Bleacher Bums Forum

Ditto.  All kinds of ways to end up scoring more runs than the other team.  And certainly incremental improvements in any aspect of the complex game can help. 

One question is whether the HR-oriented approach is particularly ill-suited to playoff baseball?  Do home runs come mostly on mistakes and off bad pitchers, and are they a tool better suited to regular-season long-haul than the short-series baseball against high-end teams? 

I don't actually think so.  I almost think that the better the opposing pitching, the more progressively difficult it becomes to sequence multiple hits in one inning.  (Particularly in National League series with no DH).  Playoff pitchers don't usually allow lots of hits.  With all of the off days and large amounts to rest, managers can often get by using only their favorite several relievers. 

So bunching hits is perhaps harder than ever.  Perhaps the periodic "blink" HR is as or more accessible?  Even the best pitchers still makes some mistakes, if you can punish them, and sometimes even even excellent pitches can be driven out.  I think we basically beat Cain that way in the dramatic Pirates tie-breaker.  So I don't really think the high value for HR-power is at all inappropriate for playoff success.  But it would be nice to be able to score in multiple ways; in the Cardinal series some walks and suicide squeeze plays did that, for example. 

This October really was a tale of the hot team.  Cubs were hot coming in, then the Mets got hot and cooled in the finals, Houston and Toronto were hot coming in, cooled, Kansas City was just Kansas City.  Just steady.

Good Series.  At least the colors were right. 

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-lessons-the-royals-should-and-shouldnt-teach-us/

Thanks for the link.  Seems like a pretty good analysis to me.

Would you have rather ended the season the way the Cubs did (getting swept, looking generally overmatched in the series, never leading in a single game), or the way the Blue Jays or Mets did - having leads in most games, winning a game or two, having your closer on the mound during 3 eventual losses, making big mistakes on defense, etc..

I don't like the Mets, so it didn't bother me a bit to see them blow leads, play tight, and lose the way they did.  But that had to pretty painful, for fans and players alike.  As a franchise with perhaps a still somewhat fragile psyche, I think the quick 'n' ugly sweep (after winning the Pirates game and Cards series) was actually an ok way to bow out.  Motivating, but hopefully not damaging.

Used to be that winning the pennant was, by itself, a really big deal. Now, it's just kind of a step in advancing to the final round. Like winning the NFC or whatever.

I'm thinking of Russ Hodges and THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT!-THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! Kind of outshone the World Series that year, in a way.

For me-- still--winning the pennant would be a really big deal--and then work from there.

Yeah, guessing I will think of this season similar to 1989 when didn't get all that close to beating Giants in NLCS---and not so much like the agony of 1984 and 2003 outcomes.

For me, 1984 was the worst---even more than 2003. Cubs were best team in NL hands down in 1984.

Other season was 1970---year after the 1969 debacle. NL was there for the taking in 1970 and that club should have won division and moved on. Probably residue of 1969 and Leo had lost the clubhouse by then. A horrible, missed opportunity.

Agree that the worst post-season loss for me was 1984.  The Cubs were expected to go to the World Series and should have.  Very painful.