2014 NLCS: San Francisco Giants vs St. Louis Cardinals

Giants in six.

Neither in zero.

lol

i do understand people not wanting to see the same team, so the brand new car is always a little shinier.

Same feelings about both: a little tired of them, admire (and am envious of) their success--especially the Cardinals. So no real preference. But I'm rooting for the Royals in the AL, and their best match-up is obviously the Cardinals. Brett and Ozzie throw out the first pitch; if not them, Joaquín Andújar and Don Denkinger.

http://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/assets/1545321/screw-you-ozzie-2.gif

http://www.sothebysrealty.com/eng/sales/detail/180-l-702-56sfhy/the-barry-zito-estate-villa-della-pace-kentfield-ca-94904

About 660 Goodhill Road
Spectacular Mediterranean gated estate, owned by three-time All-Star pitcher Barry Zito, with inspiring panoramic views of Mt Tam and Phoenix Lake. Located on over 2 acres, the over 7,000 square foot home is grand in scale, with a circular entrance and foyer with high ceilings and large formal living, dining and family rooms with French doors opening to stone terraces and gardens, offering gracious indoor/outdoor living with an outdoor fireplace, Bar-B-Q, pool and spa that share the stunning views. Meticulously constructed with the finest finishes and a masterful design. Three en-suite bedrooms, three full and two half baths in the main residence plus one bedroom, one bath guest house, 3 car garage, and truly incomparable views...

Is that from the '87 Cards/Giants series? Don't remember that.

I've been watching some of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqAPmdnzxdE

The Andujar insanity starts around 1:38:30. After the game, there's a phone call from Reagan that's endless--phone gets passed from Howser to Saberhagen to Ewing Kauffman to Brett.

Dislike Giants, hate StL, so I'll go with a SF sweep so it's over as quickly as possible.

um. they have entire baseball games on youtube?!

i don't know anything about pitcher mechanics but andujar has such a terrible delivery

Thermo, they have plenty of them! The whole 2010, 11, 12 and 13 post-seasons also.

I got the Giants in 7, with a miraculous come back from both Zito and Scutaro to save the day (and some rain.)

The broadcast team--Al Michaels, McCarver, and Palmer--was right: Andujar would never recover. His career meltdown was already underway. He was 7th in the Cy Young in '82 (his best year), 4th in '84, and, through July 26 of '85, was 17-4 with a 2.31 ERA. No one was going to mistake him for Dwight Gooden, but at that point, at the age of 32, he was probably one of the 10 best starters in baseball.

He then a) finished the season 4-8/5.46, b) was 0-1/6.97 in the LCS, c) was 0-1/9.00 in the Series, d) had an okay but lesser year with Oakland in '86, and e) retired after two more nothing years.

http://www.sportsgrid.com/mlb/the-hunt-for-red-and-orange-october-cardinals-giants-have-rich-history-of-hostilities/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl2oa6KCX2c
secret skinny weapon

Andujar never topped, say, Jacob deGrom's 2014 in any season but '82 and '84. He also threw 260+ innings in three of his age 29-32 seasons, so he was a great bet to spiral down. I wouldn't factor the WS meltdown in much.

I meant to post Brisbee's evaluation of the NL evilness factor here:

We're probably a couple years away from a Pirates-Cubs NLCS matched up against a Yankees-Red Sox ALCS, so until then, this is as lopsided as an LCS pairing can be. The winner of the ALCS will become baseball's darling. The winner of the NLCS will have a handlebar mustache. It's hard to invent pairings that would make you, and the rest of baseball, feel so different.

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2014/10/8/6946969/alcs-nlcs-giants-cardinals-royals-orioles

I always root for STL to lose so I'll say Giants in 6

http://www.sbnation.com/2014/10/9/6944445/mlb-2014-nlcs-playoffs-cardinals-bad-writing

^ almost too good

Wainwright's elbow in uncertain shape

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/10/08/adam-wainwrights-status-for-the-nlcs-could-be-in-doubt-due-to-elbow-problems/

oh, if you get this FS1 thing, there's alternate 'sabermetric' studio coverage on it for Game 1. Saves you from using the mute for a night.

http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/just-a-bit-outside/baseball-joe/blog/the-power-of-jabo-100114

apparently now wainwright is perfectly fine, will start game 1

feels like our expectations are being mathenaged

Dislike Giants, hate StL, so I'll go with a SF sweep so it's over as quickly as possible.

