It’s never going to be an action-packed game, and I’m not a cricket guy, but I’d be surprised if any proper baseball fan would give you any grief about cricket being ‘boring’.
Watch the pitchers and the pitches, and look out for their sequences; Cristopher Sanchez, Paul Skenes, Tarik Skubal, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, these guys are the best in the business right now and these are the boys you should watch, and whilst the pitch-clock robs the pitcher of his personality (in my opinion), I just love watching a 99mph fastball/94 mph sinker-78mph curve sequence against an “elite” hitter who ends up swinging at absolutely nothing.
Losing a marathon game like the one before always feels like it puts the loser on the precipice, as if in the end too much was put into what was ultimately a losing effort. Losing last night would have essentially ended the series not just because of the lose and they’re done situation it would put them in, but the momentum it would have locked in.
It is the perfect illustration of how baseball benefits from the multi-game series better than any other sport.
I thought it was a fantastic series and not as loud an argument for the salary cap as expected (though I’d still support a salary cap combined with a floor). For all the money they spend, it’s Rojas, Smith and Pages, all from the farm, who probably had the biggest impact on G7 (Yamamoto, obviously, is not human). The Jays were inches away from taking the game and the series on three or four occasions.
Interesting to see how this impacts 2027, though. Could be lockout bound.
Fuck the Dodgers and fuck Shohei, anyway. Long live Joe Blanton, the last pitcher to go deep in a World Series.