MLBRT 10/10/2024

 

The questions and discussion…  

1) Entering this year’s MLB playoffs the New York Yankees are 10 wins away from ending the team’s 15-year championship drought. For eight of those 15 years Aaron Judge has been a Yankee and has participated in 18 postseason games but his record in the playoffs has bene a lot less eye-opening than his numbers in the regular season have been… overall in the playoffs Judges is 10-for-74 (.135) with 5 HRs and 28 strikeouts.   

Is this the year that Aaron Judge snaps out his post-season doldrums and in the process  leads the team to  its 28^th overall World Series ring as a team? Why or why not? 

I think this is going to be the year that Aaron Judge finally corrects his postseason troubles.

The main reason for my confidence in Judge is due to the upgrade of offensive talent surrounding him. The overall Yankees’ lineup has been a lot better this season from top-to-bottom and with Juan Soto batting around him, that will provide a lot of relief from having all the pressure rely on Aaron Judge. Giving Judge some breathing room will allow him to keep his regular season confidence and keep playing at the rate that he plays during the 162-game slog of a season. I think he just needed these first two games out of system, as he struck out three strikeouts and one walk with no hits. Next game, he had only one strikeout and had a walk and one hit out of three at-bats. I think he just needed those two games to get his bat on track and he’s going to excel in the rest of the series and the rest of the postseason. 

As a Yanks fan I damn well hope that Judge gets it going in the playoffs but so far this postseason his stats have been abysmal… he’s slugging .083 as I write this!

Considering the Yanks are just one game from advancing to the ALCS I’m going to say they actually do win their series versus the Royals in the ALDS and then, yes, Judge finally gets it going in the ALCS  and Yanks get into the Worlds Series and win that elusive (for them anyway) 28^th World Series trophy.   

2) On Friday (10/4) the Cincinnati Reds were able to lure two-time World Series champion Terry Francona out of retirement and signed him to a three-year deal (with a club option for the 2028 season) to be the manager of the Reds the team.

What is your opinion of this move by the Reds? Why?

Can Francona turn around the Reds’ usual year-to-year sad fortunes and turn the team into a team that wins a lot more often than it losses and is perennially challenging to be in the post-season? Why or why not?  

I really like Terry Francona signing with the Cincinnati Reds.

I think they need correct leadership with the young roster and potential the team has shown last season, and the beginning of this season. Getting a proven leader who has won two World Series trophies and three Manager of the Year awards, he’s a proven manager that the Reds need in their clubhouse to finally compete for the NL Central title. While they do have a nice roster and should’ve been competing this season, this manager signing is going to right the ship for them and finally let them be able to compete for the postseason and divisional crown title once again. 

For a franchise that tends to be more poorly run (in my opinion it is) than it is run well I think this is an exceptional move by the Reds’ principal owner and managing partner Bob Castellini.

Francona is a proven winner with two World Series trophies to his credit and when he steps onto the field in spring training and meets and greets and begins working with the players he will have that credibility to instill into the Reds a winning attitude right from the get go.

I also think Francona is the type of manger who can easily work with veteran players as well as young and up and coming players, which I think will be a big advantage for him as he begins on his task of transforming the Reds into a team that wins more than they lose. And with Francona now at the helm of the Reds I believe that winning will begin as early as i the middle of the 2025 season.

Yeah, I think Terry Francona becoming the Reds manager is that big for Cincinnati.  

3) Putting all team prejudices and biases aside…

Which World Serie match-up do you most want to see this year? Why?

The World Series matchups I would love to see are the Dodgers v Yankees and the Royals v Padres.

I’ll start with the Dodgers v Yankees as it has a lot of historical value with two of the best franchises of all-time in baseball, both coming from New York with a rich rivalry history, one from each coast, and it’ll feature two of the best sluggers in the game today in Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani. Any matchup featuring Ohtani is going to be awesome to watch and I would love to see Ohtani get a ring that he deserves.

