AL Round 3--ALCS

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It's the Tampa Bay Rays and the Houston Astros in the ALCS from Petco Park in SD. All games will be on TBS which means Ronnie with someone that isn't Gary Cohen. Game 1 is Sunday night at 7:37 PM.

I think that I can safely say for all of us: GO RAYS!



ALCS on TBS Broadcast Schedule

TBS Studio shows airs 30 minutes before/after game

Game 1: Sunday, October 11, Astros at Rays, TBS 7:30 p.m.

Game 2: Monday, October 12, Astros at Rays, TBS 4 p.m.

Game 3: Tuesday, October 13, Rays at Astros, TBS TBA

Game 4: Wednesday, October 14, Rays at Astros, TBS TBA

Game 5: Thursday, October 15, Rays at Astros, TBS TBA*

Game 6: Friday, October 16, Astros at Rays, TBS TBA*

Game 7: Saturday, October 17, Astros at Rays, TBS TBA*

*if necessary



TBS Broadcast Talent

Brian Anderson, Ron Darling, Jeff Francouer & Lauren Shehadi



TBS Studio

Ernie Johnson, Curtis Granderson, Pedro Martinez, Jimmy Rollins



Streaming: TBS.com, TBS app, MLB.tv



ESPN Radio: Dan Shulman, Chris Singleton

Edited October 10, 2020 by Guest

[MFS62]

=bmfc1 post_id=48371 time=1602389997 user_id=73]
I think that I can safely say for all of us: GO RAYS!

[ashie62]

I like both teams. Houston is where they are despite not having the services of last years ROY Yordan Alvarez for all but a few AB's. Greinke has been tepid thus far and he will need to pick it up.

[Frayed Knot]

No Alvarez, and also no Verlander (or Gerrit Cole for that matter). Rays v Astros was the ALDS last year (3-2) with the Houston wins coming from Cole, Verlander, and Cole.



That said, they were a sub-.500 team during this, admittedly fucked-up, season, which is of course a downside (one of several) to ever expanding playoffs. What I'm afraid of is that too many are going to see things like this as an argument for this playoffs-on-roids idea.

[G-Fafif]

A la Whitney Houston, I wanna dance with somebody...who loves beating the MFYs the way the Rays do.



https://twitter.com/juanctoribio/status/1314800748136411137?s=21https://twitter.com/juanctoribio/status/1314800748136411137?s=21

[Frayed Knot]

Snell is the beneficiary of several at'em balls and yet has still thrown right around six innings worth of pitches just to get thru four ... so he's not long for this game even though only down 1-Zip

[Frayed Knot]

So I'm thinking that tonight's game is featuring the first Framber (Valdez) vs Yandy (Diaz) match up in MLB post-season history.

[Frayed Knot]

The bottom of the 7th features some red hot Blake Taylor action.

Never active with the Mets, the lefty hurler was 2013 2nd round pick by the Pirates and became NYM property in the Ike Davis trade,

and then was dealt to Houston this past off season for Jake Marisnick. Made his MLB debut back in August.



The three batter minimum of 2B - K - HBP ends Taylor's night

[Frayed Knot]

Nice game, 2-1 Rays victory.

Now what would have made it a terrific game would have been if it were an hour shorter. Instead, it was an 8-1/2 inning 2-1 game that somehow took (ugh!) 3:50 to complete.

[Centerfield]

Think of how long it might have been if Taylor only faced two batters.



God bless Manfred.

[Frayed Knot]

And the thing is, if the three-batter rule weren't in effect Taylor just would have been removed one or two hitters earlier than he was, but there still wound up being a pitching change in the middle

of the inning so the rule had zero effect on the time of game which is supposedly the sole reason why it's in there. His replacement, the same Castillo guy who ended the Yanqui series, threw one

pitch for an inning ending GiDP bailing Taylor out of the bases-loaded situation he created.



What this all means is that when you add the mid-inning pitching change, which takes at least two minutes (at least until they adopt my no more warmups rule), then Castillo throws one pitch, and then they

break for the three minute between innings commercial break (up from 2:05 in reg season) heading into the bottom half of the inning. So five-plus minutes went by during which ONE pitch was thrown and

that, dear readers, is the kind of thing that's driving these games towards GONE WITH THE WIND territory in length.

