Dodgers Advance to the National League Championship Series!

After being on the brink of elimination, the Dodgers beat the Padres 2–0 to advance to the National League Championship Series!!!! We were down 2 games to 1, and we won the next two games to get past the Padres.

There was one home run from Kiké Hernández, and then later there was one home run from Teoscar Hernández. Therefore, it was also Hernández 2, Padres 0.

We'll be facing the Mets in a rematch of the 1988 NLCS.

The Winning Game and a Potentially Interesting Dodger Factoid

In franchise history, the Dodgers have never had a season in which none of their pitchers has won 10+ games.

This year, our win leader is Ross Stripling (with 8 wins), who is currently on the disabled list.

We have a good chance to make the playoffs, and there is an even better chance that none of our pitchers will get double digits in wins. "Accomplishing" both of these things in the same season is not easy.

(I found this out from Charley Steiner on tonight's broadcast.)

We're Going to the World Series!!!!

The Dodgers are going to the World Series for the first time since 1988!!!!!!!!

Update: The co-most valuable players (co-MVPs) of the National League Championship Series, in which we just beat the Chicago Cubs, are Chris Taylor and Justin Turner. (I thought that Justin Turner would be the lone MVP, but this choice also seems sensible.)

Off to the NLCS!!!!

The Dodgers have beat the Nationals 4-3 in the deciding game 5 of the National League Division Series (NLDS). Dodger closer Kenley Jansen came in to start the 7th inning, and pitched 2 and a third innings (and made the most pitches he had ever thrown in a Major League game).

And with one out and men on first and second, Clayton Kershaw came into the game for his first relief appearance since 2009. I had noticed Kershaw tossing a ball a bit in the dugout in the middle of the game and figured he would be available for something like this.) Kershaw started off by getting last year's nemesis Daniel Murphy to pop up. He then got the third and final out to beat the Nationals and win the NLDS.

And so we're off to the NLCS!!!! (And we're going to be facing a very, very tough Cubs team. The Cubs are a juggernaut, and we are most certainly the underdogs.)

Today was the longest 9-inning postseason game in Major League Baseball history. This series saw a Major League record for number of pitching changes in a Division Series, and it also saw a Major League record number of batters hit in a postseason series. (It was a really tough series. The Nationals are a strong team.)

Regardless of how things turned out, we had to go with our best. (None of this Showalter don't-use-your-best-pitcher nonsense from their do-or-die game against the Blue Jays.)

Go Dodgers!!

Even More Average Than Before?

Former Major Leaguer Gabe Kapler offered some astute analysis about the Giants' playoff chances: "The loss of Pagan makes an already league average offense more average."

In related news, I subtracted 0 from 0, and I still have 0.

Note: Pagan's injury is a very big loss. Kapler had a sensible point in mind, but the way he phrased it is "fantastic".

Dodgers Win the NL West!!!!!!

The Dodgers just clinched the National League West division title!!!! This is our first division title since 2009, and we have become the first team to clinch a division title in 2013. Yay!!!!! Go Dodgers!

Revised Baseball Playoff Format and Astros in the American League

Two recent items of discussion in Major League Baseball have now become official (though a few details remain to be worked out): (1) There will now be two wild-card teams in each league, and they will face off against each other in a one-game sudden-death playoff to see who advances in the postseason; and (2) the Astros will be moving to the American League.

Both of these are likely to start with the 2013 season. Unlikely many previous changes in the playoff format, I massively approve of change (1). I think this is excellent, and it reinstates the situation of division leaders having a genuine advantage over wild-card teams, which was the major reason that the institution of the wild card annoyed me so much in the first place.

MLB.tv Fail

Last night I watched the one-game playoff between the Twins and Tigers to determine the American League Central champion. I'm pleased to report that the Twins won 6-5 in 12 innings. (I went to bed during the 9th inning and fell asleep immediately, though I was planning on listeniing while lying in bed.) The Yankees intelligently chose to start the series today rather than tomorrow, so they have even more of an advantage in the AL Division Series than they already did from being the better team.

