REGIONAL #105: This regional didn’t include any pennant winners, but some entries were close. The 2009 Rays had won a pennant the prior year, and they had the added motivation that no Tampa team has yet managed a regional win in this tournament. The 1995 Yankees would win the AL the following season, and the 1988 Mets had famously taken the World Series two years earlier. And, the 1994 Reds might have won the NL if there had actually been a pennant awarded in that strike year, as they had the best record in the NL Central. Unlike the prior regional that only included two teams with winning records, it seemed to me like most of these teams were winners and it was difficult for me to choose among them, but I ultimately took a stab and guessed that the Reds would top the Mets in the finals. The ELO rankings concurred with my view that this slate of teams was much stronger than those from the prior regional, but those ranks favored the Mets to win a subway series final over the Yankees.
First round action:
Setting the lineups for a 1st round Buckeye State matchup between the 1934 Indians and the 1994 Reds, I quickly realized that these were two pretty good teams. The Reds finished that strike-shortened season 66-48, the best record in the NL Central, and had an offense led by a monster year from Kevin Mitchell. The Indians went 85-69 to finish 3rd in the AL and were driven by the powerful tandem of Earl Averill and Hal Trosky, and they also had 20-game winner Mel Harder on the mound facing the Reds’ Jose Rijo. The Reds have a nightmarish 1st inning, getting three hits but not scoring courtesy of Barry Larkin getting caught stealing, and Bret Boone (grandson of Ray, who acquitted himself well in the prior regional) hitting into an inning-ending DP accompanied by a 4-game injury. The Reds do get on the board first in the 5th when Indians LF Joe Vosmik misplays a Mitchell single that leads to two runs. The Indians strike back in the 7th when Trosky leads off with a HR, but Odell Hale misses a split chance for a second one and gets stranded at second, and the score is now 2-1 Reds after 7. The Indians get a runner in scoring position in the 8th when Reds SS-1 Larkin boots a grounder from PH Johnny Burnett, but the .341 hitting Vosmik fails to drive him in, and then in the bottom of the 8th Vosmik can’t get to a Brian Dorsett liner, and the resulting single scores two to extend the Reds lead to 4-1. Rijo now just has to get through the heart of the Cleveland order in the top of the 9th, and he quickly retires Trosky and Averill. But Hale doubles, Billy Knickerbocker singles Hale home, and the tying run is at the plate in the form of 44-year old Hall of Famer Sam Rice. But Rice hits a sharp grounder to 2nd that is fielded cleanly by injury replacement Jeff Branson, and it’s game over--the Reds win 4-2 to move to the semifinals.
The 1995 Yankees went 79-61 (with one tie) in another strike-shortened season, finishing 2nd in the AL East and making a brief post-season appearance as a wildcard team. Perhaps the most interesting thing I noticed about this team is that it had a bunch of surprisingly bad versions of well-known players, including Derek Jeter, Jimmy Key, Steve Howe, Darryl Strawberry, and Mariano Rivera. However, there was certainly enough Yankee talent in the form of Bernie Williams, Paul O’Neill, and Wade Boggs to make them favored over a 70-win 1930 Braves team. Although the Braves did field five .300 hitters in that offense-crazed season, they predictably lacked much pitching or power aside from Wally Berger’s 38 homers, with the second highest HR total on the team being Buster Chatham’s 5. The Yanks tapped 18-game winner David Cone, a mid-season acquisition, to start against the Braves’ Bob Smith (hey, if I was a starting pitcher for that Braves team, I’d use an alias too). Things get interesting quickly in the 3rd when Chatham singles for the Braves, Freddie Maguire beats out a sac bunt, and George Sisler’s grounder advances the runners to 2nd and 3rd with 2 out and Berger at the plate. With first base open, the Yanks ponder the intentional walk given that Berger is the sole power threat for Boston, but decide it’s too early in the game for that and pitch to him. Wrong answer: boom, three run homer, and the Braves lead. Cone pitches his way out of a jam when he walks three batters in the bottom of the 6th but strands them all, while Smith catches the disease and starts off the top of the 7th by walking three consecutive batters. Unfortunately for the Braves, Smith can’t get out of that jam as Randy Velarde smacks a triple off Smith’s card to tie the game, and then pinch hitter Gerald Williams homers to put the Yanks up. A Boggs triple followed by a Mattingly sac fly and the score is 6-3 New York, and there is no relief in sight in the Boston bullpen. Berger isn’t giving up, however, as he blasts a solo shot in the bottom of the inning to narrow the gap to 6-4, and when Rabbit Maranville leads off the 8th with a HR off Cone’s card to bring the Braves within one, the Yankees turn to closer John Wetteland to try to finish things out. Mattingly promptly drops a grounder and a sac bunt gets the tying run in scoring position, but Wetteland gets Neun to popout to end the threat. Wetteland then just has to get through the heart of the Boston order in the 9th, and they go down 1-2-3, including a strikeout by Berger, and the Yankees advance to the semis with a hard fought 6-5 win.
