Thanks to you and NIck for all the wonderful podcasts this year - as completely unsatisfying as this 89 win year was. I'm so glad it's over and how sad is that?
I'm on holiday and haven't had a chance to listen to this episode, but here's some observations:
1. Kikuchi? Seriously? Sure he had a great bounce back, but hands up how many of us truly had confidence in him?
2. It didn't take a psychic to look into a crystal ball and see that playing the Twins was going to be a nightmare given our propensity to be completely shutdown by 'elite and exceptional' starters. I'd have preferred Tampa and their beat up lineup and sudden keystone cops defence any day. There was some preview article about Game 2 on the Athletic and I managed to be the first to comment so predicted that we'd be shut out. Of course I was right. I'm sure most long suffering Toronto sports fans also have a sixth sense about these things right?
3. I also live overseas so had to listen to the stupid ESPN broadcast team of A-Rod and someone else. Sure A-Rod had some good insights, but man are we lucky to have Dan Shulman (and Buck and Joe). Infinitely better. There was no pre-game or post-game show for us ex-pats either. Those were the best parts of the year. The Sportsnet crew is great. Jamie Campbell is the best.
4. As for the Jays - Bah humbug. Next year we'll be below .500. It is written.
Thank you for all the posts and podcasts, Andrew. They were often the best part of a pretty bad year. I hope you enjoy the off-season and am looking forward to your coverage of whatever this maddening team decides to do. Go Jays.
I live in Sweden. This means that the mlb.tv postseason coverage will not give me the Sportsnet coverage (or whatever the local Minneapolis coverage is called, either) but only the American National tv coverage. So I watched that. And in game 1 (which I think was broadcast by ABC, but maybe it
was ESPN) the announcers were convinced that Gausman was tipping his splitter. (We wondered about that when they played earlier this year, too.) Because he wasn't getting *any* swing and miss on it, and the pitch was being thrown perfectly over the plate, was as nasty as ever ... and when Swanson started pitching, he was throwing a splitter too, and _he_ was getting swing-and-miss.
So. We will probably never know if this was true, but I spent Game 1 thinking that if Gausman is tipping, then it would make sense to pull him. And then, when Berrios was pitching well, I wasn't in any way thinking that pulling him was a good idea.
Those of us who work with large amounts of data on a daily basis know very well that in most business situations, analytics are absolutely useful for informing judgement and absolutely not useful for replacing judgement. And this is part of the reason why the fanbase is so upset right now. We'd like it if we had a reasonable amount of confidence that the former and not the latter was what was happening.
The USA broadcaster, maybe it was A-Rod, when Berrios was pulled, said that 'this decision was made in the middle of the night last night, by somebody looking over a spreadsheet'. And that may or may not be true. But as fans, we would feel so much better if there was one accountable person, say the Manager, who would constantly say things like 'This was my call. The analytics say .... and then, whatever it was ... and I decided to go with that. Or 'I thought it was time to pull him because he was tipping his pitches' or 'I didn't want to pinch run for Kirk because I thought we would still need his bat in the 9th.' A fair bit of 'I made the decision, and I now think it was wrong' and 'I made this decision, and it didn't work out, but I would do it again tomorrow'.
We don't want rule by committee. We want leadership, and 'the buck stops here'. We can handle a manager who is wrong on occasion, especially if he seems to be learning from his mistakes. But a person who isn't empowered or trusted enough to make these decisions -- well, we have problems trusting him as well.
I got more fun out of the 2022 Blue Jay season than this one. Anybody feel better about this one than the one before?
ps -- sorry I forgot to thank you for the coverage this year. Good stuff.
Looks like the person who knows how to hit HR when there are runners in scoring position is Gabriel Moreno. Good on him.
Thanks to you and NIck for all the wonderful podcasts this year - as completely unsatisfying as this 89 win year was. I'm so glad it's over and how sad is that?
I'm on holiday and haven't had a chance to listen to this episode, but here's some observations:
1. Kikuchi? Seriously? Sure he had a great bounce back, but hands up how many of us truly had confidence in him?
2. It didn't take a psychic to look into a crystal ball and see that playing the Twins was going to be a nightmare given our propensity to be completely shutdown by 'elite and exceptional' starters. I'd have preferred Tampa and their beat up lineup and sudden keystone cops defence any day. There was some preview article about Game 2 on the Athletic and I managed to be the first to comment so predicted that we'd be shut out. Of course I was right. I'm sure most long suffering Toronto sports fans also have a sixth sense about these things right?
3. I also live overseas so had to listen to the stupid ESPN broadcast team of A-Rod and someone else. Sure A-Rod had some good insights, but man are we lucky to have Dan Shulman (and Buck and Joe). Infinitely better. There was no pre-game or post-game show for us ex-pats either. Those were the best parts of the year. The Sportsnet crew is great. Jamie Campbell is the best.
4. As for the Jays - Bah humbug. Next year we'll be below .500. It is written.
Thank you for all the posts and podcasts, Andrew. They were often the best part of a pretty bad year. I hope you enjoy the off-season and am looking forward to your coverage of whatever this maddening team decides to do. Go Jays.
I live in Sweden. This means that the mlb.tv postseason coverage will not give me the Sportsnet coverage (or whatever the local Minneapolis coverage is called, either) but only the American National tv coverage. So I watched that. And in game 1 (which I think was broadcast by ABC, but maybe it
was ESPN) the announcers were convinced that Gausman was tipping his splitter. (We wondered about that when they played earlier this year, too.) Because he wasn't getting *any* swing and miss on it, and the pitch was being thrown perfectly over the plate, was as nasty as ever ... and when Swanson started pitching, he was throwing a splitter too, and _he_ was getting swing-and-miss.
So. We will probably never know if this was true, but I spent Game 1 thinking that if Gausman is tipping, then it would make sense to pull him. And then, when Berrios was pitching well, I wasn't in any way thinking that pulling him was a good idea.
Those of us who work with large amounts of data on a daily basis know very well that in most business situations, analytics are absolutely useful for informing judgement and absolutely not useful for replacing judgement. And this is part of the reason why the fanbase is so upset right now. We'd like it if we had a reasonable amount of confidence that the former and not the latter was what was happening.
The USA broadcaster, maybe it was A-Rod, when Berrios was pulled, said that 'this decision was made in the middle of the night last night, by somebody looking over a spreadsheet'. And that may or may not be true. But as fans, we would feel so much better if there was one accountable person, say the Manager, who would constantly say things like 'This was my call. The analytics say .... and then, whatever it was ... and I decided to go with that. Or 'I thought it was time to pull him because he was tipping his pitches' or 'I didn't want to pinch run for Kirk because I thought we would still need his bat in the 9th.' A fair bit of 'I made the decision, and I now think it was wrong' and 'I made this decision, and it didn't work out, but I would do it again tomorrow'.
We don't want rule by committee. We want leadership, and 'the buck stops here'. We can handle a manager who is wrong on occasion, especially if he seems to be learning from his mistakes. But a person who isn't empowered or trusted enough to make these decisions -- well, we have problems trusting him as well.
I got more fun out of the 2022 Blue Jay season than this one. Anybody feel better about this one than the one before?
ps -- sorry I forgot to thank you for the coverage this year. Good stuff.