[Frayed Knot]

GAME 2



A lazy error by Altuve (along with a less than stellar effort by Guriell at 1st) on a grounder which should have ended the bottom of the 1st, led to a 3R HR two pitches later by Manuel Margot.



3-0 TBR even as Houston has had a bunch of hits and runners early on. Magot later went tumbling over a sidewall to make a run-saving catch.

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[YOUTUBE]https://youtu.be/1nOkd0VweSAhttps://youtu.be/1nOkd0VweSA[/YOUTUBE]

[MFS62]

Yeah.

But he's no Derek Jeter.

(SM-96)

Later

[ashie62]

Manny Margot is there hero for sure. That was quite a steep fall.

[MFS62]

Before this series, I don't think I could have named one player on the Rays.

I still don't think I could name more than two.

Later

[Frayed Knot]

And yet they went 40-20 during the season and are one game away from the WS.

What's been most lopsided during this ALCS has been the defense. TBR gloves have been stellar while Altuve seems to have a mysterious case of the yips ... or the 'Knolauchs' or 'Sax's or whatever you want to call them.

[MFS62]

When I think "Tampa" and "baseball", my first association is "Lou Pinella" because they always seemed to make it a point of telling us where he was from.

Maybe my dismissal of the Rays is because I remember (only a few years ago) when they were the MFYs whipping boys, and never seemed to be able to hold a lead, no matter how big, against them.

Glad that has changed.

Now they're good to watch because they play good fundamental baseball.

Later

[G-Fafif]

Official thread of the ALCS.

[Frayed Knot]

TB Rays baseball: Charlie Morton has a two-hit shutout going on only 66 pitches thru 5-2/3 ... and he's pulled for a reliever with runners on 1st and 3rd



Out of the inning but they've still got three more innings to cover

3-1 TBR, heading for bottom 6th

[G-Fafif]

Regardless of the outcome of the NLCS, we are guaranteed an all-Teams For Whom Travis d'Arnaud Has Played World Series.

[Frayed Knot]

So despite all the wackiness of this season and the playoffs-on-steroids experiment (at least I hope it's an experiment), this year's WS is going to wind up with no Wild Cards only division winners

and will feature the best record in the AL matched up against either the best (LAD) or 3rd best (ATL) from the NL (SDP was 2nd).



Houston winning the ALCS would have produced a first ever sub-.500 WS team, something that likely would have given ammo to both sides of the debate over expanded playoffs.

- 'Stop watering down the playoffs ... lousy teams don't deserve to be there!'

vs

'Hey this is great, your team can suck most of the year and still go all the way if they get hot at the right time ... so every game counts!!!'

[ashie62]

How about they go to six teams for the playoffs in each league.



It would eliminate the one game wild card matchup.



Top two division winners get a bye and 3 plays 6 and 4 plays five in a best of five..

[G-Fafif]

Dusty Baker has now taken five teams to the postseason and none of them to a world championship.

[MFS62]

I look at the Rays' roster and I'm still not sure I'd take theirs over the Mets.

But they seem to do all the little things right when they have to be done.

Later

[bmfc1]

By current standards, last night's games were completed in a crisp 3:20 and a crisp 3:14.

[Frayed Knot]

Which, when you consider that the extra commercial times during post-season games add some 16-18 minutes over what it would normally run,, so both were the equivalent of 3 hours ... which sounds kind of good these days.

Except that the games were 3-1 and 4-2, and both were only 8-1/2 innings, and that there were just a few in-inning pitching changes.

Those are the type of games that used to run more like 2-1/2 hours or even less, so they've taken the same amount of action and just made them 45 to 50 minutes longer.

[bmfc1]

True. They add :30 seconds of commercial time between innings (and perhaps during pitching changes). If you eliminated those :30 and another :30 you could make some progress on shortening the games. Before you say, "there's no way they will accept losing money from commercials" there are other ways to hit us with ads, such as those quick split screen ads or the square around the game you can see during Premier League matches.

[Frayed Knot]

=bmfc1 post_id=48702 time=1603050461 user_id=73]
True. They add :30 seconds of commercial time between innings ...

[bmfc1]

Baseball continues to be the only sport which allows on-field meetings during the game (I'm not including football huddles) such as the type you mention.



I didn't realize that it's :30 + :30. Fix that and then we can talk about other way to move it along.