REGIONAL #227:  For the second bracket in a row, all eight teams are post-2000 entries, and the more recent the team, it seems the less I remember about them.  I knew that the Rockies and the Cardinals were both three years away from a pennant, and having gone to a number of Astros games in 2011 I remembered them as terrible.  There was the first selection from my recently acquired 2023 set, the Nationals, and although I wasn’t certain my recollection was that they weren’t very good either.  Of the remainder, I thought maybe the Mets might have been decent (editorial note:  I totally forgot they won the NL pennant that season), so I blindly guessed that they would make it to the finals where they would be eliminated by the Cardinals, assuming the latter could get by the probably insane offense (albeit terrible pitching) of the Rockies.  The ELO rankings thought my picks weren’t bad, but suggested that I overlooked an Indians team that had the best ranking in the group, which surprised me given that their team from a few years afterward played in the prior regional and was pretty unimpressive (despite winning the bracket); still, the ELO ratings predicted that those Indians would top the Mets in the final.

First round action

This bracket had teams that were either pretty good or pretty bad, and this first round matchup featured two of the bad ones.  The 2023 Nationals were the first team selected from the recently arrived 2023 set, but not exactly a good example as they lost 91 games, and after consultation with obvious expert NatsFan during Friday Night Strat, it was agreed that Josiah Gray (8-13, 3.91) was the only starting pitcher worthy of a uniform, although there were some good-sounding names on the roster, such as Stone Garrett and Carter Kieboom, and Jake Alu was there trying to sneak in as a 4th brother but his spell-checker wasn’t working.  The Nats had nowhere near the offense of the 2004 Rockies, as might be expected when you combine the thin air and the steroid era, but that team lost 94 games despite getting MVP votes for Todd Helton, Jeromy Burnitz and Vinny Castilla, mainly because after Joe Kennedy (9-7, 3.66) the pitching staff was gruesome.   The leadoff hitter in the bottom of the 1st for the Nats, Lane Thomas, swats a triple, but Kennedy bears down and whiffs the next two batters to get to Keibert Ruiz; Ruiz swats a lazy grounder toward 1B-1 Helton, and he unexpectedly muffs it and Thomas crosses the plate for an unearned Washington lead.  Thomas continues his hot hand in the 2nd with a 2-out RBI single, and in the 3rd another 2-out run-scoring single from Dominic Smith makes it 3-0 Nats.  The Rockies get on the board in the 4th with a solo shot from Mark Sweeney, but once again in the bottom of the inning Kennedy can’t get the third out as a two-out RBI single by Joey Meneses extends the Nats lead to 4-1.  Two singles and the second error of the game by Nats SS-3 CJ Abrams (he later claims lens flares blinded him) loads the bases for Burnitz, who rips a grounder that Abrams can’t reach and two runs score.  Up steps Castilla, and he rips a double, Burnitz (1-13) beats the throw home, and the Rockies take the lead–briefly, as in the bottom of the inning Smith leads off with a double and he eventually scores on a squib single from Thomas to tie the game.  Both pitchers recover a bit, but a leadoff single in the 8th chases Gray for Hunter Harvey, who ends the inning uneventfully.  Thomas singles to lead off the bottom of the 8th, his 4th hit of the game, and the Rockies eye their pen and turn away in horror, figuring Kennedy would be better with a dead arm than the disasters waiting in the bullpen.  Garrett singles Thomas to 3rd and with nobody out, Abrams steps to the plate–and it’s the pitcher’s best friend, the dread LOMAX and the Rockies escape disaster with a triple play!  Neither team can score in the 9th, so the game heads to extra frames, and although Kennedy allows a leadoff double to Smith in the bottom of the 10th, he strands the runner and finishes his eligibility with a no decision.  Meanwhile, Harvey is burning his eligibility for the regional in the 11th, and he is dominating as he finishes out four hitless innings; Jamey Wright then comes in for the Rockies and he holds serve so the game moves to the 12th with the Nats handing the ball to Robert Garcia.  The Rockies are pleased to see a new pitch and greet him with a single and then a double that gets past LF-3 Garrett, so the go-ahead run is on third with one out and the infield comes in.  But Garcia whiffs Sweeney and Charles Johnson flies out, and when Nats 2B Luis Garcia is caught stealing for the second time in the game in the bottom of the inning, we move to an uneventful 13th.  However, in the bottom of the 14th, Garcia walks and finally succeeds in stealing second; with two out a squib single from Smith moves him to third and Ildemaro Vargas is at the plate.    It’s a 3-6 roll, a TR/DO split and Garcia trots home without getting caught as Vargas walks it off to seal the 14 inning, 5-4 win for the Nationals.  

