Your Official Live 2016 World Series Thread---From Game One to (if necessary) Game Seven . . .

[Machiavelli]

When the Cleveland starting pitcher was removed after six innings, despite allowing no runs, only four hits, and no walks, it reminded me of how the management of pitchers has changed over the years.

Back in 1962, relief pitchers even then were a major factor in games, however the average standard pitching rotation was four men, and starting pitchers tried to pitch a complete game. In 1962 there were 844 complete games pitched.

In 2016, we have five or six man pitching rotations, and only 83 complete games were pitched. Four teams had zero complete games pitched.

[Polly Ticks]

All Kluber, all Miller, all Perez, all Indians, all the Game One time
By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2016/10/26/all-kluber-all-miller-all-perez-all-indians-all-the-game-one-time/

Very nice write-up, @EasyAce   
I enjoyed reading it.

[musiclady]

When the Cleveland starting pitcher was removed after six innings, despite allowing no runs, only four hits, and no walks, it reminded me of how the management of pitchers has changed over the years.

Back in 1962, relief pitchers even then were a major factor in games, however the average standard pitching rotation was four men, and starting pitchers tried to pitch a complete game. In 1962 there were 844 complete games pitched.

In 2016, we have five or six man pitching rotations, and only 83 complete games were pitched. Four teams had zero complete games pitched.

Terry Francona is on the cutting edge of changing pitching rotation.  I think because he wants to use Kluber two more times (if needed) and because the Indians' bullpen is so stinkin' AWESOME, he can do things that didn't used to happen.

What he did clearly worked!  ^-^

[musiclady]

Very nice write-up, @EasyAce   
I enjoyed reading it.

So did I!  ^-^

[Suppressed]

Did anyone post the story about this guy who made this prediction in his high school yearbook in 1993?

[Wingnut]

Link to Game 2 thread?

[EasyAce]

Link to Game 2 thread?

The title of this one says, "Live . . . From Game One to (if necessary) Game Seven." ;)

Stick around, Game Two coming up . . .

[EasyAce]

Lester’s no-thanks-throwing-over a danger? Yip.
By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2016/10/26/lesters-no-thanks-throwing-over-a-danger-yip/

At the end of his first spring training as a Cub, in April 2015, Jon Lester thought his issue about throwing over to first base—
which he doesn’t, if he can help it, which is most of the time—was no big deal. He still didn’t think so when the Cardinals took big
leads off him and used them to help themselves toward an early-season 3-0 win televised nationally.



“I don’t know why,” he told the Chicago Tribune at the time. “I guess it must have been a slow news day, and they wanted to talk
about it. Like I said, it’s something that’s being blown out of proportion right now. There’s really nothing to talk about at the
beginning of the year. So you need to talk about the negative stuff and now we’re just continuing to work on the things we need
to work on and get out and pitch.”

Lester has long since insisted he really does trust his defense and thus has less reason to worry about throwing to first. In World
Series Game One, his trust enabled catcher David Ross to throw Indians road runner Francisco Lindor out stealing in the bottom
of the third, in a close play on which Cub second baseman Javier Baez’s glove laces brushed Lindor’s left arm, getting the call.

It was what happened a pitch or two earlier that raised alarms about Lester’s issue. Lindor had a lead off first big enough for an
Amtrak train to clear. The Cubs had him picked off dead to right if Lester would have thrown. Even a bad throw would have
bagged the Cleveland shortstop with a lead that fat.

Lester merely looked at first and then delivered home to Carlos Santana, who ultimately walked. The Indians went on to win, 6-0.
That shutdown Indians pitching—starter Corey Kluber, relievers Andrew Miller and Cody Allen—had a lot to do with it. But who
knows how the tenor of the game might have changed if Lester could have picked Lindor off?

Lester’s issue isn’t going away any time soon. He tried working on it in 2012, when he was still with the Red Sox, then stopped
throwing to first in 2013. Some now wonder how he managed to be as shutdown as he was in that year’s World Series, which
the Red Sox won.

Trusting his defense may carry Lester only so far if the Indians figure out more ways to exploit it, should they see him again in
the Series. And it isn’t as simple as just suggesting the Cubs work him to the bone in spring training to overcome it.

Apparently, Lester won’t even think about whether he has what sports people call the yips. “It’s out of Boston,” he once said, a
little annoyed, referencing a story from Boston that suggested just that making itself manifest. But they’re no joke. No illusion,
either.

It’s happened to baseball players in the past and wrecked games, not to mention careers. Especially when they obstruct what
seem to Joe and Jane Fan to be things they could do in their sleep. And players themselves would rather challenge barracuda
than talk about it.

“We really don’t talk about it as baseball players,” said long-since retired Jason Giambi in 2013, without ever having suffered a
case of it himself. (Giambi finished his career with the Indians; he was a member of their 2013 second-wild card winner.) “It’s
just this unwritten rule.”

Former major leaguer Jason Tyner once remembered seeing pitcher Matt Garza, when they were Tampa Bay teammates, at war
with himself trying to make simple throws to first.

