Official 2023 Playoff Thread

Rangers have Will Smith, that’s why they’ll be in the World Series.

Btw, he hasn’t given up a postseason run since 2020.
 
CyYoung31 said:
Rangers are a better team than the Orioles. Orioles grossly outperformed their expected W/L.
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They're not this much better though. The Os, like most bye teams, were rusty and cold by the time they started playing again. The Dodgers, maybe baseball's second best team, are having the same problem with Arizona.
 
When was the last time the Orioles were swept in a series. I recall them having gone the longest active streak of not getting swept stretching back to last year. Not sure if they got swept in between when I saw that and the playoffs.
 
striker42 said:
They're not this much better though. The Os, like most bye teams, were rusty and cold by the time they started playing again. The Dodgers, maybe baseball's second best team, are having the same problem with Arizona.
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Orioles weren't winning it all. Only team I. The wild card era to win the World Series with a payroll ranking 16 or below was the 03 Marlins. Even that Marlins team in 03 had a pretty close payroll to this Orioles team. Which is saying something about inflation because the top team from 03 would be 17th or 18th this year. Or to put it another way Marlins had 1/3 of the payroll of the top team. Orioles had 1/6 of the payroll of the top team (lol Mets)
 
zitothebrave said:
Orioles weren't winning it all. Only team I. The wild card era to win the World Series with a payroll ranking 16 or below was the 03 Marlins. Even that Marlins team in 03 had a pretty close payroll to this Orioles team. Which is saying something about inflation because the top team from 03 would be 17th or 18th this year. Or to put it another way Marlins had 1/3 of the payroll of the top team. Orioles had 1/6 of the payroll of the top team (lol Mets)
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I see what you are doing, but I wouldn't use the mets as my top payroll. They literally spent stupid money and didn't even get close to the playoffs. I would look at top payroll of playoff teams and then compare to get a fair comparison.
 
zitothebrave said:
Orioles weren't winning it all. Only team I. The wild card era to win the World Series with a payroll ranking 16 or below was the 03 Marlins. Even that Marlins team in 03 had a pretty close payroll to this Orioles team. Which is saying something about inflation because the top team from 03 would be 17th or 18th this year. Or to put it another way Marlins had 1/3 of the payroll of the top team. Orioles had 1/6 of the payroll of the top team (lol Mets)
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I'm not really concerned whether or not the O's would have won it all. It was pretty clear that the long layoff hurt the O's. They were cold out of the gate and then started to press. The Rangers were rested and energized coming off their wild card series win. The O's were at a disadvantage due to the structure of the playoffs. Not a great reward for regular season success.

The Dodgers current situation shows how bad the playoffs are broken even more.
 
Even if you imagine the Orioles are closer to their Pythagorean W/L, that still puts them as a 94 win team in arguably the toughest division in baseball. The only real weakness you could argue was SP, as they only had 1 top end guy and several MOR/BOR types. I guess closer was also an issue as they lost Felix Bautista late in the year.

Their main issue is that their hitting just disappeared in Game 1 vs some very mediocre pitchers. Kremer sucks. Dunning isn't much better. Their BP isn't that great either.

Game 2, going with a rookie was probably not the wisest of moves, even is his raw stuff was better than other guys. Not really sure why they sent Tyler Wells to the pen late in the year when he was one of their better starters. Perhaps he reached an innings limit. I don't know, but either way I probably would have used Wells as a starter this series and pitched him game 2. Limited sample size, but Wells threw 5 perfect innings against Texas back in April.

Game 3 in TX. Momentum totally in favor of TX. I would have chalked this up as a likely TX win regardless of what happened in Games 1 and 2. Eovaldi vs whatever starter they decided to throw here was always a bad matchup for Baltimore.
 
thewupk said:
Imagine telling a Mets fan at the start of the season that both Scherzer and Verlander would make starts in the League Championship Series.
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Stros aren't there yet. Game 4 is a battle of back end guys, but Joe Ryan is a big strikeout guy. And Minny is playing at home so I give the advantage to Minny. If Minny can get to game 5, I like Lopez over Valdez.
 
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