The Los Angeles Dodgers won their first World Series title since 1988,
October 27, 2020 8:45 PM   Subscribe

Dodgers Win the World Series After Years of Frustration. A win against the Rays in Game 6 sealed the franchise’s first title in 32 years and compensated for several postseason disappointments in recent years. "The same manager that left Tyler Glasnow out there to die for 112 pitches when he didn’t have it took Blake Snell out of an elimination game when he had a 2-hit shutout going at 73 pitches with the part of the order coming up that was 0-for-6 with 6 strikeouts on the night. How." Twitter melts down over TB pulling Snell due to ... analytics?
posted by geoff. (34 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
Well, that sure explains all the fireworks outside.
posted by mykescipark at 8:48 PM on October 27, 2020 [4 favorites]




I didn't understand the Justin Turner thing, makes sense now. What a strange game in a strange year.
posted by geoff. at 9:08 PM on October 27, 2020


LA right now
posted by geoff. at 9:10 PM on October 27, 2020


*
posted by 7segment at 9:34 PM on October 27, 2020 [2 favorites]


Maybe "Pulling Snell" will enter the common parlance to mean any monumentally, bafflingly wrongheaded decision.
posted by Crane Shot at 9:41 PM on October 27, 2020


Maybe "Pulling Snell" will enter the common parlance to mean any monumentally, bafflingly wrongheaded decision.

I follow a lot of sabermetrics/baseball analytics types on Twitter and I've yet to see any statistical analysis that shows pulling Snell was a good idea. I have no idea what dice they were rolling that said to pull a pitcher against a certain batter but it better have said 99 times out of 100 to pull him...
posted by geoff. at 9:59 PM on October 27, 2020


I'm a life long Dodger fan who think most of fan hot takes about Dave Robert's (the Dodger Manager) bullpen mismanagement are bullshit (if you are so good, why aren't you a professional baseball manager?), but I cannot believe Snell was pulled. He was dealing, and next three dudes coming up were 0 for 6 with SIX STRIKEOUTS. Oh well, works out for Los Angeles.

And let me close by saying: Fuck the Giants, and especially Fuck the Astros.
posted by sideshow at 11:07 PM on October 27, 2020 [4 favorites]


I will add that besides the first inning, Tampa Bay barely got on base. Also, the lat two Rays batters in the 9th struck out and didn't even swing the bat. So, while Cash is almost certainly fired and will be asked about this game for the rest of his career, and perhaps life, his hitters not named Randy didn't give him any offense, and that was a problem the entire post season, not just this one game.
posted by sideshow at 11:12 PM on October 27, 2020


My kids watched the game with my dad and at the end my 7 year old daughter came upstairs and said "the Dodgers won and now they are all jumping up and down and hugging each other and very NOT social distancing" so that's how children whose families have been isolating since March feel about the World Series in case you were wondering
posted by potrzebie at 11:14 PM on October 27, 2020 [22 favorites]


GO DODGERS! let's just be excited about *something*

We had the champagne chilled and ready to go. LFG!
posted by Red Desk at 12:30 AM on October 28, 2020


The positive Covid test story gets better and better. Or, uglier and uglier.

In case that’s paywalled, it looks like he had a positive test, but they let him play while waiting for results from a second test, pulled him, told him to stay put, then let him out on the field to mingle and hug after TWO positive tests.
posted by Ghidorah at 12:40 AM on October 28, 2020 [11 favorites]


I was born in and currently live in Los Angeles. I'm a Giants fan but I enjoy the Dodgers too. I make it to maybe one game a year but they're always enjoyable. As a bandwagon Dodgers fan I want to thank the Red Sox for trading Mookie Betts and in the process handing the Dodgers a World Series title. I can hear as many explanations as you like about money and rebuilding and all that but the fact remains the Red Sox traded away Mookie Betts.
posted by rdr at 3:12 AM on October 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


From the Tampa Bay Times:
Cash said he made the decision because he didn’t want Snell to face the Dodgers' top hitters, Betts and Series MVP Corey Seager, for a third time, which is a common analytics-driven basis for decisions throughout the game. (article)

“Blake Snell was throwing better tonight than anyone I’ve ever seen in the World Series,” Hall of Fame pitcher Jack Morris told Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Patrick Reusse. “These analytics guys we have now think numbers are more important than having an ace at his best on the hill.” (article)

