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2018 World Series - Red Sox v Dodgers

dbecks

By dbecks
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Vic Mackey
Vic Mackey

It's ending this inning. I can feel it

MaxHorn
MaxHorn

I'm a lifelong Dodgers fan. My grandpa was the original radio engineer for Vin Scully & Jerry Doggett when the Dodgers moved to LA. My mother went out on a date with Sandy Koufax. I moved to Texas

Vic Mackey
Vic Mackey

Good thing you guys don't have Yu this time around for 2 free wins for the opposition haha.

Sbbruin

Sbbruin 21865

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, David Dennison said:

Probably a bad time to ask, but what's the feeling out there about what Kershaw is going to do?

Hard to say, but I don’t think he opts out, or if he does, it’s because the Dodgers will give him a new 4yr deal.  No way they go longer.  And no way he comes close to the 65 mil he’s owed over the next 2 yrs.

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Helobious

Helobious 9464

Posted
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1 hour ago, Vic Mackey said:

This is their 4th title in 14 years. I didn't get that at all. They are a force. Not some magical cinderella story. Hell they won 108 games and mowed through the playoffs as expected. One of the best teams of modern times. 

And the #1 payroll by far in the game this year to boot. They were everything the Yankees (and most of the other contenders) tried to be this year. Can't remember another team breezing to a title like they did in the past decade. 

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InkaUtexas

InkaUtexas 26017

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2 minutes ago, Helobious said:

And the #1 payroll by far in the game this year to boot. They were everything the Yankees (and most of the other contenders) tried to be this year. Can't remember another team breezing to a title like they did in the past decade. 

Yeah, we are good. Keep trying. 

 

jeter-sucks-arod-swallows-funny_1_27db7e

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MaxHorn

MaxHorn 325

Posted
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I'm a lifelong Dodgers fan. My grandpa was the original radio engineer for Vin Scully & Jerry Doggett when the Dodgers moved to LA. My mother went out on a date with Sandy Koufax. I moved to Texas in 1979 and became a huge Ranger fan, and have followed both teams fanatically ever since.

That means my teams have lost 4 of the last 9 World Series. Fuck me.

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WBT

WBT 20641

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That was one of the greatest playoff runs ever.  It's even more amazing when you consider that Mookie didn't have a good playoffs, Sale only pitched 15 innings total with an ERA over 4, and Kimbrel had an ERA of 5.90.  They were more carried by Pearce, Price, Bradley, JDM, and Eovaldi.

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dbecks

dbecks 442

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I thought this was cool.

https://twitter.com/IanMBrowne/status/1056772415483654144

Classiest moment I saw during the post-game. As Alex Cora was walking off the on-field stage, he spotted top analytics man Zack Scott, yelled, "Zack", pointed to him in salute, made time to give him a hug. Not sure every manager does that. Not sure most managers do that.

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54310

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Stark:

Quote

LOS ANGELES — It’s so hard to comprehend history when you’re making it. But sometimes you don’t need to embrace history. Sometimes, history embraces you.

For seven months, what the 2018 Boston Red Sox did was play. But then, on a euphoric Sunday evening in Southern California, Chris Sale spun one last man-eating slider past Manny Machado for one last 27th out. And suddenly, for the 2018 Red Sox, there were no more games to play.

They had just won the World Series, for the fourth time in 15 seasons. They had just steamrolled the Dodgers, 5-1, to finish off one of the greatest seasons in the history of their sport. And they had just won their 119th baseball game. Their 119th!

But wrapped inside those 119 wins was something magical, something truly everlasting. Wrapped inside those 119 wins was a season that will elevate these 2018 Red Sox to a place reserved for only the most iconic teams of all time. And it wasn’t until they passed around their gleaming World Series trophy for the first time, on a makeshift stage at Dodger Stadium, that that status was finally beginning to dawn on them.

“We’re one of the greatest in history,” said reliever Joe Kelly. “And now we have that bond for a lifetime.”

But that bond isn’t all they will have for a lifetime. We want you to take a moment to reflect on something that gets more powerful the more you think about it.

The 2018 Red Sox won 108 games during the regular season — and then went on to win the World Series. Now peruse this list of the only other teams in history to do that and think about what it means for this team — or any team — to join this group:

• In the wild-card era: the fearsome 114-win 1998 Yankees.
• In the division-play era: the 1986 Mets of Doc Gooden/Keith Hernandez, the storied 1975 edition of the Big Red Machine, and the 1970 Orioles of Palmer/Cuellar/McNally.
• Then further back in baseball time: the 1961 Maris/Mantle Yankees, the 1927 Ruth/Gehrig Yankees, and the prehistoric dead-ball 1909 Pirates of Honus Wagner.

That is seven legendary baseball teams. And now they have company — the 2018 Red Sox. The Red Sox of Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez. The Red Sox of Chris Sale and David Price. The Red Sox, just to cite their two of their surprise October heroes, of Nathan Eovaldi and the newest World Series MVP, Steve Pearce.

