, if we gain momentum with a win today, we do have some chance.

What does bother me, and always has, is when people say, “Well, the manager didn’t strike out, or make the error, or throw the bad pitches, so why blame him?” No manager does that on the field, no football coach fumbles the ball or fails to tackle; no basketball coach misses shots or doesn’t play defense. So why ever fire a coach or manager? Because what their team does on the field is a reflection of the coaching or managing. The exception would be if there is absolutely no talent there at all. but that is hardly the case here. So while one doesn’t want to go player by player, one managerial decision after another, it is a whole. And I contend that Roberts is not the kind of manager that we need to win titles. Maybe we could somehow win one, and the could live off it for 40 more years, but he is still limited in his abilities to get his teams to succeed in the postseason. We can go over pulling Hill early twice in World Series games, when any smart manager would have seen that he was pitching great, with intense focus. Leaving in Kershaw after the first homerun in the eighth last year. Having Kelly start his second inning. Pitching Darvish in game 7 when Kershaw was obviously able to pitch four innings, since he did when the game was over. There are others. The lineups, the handling of the bullpen. No manager is perfect, but he is worse than the best ones, and that’s whom you have to beat in the playoffs. It seems obvious to me.

The Dodgers in some way are like Disney. Lots of happy talk, welcome to the magic kingdom. They hate to make any changes. They didn’t even fire Mattingly, Friedman kept saying that they intended to keep him, but then maybe there was some disagreement about analytics. They hired Roberts for mostly public relations aspects. They can keep him forever, we cannot do anything about that. They can do anything they want, they own the team, the fans do not, though they depend on the fans. But this ownership so far has no championships, does that matter to them? Maybe not. So far, pending the end of these playoffs, the approach of ownership and the management they hire has brought much regular season success, but no championships, and now the Dodgers are in danger of becoming a joke, as the team which wins all the games but falls apart in the playoffs. Is this just bad luck, or is there something wrong with their model of trying to pick up under-the-radar players like Muncy and Taylor, or do they have the wrong manager? Are they just going to go out there next year and do the same thing, albeit with a few different faces? At this point, i have no real interest in following the regular season next year, all those wins and statistics which mean nothing in playoff time. To me, they look like a wildcard team next year. Of course, there is still a chance to save this season, let’s see if we can do it.

I think Muncy had a hard time seeing the bad throw. Lot of the players were complaining that they couldn’t see due to the bad winds

We all know that Kershaw has not been Hall of Fame good during past playoffs but starters have to depend on their bullpen to some extent to keep their own ERA numbers intact.

Starting in 2013, during the playoffs, CK has left the game with a total of 17 runners on base. The bullpen has allowed 15 of those runners to score, that’s 88%. Anyone have any idea what the average is for inherited runners allowed to score? I’m assuming it’s a lot lower than 88%.

It is possible!!

Link (below) to ESPN article on teams that have come back from a 3-1 series deficits.

The one I remember most fondly was the “We are Family” 1979 Pirates. That was a great series with Pops Stargell doing amazing things in his age 39, co-mvp season. Even as a die-hard Dodgers fan I got sucked into that series as a 12-year-old.

Bear, unless I misunderstood what you were saying, you mentioned above that the only team to come back from a 3-1 deficit was Doc’s Red Sox team. They actually came back from 3-0.

Coming back from 3-1 has been done 13 times since 1925, including of course Doc’s 1986 Red Sox team. The last time it was done was in 2016 when the Cubs did it against the Indians on their way to breaking the curse.

The Royals actually came back from 3-1 in both the ALCS and the WS in 1985.

Oops, looks like you beat me to it Bisonjones, and you supplied videos.

We got this! Start planning the parade.

If WAR is the Holy Grail of modern-day baseball then AF should find some mathematical savant to come up with a playoff WAR. 162 game WARs are fun to talk about and a nice stat to justify decisions and arguments but don’t seem to relate to short series. There must be some way to analytically measure something like a that. If not, it is just plain dumb luck.

There’s a fun article by Cory Brock today in the Athletic on the 1970 Spokane Indians “Tommy’s Gang”. The best AAA team I ever saw.

I personally, am not making any comments about off-season transactions and personel until this season is over. There’s plenty of time when this season ends.

Here are my thoughts on last night:

* Andy McCullough of the Athletic this morning criticized Doc for leaving CK in to face Ozuna a 3rd time. It’s an easy criticism when you know the outcome. Dusty Baker stuck with his pitcher in the Cheato’s win yesterday and was lauded as a loyal Savant for keeping the guy in against the book. His move worked. Doc’s didn’t. Doc has made some mistakes for sure in the past, but trusting and sticking your Ace to face Ozuna wasn’t one of them.

* Nobody pitched well. Floro was closest, giving up a homer and 2 unearned when Beaty can’t catch the ball at first base.

* MLB does it again. With the bubble format and select, warm weather venues there is no fear of a rain out, snow out, freezing temps or a postponement. The game in San Diego with the Rays and Cheatos was perfect weather. So who in MLB decided to leave the friggin roof open to play in a windstorm in Arlington? The excuse was to keep the covid in the wide open spaces, like there isn’t enough ventilation with the roof closed and the folks in there aren’t pretty much quarantined? You got folks in hoodies and bundled up like they were playing in Boston or Philly in the snow with the wind whipping around like Candlestick. It was a a safety decision. Right. Piss in my ear and tell me it’s raining. Manfred and MLB have another cranial-rectal inversion.

* 2nd base has become an offensive Black Hole. Apparently CT3 has lost that job by hitting .143 (.429) with 11 K’s in 28 AB’s. His replacement, Kike, is hitting .182 (.762) with 5 K’s in 11 AB’s. Why is 2nd always a troublesome position year in and year out?

* Bottom line – a rookie shoves it up your nose. Apparently this line up didn’t read the Memo that Wilson gets lit up by left handed bats. The Dodgers get 2 runs, both by an unlikely DH, on 3 hits and 4 LOB. No Traffic. No production.

End of story.

Last night’s game was one where the Dodgers didn’t play well in any aspect of the game – they didn’t hit and the bullpen stank.

I didn’t think that Kershaw looked like himself all night. He was missing arm side which meant that he wasn’t coming all of the way around on his release point, probably because his back was still stiff. It’s also why his breaking stuff wasn’t crisp and why his velocity wasn’t up. For 5 innings, he got away with it. He’s a warrior.

I don’t fault Roberts except that he should have been ready to pull Kershaw out of there at the first sign of trouble.

Like I said before, no one executed last night – it’s everyone’s fault.

Maybe what this team needs isn’t a pat on the back, but someone to get in their face. Where’s Gibby when we need him?

Minter gets the open for the Braves. We know it is a bullpen day for the Atl. Seager hit a 3 run shot off of him in the comeback almost game

Angels trainer who provided Skaggs with drugs indited by the grand jury,

Today’s lineup:

Mookie

Seager

JT

Muncy

Smith

Belli

Pollock

Joc (DH)

CT3