As a Giants fan, all I can say is it wouldn't be 2020 without the Dodgers winning the World Series, and I'm very glad I elected not to watch Game 6. (Of course, if it'd been Astros-Dodgers, I would have swallowed my bile and rooted wholeheartedly against the Astros.)
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 4:45 AM on October 28, 2020 [2 favorites]


Yeah, if you score 1 run all game, bringing in Nick Anderson isn’t the reason you lost.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 5:53 AM on October 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


As another lifelong Giants fan, I find my usual lip curling disdain for the Dodgers seems to have evaporated in the shitshow that is 2020. Baseball rivalries just feel quaint when there’s nazis in the streets you know?

Anyways given that it was very likely the Cubs win in 2016 that warped time and space and forced us all into the darkest timeline, perhaps this is our ticket home?
posted by supercrayon at 5:59 AM on October 28, 2020 [11 favorites]


As a Giants fan, all I can say is it wouldn't be 2020 without the Dodgers winning the World Series

I regret that I have but one favorite to give this comment.
posted by chavenet at 6:07 AM on October 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


Re: Turner's positive test. The story has been clarified. He had an inconclusive test result from the day before that came in around the second inning. They expedited his test from day-off and it came in positive in the 8th and that's when he was pulled.

I'm more concerned about him having a positive test, but still being on the field, maskless, for the celebration and team photos.
posted by thecjm at 7:02 AM on October 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


The positive Covid test story gets better and better. Or, uglier and uglier.

In case that’s paywalled, it looks like he had a positive test, but they let him play while waiting for results from a second test, pulled him, told him to stay put, then let him out on the field to mingle and hug after TWO positive tests.


Millionaires do what they want.
posted by srboisvert at 7:15 AM on October 28, 2020


I follow a lot of sabermetrics/baseball analytics types on Twitter and I've yet to see any statistical analysis that shows pulling Snell was a good idea. I have no idea what dice they were rolling that said to pull a pitcher against a certain batter but it better have said 99 times out of 100 to pull him...

You only have to go back to last Wednesday to find a time when Snell started to scuffle the third time through the lineup. He cruised through the first four innings but in the fifth, starting with the second at-bat of the 9-hitter, he gave up a HR, walk, single to three consecutive batters before he was pulled.

A lot of this second guessing is because of who replaced Snell. Anderson had not pitched well in the playoffs and it was surprising that he got the ball there. Had Anderson successfully closed out the inning, I don't think it's a next-day controversy at all.
posted by The Notorious SRD at 7:26 AM on October 28, 2020


Re: Snell...

I'm a romantic. Let him have his "Tin Cup" moment (Kevin Costner going for the green)

Some years back, the Dodgers had a rookie going into the 9th inning with a no-hitter. He had a large contract with Strasburg limitations (pitch count) to protect their investment. I believe he had one out when he reached his pitch-count and they pulled him. The next reliever gave up a hit.

This is the problem I have with data. Sometimes, screw it. Go for the Tin Cup...
posted by goalyeehah at 8:55 AM on October 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


Longtime Rays fan here. (No, I'm not the only one, despite what they say.)

We all have of moments of frustration with Cash, but he's one of the best managers in the game. He was just named manager of the year by The Sporting News and came in third in the voting for the BBWAA's award the last two years.

I don't know how much Cash himself personally buys the analytics, but that's the organization's DNA from the owners (Wall Street guys) on down. One thing that's become dogma is that pitchers do much worse once the hitters are seeing them for the third time in the game, which at the latest is the seventh inning (for you non-baseball types) and usually an inning or two earlier. Stats bear it out almost universally.

But yeah, last night there was much yelling at the screen in the MQBlank household. Jack Morris is pretty much the definition of Cranky Old Guy Yelling At Kids With Spreadsheets (who campaigned mightily against his Hall of Fame candidacy, but that's another story) but in this case I'm with him. Snell was absolutely dealing, and the vaunted bullpen has been wobbly at best. If there ever was a time to go against the Rays playbook it was last night.