Perhaps you don’t think that this team deserves to be in the same conversation with those teams. If you don’t, we’ve got news for you: You think wrong.

We posed that question Sunday to one of baseball’s most astute historical and statistical minds, the Elias Bureau’s Steve Hirdt: Is it accurate to place these Red Sox in a pantheon that includes those teams that we just talked about?

“As a one-year team? Is that the standard?” Hirdt replied. “Oh, absolutely.”

Why does he think so? Why do we agree? Let’s tell you exactly why this team totally deserves to be in that exalted company.

THEY CHECK EVERY BOX

There is no 100 percent accurate way to compare teams across very different eras. But let’s take three statistical categories that can help us do that, then rank all the teams above in those categories and show you why these Red Sox deserve to be positioned among the top three champions of all time.

OPS-PLUS
1927 Yankees 127
1998 Yankees 116
2018 Red Sox 112

ERA-PLUS
1909 Pirates 125
1927 Yankees 122
2018 Red Sox 117

RUN DIFFERENTIAL (162-GAME SCHEDULE ERA ONLY)
1998 Yankees plus-309
1975 Reds plus-254
2018 Red Sox plus-229

Get the idea? If you show up on all three of these leaderboards, you’re special. Period.

“If we’re just comparing single seasons,” said Tony La Russa, who serves as a special adviser in this Red Sox team’s front office, “I’d put this club with any club anywhere.”

THEY BEAT THE BEST

Think of the October road this Red Sox team had to travel to lift that World Series trophy into the California sky Sunday night. They beat a 100-win Yankees team in the Division Series. Then they ousted a 103-win Astros team in the ALCS. Then they wiped out the team that has represented the NL in the World Series two years in a row, the Dodgers. Here’s what made that road so special:

• The Red Sox were the first team ever that had to beat two 100-win teams just to reach the World Series.

• They were also the first team ever, according to Stats LLC, to beat both of the previous year’s World Series teams (the Astros and Dodgers) in a single postseason.

• And the Red Sox had to face the two teams (Astros and Dodgers) that led each league in ERA on their way to the World Series. Only five other teams have had to do that — none of them members of the 108-win club.

“You’ve got to win three rounds of playoffs now,” Hirdt said. “And that makes it a lot more difficult. Ask that Seattle Mariners team that won 116 games or that (1995) Indians team that won 100 in a shortened season. This is tough to get through, because you need to win a marathon and you need to win a sprint. Actually, you need to win a marathon and three sprints.”

THEY WERE GREAT FROM START TO FINISH

These Red Sox put their stamp on this season from beginning to end, in a way very few teams ever have:

• They started out 17-2: “We won in all kinds of crazy ways when we were 17-2,” said bench coach Ron Roenicke. “We’d walk in after the game and go, ‘How’d we win that ballgame?’”

• They went 42 straight series without being swept … and 100 straight games without losing three games in a row … and never lost four in a row at any point: “It was amazing, man,” said shortstop Xander Bogaerts. “It felt like if we’d lose today, we’d always win the next day.”

• They went 75-34 over the first four months of the season — and yet the team they rolled out there in October was even better than that team, because their midseason additions, Pearce and Eovaldi, were so good. “What a great job Dave Dombrowski and our front office did,” Roenicke said. “Eovaldi was so good. And as soon as we got Pearce, he was impactful for us from Day One.”
`
THEY BLITZED THROUGH THIS POSTSEASON

Remember when the popular wisdom was that the Red Sox weren’t built for October? OK, so much for that.

• They went 7-1 on the road in the postseason — the second-most postseason road wins ever. They went 2-0 in Yankee Stadium, 3-0 in Houston and 2-1 in Dodger Stadium.

• They went 11-3 in this postseason — a record topped by just the 1999 Yankees (11-1), 2005 White Sox (11-1) and 1998 Yankees (11-2).

• And they never lost more than one game in any of the three rounds — something just three other teams could say (those ’99 and ’05 White Sox, plus the 2008 Phillies).

USATSI_11547576-1024x736.jpg
 
Red Sox manager Alex Cora hoists the Commissioner’s Trophy after defeating the Dodgers in Game 5 of the 2018 World Series at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. (Gary A. Vasquez / USA TODAY Sports)

“It’s not just that we won the World Series,” said second baseman Ian Kinsler. “This team ran through the playoffs. Ran through the New York Yankees. Ran through the defending champions. And then beat the L.A. Dodgers in their stadium to be world champs. Those, by all measures, by all media outlets, were the three best teams besides the Boston Red Sox. And this team dismantled those three teams.”

And yet, as dominant as they were from start to finish, it was hard not to notice something. Think about that list of those other 108-win teams we hit you with earlier. Think about the reverential tone people use to talk about those teams. Then think about the narrative that surrounded these Red Sox for most of this season.

