2023 Baseball Postseason Special

I don’t usually write something quite like this, but I felt the inspiration today to try and crank out in about an hour my thoughts on the 2023 baseball season, and I actually think it’s a perfect day for it because the Division Series** begin tomorrow.

** - The word series deserves a pause here, because the plural of series is also series. There are plenty of other words like this in English, but most of them, like deer or fish don’t also end with an s, and it’s usually a lot easier to know in the context of the sentence what’s going on. The only other word like this which both begins and ends with an s which I can immediately think of is species and it’s also a really weird word. English truly is bizarre sometimes.

*** - I’ve clearly been reading too much Joe Posnanski lately because I managed to make my second paragraph into an inline note, and it is longer than my first paragraph, and I have now seen fit to add a second inline note wherein I am remarking upon itself, because although I’m attempting to write about baseball here, this is still META-SPIEL.

I’d like to specifically credit Molly Knight for keeping my head into baseball in a different way than maybe I’ve had my head into it in the past. Instead of writing around baseball like I often do, I’m actually going to write about baseball here. I promise! Meanwhile you should read Molly’s Substack, ok?

This year I went to 6 MLB games, which is definitely more than I’ve gone to in any previous year. (I think I may have gone to as many as 4 back around when I was 14 but I don’t have ticket stubs to prove that.) The games were:

• April 30, Angels at Brewers

• July 9, Cardinals at White Sox

• August 8, Yankees at White Sox

• August 27, Padres at Brewers

• September 12, Royals at White Sox

• September 28, Diamondbacks at White Sox

This year, in person, I saw home runs hit by Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge, and by both Willson and William Contreras. And, yes, amazingly, I actually saw the White Sox win a game.

I’ve written about going to some of these games and how much we like American Family Field in Milwaukee. There are a couple more high level observations I have about going to games:

First, I wish they had scorecards with rosters available at the doors. I’m not saying to hand them out to everyone. I’m saying that just like I remember from being a kid, I want to give someone a dollar for a piece of paper and a pencil, and I want to keep those two things as my primary souvenirs from the game. I think you can find a scorecard at The Downs if you go to exactly the right place somewhere behind home plate but the last time I got one it was kind of a half-assed printout and this just seems like such an easy thing for stadiums to do well and break even doing so. Since we don’t get ticket stubs anymore with the tickets on our phones, all the more reason to have something like this.

Second, I much prefer getting to the ballpark an hour or more before the game starts, and am going to make a lot more of a point of that in future years. Part of it is wanting to settle in before action begins, but a huge part of this is that it’s just so nice just sitting there.

Third, at both stadiums, and I suspect at all MLB stadiums, there’s a policy that you can carry in with you one sealed bottle of water per person, and I love this policy, not just because they’re acknowledging they’re going to gouge you for water, but because it helps you remember to bring a lot of water on a day you’re sitting in the sun for hours, which is all the more important if your intention is to show up and drink beer. Clearly this has not been a security problem and I think it’s a policy that every league should adopt immediately.

Finally, I really want to get out and see games at some other stadiums, and I have every intention of making it to at least St. Louis or Minneapolis next year.

Now, about the playoffs, and instead of building up to a prediction, I’m just going to throw it at you right here:

I’m predicting a World Series rematch between the Phillies and Astros, with the Phillies winning this time.

I’ve actually been calling out that matchup as what I expect for weeks, and the ridiculous end of the season in the AL West when the Astros took the division even though they’d just lost series to the two worst teams in the league (A’s and Royals) just solidified my thinking.

The Astros get the Twins now, and the Twins might be game, but they’re a shaky team that won an awful division, and they do strike a lot of batters out, but they don’t scare anyone. They’re the equivalent this year of what Cleveland was last year, and while I think they’re an interesting team and I’d kind of like to see them do more damage, I just don’t believe that’s going to happen.

The other ALDS is between the Rangers and the Orioles, and I expect the Orioles to win this, but to be stretched in doing so. The Orioles have been the best team in the AL all year and they’re a wonderful story and a wonderful team and they might be the next Astros or Dodgers, competing at a high level for years to come. Or they might be the next Cubs, and might peak this year or next year and win a World Series, and then for whatever reason it just doesn’t hold together. They’ve got the talent now. But the Rangers have the two best players in the series in Corey Seager and Marcus Semian, and the Orioles also don’t have a bullpen at full strength.

I think the Orioles advance but run into an Astros team that has their rotation set up a little bit better, has a bunch of guys who have proven themselves in the playoffs before (with and without help), and I just have a feeling that given the opportunity, you’re going to see José Abreu lock in and do really well. It might not be the outcome we’re all hoping for, but I think the Astros are lined up for yet another World Series trip.