I guess you're not all bad.

Go asteroid!

BP preview calls this series "Freddy vs Jason"

who is who?

does it matter?

AJP added to Cards' roster, so if you didn't hate em before...

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

does it matter?

lol, well i think i like Jason more and was trying to relate to it.

*steeples fingers*

Lincecum on the roster.

what about Michael Morse?

if anybody finds a stream of the FS1 sabercast, help a brother out.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

this game is on Fox.

oh nevermind.

Lucky Panda.

Grichuk almost playing at being a Royal

i have the Fox feed and KNBR audio

station-to-station rallies, that's what i like to see

This SABR broadcast should be shown MST3K style.

Bases loaded with Madison Bumgarner, are we ready?

who is Jon Miller's color guy? He just said "that's one of the greatest doinks i've ever seen"

Switched back to hear Reynolds say "There is an artform to winning games [as a pitcher]."

This SABR broadcast should be shown MST3K style.

That's part of what they're planning! Do you have it on?

who is Jon Miller's color guy? He just said "that's one of the greatest doinks i've ever seen"

― this horrible, rotten slog to rigor mortis (Dr Morbius), Saturday, October 11, 2014 8:40 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sounds like Kruk

This is definitely preferable to Buck/Harold/whoever.

is Waino at 40 pitches in the inning yet?

Can't believe the Giants' luck so far.

And he looked the same then. Only throwing his fastball. No change ups.

Nope. xp

Losing team in all four series thus far has won 0 or 1 game. How can that be "the best postseason"?

Now 1986, THAT was a postseason.

Matheny burned bullpen in Lackey start. He's an idiot but Giants were the better team.

Willie Mays still has a post with the Giants, I bet his elevator dog will be well fed.

Was Matheny talking to Yost on the bullpen phone?

Losing team in all four series thus far has won 0 or 1 game. How can that be "the best postseason"?

That was about the best 4-1 LCS you're going to see though.

Boy I wish Matt Cain was still on the roster, what a shitty injury.

that michael morse HR trot and delirious celebration seriously made me do a gut laugh, first time in forever. i almost fell over

Hah he was so over the top overjoyed

@BenLindbergh
For those of you not taking in the postgame festivities, Brian Sabean just called his players "a bunch of cockroaches"

Jeff Sullivan @based_ball
smart of the Cardinals to get Wacha some mop-up work to shake off the rust, he should be good to go over the weekend

Will this be the first WS between two sub-90-win teams? (since the sked went to 162, i mean)

Yup first time, closest we've been was 1926 (Cards had 89 wins and Yankees 91). Obviously, 1981 does not count.

yep. it looks like the two next closest weakest WS matches were in 1997 (the 92-game winning Marlins vs. the 86-game win winning Indians) and 2010 (The 92-game winning Giants vs the 90-game winning Rangers).

yeah, but they only played 154 games in 1926. since the 162-game schedule started, it's 1997 and 2010

oh my bad. not surprised for 2010.

@miklasz
Matheny, when asked about not using Rosenthal in 9th: "We can't bring him in, in tie-game situation. We're on the road.”

mike matheny is not the kind of guy who would do anything but use Rosenthal for the all-important Save. i was more confused that he didn't bring in martinez or maness, especially when shit got real on wacha and they needed a fucking strikeout and/or double-play.

that's the thing with matheny. it's not like he has some other strategy or line of reasoning for the dumb shit that he does. it's that he has NOTHING, no rationale, just total emptiness

https://i.imgflip.com/b3dgu.gif

lol at a comment on another forum:

In this picture, Mike Matheny is mario
and Yoshi is Wacha
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/O_GoNmpZDMSkATML107-wa-hFnx2AmsQtrBLuIUy4xUk=s192-p-no

To the Cards: Better luck next year, especially since it'll be an odd year.

his contract runs through 2017. shit. i didn't even realize. i pay attention to who is managing, obviously, but i never pay attention to the contracts they receive. is there any manager guaranteed for more years than matheny? maybe it doesn't matter because managers seem to just get canned sometimes?

i tuned back in just in time to say to the gf (as if she would know), "why isn't Rosenthal pitching?!" and then shortly thereafter, watch a ball leave the park.

so, my question is: are there *any* managers in baseball with a brain?

i feel like a normal reliever would have been pulled after the four-pitch walk (or at 2-0 on ishikawa), but then matheny would have had to answer further questions about why wacha was on the roster at all if he was trusted so little

recall some discussion about leyland vs ausmus, and how for all the odd decisions he made, leyland had the confidence to admit a mistake and try something different, which ausmus lacked in his first year. even after three successful seasons, matheny seems awfully inflexible

or maybe jesus makes his bullpen decisions

I'm amazed that the 1926 win totals came so close. Are we sure Bud wasn't commish then btw.

