Baseball Nation - Greatest Night In A.L. History Ends With Simultaneous Walkoffs

Boston Red Sox GM Theo Epstein Admits 'Regrets' At Press Conference

2011-09-29T20:56:26Z

Not even 24 hours removed from completing their epic collapse, Boston Red Sox' general manager Theo Epstein spoke to the media to voice his concerns and displeasure with the way things ended up as well as set the record straight on the status of skipper Terry Francona.

On the late-season collapse:

"I think you can certainly say across the board, if the urgency was felt, we didn't respond to it...There were regrets. There was a lot of talent in that clubhouse. We didn't get the results we wanted."

On manager Terry Francona:

"Tito and I spent some time talking today. We're going to get together [all of the ownership] and talk about the future...No one blames what happened in September on Tito."

On slugger David Ortiz:

"I told [Pap] that I thought that he took his game to a new level this year. I was proud of him, the way he took that next step."

For more on the Boston Red Sox and their late season swoon, keep an eye on Sox blog Over The Monster and SB Nation Boston.

Carl Crawford And The Red Sox: The Perfect Storm

2011-09-29T18:48:40Z

On Carl Crawford's Baseball Reference page, his nickname is listed as "The Perfect Storm."

This is useful to know because one day, you might find yourself at some sort of function or cocktail party, and baseball might come up. When the time is right, you can interrupt and say:

You know, Carl Crawford's nickname is "The Perfect Storm."

Then you can raise your hands up, drop the microphone you were holding, turn around and just walk away, arms still aloft. Also, you'll need to carry around a microphone. It'll be worth it.

People generally like the Rays for being a plucky collective of young talent. People generally resent the Red Sox for spending money on whomever they want. Crawford was on the Rays. He left for the Red Sox, who paid him far more money than the Rays could. And when the Red Sox and Rays were fighting for a playoff spot, the Red Sox lost when Crawford couldn't catch a sinking line drive.

When you slow the video down, you can see that he had a lot to deal with ...

... and that's why he had difficulties moving in a few feet to catch the ball. It wasn't an easy play, to be sure, but it's one Crawford gets to 95 percent of the time. And it sure looks like a play he should make. We're not the ones reacting to the crack of the bat, watching the line drive sink at a million miles per hour. But we can look at where he started and see where he ended up and think, "Gee, those two points aren't that far from each other."

And if Robert Andino had hit the ball somewhere else -- if he had dribbled a ground ball through the hole, gone to the opposite field, lined it down the line -- no one would be talking about Crawford right now. It would be Papelbon, Papelbon, Pabelbon, and after a few hours, you might get an exchange of "Boy, Carl Crawford sure didn't hit this year./Yep." He would have been a part of the discussion in the off-season about what didn't go right in 2011.

But he wasn't so lucky. He had a line drive hit at him. If it were hit an inch higher, if Andino exerts .001% more force when he swings, if Paplebon's grip is one millimeter over, if Lavarnway calls for any other pitch, we're not talking about Crawford at this exact moment. But the Red Sox missed out on the playoffs when that exact pitch produced that exact swing, which hit it to the exact spot where Carl Crawford could get a glove on the ball without securing it. This put the team that couldn't afford Crawford into the playoffs at the expense of the team that could.

The perfect storm.

/drops mic

It's too perfect. Too heavy-handed. It's like a movie of The Extra 2% with an ending that was changed by studio execs after a test screening. With one swing of the bat, fair or not, Carl Crawford became a symbol, a metaphor. He became a thing, like Bill Buckner or Bucky Dent -- a painful 400-page diary entry packed tightly and irrevocably into a first and last name.

The off-season will wash away some of the pain, and the odds are that Carl Crawford is still an excellent player who just had a miserable season. He was obviously distraught, but he didn't shy away from the media on Wednesday night. He'll have chances for redemption. About six years worth, give or take. With another postseason run, he could be remembered for something completely different.

But for now, he's The Perfect Storm. He's an example of how baseball makes perfect sense, even when you know deep down how often it doesn't make sense at all.

The Red Sox Collapse: Why Were The Orioles So Danged Happy?