The marquee game of the regional was the first round matchup between the two top seeds, the #1 2007 Indians and the #2 2001 Cardinals, and what better to serve as a Zoom game of the week with Cleveland’s own ColativoFan managing an Indians squad for the second week in a row, and Tall Tactician steering the Cards although as a Philadelphian expressing skepticism about having to include JD Drew in his lineup.  These Indians won 96 game and the AL Central, and led 3-1 in the ALCS before dropping three straight to lose out on the pennant; Victor Martinez and Grady Sizemore received MVP votes, as did Cy Young winner CC Sabathia (19-7, 3.21).   The Cardinals won 93 games themselves, making the postseason as a wildcard, and 21 year old Rookie of the Year Albert Pujols finished 4th for MVP, while Matt Morris (22-8, 3.16) came in 3rd in the Cy Young to two high-profile Diamondback starters.  So it seemed like a pitching duel would be in the cards, but the second batter of the game, Jason Michaels, converts his HR split to quickly put the Indians up, 1-0.  The vaunted defense of the Cards looks shaky in the early innings but Morris successfully gets out of some jams until the Indians seem to figure him out in the 5th, with an RBI double from Casey Blake, but Morris escapes a bases-loaded situation without further damage.  Still, a 2-0 lead is looking like plenty as CC stands for cruise control, and he racks up the strikeouts against names like Pujols, McGwire, and Edmonds.  Meanwhile, JD Drew, producing little and tiring of TT’s goading, suddenly develops a 5-game “injury” and he heads back to the card catalogs on his own.  In the top of the 8th Casey is at the bat again, and he lofts a solo shot to provide a little additional padding, but Sabathia seems confident that it won’t be necessary.  CC gets a little overconfident in the bottom of the 9th, when with one out and the bases empty McGwire launches a moon shot that may have cleared the Arch, but it is too little too late and Cleveland continues the winning ways they demonstrated in the previous bracket with a 3-1 win over their biggest obstacle in the regional.  

I distinctly remember going to several games of the 2011 Astros, actually holding allegedly “work meetings” at the Wednesday day games as tickets were quite easy to come by ; the team did remarkably well when we attended despite racking up 106 losses that season.  I remember watching a 21 year old rookie named Jose Altuve, who from the stands look like he was about the size of Eddie Gaedel and I did wonder whether this was some sort of Bill Veeck stunt designed to draw a bunch of walks; but Jose didn’t have a particularly spectacular start and there wasn’t a single walk on his Strat card that season.  The Astros did have Bud Norris (6-11, 3.77) as a competent starter who would face another bad team, the 2016 Reds, who lost 94 games but looked like a much better team.  The Reds had Joey Votto finishing 7th in MVP votes and although they only had three starting pitchers with at least 100 IP, all three had ERAs under four with Anthony DeSclafani (9-5, 3.28) getting the round one assignment.  The Reds lead off the bottom of the 1st with doubles from Sliding Billy Hamilton and Jose Peraza, and Peraza eventually scores on a Scott Schebler sac fly and it’s 2-0 Reds after one.  The Reds lose C Tucker Barnhardt in the 2nd to injury without much to replace him, and in the top of the 3rd the first pitch called by his replacement is deposited in the outfield stands by Jordan Schafer to make it a one run game.  Votto answers with a solo shot of his own in the bottom of the inning, , but the Astros load the bases up in the 4th for the youngster Altuve, who rips a 2-run double to tie the game with nobody out.  Humberto Quintero then strokes a 2-run single and the Astros charge in to the lead.  Not looking done yet, they reload the bases and the Reds decide to de-DeSclafani and hope Raisel Iglesias can get out of the jam, but one more run scores on a fielders choice and it’s now 6-3 Houston.  Things don’t look any better for the Reds when Hamilton slides his way into a seven game injury in the 5th, but they get a walk and a double in the 7th to chase Norris for closer Mark Melancon, who walks Votto to load the bases but whiffs Adam Duvall to end the threat.  Melancon holds off the Reds, and the Astros seek to preserve him for later rounds and let Wilton Lopez close out the 9th to seal the 6-3 win that sends the bracket’s bottom seed to the semifinals.  

