Game 7 was pure , exciting baseball as it was meant to be viewed. Who cares about all the money spent and the shoulda woulda coulda………that game was never a dull moment , glued to your tv set , can’t miss an inning baseball. What a Game!( And this is coming from a Giants fan)

All the Blue Jays had to do was cash in the leadoff double in the bottom of the eleventh by Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and the game would have gone to twelve innings which would have tied the record for the longest game seven in World Series history. But they couldn't get it done....

:(

All the Blue Jays needed was Isiah Kiner-Falefa to run hard through the base instead of slide into home and the Blue Jays win in 9.

Did you see how small his lead was off third base was when the ball was hit? A few feet more and he easily scores.

Wasn't he put in strictly to pinch run? In which case he failed miserably to do his job.

But a bottom of the ninth victory wouldn't have been nearly as historic anyway as one that went into three or more extra innings.

:(

Series was mentally exhausting. I'm glad it's over.
Jays surprised everybody this year. Who thought they were going to set all these postseason records and play in the World Series ??
And this team has depth. Even if their best players are down, then no problem! They can play well without Bichette and Springer !!
Vladdy is one hell of a leader and made some insane plays this postseason.
Jays will be back.

It’s obvious why the Mets ship hasn’t come in….they cant sign the best Japanese players because LA is preferable and close to home. Secondly, it’s a work in progress to rebuild an entire organization from the disaster of the wilponzis. They need better pitching. It will come. The farm system is way better already. That is where money can make a difference, and cohen is doing it right.

But several orgs have it right, so winning wont be so easy. Dodgers have that japan advantage. Mets had the same offer to Yamamoto….would have been different season if they had gotten him.

I was very confused by this. Why did he slide? It was a force play, there wasn't going to be a tag. Just a mental hiccup? Force plays at home are so rare that players automatically go into "avoid the tag" mode when headed home?

Kirk swinging away was also confusing. They'd already bunted Vlad over, so they already decided to play for a tie. Unless Barger walking changed their calculations significantly (and I don't think it should have - he wasn't going to score from first on a hit), given that they had already bunted Vlad over the play with Kirk should have been a suicide squeeze.

While money plays a part in it, its also who you get to play with. Yamamoto got offered the exact same contract from the Mets. After he got it he took it back to the dodgers and said match and I'll come. Saski could have made more money on other teams with more international money, he just decided to come to the dodgers.

The dodgers have about 1-2 more years before things go south with guys getting old (Freeman, Betts, and Teoscar, Snell will all be 35+) and they feel the effects of the Cohan tax on their farm system. Unfortunately though because of their success, there will likely be a lock out for 2027 with 29/30 owners wanting a hard salary cap.

Nothing more ludicrous than a bunch of billionaires complaining that the system isn't fair to them. You want to win? Spend some of Daddy's money. Otherwise, sell the team to someone who is willing to spend.

+1

That would be valid if all owners want to win. Not all owners want to win, they want to make a profit. The easiest way for them to be prov]fitable is with revenue sharing and keeping costs down. I wish fans had a way to fire owners like a manager or GM.

Well, sure, changing the rules to get more $$$ is what billionaires do, both in and out of sports.

Relegation would be another way to handle it...Id love to see how ownership would react after the Angels or Pirates have to play against AAA teams for awhile.

It's only 2 different Will Smiths. The same one was with the Dodgers all 3 times they won, and the other was apparently the lucky charm for 3 different teams 3 years in a row.

The Tampa Bay Rays, a team in the legit bottom of revenue...a team that currently doesn't have a stadium to play in...a stadium that the owners don't like even when it was operational...that the team doesn't even own the building or the land it's on...

...was purchased a couple months ago for 1.7 billion dollars.

Kirk has 0 sacrifice bunts in his career so asking him to do it in the 11th inning of game 7 is unlikely. There's probably a much better chance he hits a sacrifice fly than gets a bunt down, but unfortunately, a ground ball is a likely double play with his lack of speed, and that's what happened.

All the talk of buying championships and no mention of the Dodgers not winning if Miguel Rojas wasn't on the team in general (ask Mookie about him), and in the lineup the last couple games.

His entire three year deal pays him about 35 games of what Ohtani makes.

The only explanation is stupidity. For any professional baseball player not to be aware of what's required in a certain specific on-field situation though is unforgivable. It's not nuclear physics. Here he's drawing a salary that's a king's ransom and he shows himself confused by the basics of the game.

Meanwhile Ty Cobb or Pete Rose woud not only have run through the plate but would have put their shoulder into the catcher while doing it to jar the ball loose if needed.