2011-09-29T16:27:15Z

Schadenfreude. It's a German word that means "to take pleasure in the suffering of others." Let me just copy and paste a 1,000-word essay on the definition of the word so we can be on the same page:

Now, you see the way your cheeks are jutting out, and how your mouth is curving in an upward arc? This is because you're happy. That's schadenfreude.

So if the internet were a toilet -- and it's not not a toilet -- that wet feeling around your ankles would be liquid schadenfreude flowing up and over the bowl. We hope. Even though the Atlanta Braves have been good for a few decades, and success always creates jealousy, most of the schadenfreude is being directed toward the Boston Red Sox. This is probably because of the "Red Sox Perception Theorem," which posits:

No one likes the Red Sox

It's airtight, that one. The Red Sox acquired Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford last winter, which led to articles like this:

The 2011 Red Sox could accomplish a feat that has never been done. They could unseat the 1927 Yankees as the greatest major league team of all time. That would be something to celebrate.

So around the internet, there was pleasure to be had with the Red Sox not making the playoffs. As the collapse became more and more possible, there existed the potential for great, once-in-a-lifetime schadenfreude.

Now that we've set up what schadenfreude is, let's show what it isn't. Here are three pictures. The first two are from Wednesday night, and the third is from the Orioles' celebration after the 1983 World Series. These might be the happiest collections of Orioles players in history.

Now using science!, we can determine which group was happier.

Wednesday night, the Orioles were acting like they won the World Series. Robert Andino was greeted at home plate like he was Bill Mazeroski riding on Joe Carter's shoulders. At no point did they all stop to think, wait, we're the Orioles. There was too much mirth and merriment for anyone to think rationally.

But was it schadenfreude? Was the celebration one that couldn't exist if the Red Sox weren't suffering at the same moment?

I'm going to say no. I'm guessing that was the celebration of a team that spent six months hearing what they couldn't do. Heck, it started earlier than that. From the moment Vladimir Guerrero signed with the Orioles, he was on a punch line of a team. When Mark Reynolds was traded away by the Diamondbacks, he went to a hopeless team that was constantly reminded of just how hopeless they were. The Orioles were in the AL East, where there are only two teams that matter.

It has to be hard to be the best baseball player at every level growing up, only to reach a level and a team where suddenly you're not the best, and neither is the guy on either side of you. Every spring, the Orioles are mathematically eliminated from the playoffs with their first loss in the Grapefruit League.

It's not that they defeated the Boston Red Sox, the team with the stereotypically obnoxious fans who are always on ESPN and just love to make the drive south to Baltimore when their Sox are in town. It's that they defeated the Boston Red Sox, heavy favorites. This was their chance to not be overlooked as they always are for just about every game in every season. In their final ten games, the Red Sox needed to win three games out of seven total against the Orioles to make the playoffs. It was a formality, even considering how poorly as the Red Sox were playing in September, because the Orioles were still the Orioles.

Until they weren't.

And that's why they were celebrating as if they had won something more than a meaningless game. They had. After months, years, decades of not mattering, the Orioles mattered. That's the kind of thing that will make players mob their teammates at home plate. It was an affirmation of something that's hard to remember at the end of a 162-game grind. The Orioles could be proud of how they played, even if just for a couple of series against a much better team.

It also didn't hurt that it was the Red Sox who got hurt in the whole thing. Maybe there was just a pinch of schadenfreude in there too. Because, hey, Red Sox.

Where Does The 2011 Season Stand Among Historic Collapses?

2011-09-29T15:47:56Z

"In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened!" -- Vin Scully

That famous line was uttered by the legendary broadcaster on October 15, 1988, when Kirk Gibson came off the Dodgers' bench to hit one of the most famous home runs in World Series, if not all of baseball, history.

But had Vin been calling any of the games Wednesday night, he could have said it again... and again... and again. The improbability -- or impossibility -- of Wednesday night's events has been chronicled elsewhere on this site. But just how improbable or impossible were those events, compared to other collapses in baseball history?

Many teams have lost big leads late in the season and failed to make the postseason. Some of them are legendary. The 1951 Dodgers. The 1964 Phillies. The 1969 Cubs. The 1978 Red Sox. The 1987 Blue Jays. The 2007 Mets. Those are among the most famous collapses of the last 60 years. How do the 2011 collapses compare?