The 2015 Mets were the #3 seed in this group according to the ELO ranks, even though they won 90 games and were the NL pennant winner, which totally slipped my mind.  They accomplished that with strong pitching, with Jacob deGrom (14-8, 2.54) finishing 7th in the Cy Young voting in his second season, although both the offense and defense from the starting lineup would improve significantly after the 5th inning once substitutions were allowed, while  Yoenis Cespedes was their top MVP vote getter as a mid-season acquisition with only 230 ABs.  They lost the Series that season to the Royals, but not the 2022 Royals that they would be facing here, as this team lost 97 games, with Brady Singer (10-5, 3.23) perhaps the lone bright spot on the team.  However, the first batter of the game, Juan Uribe, finds and converts Singer’s HR 1-18 split for an immediate lead, although C Travis d-Arnaud ends the inning hitting into a DP while getting injured for six games, leaving the Mets with the terrible Kevin Plawecki for the rest of the tournament.  In the bottom of the 3rd the Royals get three hits against deGrom but fail to score as 1-15 Kyle Isbel is cut down at the plate, and as the game goes on it looks like that may be the deciding roll as both pitcher just get stronger and stronger.  Singer strikes out 5 of the last 6 Mets batters of the game, but deGrom is untouchable, striking out the side in the bottom of the ninth to wrap up a 5-hit shutout, with three of the hits coming from bad Mets fielding.  So the Mets survive with the 1-0 win in which their total offense came on the first roll of the game.  

The survivors

For this semifinal, there was a huge gap in rankings between the bracket favorite 2007 Indians and the 91-loss 2023 Nationals, and that gap was well reflected in the difference between Cleveland’s identity-shifting Fausto Carmona (19-8, 3.06) who finished 4th for the Cy Young, and the Nats’ Jake Irvin (3-7, 4.61), whose bullpen was depleted in a 14-inning first round marathon.  But Carmona/Hernandez doesn’t look sharp as the Nats rap four straight singles, the 4th past RF-4 Trot Nixon to score two runs; Lane Thomas adds a 2-out RBI single but Stone Garrett ends the inning with a whiff and an injury that takes him out of the regional.  Meanwhile, Irvin is in fine form until the bottom of the 6th, when a 2-out rally culminates in a Ryan Garko RBI single; PH Ben Francisco then comes up with the bases loaded, rolls Irvin’s HR 1-3/flyB, but misses the split and the slam, and the Indians still trail by two entering the 7th.  In the 8th, Francisco comes up again with runners on, but this time he comes through with the RBI single and by crikey, no more Irvin as the Nats try Carl Edwards Jr., and he drives thru Grady Sizemore for the final out with Washington clinging to a one run lead entering inning nine.  The Indians also prove to be a nothingburger in the 9th, and the Nationals pull off the 3-2 upset while recording only 6 hits–5 of them in the second inning.  

The 2015 Mets were the top remaining seed in the bracket, although they had now made 27 straight outs without scoring a run; they were hoping that Matt Harvey (13-8, 2.71) could give them another shutout that would mean little offense would be necessary.  Fortunately for him, he would be facing the bottom seed of the bracket, the 2011 Astros, with Wandy Rodriguez (11-11, 3.49) a pretty decent second starter for a 106 loss team.  And it’s the Astros that take the early lead as Carlos Lee finds and converts Harvey’s HR split to lead off the top of the 2nd, and Clint Barmes adds a 2-out RBI squib single in the 3rd and it’s 2-0 Houston.  However, in the bottom of the inning a single and two walks loads the bases with one out for Yoenis Cespedes, and he rips a triple that gives the Mets the lead and he eventually scores on a 2-out Daniel Murphy single.  In the 5th, a double by Lee scores one run but the Astros hold 1-11 Matt Downs at third, and both he and Lee are stranded by Harvey so the Mets cling to the one run lead, at least until Curtis Granderson finds Rodriguez’s solid HR result to lead off the bottom of the inning.  In the 6th the Astros load the bases on three singles, two of them courtesy of bad fielding, but only score one run on a Brian Bogusevic sac fly and once again it’s a one run game.  When Carlos Lee leads off the 7th with his third hit of the game, the Mets begin to realize that these Astros aren’t going quietly and so closer Jeurys Familia is summoned to slam the door and he sets down the Astros in order.  In the bottom of the inning, Cespedes doubles in Granderson to go one homer shy of a cycle, and then David Wright singles him home, defensive replacement Ruben Tejada doubles to score Wright, and Mark Melancon comes in to pitch, only to be greeted by a Michael Conforto double past RF-3 Bogusevic that scores yet another.   That makes it 9-4 Mets after seven, and Familia is removed to save his arm and Tyler Clippard is brought in from a deep bullpen.  Clippard tosses two perfect innings and the Mets subdue the pesky Astros to move on to the finals.