In the National League, I could see any of these four teams making it. The Diamondbacks on paper are the weakest of the four, but Corbin Carroll is a superstar, and every time I see them play Christian Walker is doing something incredible, and if any of the teams in the NL feel like they have the weird kind of mojo of the 2022 Phillies or 2019 Nationals, I think it’s them. But I think the Dodgers beat them.

The Dodgers have two MVP candidates, a ton of experience, an overall excellent lineup, and best as I can tell, 0.7 starting pitchers. I can absolutely imagine them getting quality starts out of their young guys and having Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman will them through multiple games. And I think this will get them past the Diamondbacks. But then I think they’ll hit one of two teams which are just better overall right now.

The Braves are the chalk pick, best record in baseball, the likely MVP in Ronald Acuña Jr., in the argument for the greatest offensive team of all time, some excellent young pitchers. The thing is, I don’t trust those pitchers. Max Fried has a blister, Charlie Morton seems to be injured, and, well, they ran into the same Philadelphia team last year, except that team is better now, and they’ve been the second best team in the NL for a while, and the Braves lost a couple of baffling series in the second half of the year…

And it’s the Phillies who I think feel like they’ve got unfinished business. Zack Wheeler is perennial Cy Young candidate. Bryce Harper seems like Bryce Harper. When they flip the switch they hit more dingers than Hostess makes Zingers****. And I also think they benefit from having played in the Wild Card round. It may make it seem like their rotation isn’t quite as set, but they’ll be fine on that front. And if they dispatch the Braves, even if it takes a lot of effort, I think it’s an excellent matchup for them against either the Dodgers or Diamondbacks.

My World Series pick then is based on the idea that when all is said and done, it’s incredibly difficult to repeat, especially against the same team, especially when that other team is hungrier, and is also healthy and fully ready for the fight. Phillies in 6.

**** - Zingers of course were originally made by Dolly Madison, and I think we should pause for a second to consider the layers of insanity here, as this company which made snack foods named itself after the country’s third First Lady. I myself have not had a Zinger in many a fortnight, but my favorite was always the raspberry ones which were topped with shaved coconut, and which apparently still exist, so if you want to invite me over for a raspberry Zinger, I’m game.

I want to close here with something I’m surprised I haven’t written about yet:

Immaculate Grid.

This is the October 6 Immaculate Grid, before I tried guessing:

The idea here is simple. Who has played for both the New York Mets and the Seattle Mariners? Who has ever won a Gold Glove while playing for Boston Red Sox? Who has ever hit 100 or more RBI while playing for the Washington Nationals (or, because the records are considered to carry over from when they moved, you can also pick someone who hit 100 or more RBI for the Montreal Expos!)

You can play it safe and just try to get an immaculate grid - a correct answer in all 9 boxes - or you can go for a better rarity score, by picking someone that most people wouldn’t pick in a given box.

Let’s say that the grid had a box for someone who played for both the Cubs and White Sox - and there are a whole lot of dudes who you could pick here. Someone who was fairly recently traded from one team to the other, like Craig Kimbrel or Jose Quintana, might be the first name you’d think of. Or someone who famously played for both teams, like national treasure Steve Stone, might be your pick. But if you want the best possible rarity score, you’ve got to dig deeper, and pick the more obscure possible player you can come up with. For example, people often forget that his final year, the beloved Ron Santo actually played on the South Side!

Immaculate Grid, at its heart, is the nexus of sports fandom and a certain type of geekdom, and it is baseball above all other sports which I think most readily lends itself to that type of geekdom. It is a nexus where people like my wife might observe what’s happening and sincerely think this is the dumbest damn thing I’ve ever seen but at the same time there’s something about it which I think might just explain several qualities highly prized in a mate, including well, this gives him something to do which he has absolutely no reason to try and talk to me about.

I have a difficult time getting immaculate grids, because there’s often some box on the grid like Who played for both Arizona and Miami? and I’m probably not getting that. The secret to doing well at this seems to be remembering having obscure baseball cards from the mid 1980s because that’s how I’ve come up with ridiculous rarity scores for guys like Gary Woods, who was primarily a pinch hitter for the Cubs for a while, but I at some point had.. I think this specific card, his 1981 Fleer:

Now, why would I have ever owned a 1981 Fleer Gary Woods? The reality is that you would either not ask such a question in the first place, or that there is no possible answer to that question would would actually suffice to give you any kind of real understanding.

I’m not generally big into predictions! And I didn’t go into all this because I’m suddenly aspiring to write stuff like this regularly. But I haven’t written anything quite like this in quite a while and I thought I’d give it a whirl. A coconut covered, cream-filled whirl. Mmmmm.

If you want to chat baseball, the comments here are good, or look for this post on BlueSky, which I’m giving the old college try these days, as a Twitter-like site without most of the Twitter-like garbage. You do need an invite there, and I don’t have any, but if you’re looking for one, let me know, and I’ll try and hunt one down for you. You can find me there @huckelberry.bsky.social!