Take a look at graphic representations of the Red Sox' playoff chances and the Braves' playoff chances this season. Boston's peaked at 99.93%; Atlanta's at 99.64%, both with fewer than 20 games remaining. That means the Cardinals and Rays had a less than one-half of one percent chance of doing what they did last night. (Nate Silver has more on these probabilities at Five Thirty Eight today.

We don't have charts for 1951, 1964, 1969, 1978 or 1987. But we do know this about those teams:

The 1951 Giants trailed by six games with 12 to go; they forced a three-game playoff, and then trailed by three runs going into the ninth inning of the final game, and by two runs with one out in that ninth inning before Bobby Thomson's three-run walkoff homer.
The 1964 Phillies led by 6½ games with 12 to go, and the next day lost to the Reds 1-0 when Chico Ruiz stole home in the sixth inning. The Phillies lost nine more in a row; had they just won that game, they would have tied for the NL pennant.
The 1969 Cubs led by five games with 22 remaining; they lost eight straight and fell out of first place, never to return.
The 1978 Red Sox led by seven games with 31 remaining; they went 3-14 and trailed the Yankees by 3½ games. They then went 12-2 and won eight straight to tie the Yankees on the final day of the regular season before losing the tiebreaker game on Bucky Dent's home run.
I chronicled the collapse of the 1987 Blue Jays ten days ago here at Baseball Nation; the short version is that they lost six straight and got swept by the Tigers when even one win over Detroit would have forced a tiebreaker. In the season's final game, between the two teams, Toronto left runners in scoring position in the first, third, fourth, seventh and eighth innings, and lost 1-0.
We do have a graph for the 2007 Mets; their playoff probability peaked at 99.77% with 17 games to go, when they led by 7½ games. They had a chance to tie for the wild card on the season's final day, but got blown out by the Marlins 8-1 in a game they trailed 7-1 in the first inning.

What's missing from all of those descriptions that we had on Wednesday night? Last-game drama up until the final inning, with the exceptions of 1951 (but that was already dramatic, because of the tiebreaker series), and the 1978 Yankees/Red Sox tiebreaker game, but even then, the home run that was hit by the man New Englanders have given an obscenity as a middle name came in the seventh inning, not the ninth. In that Oct. 2, 1978 game, the Red Sox had the tying run on third base with two out in the ninth, but could not score; there was no extra-inning or walkoff drama, as there was in three separate games Wednesday night.

Nor were any of those races led by as many games after the first of September as the Red Sox led the Rays (9½ on Sept. 3) or the Braves led the Cardinals (nine on Sept. 1). Both of these are now the largest September collapses in baseball history. And they occurred because three teams won in their final at-bat, two of them on walkoffs, one on an improbable home run three innings after an impossible home run.

Nor did those seasons have this: not one, but two teams posting months that ranked as among the worst months in their history. The Red Sox were 7-20 in September, the Braves 9-18. Lest you forget, the Red Sox weren't just leading the wild card race much of the year; they were actually in first place on Sept. 1, ahead of the Yankees. The 7-20 September record is the worst in major league history for a team that was in first place at any point in September. (The 1969 Cubs, who were 9-18 after Sept. 1, send their thanks for taking them out of the record books, for this, at least.)

Epic collapses. Terrific late-season runs (18-8 by the Cardinals, 17-10 by the Rays). Incredible finishes to the final games, clinching playoff berths for teams that came moments away from elimination. Here's my personal ranking of the improbable collapse/comeback seasons that I noted above:

2011
1951
1964
1978
1987
2007
1969

There's no question in my mind that the wild finish to the 2011 season is the greatest in baseball history. Take a few moments, or even a few days, to savor it; things like this may never pass our way again.

Fate, Thy Name Is Dan Johnson

2011-09-29T14:08:36Z

Today we offer, as a public service and completely free of charge, two guarantees ...

Guarantee Number 1: The next four weeks of baseball will be filled with more thrills and spills and life-changing moments and crimes against probability than most human beings, not being used to such things, couldn't handle without a good supply of aspirin and frequent naps.

Guarantee Number 2: If you add up everything that happens in the next four weeks, it won't amount to three buckets of spit compared to what happened in four hours Wednesday night.

Atlanta's Craig Kimbrel, though just a rookie, entered Wednesday night with a 2.00 ERA and 46 saves, more than anyone else in the National League. He had never walked more than two hitters in one appearance.

