So I'm bummed. Obviously. I wish we won. I wish we had at least played better in losing. I wish we had traded for Reyes. I wish I was big.
I don't want to dwell on this to much but it's hard not to. I am so proud of this team. They won more games than any other Brewers team ever. They made it to their first CS since 1982, and the first playoffs I could watch (only a one year-old in '82, in Europe in '08). I got so much joy from watching the team this year it's hard to feel let down by them.
I know the playoffs are as much about luck as they are about being good at baseball. I know this. It still hurts.
I hope that I will remember the season for the fun it was in the future. I hope we get a SS with some range. I hope it's not another 29 years.
A lot of things happened during this series but among them was me noticing how terrible umpires are. The advent of baseball technology is amazing, not the least of which is slow motion instant replay. The umpires blew several important calls. I'm not blaming this for the loss as these bad calls went both ways. Primarily though I was blown away by the Pitch FX data. Even the one just on the broadcast showed some pitch calls that were not even close. Ryan Braun got a strike call on a fastball that was shown to be lower than the previous fastball that was called a ball. The strikezone varied so much from batter to batter it was stupid. Umpires suck, I want robots.
Here's a list of things that I want to look into to see if my impressions were off or not:
- The Cardinals seemed like much more patient hitters, especially in games 3-6. P/PA will tell us this pretty quickly.
- Braun and Fielder were trying too hard and pressed, and their P/PA was much lower than their season average.
- The Cardinals struck out far less than the Brewers in games 3-6. I know strikeouts are not the terrible thing that they are made out to be but it's just an observation.
- It seemed like the Brewers were all trying way too hard. The errors may be a product of that but I'm mostly referring to every batter going up there with home run swings. I want to see if the Cards bullpen (who really gets the credit for containing our offense) even give up a lot of HR.
- Tony LaRussa is still an idiot.
Thanks again for the great season Crew. I'll call when I feel ready again.
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The first four paragraphs of this are just lovely.
ReplyDeleteAs for the strike zones this postseason, several of the games really were called well. Several more were at least called consistently. But it seemed like there was at least a game or two in each series in which the strike zone was APPALLING. If an ump wants to stretch or contract the zone in some way[s], fine (within reason, of course); but for the love of God, keep it consistent!