This was, by far, the least-ballyhooed 108-win team of modern times. What’s hard to fathom is why.

“Well it’s hard for me to answer,” said Dombrowski, their president of baseball operations, “because I haven’t been around a lot of 108-win teams. … But having been around a number of other really good teams, I think you’re right. And I don’t know the answer.

“We play in a big market. We’ve won a lot of games. But for some reason, it seemed like every series we played, and really throughout even the beginning of the season, everybody always picked somebody else to win.”

All month, we asked people around baseball why they thought that was. One popular theory was that there was no Big Papi on this team, no larger-than-life personality who drew clicks and eyeballs the way stars often do. Another was that this was a strange year in the American League — with three 100-win teams but a number of truly awful teams. So the Red Sox never totally convinced people they were that much better than the Astros and Yankees — and there was skepticism that they piled up all those wins because there were so many bad teams on their schedule.

But there have always been bad teams on the schedule of all the great teams, Hirdt said. And not just in baseball.

“You’ve just got to play who you play,” Hirdt said. “You know, the year that the Miami Dolphis went 14-0 and then won the Super Bowl …they only played two teams with a winning record during the regular season. And both of those two teams just went 8-6. But people just accepted it.”

So maybe there were reasons for some of those doubts — from April through September anyway. But once the 2018 Red Sox arrived in October, they went about obliterating the doubts forever.

They rebounded from what should have been an excruciating 18-inning loss Friday with one of history’s most spectacular World Series comebacks Saturday. Then three hitters into Game 5 on Sunday, Pearce fired a two-run dagger of a homer over the left-field fence. And the Boston Red Sox would never trail again.

Then there they were at 8:12 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, with a four-run lead. The bullpen gate opened. And out burst Chris Sale, their ace turned closer, to do his Randy Johnson/Madison Bumgarner/Walter Johnson imitation and finish the same World Series he’d started a week earlier.

As Sale jogged to the mound and shock waves rippled through a packed stadium, “it gives you chills,” said reliever Matt Barnes. “I got chills when he did it in New York. And you’ve got one of the most dominant [starters] in the game coming out of the bullpen to lock this thing down for us. And I mean, you look at him and it gives you goosebumps.”

Down went Justin Turner on an 0-2 slider. That was one strikeout. Down went Enrique Hernandez on about the funkiest hack at a 3-2 slider you will ever witness. That was two strikeouts. And then it was Manny Machado’s turn. He would corkscrew himself into the dust chasing yet one more devastating slider. And finally, at 8:17 PDT on a night they will never forget, there was nothing left for the 2018 Red Sox to prove.

Asked if he could put that feeling into words, Kinsler said: “I don’t know what the word is. I don’t know if I have it. I don’t know if I’ve had that sensation before.”

It was such a powerful feeling, Kinsler began to quiver with emotion merely trying to capture it. Once upon a time in another October, he was a member of a 2011 Rangers team that got one strike away from that moment and never got to experience it. So to be here for this one, to be part of one of the greatest teams in the history of his sport, was leaving an impression on him — and every occupant of his joyous clubhouse — that he didn’t want to forget.

The Big Red Machine … the ’86 Mets … the ’98, ’61 and ’27 Yankees … they knew this feeling. And now they had company.

“It’s incredible,” Kinsler said. “It’s incredible to be a part of this team and a part of this moment. This team has lived in the moment all year. And now I want to live in this moment forever.”

 

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wild_turkey

wild_turkey 3170

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As a Dodgers fan, just happy we made it to the WS this year. I think we exceeded expectations given that we had injuries to Seager, Turner, Kershaw, Maeda, Ryu, and Jansen throughout the year. We were 10 games under .500 at one point. Great Sept-Oct run to win 163, easily handle Atlanta, then fight it out for 7 games against Milwaukee.

 

Congrats to the Red Sox and their fans. One of the best teams in a long time and they definitely earned it.

 

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phdhorn

phdhorn 6224

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10 hours ago, Vic Mackey said:

 

With the possible exception of the Game 3 walkoff in the 18th (and barely), this was the most exciting moment of this year's World Series.
(the guy is a total dumbass for wearing the Yankees shirt, but if Mr. Fuckin' Weirdo did that to me, he'd be wearing that bottle as an assplug).

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TheFlagship

TheFlagship 436

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46 minutes ago, phdhorn said:

With the possible exception of the Game 3 walkoff in the 18th (and barely), this was the most exciting moment of this year's World Series.
(the guy is a total dumbass for wearing the Yankees shirt, but if Mr. Fuckin' Weirdo did that to me, he'd be wearing that bottle as an assplug).

Hubbs is the Yankees writer for Barstool and he does podcasts with Dallas Braden (the water bottle guy) and their Red Sox writer. They forced him to go to these games after they lost to Boston in ALDS. Pretty funny actually

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