Tourtellotte: Looking back at the 2017 postseason
From SABR member Shane Tourtellotte at The Hardball Times on November 22, 2017:
The 2017 season is over, capped by a postseason that had a little something for everybody. It had home runs galore, including two players, José Altuve and Enrique Hernández, hitting three in a single game. It had every kind of pitching performance, from the New York Yankees bullpen throwing 8.2 innings to win an elimination game to Justin Verlander pitching conceivably the last postseason complete game we will ever see. We even had a World Series game come in under two and a half hours. That also might be the last we ever see.
In the end, it had another long championship drought breaking. At 56 years, the Houston Astros’ wait didn’t measure up to the Cubs’ 108 that ended last November. It had, though, been the third-longest extant drought, behind the Indians’ 69 seasons and the Washington Senators/Texas Rangers’ 57 years. The Astros paid a hefty price in long rebuilding years with terrible records and local TV ratings of 0.0, but they got the payoff, and at a time when the city of Houston needed it most.
I’ll be looking back at the postseason today, just as the title promises. As has become my annual custom, I will be gauging the excitement of the games rather than the ups and downs of player and team narratives. For this, I bring back out of cold storage the WPS Index.
Read the full article here: https://www.fangraphs.com/tht/looking-back-at-the-2017-postseason/
Originally published: November 27, 2017. Last Updated: November 27, 2017.