The Bobby Valentine Sport Show: Episode 19
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of The Bobby Valentine Sport Show, and I’m your host Frank Ramppen. The MLB postseason is about halfway through, a little bit more than halfway through. We’re getting into the championship series now. We’re going to talk about what went on through the Wild Card series, the divisional rounds, and we’re going to talk about a little bit about my predictions that I did go over, a game of the week that happened during this postseason, and I’m sure you could tell which one that was.
A lot of good games, but one that stood out above the rest, unbelievable games, unbelievable series, and a lot of surprising things happened throughout this first week, week and a half of the postseason. So let’s get into it right now. We’re going to break down our postseason recap so far, our weekly recap of the postseason. So wild card and divisional round, we’ll get in that.
So last time we talked, I made some predictions for the Wild Card round, right, and a couple of those predictions were right, a couple of those predictions were wrong, and we’re going to get into that right now. So out of the there was four Wild Card Series in totals, the two Toronto Blue Jays took on the Minnesota Twins, the Milwaukee Brewers took on the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Philadelphia Phillies took on the Miami Marlins, and the Texas Rangers took on the Tampa Bay Rays.
The first of this series was between the Texas Rangers and the Tampa Bay Rays, and well, the first one that kicked off, they all were kind of simultaneous, but the first one that happened, we’ll go in order of how they were presented to the viewers. First one was Rangers Rays. The first game of this series had 19,000 people at it. 19,000 people at the game, the least attended MLB playoff game since 1919, over a hundred years ago. Shoeless Joe Jackson was playing in that game in 1919, the last time there was that little people at a major League Baseball postseason game at the Trop.
So what’s Major League Baseball going to do? They’re just going to give the Tampa Bay Rays, who always had a struggling fan base because they’re in St Petersburg, not in the city of Tampa Bay, right? They’re just going to, you know what? We’re just going to build them a new stadium right there, right next door, in the same exact location they are now because that’ll fix everything, right? No, it won’t, but they’re going to take my team, the Oakland A’s, and they’re going to move them out of Oakland and take them to Vegas, right? Even though just four years ago, four short years ago, the AL wildcard game was between my Oakland A’s, and the uh, Tampa Bay Rays, this team I’m talking about right now, at the Oakland Coliseum in Oakland, there were 60,000 people there. It was the most attended wild card game in the history of baseball. So you’re going to take away that fan base who will fill out a stadium that’s terrible for a team that they love, no matter what, for a team and build a new one in Tampa Bay for no reason.
I’d love to ask Rob Manfred that question. I’d love somebody to ask him that question because I’d love to know the logic behind that right there. How you going to make money and Tampa Bay now? What’s the difference? But off track, already. Let’s get back into the game. Had to get that off my chest though, for sure. I’ve been thinking about it for about a week now, two weeks.
So every single series, that was every Wild Card series that we’re talking about, we’re going to talk about this one because I wanted to get that Rays point out. Every single wild card series ended in a two-game sweep. They’re all three-game series now, two-game sweep for all of them. The Rangers handily took care of the Rays. The Rays played sloppy baseball throughout that entire series, especially in game one. They put themselves in a hole, and really that was kind of it for them. The Rays didn’t really have a chance. Pitching performances from Jordan Montgomery, um, and am I blinking? Oh, uh, Nathan Naldi were very, very good in the Wild Card round. So they were able to take care of them. And Evan Carter, the rookie who’s 21 years old, just turned 21, I believe like a month ago. He just got called up about a month ago as well. Unbelievable start to his postseason career. He reached base like six consecutive times in a row, which is the second most all-time behind J Solair. Unbelievable stuff from him, and he went deep in that Ray Series. So he looked great. They moved on to play the Blue Jays.
The next series that happened in that was the Minnesota Twins took on the Blue Jays. That was in Minnesota because the Twins won their division. And the Twins entered this series on an 18-game wild card or 18-game playoff losing streak, 18 games in a row had not won. They had not won a game since 2004, the ALDS against the Yankees. And they lose the series. But in the first game against the Blue Jays, they finally break that curse. Royce Lewis, their rookie sensation, Mr. Grand Slam, as I like they call him, hit two home runs in his first-ever playoff game. Unbelievable stuff from him in his first two at-bats, mind you, of his postseason career. He went deep. So pretty impressive stuff there. Third player of all time to do that. The Twins, that crowd was so ready to go for that postseason win. They finally got the win, and they finally moved on in the postseason for the first time since I believe 2002 when they moved on against my OCL A. But good for the Twins. They moved on to play the Orioles. We’ll get into the Houston Astros, of course, the Houston Astros because why not? The two National League Series. So that goes over the American League Wild Card, the National League Series. So out of those two, I went 0 for two on picks. I picked the Rays, and I picked the Blue Jays. So my American League Wild Card picks did not look too good. But in the National League, I fared a little bit better because the Phillies and Marlins played, and the Phillies kind of took it over. Red October in Philadelphia. It’s unbelievably hard for anyone to go in there and play. They put up a stat that going into this postseason, the Phillies were 24 and 11 at Citizens Bank Park in the postseason in all their games there in total. So a very hard place for Miami to come in and play in. Phillies played very well. Aaron Nola, Zack Wheeler had two horse starters, so they pitched well. We’re able to sweep them in two, candidly. Now they go to play on the Braves. The Diamondbacks were able to use their young stars. They had three players who were younger than 23 years old, the fourth team since 1901 to have three players younger than 22 or 23 years old, Homer in the same game in the postseason. Pretty cool stuff. Their young stars propelled them over the Brewers. They had a great comeback in game one where they were all over Corbin Burns in game one, and then in game two, they were able to come back and take it in two games. So every single Wild Card round, every Wild Card series ended in a two-game sweep.
For more from the MLB playoffs and some interesting divisional series matchups click the video below!
