Playoff Baseball

And other stuff, I guess.  I've enjoyed the playoffs as much as is humanly possible.  Am I the only one who cannot stand the TV coverage, which is generally ill-informed at best.  And, geez, the length of the games!  I'll tell you what will improve the situation with these interminable games.  Cut the damn commercials.  I mean, in the regular season there is a substantial commercial break between innings, but in the post-season it is twice as long.  There is already a natural break of a couple of minutes between innings, which, of course, adds thirty minutes or so to the game.  In the playoffs, this seems to be doubled or more.  That's nearly ninety minutes of inaction right there.

As far as the games themselves, there were quite a few exciting games.  I cannot say all the teams were exciting.  Try as I might, although the Royals are a Cinderella story, I can't say they are a good team or they really belong.  I expect the Giants to win the Series rather easily.  The Giants really are a very good, solid, team.  Also, it was really good to see the Cards go down.  They play good ball, but I just don't like them.

I saw an interesting piece recently that discussed the topic of the effect of the strike zone on run production.  The author's premise is that, over recent years, umpires have started calling more low strikes, actually lowering the strike zone below the knees, and narrowing the zone as it affects the corners.  This has shifted the advantage to pitching with obvious results.  He makes a convincing argument that explains at least some of the lack of production.  I haven't really noticed this watching games, though I will say that if the camera illustrations on TV of balls and strikes are accurate, the umpires are, in general, highly inconsistent and prone to error.

Recently there was a long exchange on the Cubs MLB Board, as well as others, about strikeouts.  Many Cubs fans, noticing the preference of Cubs players for the strikeout as a preferred outcome of their at-bats, have argued that strikeouts do not matter.  So. presumably, it is not a great worry that several Cubs prospects strike out all the time.  (I think Baez set some sort of record for percentage of strikeouts for a player with at least 200 plate appearances).

Actually, it is perfectly true that there is a weak correlation in most statistical analyses between strikeouts and winning percentage.  There is, however, a strong and statistically significant inverse correlation between strikeouts and runs scored.  There is a similarly strong correlation between runs scored and winning percentage.  So, looking at the big picture, strikeouts do matter.