Fernando Tatis is coming up big for baseball, and MLB needs him to power the Padres into the NLDS

Posted on October 2, 2020 by Aaron Yorke

It’s safe to say that the MLB commissioner’s office will be rooting for the San Diego Padres tonight as they take on the St. Louis Cardinals in the third and deciding game of their National League Wild Card Series. That’s because San Diego has the one player who is widely proclaimed to be the future of baseball, 21-year-old shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr.

After putting up MVP numbers for the first five weeks of the season, Tatis cooled off in September and hit .208/.311/.403 while the Padres cruised into the postseason. Still, the sophomore’s combination of speed, power, and swagger has him on the path to superstardom. That was never more apparent than last night, when he keyed a come-from-behind win with San Diego teetering on the edge of elimination.

That epic flip — reminiscent of the one Jose Bautista pulled off during the 2015 ALDS — was from Tatis’s second home run of the night. His first home run was a laser beam to left field that turned the score from 6-2 to 6-5 in the sixth inning. Manny Machado tied the score with a big dong of his own immediately after. The bat flip home run, though, turned out to be just as important because it drove in two runs, which was precisely San Diego’s margin of victory. Drew Pomeranz and Trevor Rosenthal fended off a late Cardinals rally and secure an 11-9 victory.

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MLB will want to stick with this 16-team postseason format, so be prepared to get used to it

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Aaron Yorke

Wednesday was an interesting day for baseball fans. As the second day of the 2020 Postseason, it was also the only day with all 16 playoff teams in action. The March Madness of baseball. There was excitement throughout the slate with the Braves starting the day by outlasting the Reds in a 13-inning pitching duel that remained scoreless for four and a half hours and the Yankees wrapping it up by scoring two runs in the ninth off of Brad Hand to take the lead for good in a rain-soaked marathon slugfest.

So why was it an “interesting” day for baseball and not a great day? Because it looks like Rob Manfred is using the COVID-19 crisis to make the 16-team bonanza a permanent part of the baseball calendar. You can tell by the way MLB is pushing the expanded postseason as the wave of the future. You can tell by the way the media got a little excited about the national pastime for the first time since 1998. There were Wild Card game on network television, for goodness’s sake. Here’s the official hype video for the playoffs.

REMIX! “Same game, whole new attitude.” Can you tell that MLB is trying to be hip and cool like the NBA? One way to be like the NBA is to reduce the meaning of the regular season that’s not moving the needle anyway by letting half the teams in the playoffs, allowing for more national TV games and more revenue. As much as the promo feels like another iteration of the Steve Buscemi “hello fellow kids” meme, the way it links baseball’s hot young stars to the expanded format is clever advertising.

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Yankees open postseason with blowout win, Rangers say goodbye to a legend

Posted on September 30, 2020 by Aaron Yorke

The MLB Postseason started yesterday, and it couldn’t have gone much worse for people who want the Yankees to lose. But who would want the Yankees to lose? Player haters, that’s who. Just miserable people who are jealous of the franchise’s 27 world titles and impeccable pinstriped uniforms. They should stop hating the players and start hating the game.

Well, right now I hate baseball because the Yankees blew out the Cleveland Indians 12-3 in Game 1 of their American League Wild Card Series on Tuesday night. Not only did presumptive AL Cy Young Award winner Shane Bieber allow seven runs in 4.2 innings, but his counterpart and the guy Yankees fans wanted to win the Cy Young, Gerrit Cole, dominated with 13 strikeouts, zero walks, and two runs allowed in 7.0 innings.

Yikes. What a nasty curveball. Maybe that guy is worth all the money the Yankees paid him. The Mets are still getting much better value with Jacob deGrom, though, so I don’t care even though the rest of the Mets rotation is superbad. If only Steve Cohen was a year early.

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Oh goodness the Giants are bad

Posted on September 29, 2020 by Aaron Yorke

I had a conversation with my wife on Sunday night after the Giants lost 36-9 to the 49ers. She thought it was hilarious that Big Blue lost by 27 points in a game that I thought they would win. I even said before the game that I thought the Giants would win. I wasn’t the only one who thought so. New York was only a three-point underdog and San Francisco was short its starting quarterback and star tight end.