:rolleyes:

Is it the owners of the small market teams who are complaining? I don't think so. They're probably happy to just operate at a profit. It's the fans of these teams who do most of the complaining.

To think that the owners should behave like fanboys and operate the team for the good of the community or fan base is just silly.

Actually I find it difficult to condemn anyone operating in a common sense fashion.

Fans are SUPPOSED to complain, that's OUR job in the organizations, for which 29 in 30 of us get paid with heartbreak.

Being a baseball team owner isn't a free market experience. You have to be vetted by other owners, and you have to be invited in. Supply and demand isn't in play. The highest bidder isn't in play.

Also, every...EVERY...single team gets government grants, government subsidies, and government tax breaks. They get not just fan money whether they consume a paid product or not, but they also take it from those that don't even care about baseball.

Fan pressure to spend on ownership has a long history of working and not working.

Asking one side of capitalism to just shut up and eat their slop while being happy to have slop to eat is weird.

That has to be up there with toughest losses I have ever seen a team absorb. Shades of Red Sox 86 or 03, Yanks of 04 in terms of the gut punch jays fans must be feeling. I recall how physically and mentally ill I was the day after the 03 ALCS. Of course all those martinis I was pounding during the game probably didn’t help.

The Dodgers went out and won it. I didn’t feel that was a choke job by the Jays so much as the other team just pulled it out. In that sense Jays fans can hold their heads high.

That's always enraged me. The politicians who approve those subsidies should all be jailed.

The other thing that makes me furious is that both MLB and the NHL have been awarded exemptions from anti-trust statutes which has enabled them to own and operate minor league teams and even leagues as if they're nothing but a branch/subsidiary of the major league team. Leagues such as the International League, the Pacific Coast League, American Hockey Heague, etc. should function independently of the major leagues.

:mad:

I loved the look of pure joy on Justin V.'s face when the Dodger clinched it. Fitting conclusion to a brilliant career.

Who?

Well not necessarily a choke by the Jays, they had plenty of chances to score in Game 7 and build a much bigger lead. They also could have won it in the 9th with some better base running and at least tied it in the 11th with a fly ball instead of a double play grounder. They just couldn't get the big hit when they needed it other than Bichette's home run.

The best game 7 I have ever seen in a WS. The bulk of the series, however, was a little choppy and erratic. I love all these Dodger fans lecturing the Mets fans. You can thank Bud Selig for the head start in forcing that regime change. The Mets were saddled with the Wilpons for many years thanks to Bud protecting his buddies. We'll see what happens going forward.

This. Muncy was a good 20 feet off the bag, the runner about five. Where was the coach, what in the world was he doing? That's the tying run, get him as close as you can in case of a wild pitch, passed ball, or slow grounder to the infield!

Actually it was the World Series winning run...

Relegation is a cute idea but would never be practical. The same MLB teams own the minor league teams. Plus the facilities would not be up to par. No way the Yankees or Dodgers want to fly into Syracuse or Tidewater because one team in a major city had to finish last.

Oh, I know it's totally not practical, and not going to happen, but it would be super fun!

IMO it was pretty clearly an overcorrection in response to the way game 6 ended.

Huh? Please explain.

:confused:

I really loved that this World Series rewarded those who have the attention span (and, admittedly, the time) to watch every game from beginning to end. It's a reminder to the baseball doomers that baseball is still awesome and probably will be for generations to come.

How about Dodgers facing elimination in games 6 & 7 and both games ended with double plays?

What an exciting Series. Nobody plays perfect baseball, but these two teams battled it out night after night. There were so many close plays that could have changed the course of game seven if just....the ball would have been a couple inches further, the runner had a bigger lead, the pitch would have been executed better, etc. And two extra inning games, including Game 7.

Wow.

Oof!

That would make you play it differently from how you would in any other game? I can't see that.

"Kiner-Falefa, to his credit, spoke about the play after the game and explained exactly what went wrong. "They told us to stay close to the base," Kiner-Falefa said, per Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet. "They don't want us to get doubled off in that situation with a hard line drive. Varsho hits the ball really, really hard. (Max Muncy's) right there. I'm waiting for a backpick from (catcher) Will Smith in that situation. "It was obviously a tough play. They got it done. The lead is small. In that situation, you can't get doubled off. I got the best secondary lead I could, and it didn't work out."

"Upon rewatching, however, it looked as though it took Kiner-Falefa a few steps to get into high gear, and he even peeked over his left shoulder a bit to gauge where the grounder was hit in relation to Rojas."

Yes wow, but it's not that it was 2 games, it's that it was ELEVEN innings, including game 7.


