Astros gave the Twins a serious spanking today. Sigh…

Astros play a shit ton better on the road. Twins are a legit team nonetheless. They are going to only get better and it’s not over yet and they are doing a lot better than AL East teams right now

I am astounded that Baltimore is getting pounded like they are

Dayum! Rangers are pounding the O's again tonight aren't they? 6–1 now in the 5th.
The AL East teams could easily go 0–7 this year.

EDIT: Orioles lose 7–1. CONGA RATS to the Texas Rangers on advancing.

Indeed, congratulations to Texas for moving on.

Baltimore just looked to me like a team that was tired.

I am coming to the opinion that there is a major problem in the new playoff system - the length of the post season byes. All of the divisional winners are coming into the round cold, after most of a week off. Where all the winning teams from the Wild Card round are coming in on both an energy high from winning the wildcard round, and without the rust that comes from at least a week of competitive baseball. And it's showing in the relative lack of offense against the secondary pitchers of the Wild card teams.

I really don't know what the answer to this problem is though, and maybe its something that smart baseball teams need to think about since it's so new. But they won't go back to 4 playoff teams, and going to 8 would be disastrous. You can't really compress a best of 3 into 2 days and have a good product, and you need a day to travel (based on not knowing who the teams are, you can't assume short trips), But maybe the key is to do the WC round Monday,. Tuesday, Wednesday if necessary, and evening games on Thursday? It would further penalize the WC teams, but as it stands right now, I think the divisional winners are taking a bigger hit that the WC teams.

Jason

I think it is hard to judge on 2 seasons. It is such a small sample size. The 2022 ALCS was #1 vs #2, and #2 looks to make it this year.
The big problem in the NL is the Dodgers, they have just been killed on long term planning of their rotation.
The Dodgers rotation at the start of 2021.
Buehler
Bauer
Kershaw
May
Gonsonlin

3 of those five have had TJ, and the other is not welcome anymore.

Oh, well. Twins had a pretty good season, and, apart from Game 3, they put up a good showing vs. the Astros.
Couldn't buy a hit tonight, and I sure do miss Ryan Pressly. He shut down my dream of a walk-off.

Good luck to your guys, Brandon.

Thanks Beachy! I was super impressed by the Twins, honestly. Every piece of experience these guys get will help them next time!

I would have liked more, obviously (really, really wanted to see Pablo Lopéz v. Justin Verlander in game 5), but I mainly wanted to
see them end that horrible 0-18 post season streak. And they did that by going 3–3, which isn't too shabby.

This is why I didn’t want to play the Astro’s.
They walk the walk.
Same reason nobody wanted to play the Patriots all those years.

Yeah, I was happy it wasn't a 3-game series with them.

Plus having 52 of your 108 outs over 4 games be strikeouts, is not a recipe for success.

Astros went through all of this in 2015 and 2016. They eventually weeded out the high strikeout guys and found the contact guys along with bringing along their prospects. It takes a little time to get the right combo. Correa was a big part of it.

I still can’t believe they have now gone to 7 ALCS’ in a row. 14 year old me would have never believed 49 year old me if I could go back in time. It had been a hard thing to be an Astros fan for a very long time.

I find it humorous when the fans are chanting “we want the Astros”. I don’t think they feel the same way when they get them. Eventually someone will knock them down, but until then I am enjoying the ride

an arizona/texas world series will be a TV ratings disaster.

It does seem that winning your division by double digits and having over 100 wins isn’t what it used to be (hello Dodgers and Braves). Guess they knew this would happen if you expanded the wild card teams. It does mean we won’t see one of those “that championship season” teams much anymore, you know a team of destiny that goes from start to finish decimating teams all the way.

Look at the Dodgers who were the best team last season (111 wins and failed) And this year (100 wins and 16 games in front of Arizona at the end of the year). Twice is now a trend.

Houston was a #2 seed, and Texas a #5, but they had the exact same record.

I still say any playoff system that leads to baseball being played in November is a wrong system.

How about we have 12 Wild Card Teams per League, and make it a best of 162 games against each other
and every other team in MLB. Then the one of the 12 with the best record can play the Divisional Winner
with the best record while the 2nd and 3rd best Division Leaders take on each other?

Then the winners of those 7-game series can play each other in another seven-game series to see who goes
to the World Series for one final seven-game series?

John is wrecking my dream of baseball having a "Mr. December" some day.