On Oct. 1, 2011, Koji Uehara made his playoff debut and pitched in relief for the Rangers. He faced three batters, retiring none and allowing a dinger. In his next appearance in the playoffs, after ten days, he allowed a dinger. In his next appearance in the playoffs, he allowed a dinger. Uehara wouldn’t pitch again in that postseason, having completely lost Ron Washington’s trust. That is, if he ever had it. It felt like Uehara and the Rangers was never a marriage; rather, they were assigned lab partners, thinking wistfully of other lab partners. They didn’t work well together, and that’s half the reason the Rangers regret giving up Tommy Hunter and Chris Davis.

These days it’s impossible to imagine that version of Uehara ever existed. A vulnerable version, even if the extent of his vulnerability was a wee bit exaggerated. Uehara has always been good, but you might not even realize just how amazing he was with the Red Sox. He allowed a .400 OPS. His OPS allowed was almost half that down the stretch. FOX liked to show a graphic saying that Uehara had walked one batter since the All-Star break. That held true all the way through the playoffs, in which Uehara pitched 13 times, facing 46 batters, walking none, whiffing 16. In the playoffs he allowed a .413 OPS. That’s actually worse than what he allowed in the season.

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What a difference six months can make.

A Major League Baseball club can open the season in April with an impressive collection of players on its 25-man roster but that team’s picture will no doubt be significantly rearranged come September. Look to the 2013 Toronto Blue Jays for an example of this statement.

Prior to the season, the club was picked by many people — whose job it is to make these sorts of predictions, and make them well — as the favorites to win the American League East division. Instead, the club stumbled out of the gate and key players suffered significant injuries, while others were wildly inconsistent or down right disappointing.

Some big league organizations can easily rebound from catastrophe that was the Jays’ 2013 season. The Cardinals, for example, reached the World Series in ’13 while regularly utilizing seven rookies. The Dodgers reached the National League Championship Series despite injuries to key veterans Hanley Ramirez and Matt Kemp, thanks to strong contributions from June call-up Yasiel Puig and Korean import Hyun-Jin Ryu.

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It is perhaps no longer appropriate to talk about the 2013 St. Louis Cardinals as a current baseball team. As of late Wednesday night, there are no current baseball teams, with all teams now to be referred to in the past tense. In the end, the Cardinals came up just short of the Red Sox, and though they lost the finale by five runs, they did manage to strand runner after runner against John Lackey and bits of the Boston bullpen. It was a theme for the Cardinals in the World Series — though they didn’t perform much worse than Boston at the plate, their timing was worse, and as Dave noted earlier Thursday, the Cardinals were let down by a lack of timeliness that had driven them all regular season long.

Oddly and interestingly, some semblance of Cardinals magic was with them in October. In the playoffs, with runners in scoring position, the Cardinals batted just .259 with a .701 OPS. Those numbers aren’t particularly good, but in the playoffs, with the bases empty, those same Cardinals batted a woeful .190 with a .522 OPS. On the one hand, the Cardinals weren’t automatic in run-scoring situations, like they were during the year. On the other, they still significantly elevated their performance, and this gets to a subject most perplexing.

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Let’s talk about why I love Jamey Carroll. He has had — like most of us would like — his best years after the age of 30; he has played every position except catcher, including an inning of scoreless relief in 2013; he’s short; he spells his name humorously; and he plays a cop in this music video (therabouts of 1:10).

But what impresses me most about him is his rare combination of no power and great plate discipline (as seen here here). There is almost no threat of a homer and only a mild threat of a double when he walks to the plate, but he still induces a walk rate near 10%. Carroll walks more than Robinson Cano and Adrian Gonzalez not because pitchers fear him, but because — as anyone who’s watched Carroll can attest — the 5-foot-11 infielder fights off a half-dozen bad pitches until he finds one he can pop for a single.