Wednesday night, Kimbrel walked three Phillies to blow the Braves' one-run lead, and the save.

Boston's Jonathan Papelbon entered Wednesday night with a 2.69 ERA, and hadn't lost a single game all season.

Wednesday night, Papelbon struck out the first two Orioles he faced, then gave up consecutive doubles and a single -- all of them ringing drives, no bloopers or bingles among them -- to blow the Red Sox' one-run lead, and the save, and the game, and the American League Wild Card.

Wednesday night, the Tampa Bay Rays trailed the New York Yankees by seven runs after five innings. At that point, history would have suggested the Rays' chances of winning the contest was somewhere between one and zero percent. The Rays also trailed the Yankees by seven runs after six innings, and seven; at the conclusion of each, history would have suggested that the Rays' chances of winning the contest was zero percent.

Not exactly zero percent, of course. Nothing is exactly zero percent. There is not exactly a zero-percent chance that monkeys will fall out of the sky tomorrow. There is not exactly a zero-percent chance that our sun will explode tomorrow. But the chances of approach zero percent quite closely, and so did the Tampa Bay Rays' chances of making up a seven-run deficit, even against the New York Yankees' second-string bullpen.

Wednesday night, the Rays scored six runs in the eighth inning, which improved their chances from (almost) exactly zero to something like twenty-five percent. After two quick outs in the bottom of the ninth, their chances had plummeted again, to something like five percent.

Enter Dan Johnson.

Dan Johnson joined the Rays in 2008, and hit two home runs that season. The first of them was a game-tying blast against Jonathan Papelbon in this game.

Johnson played for the Yokohoma BayStars in 2009.

He returned to the Rays in 2010 and hit the grand total of seven home runs; one of them was a walkoff against the Red Sox.

Johnson has played with the Rays sparingly in 2011, and he's hit only two home runs all season. The first was a ninth-inning shot that turned a 7-6 deficit into a 9-7 lead, and the Rays recorded their first victory -- one they would desperately need, as things turned out -- after opening the season with six straight losses. Johnson's second home run of the season came in the bottom of the ninth inning in the Rays' last victory, and pushed their chances of winning from less than five percent to more than fifty percent.

In the 12th inning, Evan Longoria hit his second home run of the game, this one to clinch the Wild Card. Longoria's home runs were improbable, as was the entire month of September for the Rays and the Red Sox and the Braves and the Cardinals. It's Longoria's home runs that will be remembered, and justifiably.

But if you're looking for a single living creature to symbolize the crazy mixed-up world in which we live and breathe and play and cheer, Daniel Ryan Johnson is your man.

****************

I've not mentioned the St. Louis Cardinals, but I mean them no disrespect. When September dawned, the Cardinals trailed the Braves by 8½ games; at exactly the same moment, the Rays trailed the Red Sox by 9 games.

According to coolstandings.com, at that point -- and remember, this is merely four weeks ago -- the Rays had a 1.7-percent chance of reaching the playoffs, the Cardinals a 3.3-percent chance. At that point, the chance of the Rays and Cardinals reaching the playoffs was (roughly) 1 in 1,783.

Once every 1,783 times, a 1-in-1,783 shot will come through. And there are, if you go looking for them, a lot of 1-in-1,783 shots out there.

What made this one different is that we didn't have to go looking. This one just arrived in our laps, like a new puppy at Christmastime. And the sun might explode before we see this again.

Rays Vs. Yankees: Evan Longoria Saves The Season, Tampa Fans In Awe

2011-09-29T13:42:03Z

Wednesday night was possibly the greatest regular season night ever in the American League. It might have been the greatest regular season night in the history of baseball, period. It was all capped off by a walk-off home run by Evan Longoria of the Tampa Bay Rays, a home run that gave the Rays an 8-7 victory over the New York Yankees after 12 innings. It came just minutes after the Boston Red Sox collapsed in the ninth inning. The A.L. playoff picture went from advantage Sox, to uncertainty, to the Rays winning a Wild Card berth in under 30 minutes.