(the Red Sox lost 107)

can you pull a reliever in the middle of the at bat if he's not hurt? I imagine you could, but I've never seen LaRussa do it, so maybe not?

it's a little rough on the guy you bring in, but yeah

(and embarrassing for the guy being yanked)

Weird vs. weirder. KC winning would be weird, but I could get my head around it, for reasons we've discussed: great defense, speed, bullpen, getting hot at just the right time. I don't think I'd be able to get my head around the Giants winning three World Series in five years.

@msimonespn
The walk-off HR was Travis Ishikawa's 1st extra-base hit against a pitch thrown 96+ MPH since July 23, 2010 (double vs Dbacks)!!

btw did morse actually touch first base here?

http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/11493214/v36821563/must-c-clutch-morses-solo-shot-ties-it-in-the-8th

The BP podcast guys spent most of an hour coming up w/ legit reasons for MM's bullpen choices, then at the 50-minute mark they saw his "can't use my closer in a road tie" quote, and committed verbal seppuku.

it's hilarious how his actual quote was "We can't bring him in, in a tie-game situation. We're on the road.”, but in the mlb.com recap it got cleaned up to "We can't bring him in in a tie-game situation when we're on the road."

ok i guess that's not the best example but if you regularly listen to matheny speak it quickly becomes apparent that he just chooses a few key words that might be relevant and then attempts to connect them together into a sentence using random words

saw that earlier and honestly thought it was someone making the obvious joke

it was, unconsciously

https://twitter.com/BestFansStLouis
https://twitter.com/BestFansStLouis
https://twitter.com/BestFansStLouis
https://twitter.com/BestFansStLouis

WS is going to be the immovable object vs. the irresistible force.

Jeff Sullivan @based_ball
under standard conditions, Joe Panik's home run would have left zero major league ballparks http://hittrackeronline.com/detail.php?id=92014_48&type=hitter

what were the nonstandard conditions?

wind iirc

But if you put on the AT&T Park overlay, it's still a homer, because down the RF line is just over 300 feet.

lol:

http://cardinalsfarm.com/2014/10/20/mike-matheny-to-release-book-on-managing-in-february/

Now, according to Amazon, the Cardinals manager that so many in St. Louis love to kill with scorn is releasing a “Manifesto” on his managing style and personal life titled, “The Matheny Manifesto: A Young Manager’s Old-School Views on Success in Sports and Life.”

The title above is linked to the Amazon page for the future release, which was co-written by Matheny and Jerry Jenkins. The book will be available for purchase in February of 2015, just prior to the opening of spring training and the start of Matheny’s fourth season as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals.

Christmas is TOO SOON i guess.

i hope it's written in the style of his post-game interviews.

you have a team, job to keep the goal in mind. tough trip ahead but just stay positive, one day at a time. can't worry about next week. guys have a lot of heart, can't count them out.

wake up with alarm, have some breakfast. stay focused and half of success is just showing up, so that's a priority. turn on jars of clay at a decent volume and stare at the scripture i had engraved on the wall in my office. go with a hot hand, pay attention to the stats but can't forget intuition. you have nine innings to score more runs than the other team, and you score a run when you go all the way around the bases and then touch home plate again. before there are 3 outs. there are other rules but at the end of the day you say your goodbyes and go home and prepare for that next day. mental long grind dinner empty dreams, sun alarm breakfast and it starts again.

you should do the Audiobook.

i've already busy recording the audiobook for my favorite book of all -

Intentional Walk: An Inside Look at the Faith That Drives the St. Louis Cardinals

Looks like you have a new followup project to your Conference Call and Meditation pages.

heh, i actually do have something in mind (bought the domain today and was thinking of starting a thread on it soon), but thankfully it's non-matheny related.