The 1988 Mets won 100 games and the NL East; they lost the NLCS to the Dodgers in 7 games but the ELO rankings had the Mets as the best team in baseball that season, and the easy favorite in this regional. The Mets shared two players with the winners of the previous game--David Cone and Darryl Strawberry--except the Mets versions were better, with Strawberry’s 39 homers pacing the team and 20-game winner Cone taking the mound for the first round. With largely the same lineup as the vaunted 1986 WS Champs that exited the tournament in the 1st round in regional #41, this Mets team was determined to atone for that embarrassment. They faced a 2015 Brewers team that lost 94 games, boasting a few sluggers but not much starting pitching, with Taylor Jungmann starting as perhaps the best among unimpressive options. However, the Brewers did have a potential secret weapon at second base--Scooter Gennett had led the 2018 Reds to an unlikely regional win in the previous bracket, and Brewer fans were hoping that lightning would strike again. The Mets don’t take long to make a statement, with a 2-run homer by Kevin McReynolds in the top of the 1st establishing a quick lead, and Keith Hernandez leads off the 2nd with a solo shot to make it 3-0. In the 5th, Dykstra leads off with another HR and later Strawberry adds an RBI single to make it 5-0. The Mets load the bases in the 7th and Jungmann is gone in favor of Francisco Rodriguez, but Hernandez nails a single that scores two; the Brewers finally put together two hits in an inning in the bottom of the frame but Cone fans Gennett to squelch any rally. Strawberry puts a cap on things in the 9th with a colossal solo HR, but Khris Davis breaks the shutout by converting a HR 1-3 on Cone’s card, and things end that way with the Mets winning easily, 8-1. Cone tosses a 5-hitter and fans 10 to win a second consecutive game in this regional.
As a relatively young expansion franchise, the Rays had never captured a regional, but the ELO ranking for the 84-78 2009 Rays were surprisingly strong, with the team showing solid offense and good defense, albeit suspect pitching. It was interesting that their ranking was so much better than that for the 1973 Royals, who had a better record with 88 wins, but the Royals didn’t have much punch beyond Amos Otis and John Mayberry, although they were starting 20-game winner Paul Splittorff against Tampa’s Matt Garza, who only won eight. The Royals rack up three hits on Garza in the bottom of the 1st, including a Mayberry RBI single and a Fran Healy sac fly, and the Royals jump to the 2-0 lead. The Rays quickly strike back with Carlos Pena leading off the top of the 2nd with a HR, but Schaal rips an RBI single past Garza in the bottom of the inning that makes it 3-1 KC. Mayberry leads off the 5th with a HR, and the Rays start frantically searching their bench for answers against Splittorff. That answer comes in the 6th in the form of PH Matt Joyce, who blasts a 3-run shot and the game is now tied at 4 each. Undaunted, Rick Reichardt sends Garza’s first offering in the top of the 7th into the cheap seats, and the Royals regain the lead and the Rays boot Garza in favor of Randy Choate out of the pen. However, in the 8th, for the second inning in a row, a Rays PH (this time Joe Dillon) launches a 3-run homer and the Rays take the lead for the first time, 7-5, after 8 innings. For the 9th, the Rays summon closer JP Howell to handle the top of the Royals lineup, and he faces the minimum as the Rays finish out a come-from-behind 7-5 win to vault them into a tough semifinal round where all four contestants are ranked among the top thousand teams of all time.