Of course, it wasn't just about Jonathan Papelbon giving the game away for the Sox or Longoria's walk-off. The path to that moment for the Rays was the most improbable part. Down 7-0 in the bottom of the eighth inning, the Rays rallied for six runs, giving themselves a chance in the ninth. With two outs in the bottom of the ninth, down to their last out of the season, Dan Johnson stepped to the plate. Johnson, a man with a sub-.300 on-base percentage and one home run in just 26 plate appearances to that point in 2011, hit a game-tying solo home run. From there, the Rays had to win. They'd already done the difficult (and highly improbable) part.

Tampa Bay Rays blog DRaysBay summed up the moment nicely.

What a roller coaster ride. What an experience. I can't wait for playoff baseball, but I also don't think anything can come quite as close to perfection as this game. The Rays were nine games out in the beginning of September, but they played .630 ball down the stretch against primarily really good teams: seven against the Yankees, seven against the Red Sox, and four against the Rangers.

As cool as this game was, the point at the end is just as important as the final day of the season. The Rays had a tough September schedule and they played great through that stretch. They deserve to be in the playoffs, and they now look ahead to a series against the Texas Rangers.

Red Sox Collapse, Rays Comeback: Odds Of That Were 1 In 278 Million

2011-09-29T13:35:33Z

Coming into Wednesday night with the Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays tied for the American League Wild Card spot, we expected drama, but what happened was crazier and more unlikely than anyone could have imagined. Just look at the numbers.

Over at the New York Times, Nate Silver broke down the win probabilities of the Red Sox and Rays, and, when multiplied together, the chances that Wednesday night played out like it did--with two playoff teams winning and losing on walkoffs, were 1 in 278 million.

First, you look at the Red Sox. On September 3rd, with the Sox in first place, the odds of them making the MLB playoffs were 99.6 perecent. Then, against the Orioles in a must-win game Wednesday night, the Red Sox led until the final strike of the ninth inning, and their odds of winning were somewhere in the neighborhood of 98%.

And then you have the Rays... They were down 7-0 as late as the 8th inning, when they had just .3 percent chance of winning. Then, even after the comeback, they were down to their last strike with Dan Johnson, a career .108 hitter who was just 1 for 45 in situations with two strikes. The odds of them winning at that point were just 2 percent.

Coming up with the probabilities is an inexact science, but when you multiply all the factors together, the numbers reinforce what most sports fans knew Wednesday night--we'd just witnessed one of the most incredible nights in baseball history.

The Red Sox had just a 0.3 percent chance of failing to make the playoffs on Sept. 3.

The Rays had just a 0.3 percent chance of coming back after trailing 7-0 with two innings to play.

The Red Sox had only about a 2 percent chance of losing their game against Baltimore, when the Orioles were down to their last strike.

The Rays had about a 2 percent chance of winning in the bottom of the 9th, with Johnson also down to his last strike.
Multiply those four probabilities together, and you get a combined probability of about one chance in 278 million of all these events coming together in quite this way.

It's a reminder that no matter what, real life always trumps even the craziest of Hollywood scripts. And more than anything, it reminds us why we watch sports. Every now and then, you get one of those one in ~~a million~~ 278 million nights like Wednesday, and the whole thing just blows your mind.

Red Sox Vs. Orioles: Baltimore Happy To Send Boston Home 'Sad, Crying'

2011-09-29T12:59:31Z

The Baltimore Orioles were out of the playoff race for quite awhile, but that didn't stop them from playing hard in the final game of the MLB regular season in an effort to force the Boston Red Sox to also miss out on playing in October. And, frankly, the Orioles were happy to send the Red Sox home the way they did.

The player that seems happiest about helping end Boston's season is the same guy that effectively ended Boston's season in the bottom of the ninth inning.

"End of season like this - (to) make Boston go home sad, crying - I'll take it all day," Robert Andino, the player that drove in the game-winning run with a line drive Carl Crawford couldn't get under, told the Baltimore Sun after the game.

Andino apparently takes a special sort of pride in beating up on the Red Sox as Wednesday night's game wasn't the first time he came up in the clutch again Boston. His manager, though, was a bit caring in his post-game comments.

"I can't believe what Boston must be going through emotionally right now. We understand that there's another side to this," Buck Showalter said. "Baseball is a cruel game."

A cruel game indeed -- especially when one team can take solace in winning for no other reason than sending the other home sad and crying.