Two of the four Division Series took four games to decidew with the other two going the full five games. Here is a summary.
Yankees-Blue Jays. The Yankees fell in four games to the AL East winner Blue Jays. The Jays were clearly the better team, a big failure for the Yankees who have had one of the highest MLB payrolls for many years. After the series, FOX commentator Alex Rodriguez countered criticism of Yankee manager Aaron Boone by saying that the fault lay not with the manager but with the front office. A-Rod said that the Yankees were "one of the worst constructed teams" he has ever seen, saying “They have three left-handed catchers, you have five DHs, you have a first baseman in and out". In a long response, fellow commentator Derek Jeter agreed with A-Rod's analysis. The Yankees have now gone sixteen years since their last World Series championship in 2009.
Dodgers-Phillies. The Ddogers also won in four games. After beating the Reds handily in two games in the Wild Card round, and then beating the Phillies in the first two games in this round, it looked like the Dodgers were a shoo-in. But the win in game two bordered on the bizarre. With no outs in the ninth and a Phillies runenr on first in a one-run game, the Dodgers perfectly executed a rare wheel play to get the runner at third. (More on this below.) And then two batters later Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman caught a bounced throw to first to get the third out and preseve the 4-3 victory.
The Phillies then bounced back to win game three in Dodger Stadium, and took the Dodgers to extra innings in game four. But with the score still tied 1-1 in the bottom of the 11th, the Phillies pitcher made the bonehead play of the year. With the bases loaded and two outs, he threw home on a comebacker, instead of taking the out at first. He seemingly forgot how many outs there were! His hurried throw home was wild, but the question arises of whether the runner would have been out with a good throw. The runner seemingly missed home, but that was only because the catcher was blocking the plate without the ball, which you're not allowed to do. None of the announcers or commentators have pointed out this simple fact. The runner missed the plate only because he stepped on the catcher's foot, which highlights the fact that the catcher was blocking the plate.
Mariners-Tigers. The Tigers bounced back from a deficit to force a decisive game five in Seattle. What transpired was a game which went 2-2 into the 15th inning! The Mariners finally broke through with a walk-off run in the bottom of the 15th, ending the longest winner-take-all game in MLB history, four hours and 58 minutes!
Brewers-Cubs. All five games were won by the home team, as the AL Central winner Brewers beat the Cubs three games to two.
Observations. Of the four teams which received a first-round bye, three advanced to the LCS. The Brewers, Blue Jays, and Mariners advanced, with only the Phillies losing. There is always an issue as to whether the first-round bye is an advantage or a detriment. During the past three years that the current system has been in effect, teams with the bye have won only six of the twelve series, so it doesn't seem to confer any advantage.
I was delighted to see the Mariners and Brewers advance, since neither team has ever won a World Series. In fact, the Mariners are the only team that has never even been to a World Series. I'm happy also for the Blue Jays for destroying the mighty Yankees. My only disappointment was the Phillies losing to the Dodgers. The Phillies owner has spared no expense in trying to win a World Series, and he and the great and loyal Phillies fans deserve a championship.
The wheel play executed by the Dodgers is a rarity thse days. This is because sacrifice bunts are relatively rare compared to past eras. The high for sac bunts during the deadball era was 2,785 in 1909, and the high during the liveball era was 2,097 in 1928. But these days the number runs in the neighborhood of only 750-800 a year. The reasons for this decline are twofold: one, modern analytics has frowned on giving away an out, so teams simply don't use it very often; and two, with pitchers not batting anymore there are fewer obvious bunting situations.
So why was the situaion in the Philies-Dodgers game considered such an obvious bunting situation that the Dodgers would decide to put on the wheel play? Castellanos was on second base, haivng just hit a double which pulled the Phillies from down 4-1 to down 4-3, with no outs. The analytics in play here are these: the run expectancy with a runner on second and no outs is 1.13 compared to .97 for a runner on third and one out, which seems to call for eschewing the bunt; however, the chance of scoring one run is 61.2% for a runner on second and no outs, compared to 66.3% for a runner on third and one out. The time-honored axiom says to play for the win on the road, which the Philies were, and to play for the tie at home. But the Phillies manager decided to play for the tie, for the good reason that his bullpen was better than the Dodgers bullpen, which had been notoriously unreliable.
Part of the Phillies' problem here was that they didn't have anybody left on the bench to pinch-run for Castellanos, so they were stuck with a slow runner on second. With a fast runner Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts surely would not have trusted his ability to beat the runner to third in time to catch the ball and apply the tag to the sliding runner coming in from second.
Mookie Betts reasoned all this through and, in a meeting on the mound, called for his teammates to put on the wheel play in anticipation of the bunt. This meant that the third baseman would charge the plate to field the bunt, and the shortstop would move over to cover third. The first baseman also was going to charge, and if the ball wasn't bunted to him he would go to second to prevent the batter from taking second and getting into scoring position. When manager Dave Roberts joined the conference on the mound his players told him what they wre planning, and Roberts approved the plan. The Dodgers executed it perfectly, so credit to them for an inspired play. And special credit to Mookie Betts, who was in his first season playing the shortstop position.
