REGIONAL #127:   Regional #127 had the highest density of 21st century teams thus far in the tournament, with seven of the eight entries from the current millennium, and I have to admit that there are fewer teams from recent years that I find as memorable as those from the distant past.  There were two representatives from the Diamondbacks, one of the few remaining franchises that has never won a regional, and also two from the Pirates, including the 1930 team that a few years earlier had been swept by the Yanks in the 1927 Series.  There was also the 2020 Red Sox, only the second pandemic year squad to play in the tournament, and a couple of fairly recent entries from the Blue Jays and the Rockies.  Because none of these teams were very familiar to me, I felt like predicting a winner would be akin to flipping a coin, but to maintain tradition I had to choose someone, so I went with the 2007 version of the Diamondbacks over the Red Sox in the finals.  The ELO rankings disagreed completely, as they seemed to recall that the Blue Jays had made the ALCS and were really the only good team in this group, and predicted those Jays over the old-school Pirates in the finals.

First round action

The 93-loss 2016 Diamondbacks and the 93-loss 2008 Orioles were teams that were bad in highly similar ways, in that each boasted a couple of strong hitters and neither had much gas in the starting rotation.  The top of their rotations pitted Dback Zack Greinke (13-7,4.37) against Jeremy Guthrie (10-12, 3.63), and Greinke is not helped by SS-4 Chris Owings 2-base error in the 2nd that sets up an RBI single from Kevin Millar to give Baltimore a 1-0 lead.  In the 4th, another Arizona error, this one by the usually reliable 1B-1 Paul Goldschmidt, sets up another run, and meanwhile the Dbacks don’t even get a hit off Guthrie until the 5th inning.  The O’s finally get an earned run in the 8th when Aubrey Huff belts a solo shot, and entering the 9th with a three run lead, they contemplate going to their closer, but decide to stick with Guthrie, who is pitching a gem.  Guthrie thanks them by striking out the side in the 9th to lock down the 3-0 win, icing on the cake of his 3-hit shutout. 

Two interesting teams from two unusual seasons, one pandemic shortened and one with crazy hitting, faced off in this first round game.  The 80-74 1930 Pirates had a top of the order consisting of three straight Hall of Famers, all of whom hit in the .360s, but after that things dropped off considerably and their starting pitching was a mess.  The 2020 Red Sox went 24-36 and finished last in the AL East, although they competed for the division in both the prior and the succeeding year, suggesting that the bad performance was a low sample size anomaly.  Only the second pandemic-season team to play, Boston had the low-AB/IP wonders but also had very little flexibility in setting lineups or the rotation because of tournament usage guidelines.  Thus, the Red Sox had to start Martin Perez (4-5, 4.50) as their highest IP starter, although he was probably their best anyway; the Pirates got to “choose” Larry French (17-18, 4.36), who allowed 325 hits in 275 innings and was still the Bucs best pitcher.  The Pirates waste no time exploiting Perez’s faults in the top of the 1st, with back to back doubles by George Grantham and Adam Comorosky–both off Perez’s card–give Pittsburgh a 2-0 lead.  It’s deja vu all over again in the 2nd, when back to back doubles, again both off Perez, give the Pirates another run and Lloyd Waner an RBI.  In the 3rd, Comorosky gets another RBI double, this time off his own card, and the Pirates are up 4-0.  Two more runs on a Grantham RBI single and a run-allowing error by Sox 1B-3 Michael Chavis and it’s goodbye Perez, hello Nick Pivetta who finally pitches a scoreless inning.  Heartened, the Red Sox get on the board in the bottom of the 5th on a solo shot from Jackie Bradley, although Pittsburgh responds with a run scoring on a Pie Traynor grounder in the 6th that makes it 7-1. Grantham continues his hot hand with a 2-run double in the 8th, and when Ryan Brasier comes in to pitch the 9th for Boston all hell breaks loose, with the Waner brothers getting back-to-back doubles, both off the pitcher’s card once again, and the inning only ending when Gus Suhr hits a bases loaded double, again off Brasier’s card, but 1-17 Comorosky is out trying to score from first.  The Sox trot out a succession of low-AB wonders as pinch hitters in the bottom of the 9th, but French sets them down in order and the Pirates move on with a 13-1 blowout in which they rapped 20 hits.