The game even looked like an even match for most of the first half. The Giants tied the score at 6-6 with a Graham Gano field goal midway through the second quarter and then put the heat on 49ers backup quarterback Nick Mullens on the ensuring possession. Leonard Williams sacked Mullens and appeared to force a fumble that the Giants pounced on, but the referees blew the play dead even with Mullens falling forward while he was being tackled.

With about five minutes to play in the half, the Giants could have had a golden opportunity to take the lead before halftime. I couldn’t be that mad, though. After the sack, it was 3rd-and-22 and the Giants were going to get the ball back on a punt, anyway. I didn’t matter that blew a still-live play dead just to protect poor little Nick Mullens who isn’t a star player in any reality. What happened next sealed the Giants’ fate, though.

They easily stopped Mullens’s dump-off short of the first down market, but the refs booked rookie cornerback Darnay Holmes on a teensy-weensy tick-tack of an illegal contact penalty that had no bearing on the play. He gave the receiver a little bump 10 yards down field and suddenly 3rd-and-22 was 1st-and-10.

I mean, give me a break. Just one break. It’s already dumb to call a little bump on 3rd-and-forever that completely bails out the offense in a crucial situation. It’s another to make that call RIGHT AFTER you robbed the defense of a turnover. I don’t think referees should focus on making everything even with make-up calls. Some teams just commit more penalties than others. There has to be a little bit of justice in the football world, though.

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Mets blow their golden opportunity, MLB bracket is set

Posted on September 28, 2020 by Aaron Yorke

It’s hard to remember because the sports world spins so fast — in the past two days we’ve experienced wild college football upsets, another action-packed NFL Sunday, and two tickets punched to the NBA Finals — but on Saturday morning, the New York Mets were still eligible for postseason contention. In fact, I was feeling pretty good about it.

The joke was that the Mets had to do more than just win three games. They had to hope for Philadelphia and San Francisco to lose their remaining two games while Milwaukee had to lose one of two. Beating the basement-dwelling Nationals three times in two days was supposed to be the easy part.

Not so fast! The Mets got all the help they needed! The Phillies lost both games to the Rays, the Giants lost both games to the Padres, and the Brewers lost one of two against the Cardinals. Unfortunately, I didn’t find any of that out until Monday morning because the Mets eliminated themselves before the sun set on Saturday.

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If you haven’t played Donkey Kong Country 2, run to your Switch and fire it up

Posted on September 26, 2020 by Aaron Yorke

Nintendo announced Donkey Kong Country for its Switch Online Service a few months ago, and that was plenty exciting in its own right. What I got really jacked up for, though, was the idea of the entire Donkey Kong Country trilogy coming to Nintendo’s most modern console.

Well, it looks like that’s happening now that Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest became available on Switch this week. It’s only a matter of time until I can fire up the hovercraft and hunt down all the Banana Birds in Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble.

What makes DKC2 especially significant is that it might be the best game in the series. The first DKC set a very high bar with groundbreaking 3D graphics and clever level designs that featured many hidden bonus areas to find. Years later, DKC3 broadened the scope of the sidescrolling franchise by adding an interactive overworld and lots of NPCs.

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Mets are mathematically alive, Bill Belichick’s sweatshirt is profoundly sad

Posted on September 25, 2020 by Aaron Yorke

The Mets defeated the Nationals 3-2 last night at Citi Field, but I’m not sure that it matters. The most wins the Mets can end up with is 29, and both Cincinnati and Miami have that many already. Plus, San Francisco and Philadelphia are just one away. So… the Mets need to win their next three against Washington and need a lot of other things to happen in order to qualify for the postseason.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that it’s late September and the Mets haven’t been eliminated yet! That’s… something. Let’s just forget for a minute that this team has a Cy Young contender and one of the best lineups in the majors in a year where half the National League makes the playoffs. Take away all that stuff and it’s pretty cool that the Mets are still technically in the running for the pennant.