And I'm still confused by the Justin V. comment below...

And Will Smith caught every inning of every game (74 innings), after missing a month with a broken bone in his hand.

And hit a homer after the 73rd

Doesn't explain why he slowed himself down by sliding into home plate. Overrunning home plate isn't a problem.

:confused:

Too excited. Wrong pitcher.

Force of habit. Pretty rountine play under most circumstances, but of course this one magnified every little move into a gamechanger, which they were. All the attention would have been on Rojas, who stumbled and double-clutched the throw, if the runner had been safe.

I am so happy for Kershaw. Sometimes the good guys end up winning in the end.

I stopped watching baseball in August of 1994 because of the strike. I might occasionally watch the World Series, but that was it at best. I only got back into it in 2013 after reading Clayton's book "Arise." Such a good dude, and he and his wife opened an orphanage in a foreign country. Faith and family, etc.

My wife and I were blessed to get to go on vacation near Tampa this August, and they just happened to be in town! I got to see Kershaw pitch six scoreless and get a win! It was at Steinbrenner Stadium, so we were up close. It was only my third MLB game live ever! What a wonderful blessing that was.

Needless to say, we woke up the neighborhood when Mookie made that double play!

I watched the entire 7 game series and was hoping to see the Dodgers choke because they had the second highest payroll, just $2M behind the Mets, but then when you consider all the deferrals in payment that would actually place the Dodgers well ahead of everyone. Dave Roberts a great manager? Hell, you could put an experienced college level coach in and he'd probably have had a better record. I loved it when Roberts was playing the odds and put a lefty in vs Barger (no HRs vs lefty's in 117 at bats prior to the "SLAM").

There were also disgusting moments like in game 7 when Springer was jogging to second thinking Vlad walked and then was thrown out for a stike'm out, throw'em out double play which killed the first inning for the Jays in game 7.

At what point do these "big leaguers" get reprimanded for not hustling. Yes, 99% of the time not hustling will not lead to outs or potential scoring losses, but when it does happen, it makes you wonder why the players aren't benched. Baseball is a game of "Charlie Hustle". You play hard and never stop. Looks like today's players just don't get that.

I was happy that Kershaw's last game was him holding the Jays in the ninth inning of that marathon win for the Dodgers. All you could do was hope that Roberts wouldn't put Clayton in a position to have to pitch in a high leverage situation and blow it with that 90mph fast ball. So sad to see the skills diminished on a player like Kershaw. I mean he was one of the games best when he was in his prime.

You have to give a lot of props to Yamamoto. Wow, throws near a hundred pitches in game 6 then comes back out the next night for the win in game 7. That was a pretty interesting game 7 when you consider (4) starters pitched in that game.

Ok, enough of my 2 cents -
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Agreed.

It seems that getting reprimanded causes too many of these high priced athletes to sulk which then jeopardizes the owners "investment" in those players. Hard-nosed disciplinarian managers may be a thing of the past.

:(

Was Springer's injury a factor in that play? I thought I understood that it was, but maybe he was just jogging because he lacked the will to win in game 7.

Dave Roberts is everyone's favorite punching bag, and I've certainly jumped on that bandwagon. But he did make some awesome calls when it counted:

1) Not pinch hitting for Miguel Rojas in the 9th inning in Game 7 (and frankly putting him into the lineup in Game 6)
2) Defensive substitution in center field in the 9th inning in Game 7 -- Andy Pages for Tommy Edman
3) Letting Yamamoto pitch in Game 7
4) Not emptying the bench too early in Game 3 (unlike Schneider)

I’ve been a Dodgers fan for decades and a Roberts critic for seemingly almost as long. In fairness to him, he’s gotten MUCH better. His handling of the pitching staff in the 2017-18 postseasons was abysmal. Still makes dumb decisions but he’s better.

I was calling for him to move Will Smith up in the lineup after game 2. took him a few games but he did it.

Good calls. Yup, if Rojas would have struck out instead of homering and the Dodgers lost the series, then Roberts would have been arm chair quarterbacked to death.

What Yamamoto did was spectacular. Good for him, 3 W's for the series. We probably may not see that feat again for a while.

I still think that a manager with the pitching depth and lineup the Dodgers put together with all that money (and deferred cash) should win the WS every year. Holy crap, that starting staff for the Dodgers was just crazy. All that unhurt potential at the end of the season. The series W lets Vesia off the hook.

I was hoping Milwaukee with their 22nd ranked payroll was going to make the series.

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https://ftw.usatoday.com/story/sport...o/87066190007/

As if the WS didn't have enough...That family's been shagging fly balls.