I had blindly picked the 2007 Diamondbacks to win the regional, not knowing that they won 90 games and the NL West, and that they had a shot at the pennant but got swept in the NLCS.  However, setting their lineup I didn’t find it particularly impressive; there were five guys hitting under .255 and their rotation wasn’t very deep, as Randy Johnson was still there, but with only 57 IP he wasn’t even eligible to start.  However, at the top of their rotation was Brandon Webb (18-10, 3.01), runner-up in the Cy Young voting, and he also had the advantage of going against the 2001 Pirates, a 100-loss team that finished last in the NL Central.  The Pirates’ best option on the mound was swingman Dave Williams (3-7, 3.71), but Tony Clark greets him with a 2-run homer in the bottom of the 1st; two innings later he does the exact same thing with the same 3-10 roll, and the crowd at Chase Field is going wild.  When Dbacks DH Conor Jackson leads off the 4th with a long HR, the Pirates figure that their relief core may as well see some action in the tournament while they can, and Josias Manzanillo gets first crack.  He tosses a few scoreless innings, and the Pirate come alive in the 6th with back-to-back solo HRs from Craig Wilson and Aramis Ramirez, and suddenly it’s 5-2 and looking like it might get interesting.  However, Webb quickly makes it boring once again, only allowing one hit over the last three innings and the game ends with that tally, with the Dbacks still having one chance alive for their first regional win.

I must admit that I don’t always pay that much attention to contemporary baseball, particularly if my favorite teams are down, so it somehow escaped my notice that the 2016 Blue Jays actually made the ALCS as a wild card team that won 89 games, and that in fact the Jays team from the prior year that won the AL East was the best Toronto team of all time according to the ELO ranks.  The Jays presented a nice balance of pitching, defense, and hitting that contrasted with the rather one-dimensional 2019 Rockies, who in typical Colorado fashion would need to win high-scoring games towards the back end of their rotation.  It was a bit hard to imagine scoring a lot of runs against the Jays’ J.A. Happ (20-4, 3.18), but the Rockies #1 starter Jon Gray (11-8, 3.84) didn’t look too bad for a Coors-based pitcher.  The Jays jump to a quick lead in the top of the 1st on a 2-run homer by Edwin Encarnacion, although in the bottom of the inning a solo shot by Trevor Story narrows the gap to 2-1.  The Rockies begin to mount a threat in the 2nd inning, but Daniel Murphy lines into a triple play to the disbelief of the Coors crowd.  They get a little payback in the top of the 3rd when Darwin Barney misses Gray’s HR 1-14 split and gets stranded at second, and when #9 Rockies hitter Tony Wolters smacks an RBI double in the bottom of the inning, things are all tied up.  In the top of the 4th, Michael Saunders is cut down at the plate trying to score on a Troy Tulowitzki single, but the Rockies meet a similar fate in the 5th when Ryan McMahon is nailed trying to score, so the score remains tied through five.  Toronto gets a setback when Happ is injured on the first at-bat of the 6th, so the Jays test their bullpen with Joaquin Benoit getting the call.  Benoit ends the 6th successfully, but in the 7th things come unraveled for him after an Encarnacion error, and a Raimel Tapia RBI single and a Story sac fly give the Rockies a two run lead.  That proves to be all that Gray needs, as he finishes out a 6-hitter and the Rockies upset the regional favorite to move on to the semifinals with a 4-2 win.

The survivors

The only 20th century team in the regional, the 1930 Pirates were now the top-ranked squad remaining after the first round, and they appeared to deserve that status given that in the first round they outscored the other three semifinalists combined.  Of course, it’s pretty easy to score runs when you roll a remarkable seven doubles on opposing pitchers’ cards, so it remained to be determined whether these Pirate hitters can be successful rolling on their own cards.  However, with the 2008 Orioles putting Daniel Cabrera (8-10, 5.25) on the mound as their best option, rolling on the pitcher’s card could still be a good thing, although the Bucs’ Erv Brame (17-10, 4.70) was not without his own issues.  The Pirates put up two runs in the bottom of the 1st on RBI from Pie Traynor and Gus Suhr for a quick lead, but Brame gets a rude welcome to the 21st century from a 3-run Melvin Mora homer in the 4th that puts the Orioles on top.  Meanwhile, Cabrera doesn’t allow a hit until Rollie Hemsley leads off the top of the 8th with a double, and at that point the O’s don’t want to take any chances and summon their best reliever, Jim Johnson, to pitch to the top of the Pirates order with their three HOFers.  One Waner goes down; another Waner goes down; but then Traynor walks, Grantham pushes a single past 1B-3 Aubrey Huff, and the bases are loaded for Adam Comorosky, who clears them with a double, Suhr singles him home, and suddenly the Bucs lead 6-3 going into the 9th.  Brame then just needs to get through the bottom of the O’s order, and he does so in order, and the Pirates march to the finals with the 6-3 comeback win in which all eight of their hits came in only two innings.