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The St. Louis Cardinals are often referred to as a “model organization”, and for good reason. Despite playing in one of the smallest markets of any team in Major League Baseball, they have built a sustainable model of success, flowing through nearly every aspect of the game. They draft and develop talent exceptionally well, leading to a seemingly never ending pipeline of young talent flowing into the big leagues. They manage their financial resources very well, and consistently add quality veterans at prices that won’t prohibit them from making other necessary improvements. They have a formula in place that has allowed them to win in both the short and long term, and have shown that it doesn’t take a $175 million payroll to be one of baseball’s elite franchises.

But, of course, they aren’t perfect. No organization is. So, while the Cardinals 2013 season was a remarkable success, and should be viewed that way no matter how the season ended, there may be a few things that can be learned from their final series loss to the Red Sox.

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Last night, as you may have heard, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series. As many noted, it was the first time that a Boston team clinched the World Series in its home town since the Sox won in 1918.

It was the sixth World Championship that Hub fans have ever had a chance to witness: the Red Sox won at home in 1903, 1912, 1916, and 1918, and the Boston Braves won at home in 1914. Since it’s almost certain that none of the fans at Fenway tonight were in attendance at any of the others, I thought I’d take a quick look at what happened a century ago.
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In the little picture, Wednesday’s was a perfectly sensible conclusion. The better baseball team clinched the World Series, on its own home field. One of the truths about the MLB playoffs is that the format doesn’t always reward the best team in baseball. This time, though, the Red Sox have a hell of an argument, and they’re a more than deserving champion. In the big picture, also, Wednesday’s was a perfectly sensible conclusion. The Red Sox won their third title in a decade. They’re always thought of as a powerhouse. The magic is in the medium picture. The picture in which you realize the Red Sox did go from worst to first. Just one season ago, the Red Sox lost 93 games. This season, the Mariners lost 91 games. The Mets lost 88 games. The Padres lost 86 games. There was a lot of talent already in place, but the Red Sox badly needed some work, and the franchise identity shouldn’t blind people to the near improbability of the turnaround. No World Series champion has ever had a worse previous season.

For Sox fans, this was another opportunity to celebrate, and an opportunity to celebrate a Series win at home for the first time in almost a century. For Sox fans and all other fans too, this made for a relatively stress-free game by the middle innings. The top of the seventh offered a glimpse of possible stress, but there was no real stress to be felt after the Sox went up 3-0 in the third and double that in the fourth. Stephen Drew’s homer put Boston’s win expectancy over 90% and it never sank back down below. For several innings, the Sox all but had the clincher in the bag, after chasing the un-chase-able Michael Wacha.

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The ghost of Carl Mays smiled tonight. In 1918, the erstwhile right-hander pitched the Red Sox to a World Series championship with a Game 6 win. Nearly a century later, on the eve of Halloween, Fenway Park was once again the setting for the final game of the Fall Classic.

It was a horror show for the Cardinals.

Boston rolled to a 6-1 win, rocking Michael Wacha in the process. John Lackey played the role of Mays, sucking the life out of the St. Louis offense. For the first time in 95 years, the Red Sox tasted champagne in baseball‘s oldest ballpark.

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Source: FanGraphs

Congratulations, Boston. From 69-93 to a World Series title. The curse is well and truly dead.

For a hot minute, used to be the story of the World Series was wacky finishes. More generally, it was overall wackiness, taking into account some defensive blunders. But then we were treated to a more or less clean and conventional Game 5, and now the clear story is David Ortiz, and how he’s presently un-get-outtable. I mean, I guess the real story is how the Red Sox are on the verge of another championship, but as far as players are concerned, Ortiz is the guy. He’s the main guy on the Red Sox, and he’s thought to be the main focus of the Cardinals.

In case you haven’t heard, so far Ortiz has had one of the most productive World Series of all time. He’s got 11 hits in 15 at-bats, and that doesn’t include a grand slam he had taken away by Carlos Beltran, which left him with a meager sacrifice fly. Always a presence, right now Ortiz feels like either a dream or a nightmare, depending on your loyalty. The sense is that he’s seeing the ball better than ever, and hitting the ball better than ever, and as a consequence, if you look around the Internet you’ll recognize the familiar debate about the nature and very existence of hot streaks. They say David Ortiz is locked in. It’s an easy thing to believe. It’s a more difficult thing to prove.

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