It looked like a lopsided regional final, with the pennant-winning 2015 Mets against the 91-loss 2023 Nationals; the good news for the Nats was that Stone Garrett would be back from the DL for the game, while the Mets were still without the services of the injured C Travis D’Arnaud.  The bad news was that the Mets had Noah Syndergaard (9-7, 3.24) available to start against a much less impressive MacKenzie Gore (7-10, 4.42), and Yoenis Cespedes floats a lead for Noah with a long solo shot in the bottom of the 1st.  That lead quickly sinks as the Nats punch four hard singles in the 3rd that give them a 3-1 lead, and the Mets respond with a run on a Michael Cuddyer fielder’s choice in the 4th but they leave runners in scoring position and still trail by a run.  When backup catcher Kevin Plawicki singles to lead off the bottom of the 7th, the Nats move to Robert Garcia out of the bullpen, but he yields a single and a walk to load the bases for Cespedes with nobody out.  The infield comes in to try to preserve the lead, and Garcia whiffs Cespedes and Luke Duda and then Nats CF-2 Alex Call hauls in a long fly and the Mets again squander a huge opportunity.  In desperation, the Mets bring in closer Jeurys Familia to begin the 8th, and he holds serve until backup Mets 2B Kelly Johnson leads off the bottom of the 9th with a long homer that ties the game and sends Citi Field into pandemonium.  Curtis Granderson follows with a single, and Cespedes hits a very deep fly that sends Granderson to second while a Duda grounder outs him on 3rd as the winning run with two away and backup LF Michael Conforto at the plate.  Garcia delivers, and Conforto wraps it around the foul pole for a walk off homer and a 5-3 win, and the Mets become the first pennant winner in 20 brackets to successfully win their regional.  

Interesting card of Regional #227:  This card represents the performance of the leading MVP vote-getter for the pennant winning Mets, but one who only played in 35% of their games; I’m not certain if there has ever been a lower percentage among position players who were the top MVP candidates on a pennant winner.   Yoenis Cespedes became a bit of a sensation after defecting from Cuba in 2011, where he was an established star; he signed with the A’s and was runner-up for Rookie of the Year in 2012 after a strong season.  He became known for long homers, winning the Home Run Derby twice, and also for a cannon of an arm in the outfield (for you fans of the dark side of the Strat card, he had a -5 arm).  Even so, he ended up getting traded midseason in both 2014 and 2015, arriving with the Mets at the beginning of August, and shortly thereafter the Mets moved into first place and never relinquished it.  Although he had  another MVP-type season for the Mets in 2016, Cespedes’ career was then plagued by injuries and in 2018 he suffered a hip strain in May that put him on the DL; he was reactivated for one game in July, going 2-for-4 with a homer against Yankees on July 20th, but then went back on the DL for the the rest of the year.  Starting the 2019 season on the DL following off-season surgery, he then came out on the short end of an encounter with a wild boar on his property, breaking an ankle and knocking him out for the entire season.   Receiving extended recovery time because of the late start to the 2020 COVID season, he hit a homer in his first game back, giving him a peculiar streak of hitting homers in three consecutive games that stretched over more than two years: May, 2018; on July, 2018; and July, 2020.  However, afterwards he struggled in limited appearances, and he failed to show up for his team's game on August 2nd without giving anyone notice; when the Mets finally tracked down, he said that he had decided to opt out of the season, apparently without telling anyone, and that was the end of his MLB career.