Baseball Is Just The Best
That chart doesn’t do this game justice. That was incredible. From Rich Hill to Julio Urias to Chris Heisey to Kenley Jansen throwing 50 pitches… and then the best pitcher of his time finally getting his legendary October moment.
For the Nationals, another tough loss ending a great season, losing by the thinnest of margins to another great team. They should have nothing to be ashamed of, even though this isn’t how they wanted it all to go.
What a spectacle. What a sport. Baseball is really just the best.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Win: Urías
Hold: Jansen
Save: Kershaw
Just how they drew it up.
Who knew the answer to Clayton Kershaw in Game 4 or Game 5 was “BOTH”?
I think Dusty Baker knew. He didn’t want to admit it to himself, but in the back of his mind, he knew.
KERSHAW BABY!!!!
Dodgers announce their NLCS rotation:
Gm 1: Kershaw
Gm 2: Kershaw
Gm 3: Kershaw
Gm 4: Kershaw
Gm 5: Kershaw
Gm 6: Kershaw
Gm 7: Kershaw
How would that rotation fare up vs the Giants’ equivalent with Bumgarner? If they’d made it to the NLCS.
Kershaw with the +.327 WPA. 6.85 pLI.
5.84 ERA, 1.46 WHIP. But they won!
Obviously ChippersJonesing is referring to stats in simply game 5, where he had a 0 ERA, 0 WHIP, and sub 1 FIP (or something along those lines).
But by all means, pile on the non sequiturs.
Obviously he was referring to the game 5 stats. Duh. The connection (which you apparently didn’t understand) is that CJ’s stats are completely incongruous (matching up Kershaw with a ridiculously high pLI) and intended to be, and my comment was to place this in context with the incongruity of the entire series, where Kershaw having a high ERA and WHIP is not normal, the Dodgers winning a playoff series recently is not normal, and the combination of Kershaw having a high ERA and WHIP and the Dodgers winning is not normal. The whole situation is bizarre.
Is that spelled out clearly enough for you?I didn’t bother to spell out the connection before because it should be self-evident.
Apparently, he thought the game statistics 5. course. Midfield (which does not seem to understand) that the statistics meaningless CJ (in combination with high Kerljo PLI), and forced my comment in the context of a whole series of disputes which have high moments and often whip Kershaw new Dodgers, winning a series of tournaments is not normal, and combination of high age Kershaw and the dodgers beat the whip. The situation is very bizarre.
If writing is clear enough? Do not try to be possible to state the obvious connection.
salty much?
More WPA than he accrued in 16 of his 21 starts this year!
Joc Pederson mentioned Scherzer’s spin rate affecting his approach when he hit the homerun. Interesting…
Max was AMPED from the beginning. Got the feeling he’d run out of gas, but he really held up pretty well. Velocity tailed off a little, but it did look like he wasn’t getting quite the run on his fastball that he had the first five innings.
And then instantly got trolled by the FS1 team…
The most stressful Dodger game of my life. My heart. My poor heart.
Say that to DC fans who have had perennial losers/chokers for the last twenty years. Eager to see how they find away to lose another NLDS in 2018!
I hate to break it to you, but even years apparently don’t mean much.
How crazy is it that a team that leaned heavily on rotation depth throughout the season with a revolving door of starters and relievers won this game and the series in large part by stretching a few pitchers (Kershaw, Blanton, Jansen) for tons of batters/pitches/outs?
I had wondered all season if the roster construction of the Dodgers this year allowed the team to leverage advantages in the regular season (depth in the form of many good but not star-level players allowed them to increase their expected value of wins in a large sample) that wouldn’t play in the postseason where the focus maybe should be more on star players who can increase the probability of winning in an individual game. Funny that this game showed the team drawing on depth in some ways (many position players used, three starters used in one game), while both this game and the series as a whole showed the team leaning heavily on a few guys in particular (Hill and the aforementioned three pitchers). Amid their wealth of injured starters, young relievers, rookies, and cheap veterans, does L.A. have 25 guys that can get them past the Cubs?
Sure. 47% of the time. Maybe this time!
Your writing has always featured a conspicuously pro-baseball bias.
What a game. A great display of the Dodgers’ front office, manager and players firing on all cylinders. Just the way they planned it, right?
That leverage index though…