“If you bunted on him, he’s throwing it down the right-field line,” Tyner told MLB.com. “It wasn’t even close. You’d see him over
on a back field working on it and it’d look like a 6-year-old trying to throw to first base. He could throw 95 mph wherever he
wants to the batter, but he could not throw the ball to first base.”

Mackey Sasser’s promising career as a Mets catcher was ruined by the syndrome. As he was blasted at the plate by Atlanta’s Jim
Presley, who bowled him back over his ankles, Sasser held the ball in a kind of death grip. After that, he couldn’t return a ball
to his pitchers without double, triple, and even quadruple clutching. (Brett Butler once stole third during a Sasser triple clutch.)

When his playing career ended, at age 32, Sasser became a college baseball coach—and was finally steered to a psychologist
who got him to the root of his issue: he’d suffered several childhood traumas but suppressed them until the Presley collision.
The analysis and therapy finally did what nobody including Sasser could do while he played. And he uses it to help his own
players overcome the syndrome if it arises.

Sasser is one of the more fortunate such men. So is Tigers catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia. He once found it impossible to throw
back to the mound, too. Whether or not he knew of Sasser’s issue, Saltalamacchia consulted a sports psychologist after a
demotion to the minors and got himself fixed.

Two decades before Sasser, Pirates pitcher Steve Blass went within two years from the last man standing on the mound to
beat the Orioles clinching the 1971 World Series to a man who suddenly couldn’t get a ball over the plate. It inspired the
nickname “Steve Blass Disease” for pitchers who lost their control. Now a longtime Pirates broadcaster, Blass never figured out
just what caused his inexplicable control loss.

It ended Rick Ankiel’s pitching career, driving him to remake himself as a power hitting outfielder. Ankiel’s splendid rookie season
was ruined in a National League Division Series start, when he walked eleven and threw nine wild pitches. When he made it back
as an outfielder, injuries, not the yips, ended his career at last.

Chuck Knoblauch suddenly found himself unable to throw to first base on routine plays—if he had even an extra second to think
about the play as it was happening. If he had no time to think, he was fine. But he still converted himself into an outfielder in a
bid to overcome the issue.

Remember Daniel Bard? Great looking relief pitcher for the 2009-11 Red Sox. 9.7 strikeouts per nine, 2.88 ERA. Started showing
the yips in the second half of 2011, during the Red Sox’s infamous collapse. Converted to starting by 2012 manager Bobby Valentine.
A mess. His ERA swelled to 9.00; he was back in the minors in 2013.

Now in the Rangers organisation, Bard still doesn’t seem to know what went wrong. “The one thing that I could do really well was
taken away from me,” he has said. “There were some tough times, tough moments. You’re out there and you think you’re throwing
the ball well but it’s not doing what you want it to do. It’s so frustrating.”

That’s a polite way to phrase it.

The phrase “the yips” was invented not in baseball but by a golfer. Tommy Armour coined it to describe his sudden inability to make
short putts during the 1927 Shawnee Open, causing a surreal 23 score on the par five 17th hole. It didn’t keep him from winning
the U.S. Open, the British Open, and the PGA between 1927 and 1931, but it did keep him from becoming one of golf’s all time
greats.

Even an all-time great whose trademark was deep, often isolating concentration and otherworldly courage can be wrecked by it. Ben
Hogan was. A stoic to a fault champion, Hogan survived a near-fatal 1949 automobile accident to win three majors and, finally, the
hearts of golf fans, in 1953. Then he, too, found himself unable to sink the simplest putts. He’d never win another major again; he’d
win only one more PGA event (the 1959 Colonial National Invitation) before he retired in 1970.

Sam Snead had the same problem as he got older; it kept him from adding even a single U.S. Open win to his impressive majors
resume. He even tried the since-banned croquet mallet style of putting and a kind of side-saddle style where he’d crouch facing the
hole and swing the putter from his side. ”You get to the point where your mind can’t figure out how hard to hit the ball,” Snead once
said of his pain in the putt.

It would be simple to ask how Lester won a World Series ring with the Red Sox without throwing over to first base but lost Game One
Tuesday night. The answer might not prove to be that simple. The Indians are more likely to exploit it, and less likely to let it smother
themselves, as happened to the Dodgers against Lester in the National League Championship Series.

The Cubs’s route to a World Series title could have a land mine or three in it because of it, too.

[Wingnut]

The title of this one says, "Live . . . From Game One to (if necessary) Game Seven." ;)

Stick around, Game Two coming up . . .

We should have a new one for every game.  Start fresh.  Uncluttered.

Just sayin

[musiclady]

It's tough to harmonize the National Anthem.  Not bad.....

[EasyAce]

Game Two live thread

[Major Confusion]

Let's go CUBBIES

As a Nationals fan it pains me to say it, but GO CUBS!!!  End the Billy Goat Curse!  The Indians can win another year.

[mystery-ak]

@mystery-ak Can I start a Major League line thread 

Of course