TL; DR: Yeah, Tin Cup that baby.
posted by martin q blank at 9:42 AM on October 28, 2020 [3 favorites]


It was a refreshingly normal end to this cursed, weird season for the obvious best team to win.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:21 AM on October 28, 2020


As a life long Red Sox fan and a 20+ year resident of LA, I'll never figure John Henry from trading a home grown generational talent when he could have eaten the luxury tax charges with his pocket change, but I love Mookie and happy to see him get another one (plus I'll alway be grateful to Roberts as well)
posted by drewbage1847 at 10:29 AM on October 28, 2020


What happened last night was not "analytics." What happened was a manager treating a rule of thumb like an ironclad edict to be mindlessly followed. Real analytics would have pointed out that Mookie Betts has been horrible against lefties this year (albeit with a small sample size).

But, yeah, the Rays lack of hitting means the Dodgers probably win regardless.
posted by dirigibleman at 10:32 AM on October 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


Cardinal fans are still groping in the dark for an answer to why the front office traded Randy to the Rays after seeing his season and performance in the postseason. The general theory is that they really need more pitching and the Rays really wanted Randy over and above any of the other Cardinal OFs.

Congratulations to the Dodgers on winning the WS. I have no special sympathies to them besides the fact they gave me as a Cardinals fan a great evening; I went to a house party once and the Dodgers were playing the Cubs in an elimination game and were winning. I was sitting next to a Cubs fan watching the game and the Cubs fan was in tears. That was over a decade ago. Nice to see LA finally put the pieces together to get the win.
posted by Fukiyama at 10:45 AM on October 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


Albert Burneko with a headline (It’s Not Justin Turner’s Fault) I was feeling pretty fighting about, but as usual, it’s ends up in a pretty different place:

somebody, some one or some body of people, did have the power to keep Justin Turner out of last night’s celebration, to lift off of him and his teammates the impossible burden of making that choice in the heat of the moment. The time to exercise that authority was months ago, and every day between then and now, with bare-minimal integrity and rigor and at least some rock-bottom sense of social obligation. By last night it was already far too late for any of that.
posted by Ghidorah at 3:24 PM on October 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


Yeah great article Ghidorah, bad headline. Hopefully they're able to avoid any serious illnesses from that.
posted by Carillon at 3:30 PM on October 28, 2020


Remember, it wasn't even that day's test that came back "inconclusive" during the 2nd inning, that was the one from the day before. The current day's test came back positive in the 8th. Why was there even a game if the tests weren't just late, but late plus an entire day?

My personal guess is that the players knew that the MLB testing protocols were horseshit, and Turner wasn't going to miss out on one of the most important moments of his entire life (he grew up in Long Beach, was a Fullerton Titan, and one of his first memories was Gibson hitting the HR in Game 1 of the 88 WS) just so the MLB could show it was "doing something about taking COVID seriously". The MLB fuck up had already exposed everyone on the field to Turner by that point, so he was going go take some pictures with the team and the trophy.

The MLBPA was already going to war with Manfred and the league over the COVID related fuckups before the season even started. If the league goes after Turner in more than a token way, that war is going to escalate to the point where a strike/lockout might become likely.
posted by sideshow at 3:38 PM on October 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


The Dodgers knowingly let a player with a deadly disease on the field and the reaction seems more muted than when the Astros stole signs. What the fuck baseball?
posted by zymil at 4:58 PM on October 28, 2020


The MLB fuck up had already exposed everyone on the field to Turner by that point

Risk is additive and exposure is additive. It's not an on-off switch, it's have you been exposed to enough of the virus for it to infect you successfully.

(Not saying this to criticize you, but I think a lot of people think this way, maybe Turner included, and it's probably led to a lot of unsafe behavior that people would have otherwise avoided.)

Speaking of levels of exposure... It's not only about him being on the field. Him being there and not wearing a mask is just gratuitously fucked up.
posted by trig at 3:07 AM on October 29, 2020


Right, it's not as if people would've been like, "Where's Turner??" if he'd had a mask on.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 4:42 AM on October 29, 2020


Yeah, I can't blame him for wanting to be part of a once in a lifetime thing, but not bothering to wear a mask was pure asshole.
posted by tavella at 9:11 AM on October 29, 2020


MIDNIGHT AT FENWAY! He is the quintessential Dodger, sent to us in our time of need. He was where he needed to be, when he needed to be, and performed beyond expectation. Twice, now.
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:43 PM on October 29, 2020


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