the crads just lost a series at home to a team that was 1-14 on the road coming into that series

the crads organization is even worse than the A's at this point. complete clown show.

23 years later I still remember being in total disbelief when he blew the lead (and lost the game) in game 7 of the 2001 World Series. That guy was a robot.

Career playoff stats: 8-1, 0.70 ERA, 141 IP, 11 ER, 110 K.

steeve Cohen says hold my anhiser bush

WAR also underrates him during the regular season. Mariano Rivera is 7th all-time among pitchers in WPA (Win Probability Added - how much he improved his team's chances of winning games, taking into account the situation; this likely excludes true old timers for whom we don't have data) at 56.59, just behind Greg Maddux (59.46) and Warren Spahn (57.98) and ahead of Tom Seaver (56.43), Pedro Martinez (53.75), Randy Johnson (53.20) and Clayton Kershaw (50.62)

In the postseason, it's not even close between Mariano Rivera and other pitchers:

Top 5 Pitchers by Postseason WPA
Mariano Rivera 11.7
Curt Schilling 4.1
John Smoltz 3.6
Andy Pettitte 3.5
Jon Lester 3.4

Top 5 Pitchers by Postseason Championship WPA (basically like WPA, but in terms of increasing championship probability rather than winning individual games - this is super high variance by design FWIW)
Mariano Rivera 183.0
Madison Bumgarner 132.6
Rollie Fingers 122.3
Art Nehf 101.4
Jack Morris 92.6

I don't think he's quite there (WPA doesn't take into account the value of average innings and a huge part of his postseason WPA is due to opportunities and some of it is probably also luck) but Mariano Rivera has an outside claim as the most valuable modern pitcher ever, from the standpoint of overall team success.

I know that sounds like hyperbole, but it's instead a massive understatement - Rivera is not merely #1 in postseason WPA among pitchers, but he has more WPA than #2, #3 and #4 combined. Meanwhile, both Hoffman and Wagner have negative postseason WPA.

The fact that Rivera has pitched 10 more postseason innings than Schilling is mindblowing.

Guy came in and spent big money on pitching, got burned. now he doesn't wana play no more. wants to develop players only. I like the team but they are a few players short. Stuck. Stienbrenner he is not. One bad experinece and the checkbook is Closed.

This is a weird thing to say about a team that has literally the highest payroll in baseball. Focusing on development and thinking long-term is the right way to build a consistently good team, even if you're willing to spend. The Mets are also not a free agent or two away from being great - this is a team with an aging core with holes all over, there's just no quick fix, especially with the Braves and the Phillies being clearly superior squads.

Baseball can be very random, so you never know, but the Mets' best hope might be to tread water for the next two seasons using their financial muscle not for immediate help but for prospects and see if they can contend 2026+.

Unfortunately for me, this was starkly accurate.

It's still only between Doyer and ATL to win the whole damn thing. Someone in the AL like the Rangers or the Astros will get hot in the playoffs, then get destroyed in the WS.

Don’t count out Philly, too…. They’re very live with their pitching.

Wheeler had another dominant start yesterday.

Maybe Goatani can add a 40/40 season to his resume.

I'm telling y'all, he seems to be forcing more disengagements this season. The only thing in his way is Mookie's BB rate.

Yawn

40/40 is nice, but it’s no 41/73 season.

Nats have been playing good, and today's pitcher. They were +200 at home versus Burnes iirc

The Trea injury hurts, but they did just hit Whit 2nd and Castellanos 4th...and played Kody Clemens and their backup catcher and still won by 9 yesterday.

40/40 is nice, but what's remarkable about Ohtani's season is that he's been a little unlucky with regards to batted balls. Typically when players are putting up career-high numbers in a month or so of baseball, they are usually running fairly hot wrt batted balls. Ohtani, on the other hand, is underperforming his expected stats by a decent amount:

Ohtani
BA: .365 (#1 in MLB), xBA: .373
SLG: .696 (#1 in MLB), xSLG: .756
wOBA: .480 (#1 in MLB), xwOBA: .505

While expected stats only go back to 2015, I think all three of these might be all-time high for a full season. The highest xwOBA ever recorded was .463 (you might have guessed, Aaron Judge in 2022). Ohtani is hitting the ball very much like Aaron Judge did in 2022 when he makes contact (xwOBACON of .604 vs .611 for Aaron Judge in 2022) while striking out at a substantially lower rate (18.1% vs 25.1% for 2022 Judge).

People talked about Ohtani potentially winning the batting title last season, but the reality was that he was never that close if you looked at expected stats, so he would've needed a lot of luck. This year, he's legitimately looking like a hitter that can hit .400 with some luck. He's striking out at a well below-average rate, while having all-time level batted ball profile.

Even while underperforming his expected stats, Ohtani's wRC+ and OPS+ are both higher than Judge's 2022 season. It's early, but he's off to an absurd start. We have an injured pitcher recovering from an elbow surgery, who was embroiled in a fake scandal for much of the season, currently on pace to have an all-time great hitting season. This is not normal.

Giancarlo Stanton 120 mph off the bat, hardest hit of the season.

https://streamable.com/ajodcd?src=player-page-share

Juan Soto and Aaron Judge have also homered in this game.

O's are so deep, why wait until the trade deadline to make sure they never have to put Kimbrel in another game? imo?

the bottom feeders in each division are some of the worst I can ever remember

How about 40/40 with a batting title?

For that matter, has a 30/30 player ever won the batting title? I'm assuming that several 20/20's have been batting champions since 20/20 is much more common.

Yelich and Betts were 30/30 with a batting title very recently.

I'd be curious to know how Statcast is calculating xBA. Baseball HQ has Ohtani's xBA at .336. It's a little hard for me to see how anyone with a BABIP of .391 could possibly have an xBA higher than his actual BA.

BABIP doesn't count homers, as they are "out of play."

But homers are still hits obv.

I understand. But that's still an insanely high BABIP.

FWIW, I'm not remotely critical of Ohtani. If you were genetically engineering baseball players, the template would look a lot like Ohtani. You really couldn't ask for a more optimized set of physical tools.