It All Comes Down to 2 Games… Maybe 3
The 2021 regular season will be over today… or tomorrow. There are two games today that will help determine the Champion of the NL West. If the Giants win, they are the champs. If the Giants lose and the Dodgers lose, the Giants are the Champs. If the Giants lose and then the…
The 2021 regular season will be over today… or tomorrow. There are two games today that will help determine the Champion of the NL West. If the Giants win, they are the champs. If the Giants lose and the Dodgers lose, the Giants are the Champs. If the Giants lose and then the Dodgers win, they are tied and will have a one-game “winner takes all” game on Monday.
The Dodgers seem to be hitting their stride offensively… all except Cody Bellinger and Chris Taylor, but if everyone else hits, the team can handle it. Here’s what we know: The only want the Dodgers can win the NL West is to win 107 games. They have won 105 as of this moment. They need to win two more… AND the Padres have to beat the Giants! It’s complicated and it will not be easy. Ten days ago, I thought the Dodgers should pack it in and be rested for the playoffs. Time will tell if I was right or wrong. Right about now, it looks like I was wrong, but I hope I am not right and the starters are gassed! We shall see.
At any rate, if the Giants win and the Dodgers lose, this will go down in history as one of the most fantastic finished EVER! If that happens, MR. MO MENTUM will be so strong that the Dodgers will crush the Giants on Monday. Bet the Ranch on it!
There is a lot more at stake as well. Trea Turner will win the NL Batting Title (no one can catch him) and Striker Buehler can nail down the Cy Young Award with a spectacular game… and make no mistake, for Striker to win his first Cy Young, he will have to be lights out. He needs seven or eight innings of dominant shutout baseball to trip his ERA in the 2.30’s and notch his 16th win. I that happens, you could see Dodgers 1, 2, and 3 in the Cy Young vote
- #1 Buehler
- #2 Scherzer
- #3 Urias
Has that ever happened (Bear)? I took a lot of crap over the years for wanting to keep Young Julio, but this is what I foresaw seven or eight years ago. I refused to allow Andrew Friedman to include Julio in any trade scenario. He tried to talk me out of it, but I was resolute. [OK, you know I am lying, right?] Coming into this season, Julio Urias had 12 career wins and 239 innings pitched in his previous 5 years in the majors. In 2021, he won 20 games and pitches 185.2 innings. That is remarkable!
Striker Buehler has 202.2 innings pitched and if he pitches well and deep into the game, he will win the Cy Young because of his stats and the sheer volume of innings. Other than Zach Wheeler (whose ERA and record is much worse), Buehler will likely be just a couple of innings short of Wheeler. Buehler is simply pitching for a pennant AND a Cy Young. Let’s see if that is really ice water in your veins, young man!
The Giants and Dodgers both start at around 3 PM PT today. Jake McGee is active and both teams will pull out all the stops. I believe that the Dodgers will bring out their whooping sticks and bet Brett Anderson like the piece of human excrement he is. I am not talking about the fact he is not a good pitcher. I am talking about him personally. I don’t say that about many people and I will just leave it at that! I hope the Dodgers beat him like a Rented Mule.
Playoff Roster?
- Smith
- Barnes
- Muncy
- T. Turner
- Seager
- J. Turner
- Pollock
- Bellinger
- Betts
- Pujols
- Lux
- Taylor
- Scherzer
- Buehler
- Urias
- Gonsolin
- White
- Bickford
- Kelly
- Knebel
- Treinen
- Vesia
- Bruihl
- Graterol
- Jansen
- Prive, Beaty, or V.Gonzalez?
Shootout at the OK Corral
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Discussion (58)
Disagree, not disagreeable
Here are the five most accurate and least accurate umpires from around the league for the 2021 season.