The survivors
The semifinal matchup between the 1994 Reds and 1995 Yankees featured two teams impacted by the same baseball strike, but because the Reds missed more games, they had fewer options among starting pitchers that reached the 100 IP threshold. Still, their John Smiley matched up reasonably well with the Yanks’ Jack McDowell, and the game promised to be a competitive one. McDowell gets in trouble quickly, loading the bases in the 2nd and allowing a 2-run double to #9 Reds hitter Brian Dorsett, although a Paul O’Neill sac fly in the bottom of the 3rd narrows the Reds lead to 2-1. Bernie Williams ties it up in the 5th with an RBI single, but then in the top of the 6th McDowell gives up a 2-run triple to Neon Deion Sanders, and the Yanks are forced to go early to Wetteland to try to stop the bleeding. Wetteland strikes out the remaining Reds but the damage is done and Cincinnati has the 4-2 lead, but it doesn’t last long as the Yanks begin the bottom of the inning with three straight hits, the last being a double by PH Gerald Williams that should have scored two, but Velarde was cut down at the plate. With the tying run on 3rd, Smiley then exits in favor of Jeff Brantley, who promptly uncorks a wild pitch, and the game is again tied. However, in the 8th Wetteland is toast and the Yanks don’t have many good options left in the pen, choosing Bob Wickman to try to shut down the Reds. The Yanks load the bases in the 8th courtesy of a walk and two Reds errors (by a 3B-1 and a 1B-2), but Brantley squirms out of the jam and the game enters the 9th all tied up. Both Wickman and Brantley shut down the opposition in order in the 9th, and we head to extra innings. The Reds go down quietly in the top of the 10th, and with Brantley now burnt they have to reach deeper into their pen, tapping Chuck McElroy to face NY, and he survives a jam, getting Mattingly to pop out with the winning run on 3rd. In the 11th, Wickman is depleted and NY sends Scott Kamieniecki to the mound, and he does his job; in the bottom of the 14, McElroy is burnt and the Reds try Johnny Ruffin, who gets only one out before Yanks DH Ruben Sierra finds Ruffin’s HR result and it’s game over--the Yankees survive a marathon to win 5-4, but they will move on to the finals with nothing decent left in the bullpen.
 |
| One clutch .188 hitter |
According to the ELO rankings this regional final matched the 2nd and 3rd best teams in this group, the 2009 Rays and 1995 Yankees, with the two teams having very similar ranks. Neither team was coming into the final at full strength, with the Yanks bullpen seriously depleted by their semifinal 14-inning marathon, and the Rays with an injured Upton out for the tournament, and with the unimpressive #3 starter matchup of NY’s Sterling Hitchcock vs. Tampa’s Jeff Niemann, the Yanks’ bullpen issues were looming large. However, the Rays are dealt a big blow when their slugging 2B Ben Zobrist is injured in the 1st inning and out for 4 games, so they turn to Joe Dillon, who has delivered clutch pinch hits throughout the regional, to plug the hole. In the bottom of the 3rd, Rays DH Pat Burrell gets his first hit of the regional, a solo blast off a 2-2 roll, and Niemann seems to be getting stronger against the Yanks as he goes along. In the 7th, the Rays get another blow, losing All-Star 3B Evan Longoria to injury, and Tampa tries to cling to its slim 1-0 lead as the casualties mount. When Niemann walks Mike Stanley to lead off the top of the 9th, the Rays bring in closer JP Howell, who promptly allows a double to Ruben Sierra and then a single to Randy Velarde, scoring Stanley, but Sierra is cut down at the plate trying to score the go-ahead run. The Rays then get runners on 2nd and 3rd with one out in the bottom of the 9th, but Hitchcock gets out of the jam on his own, and the game heads for extra innings. Both squads go down quietly in the 10th, and in the 11th Hitchcock has to come out, so NY tries Rick Honeycutt in relief, who has a good card other than considerable gopher ball issues. He does his job, so in the 13th the Rays have to pull Howell and send out Randy Choate, who allows two quick baserunners, but Ruben Sierra erases one of those on a DP grounder. However, Velarde drives in his second of the game with a single off Choate’s card, Gerald Williams doubles, Tony Fernandez drives them both in with a long single, and then Mattingly drives in Fernandez, and when the dust clears Choate has allowed 4 runs on 5 hits and the Yanks lead 5-1. Now it’s just up to Honeycutt to hang on, and although Carl Crawford does find one of Honeycutt’s HR results to make it 5-2, that’s all the depleted Rays can muster and the Yankees win the regional (the 5th for the franchise) with their second extra-inning marathon in a row.
Interesting card(s) of Regional #105: The 1995 Yankees managed to capture this regional coming from behind in all three games, but they did so with absolutely no contribution from these two bench-warmers. If you’re like me, perhaps you've played in a keeper league where every new season there would be a draft of new players receiving their first Strat cards. If that draft was after the 1995 set came out, you could have had a choice of either of these two cards to draft; as the first cards for both of these players, I probably wouldn’t have picked either one. The Jeter guy had a few doubles but not much plate discipline, and he also couldn’t field his position (this was apparently before the notorious NY Strat bias kicked in, which was much kinder to him). His fellow rookie, the reliever Rivera, was a disaster waiting to happen in the bullpen. Surely neither one of these guys would amount to much, would they?
No comments:
Post a Comment