The next match-up I’d love to see is the Royals v Padres. The Padres haven’t made it to the World Series before and the Royals are a low-spending team that I always root for that gives all small market teams hope that they can win and compete for a World Series. Plus, see Tatis v Witt Jr would be a fantastic offensive matchup of two young superstars squaring off in the October Classic.  

I’m going to go with what I believe is the two teams that most of the media world as well as the folks televising the World Series are hoping to see… Yankees vs Dodgers.

What’s not to like?

The two best players in Judge and Ohtani with arguably the two best offensive lineups in the game backing them up with players like Soto and Betts and Freeman and Stanton who would be all playing on the  biggest stage MLB has to offer for all the marbles and at the end of it all be the team holding the World Series trophy.  

4) The Royals’ Bobby Witt Jr. is obviously a very good hitter and baserunner as he led the majors this season with a .332 BA and had 31 SBs.

For his three-year career Witt has 110 SBs and a 76% success rate…

If the Yankees can’t keep Witt off the bases and from running wild from base path to base path  then the Yanks will not win this year’s ALDS versus the Royals. True or not true/Why or why not?

I think the Yankees need to perform offensively regardless if Witt gets on base and runs wild because that’s almost guaranteed to happen. They need to limit how much damage he does in driving in runs or keeping the ball in the ballpark. You can let him run on the bases, but if you focus on the current at-bat and limiting the damage Witt does with his bat, the Yankees are going to be in good shape.

They also need to make sure their offense is running on all cylinders so that a run or two that Witt will score on the base paths won’t matter too much since the Yankees will have already scored three or four runs, minimum. Yankees focus more on their own team and less on if Witt is running will be a key to advancing past Kansas City.

Smart mangers don’t design their strategy against a team with the ides of just stopping their best player from doing what he does best… hitting, running and producing runs. That’s not winning baseball.

To be sure the Yanks need to be careful pitching to Witt especially if the games are tending to be low scoring affairs. But overall the Yankees just need to play their usual game by mixing in some decent pitching and then let their middle of the order guys… Soto, Judge and Stanton… do their thing and then regardless of what Witt does the Yanks should still win the ALDS.

5) On Sunday (10/6) the San Diego Padres crushed a franchise playoff record six home runs and blew out the Los Angeles Dodgers, 10-2, in NLDS Game 2 in L.A. The six homers also tied an MLB playoff record, and the win evened the best-of-five series at 1-1. 

In the first NLDS game the Dodgers beat the Padres 7-5 as Shohei Ohtani homered in his second at-bat, becoming the third player… along with Brooks Robinson in 1966 and Giancarlo Stanton in 2018… to homer in his postseason debut.

If the remaining games in their NL Division Series become slugging affairs with each team going toe-to-toe with the other team can the Padres still win the NLDS? Why or why not?  

When it comes to slugging matchups and only talking about offensive firepower of two teams, and one of the teams involved are the Los Angeles Dodgers, I have all my money on the Dodgers. They have a powerful lineup from top to bottom and they’re going to be the ones that are going to pull away from their opponents.

Ohtani can monster up home runs in every at-bat. You have Mookie Betts who can continually get doubles and knock is out of the park. Freddie Freeman is a huge bat. Will Smith, Max Muncy, Teoscar Hernandez, they can all power their way past the Padres. San Diego doesn’t want this to become a slugger fest, because they’re going to be out-matched by the powerful Los Angeles Dodgers’ line-up. Padres need to keep the ball in the park and turn these games into pitching match-ups in order to win and advance, which I think they can do with how hot they’ve been since the All-Star break. 

Everything says that if the games between the Padres and Dodgers become slugfests the advantage is to the Dodgers what with their big boppers in their batting order in guys lie Ohtani, Betts and Freeman.

But since I wrote in last week’s MLBRT these words… Padres win this year’s NL playoffs and go to the World Series…

I’m gonna go and say that regardless of how game five in the Dodgers and Padre NLDS plays out… slugfest or low scoring game… the Padres will do whatever  is necessary to come out with the win.

Padres are going to the NLCS and then the World Series where they will finally lose to the Yankees.

Extra Innings…