Most accurate
Tripp Gibson: 20 G; 95.32 percent accuracy; 96.9 percent consistency
Jeremie Rehak: 20 G; 94.85 percent accuracy; 96.8 percent consistency
Alan Porter: 19 G; 94.75 percent accuracy; 96.5 percent consistency
Edwin Moscoso: 24 G; 94.64 percent accuracy; 96.5 percent consistency
Pat Hoberg: 23 G; 94.44 percent accuracy; 97.6 percent consistency
Least accurate
Ed Hickox: 9 G; 90.13 percent accuracy; 94.1 percent consistency
Rob Drake: 19 G; 90.92 percent accuracy; 95.3 percent consistency
Adrian Johnson: 15 G; 91.03 percent accuracy; 94.5 percent consistency
Kerwin Danley: 13 G; 91.28 percent accuracy; 92.8 percent consistency
Joe West: 22 G; 91.3 percent accuracy; 94.7 percent consistency
Why do Hickox and West still have jobs? Hickox will go down in Dodgers history.
I look forward to seeing the giants again. Bummer about Muncy. He should know better than to stick his arm into the baseline.
It took the most outrageous overplay in the history of mlb to beat us this year. The Giants could play this season 1000 times over and not win 107 games! Wow! We still kick their butts in the playoffs!
I figured this was going to happen. Especially with the Padres basically using a bullpen day. But it actually is better than tying for the division since if they did that, they would burn Scherzer in the 163rd game, and if they lost that, then Urias would have to start the wild card game against a team he has faced once in his career and only pitched one inning against them. Scherzer is 2-0 against the Cardinals this season and has not allowed an earned run in either of those games. He gave up one unearned. Playoffs set. Yanks-Red Sox in the wild card in the AL. Dodgers-Cardinals in the wild card in the NL. Trea Turner is both the batting champ and the stolen base leader in the NL. Phillies fired Juan Castro and Joe Dillion, the hitting coach. They also told assistant hitting coach Pedro Guererro that he can look at other opportunities. Charlie Blackmon, who is 35, has said he will exercise his option to return to the Rockies. This sticks in my throat, but congrats to the Giants on an excellent season….now we are going to make you choke on it. LOL.
The SF players did not outperform, in the season, the Dodgers players, the Dodgers players, on the field of play, they did not lose this either, the division was decided by a bad call from an umpire, that swing that decided that It was not the third strike and the end of the game, if he decides correctly the Dodgers would have 107-55 and SF 106-54 and they would be division champions, the Dodgers were better, the run differential also shows it, the Dodgers had Against SF 10-9 in his annual series, Kenley had one more save, one less blown save, one less loss and a better ERA and would have also gotten rid of a week of insults, this was decided by a bad call from an umpire.
I’m proud of the way our boys played down the stretch. We did about as much as you can expect.
It pains me to say it, but hats off to the Giants for their grit and willingness to persevere despite all the pressure we were putting on them. Bastards……
TM
The Dodgers are absolutely a far better team than the Midgets. However, for every game that the Dodgers lost that they should have won, it is almost certain that there are others that they won that they should have lost. That’s baseball, plain and simple. All I want now in the immediate future is for the Dodgers to win on Wednesday, be it 1-0 or 15-0. And I don’t care if the outcome is the result of a lucky play or plays. And as for kicking Giant ass, my sentiments are the same. It’s all about the bottom line. Win on Wednesday and then go on to win the NLDS, NLCS, and WS.
Max Muncy’s injury is a concern. Assuming that Bellinger will fill-in for him, here’s hoping that Cody finds his stroke and picks up the offensive slack. Cody is capable, and no doubt will be a defensive upgrade, and adds speed to the equation. And hopefully Muncy’s injury is not nearly as bad as it appeared, and that he’s back a lot sooner that it appeared it would be.
Trea Turner is insurance if Cory leaves next year and Lux is insurance if Trea leaves after next year. The Dodgers don’t need to overspend for a shortstop.
A 2023 infield of Busch, Betts, Vargas, and Lux would need Pages to be ready in 2023 to be a third of the outfield. That would leave lots of salary for pitching.
We need to really enjoy and appreciate whatever number of games the Dodgers give us this year because things are a changing.
Very interesting Bum, what will the DODGERS look like in 2023