#postseason-performance

#postseason-performance

About four weeks ago, shortly after the Red Sox were eliminated, I wrote that I was rooting for the Blue Jays to win the World Series in one our Over The Monster group posts. There are several reasons for this, but one of which is I want another big spending team in the division not named the Yankees to have success while the Red Sox are on the sidelines. They haven't won yet, but for those purposes, I think we can say mission accomplished.

Pretty rarely does a series outcome rests entirely in the hands of one player. But for the Toronto Blue Jays to have any chance of winning the ALCS, there is actually one player on the Seattle Mariners that could do exactly that. That player is none other than the modern day Blue Jays killer Cal Raleigh. Raleigh was at it once again on Sunday night in Game 1 of the ALCS against the Blue Jays.

Maybe the Yankees can take some small consolation from the fact that they had three more postseason wins than the team that spent $765 million to steal Juan Soto away from the Bronx. Call that a Subway Series victory for Hal Steinbrenner. The Yankees' principal owner avoided being on the hook for Soto's onerous 15-year contract and still got five more sellout crowds at the Stadium - nearly a quarter-million beer-drinking, hot dog-eating customers - before the Yankees ultimately fell to the Blue Jays, 5-2,

The Los Angeles Dodgers starting pitching thus far in the postseason has been dominant. It's one thing to shut down the Cincinnati Reds - a Wild Card team hovering around the .500 mark with an average offense. It's another thing to systematically break down the Philadelphia Phillies on the road in a hostile environment, not to mention limiting the three-headed monster of Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber, and Bryce Harper severely thus far.

In 2020, Andrés Giménez finished his rookie season by finishing in the top 10 in NL Rookie of the Year voting as a member of the New York Mets. After one season in New York, Gimenez's tenure with the Mets was shortly over. Giménez was traded by the Mets in part of the trade that sent superstar shortstop Francisco Lindor to New York from Cleveland.