The real good news from last night was David Peterson went seven innings and allowed just one run. He’s now allowed just four runs in his last three starts and it looking like a rotation mainstay. That’s a big help since we’re expecting the Mets to make major investments in the rotation this winter. Having a cost-controlled option like Peterson will go a long way towards rebuilding the pitching staff.

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The Steve Cohen era has not yet begun, but the billionaire has already won me over with his very first move

Posted on September 24, 2020 by Aaron Yorke

When we found out that Steve Cohen was buying the Mets, I was excited because Cohen’s wealth and business acumen had the potential to usher in a new era of Mets prosperity. It meant the end of settling for less and the return to bringing the top baseball players in the world to play in Queens. What I didn’t expect was the return of my favorite general manager, Sandy Alderson, but it seems that’s exactly what Cohen has in mind. How wonderful!

Just like Gandalf came back to save Middle-earth, Alderson has returned to take the Mets back to the postseason, where he led them in 2015 and 2016. The former Marine should help Cohen spend his money wisely, as he’s used to being in charged of small-market teams like the Athletics, Padres, and post-Madoff Mets. Not only did Alderson oversee a front office that drafted Michael Conforto, Dominic Smith, and David Peterson during his first stint in New York, but he also got great value in the trading of veteran players. Under Alderson, the Mets turned half a season of Carlos Beltran into Zack Wheeler and R.A. Dickey into Noah Syndergaard and Travis d’Arnaud.

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The Mets stay alive while the Phillies try to kill their fans

Posted on September 23, 2020 by Aaron Yorke

Apparently there’s still a way for the New York Mets to make the playoffs in the year 2020. I haven’t fact checked it yet, but it comes from a very reputable source, and it doesn’t involve the entire National League catching a virus. Just bear with me.

All those things are very possible and could easily happen this week. All of them happening together? Not so much, but we’re grasping at straws with the Mets at 25-30 and having no chance to finish the season with a winning record. At the very least, I can lock in the Phillies losing their series vs. the Rays after last night’s debacle.

Philadelphia had already lost Game 1 of its doubleheader in Washington and fallen behind 6-3 in Game 2. Joe Girardi’s team battled back to send the game into extra innings and took a one-run lead in the eighth. In the bottom of the inning, with Brandon Workman on the mound, Washington’s Yadiel Hernandez, a 32-year-old rookie from Cuba, hit his first ever big league home run to send the Phillies packing.

That is a bat flip of someone who expects to hit many more home runs in the major leagues.

Blown leads surrendered by the closer that your team for some reason gave up real assets for? These are the things that only happen to the Mets, but the Phillies have been very Mets-like recently. They break their fans’ hearts and underachieve at every turn, and they should probably miss the playoffs just to spare their faithful supporters the inevitable disappointment.

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Mets lose despite deGrom’s award-worthy performance, expanded postseason might be here to stay

Posted on September 22, 2020 by Aaron Yorke

Well, I guess the Mets are finally done competing for the World Series in 2020. On Monday night, even with the season on the line and Jacob deGrom on the mound with his best stuff, New York lost to the Tampa Bay Rays, 2-1. deGrom made his penultimate push for the Cy Young Award with 14 strikeouts, two walks, and two runs allowed in seven innings, but it wasn’t enough.

The Rays threw a bullpen game and the Mets only broke through in the fifth inning when Jeff McNeil hit an infield single with the bases loaded. Willy Adames made a great play to keep the ball from escaping the infield, which would have allowed the tying run to score. Instead, the Mets settled for one and J.D. Davis lined out to right field to end the inning. If the Mets still had their mojo, Davis’s drive would have landed in the outfield and cleared the bases, but this isn’t our year.

New York is somehow still only 2.5 games out of the wild card, but there are too many teams to overcome, and some of those teams are playing each other. It’s been frustrating to watch the Mets blow so many opportunities to get back in the pennant race only to look at the standings and see that they’re not far out. They now have to win all six of their remaining games to finish with a .500 record. That might be good enough to sneak in, but probably not.

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Posted in Major League Baseball, National League East, New York Mets | Leave a comment