Although the semifinal matchup between the 90-win 2007 Diamondbacks and the 91-loss 2019 Rockies might sound lopsided, it was interesting to me that their ELO rankings weren’t as far apart as I expected.   Motivations for the Dbacks were numerous; aside from the franchise never having won a regional, these Dbacks won the NL West but were prevented from winning a pennant when they were swept in the NLCS by none other than the Rockies.  The lack of rotation depth for both teams was in play, as both Arizona’s Micah Owings (8-8, 4.30) and Colorado’s German Marquez (12-5, 4.76) had some frightening areas on their cards.  Things don’t begin well for the Dbacks when their second batter, LF Eric Byrnes, gets injured for 10 games in the top of the 1st, and then in the bottom of the inning their 1B-3 Tony Clark boots a David Dahl grounder with two out that allows a run to score.  In the 4th, AZ’s Mark Reynolds misses a HR 1-6 split and gets stranded at second, but in the top of the 5th a Chris Snyder double is converted into a run on an RBI single from Stephen Drew, although Drew is nailed at the plate (1-16) trying to score on an Orlando Hudson double, so the score remains tied and it’s becoming clear that Lady Luck isn’t visiting Arizona today.  The Dbacks finally mount a threat in the 8th when Carlos Quentin smacks a leadoff double, and the Rockies bring in their best (by far) reliever in Scott Oberg in response.  However, Jeff Salazar, in for injured Byrnes, nails another double and Arizona has their first lead of the game.  They bring out closer Jose Valverde for the bottom of the 9th, but Dahl gets a one-out double, pinch-hitter Sam Hilliard singles and Dahl beats the throw, and the game heads to extra innings.  Oberg shut the Dbacks down in order in the top of the 10th, while in the bottom Valverde has to face Nolan Arenado with two out and the winning run on second.  The pitch–Arenado rolls Valverde’s HR 1-15 split, converts, and it’s a walkoff homer in extra innings as the Rockies move to the finals with a comeback 4-2 win.  In this season, Valverde led the NL in saves and came in 6th in the Cy Young voting, but here he earns the blown save and the loss in a terrible relief appearance as he single-handedly sends the Diamondbacks back into storage.

The regional final was between the #2 seeded 1930 Pirates and the #6 seed 2019 Rockies, who had already knocked off #1 and #3 and were going for the trifecta.  For that to happen, they were going to need a decent outing from frightening starter Antonio Senzatela (11-11, 6.71) because their top reliever was burnt and the alternatives were mostly scarier than Senzatela.  Mind you, the Pirates starter, Ray Kremer (20-12, 5.02), had his own problems, particularly the 366 hits he allowed in 276 innings, so most folks weren’t exactly expecting a 1-0 game, which is the score after the top of the 1st following a two-out RBI single by red hot Adam Comorosky gives the Bucs a lead.  The Rockies tie it immediately in the bottom of the inning when Trevor Story misses a HR 1-14/DO split but scores on a Nolan Arenado single.  Paul Waner leads off the 3rd with a homer off Senzatela’s card, and they add another run in the 4th on a Lloyd Waner RBI single.  However, in the 5th Rockies 2B Ryan McMahon hits a solo HR off Kremer’s card to narrow the Pittsburgh lead to 3-2, and with a tight game entering the 6th Senzatela is on an extremely short leash.  However, he rips off three straight hitless innings and only leaves after allowing a single to Paul Waner in the 9th, when Jairo Diaz comes in and both worsens and escapes the jam.  So the game enters the bottom of the 9th with the Rockies down a run, and Kremer comes through to finish up a 7-hitter and the Pirates survive three errors (two by Lloyd Waner) to take the unexpectedly well-pitched game and the regional crown with a 3-2 win.  Comorosky, who had a .900 OPS and led the NL in triples with 23, contributed seven RBI over the three games and he earns regional MVP honors.

Interesting card of Regional #127:  When I started playing Strat back in the late 60s/early 70s, my neighborhood buddies and I had various draft leagues in which we could pick from any players in our combined collections, which at the time mainly consisted of some Old Timer teams, the original Hall of Fame series (now known as Series “A”, but this was before there was a “B”), and some then-contemporary teams.  I remember 3rd base always being a difficult spot to fill, and I often went with the HOF card of this guy, shown below.  Playing the 1930 Pirates reminded me of old Pie, and aesthetically I think I like his 1930 card even better than the 1929 one Strat chose for his HOF edition.  Reminiscing about those childhood drafts got me to thinking about how much the available options have changed since then.  For yucks, I went to Baseballegg.com to see where Pie ranked on their list of greatest third basemen of all time, and he is currently #69.  I was struck by how many of the top 3B listed on that site came along after our early leagues–Schmidt, Boggs, Brett, Beltre, Chipper Jones–and in the unlikely event that there are any 10 year olds out there having a similar draft today, I doubt they would give Traynor a second glance.  But back in the day, Pie was a top option, and he did something most of the 68 ranked ahead of him couldn’t do–lead his team to a regional win in this tournament.