MLB Bullets Ends The Regular Season With A Bang

So now we sit around and wait.

• Jayson Stark asks around about who will win the World Series? He makes the case that the Red Sox will win. He adds that his survey of executives in years past hasn’t been very accurate, in that only one thought the Royals would win last year and no one saw the Giants winning two years ago. Bottom line is no one really knows.
• Chris Bahr has five reasons the Orioles can win the World Series. (This is the last of a long series for each playoff team.)
• Mike Axisa thinks that this year is the Blue Jays’ last chance in this window to win the World Series.
• Just how much does the home field advantage count for in the postseason? Not a heck of a lot, but more in a 7-game series than a 5-game series.
• One team that won’t win the World Series is the St. Louis Cardinals, who have a whole offseason to think about what might have been, writes Mark Saxon.
• Matt Holliday came up to bat on Friday night and homered for the Cardinals. He got one more at bat with the Cardinals on Saturday, but he reflected back on his time in St. Louis on Saturday morning.
• The Cardinals have announced that they will not pick up Holliday’s option for 2017, but Holliday says he’s not ready to retire yet and wants to play next season.
• Ryan Howard isn’t ready to retire yet either, but he got a chance to say goodbye to the phans in Philadelphia and vice-versa before yesterday’s game.
• David Ortiz is retiring and the Red Sox and the city of Boston had a pretty big ceremony to send him off. They named a street and a bridge after him.
• Commissioner Rob Manfred said that Ortiz’s positive drug test in 2003 should not be taken as proof that Ortiz used PEDs. I’m assuming that Commissioner Manfred will be making the same announcement about Sammy Sosa’s results from that same test any day now.
• Wednesday’s NL Wild Card game will be a pretty exciting pitching matchup as the Mets Noah Syndergaard will take on the Giants Madison Bumgarner. And neither one will be available to pitch in Wrigley Field to start the NLDS.
• Bob Nightengale makes his choices for the MLB postseason awards.
• Dayn Perry picks an MVP and a Cy Young Award winner for each team.
• Dave Cameron explains just how much better Mike Trout is than Mookie Betts.
• Joey Votto said that he thought he’d be in the discussion for the best player in baseball every season until Mike Trout entered the league. He knew he couldn’t compete with Trout.
• Ryan Spaeder argues that Matt Bush is the Comeback Player of the Year. Not just on the field, but off the field, considering he was in prison just a year ago.
• This is an important article. Venezuela is a hotbed of future major league talent. It is also a country that is deeply troubled at the moment with lots of crime and violence. Ben Badler says that current MLB rules about when and where scouts can see players are unnecessarily putting the scouts in danger in Venezuela. He argues that the rules need to be changed now, and I agree with him. Don’t let someone get killed before you act, Commissioner Manfred.
• Here’s my tribute to Vin Scully. There were a lot of tributes to Scully over the weekend and I could have led with them as he finished his amazing 67-year career. But Scully always said that the game should come first so I moved them to the middle of the article, because that’s what he would have wanted. Here’s Scully signing off for the last time.
• More on Scully signing off, including a goodbye message to the fans.
• Ryan Rosenblatt writes about how Scully and the Dodgers have been synonymous since the team moved to Los Angeles. There’s not much that unites Los Angeles. The Dodgers and Scully are one.
• Larry Stone writes that Scully brought generations of Southern Californians together.
• Here’s ten amazing facts from Scully’s career.
• Mike Lupica says baseball won’t be the same without Scully.
• They always say to not be the person who replaces the legend, be the one who replaces the person who replaced the legend. Joe Davis is going to put that advice aside and take over at the Dodgers lead broadcaster next season.
• As a follow-up from Friday, whoever took Jose Fernandez’s high school jersey returned it.
• And another follow-up from Friday is from Richard Justice, who says that the controversial winning play from Thursday’s Cardinals/Reds game shows that baseball’s replay system needs to be reworked.
• A study on HBO’s Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel shows that umpires miss up to 1 in 3 close ball/strike calls.
• Bruce Schoenfeld looks at how new technology is revolutionizing our understanding of the value of fielding.
• Al covered the White Sox replacing manager Robin Ventura. Reports out yesterday say that Rockies manager Walt Weiss could be the next to go. Seems odd since the Rockies seem to have overachieved this season, but I would have fired Weiss last winter.
• Nationals manager Dusty Baker called the Nats “a baby-making team.” No one has any idea what he was talking about. But he did do a much better job with the Nationals this season than some thought he would, and a ton better than Matt Williams did in 2015.
• Sean Newell, on the other hand, calls the Blue Jays “a bunch of babies” for refusing to talk to certain reporters, and other aggressive behavior towards the press.
• There’s a report that the Pirates might be looking to trade Andrew McCutchen this winter. In a baseball sense, it makes perfect sense. But it’s going to be a tough sell to the fans of Western Pennsylvania.
• The Mariners just missed the playoffs this season, extending the longest current playoff drought in MLB. R.J. Anderson thinks the current core need some reinforcements this winter to make the playoffs in 2017.
• Congratulation to former Cubs and current Rockies second baseman DJ LeMahieu, who won the NL batting title this year. Just to prove that Theo’s not infallible.
• The Braves have signed reliever Jim Johnson to a two-year extension.
• Watch Twins center fielder Byron Buxton fly around the bases for the fastest inside-the-park home run of the year.
• A fan ran on the field to give Giants outfielder Angel Pagan a flower. Pagan body-slammed him to the turf. I guess he’s allergic to flowers.
• And finally, if you miss Vin Scully already and wish he would have said something about you, use this random Vin Scully anecdote generator to have Scully tell a story about your life.

And tomorrow will be a better day than today, Buster. Because there’s no baseball today, of course.