Unfortunately, MLB.tv had an epic fail. Their playoff coverage has a nice feature where one can change the camera angle. I don't remember seeing this feature during the regular season. The problem is that I was unable to figure out how to just get the telecast (though I was able to get the audio from it without a problem), which last night was on TBS, so I was forced to change camera angles manually during the game. I used the 4-panel feature, which successfully gave me smooth streaming video of 4 different things (I hadn't actually tried that before... it's quite sweet!) to get 4 camera angles at once. But I felt like I was in command central where somebody would then choose which angle to give TV viewers at a given point. I also didn't get the nice markers on the screen indicating statistics, number of outs, etc. I hope I can just get a complete broadcast today, as I'd rather use just one screen and not have to watch 4 different angles that are somewhat phase-shifted. Not that I'll be awake for the Dodger game anyway... It is slated to start at 2:37 am.

By the way, please excuse the typos in this entry. I tried to catch them, but I am running a long, slow process on Matlab on this computer and everything else seems to have slowed to a crawl. (This is my office computer, so I can't comment on the limits of my laptop at this juncture.)

Baseball update

Well, the baseball postseason is upon us and I am currently listening to the end of the Rockies-Phillies game.

I had been busy for several hours. First, I met the new math undergrads --- in particular, the ones I will be mentoring. They seem very nice, and they also seemed very happy with the fact that my style is much more informal than that of the stereotypical Oxford tutor. I really like being able to live in residence and interact with the students so closely. It's very much like an RAship, and this whole mechanism is making it much easier for me to meet other people in Somerville, including people in other subject areas who I basically wouldn't meet at all in other circumstances. Then I had dinner, and sat near one of my mentees, a postdoc, and a stray first-year grad student in medicine who had spilled over from the medicine table. [The tables were organized by subject area tonight.] The medical student was really cool, though it will likely be hard to convince someone with her schedule to play D & D even though she played back in the day. (We also talked about music and the Caltech vs. MIT prank rivalry for a fair bit.)

After dinner was a gathering of the Senior Common Room (in the Senior Common Room... recall that it refers to both the room and the group), and I had the chance to meet up with the Tutor assigned as my mentor. He was selected because he too emigrated from the United States, and it appears that he has extra adaptors and knows where to get more! Also, because he's from Boston, I asked him about the Red Sox and he is indeed a huge baseball fan, so then we proceeded to talk a lot of baseball. He has the MLB video internet package (I have the audio one this year and will get the video one next year). It looks when he shows up, there's going to be lots of baseball discussion flying back and forth. So, anyway, I'm basically extremely pleased with this whole setup. I'm not sure if I can make the RPG thing tomorrow because of a small gathering of Tutors to try to meet some more of them (that needs to get priority), but things are going very well and I hopefully should be able to hang out with some people around here. Oh, and basically everybody I met (including the undergrads!) thought I was a new freshman before they knew better. It was awesome! We were at the pre-dinner drinks (it's Oxford policy to get the freshman drunk before classes start), and several of the frosh asked me if I was a new freshman. Graduate students, postdocs, and (least surprisingly) faculty have also confused me for a new frsoh. I've been enjoying this...

In terms of baseball, the Rockies beat out the Padres for the NL West Wild Card in a game that was an instant classic. I wish I had a chance to see it or listen to it! The Rockies-Phillies series is the one that I find the most interesting. I could go for either of them winning, but I think I'd like to see the underdog Rockies get to the World Series. (The Rockies just won game 1.) The other series pits the Cubs against the Diamondbacks. The Diamondbacks are boring, so I'd much rather have the Cubbies win. In the AL, the Yankees are playing the Indians, and I want the Yankes to get their asses kicked! (By the way, I was remarking to that Tutor that he must really have taken offense when the Brits called him a Yankee. It's bad enough to call a Dodger fan that name, but to do it to a Red Sox fan is just horrible!) I'd prefer the Angels to beat the Red Sox, but I could handle any AL team except the Yankees in the World Series. My preference would be for Rockies vs. Angels and for the Angels to win, but there are a lot of other combinations that would also be very cool.

It's a bit tougher to say who I think will win. I'll guess that the Yankees will beat Cleveland in 4 and that Anaheim (or the LAA of A, if you prefer) will beat Boston in 5 games. I think the Rockies will be the Phillies in 4 games (I would have said 5 before today's victory) and that the Cubs will beat the Diamondbacks in 5 games. In the ALCS, I think the Yankees will beat the Angels in 5 games and that the Cubs will beat the Diamondbacks in 6 games. That would leave a Yankees-Cubs World Series, and I'm going to be crass and predict that the Yankees will win in 6 games. That's not what I want to happen, but they seem to be the strongest team by far based on the last few months.

I'll shortly write an entry on my predictions for baseball award winners (maybe in a few days?) and a review of Avenue Q.