The World Series: Baseball’s best teams but not its best umpires

You know my love for baseball. It stems from my father planning our summer vacations around the Brooklyn Dodgers’ schedule. If they were in Brooklyn we would go stay with my mother’s brother (Uncle Son). If they were in Cincinnati, we would stay with my father’s brother, Uncle Floyd. Dad loved the Dodgers because of Jackie Robinson while I was a Cleveland Indians fan because of Larry Doby.

Although I dislike both the Yankees and the Dodgers, I still watched the World Series and found it highly entertaining . Others did too because the Monday night game outdrew Monday Night Football. The first game with Freeman’s walk off grand slam down by a run with two outs was why baseball is great. The last two innings of game five were tension-filled. Each pitch was meaningful and although I don’t like the Dodgers, I like the Yankees even less.

I was glad that Freeman was the MVP, especially after all that he has endured this year. I’ll never forgive the Braves for letting him go to the Dodgers.

While Freeman was the World Series MVP, the Dodgers best player during the season was Shohei Otani. Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave them enough starting pitching to help conserve their bullpen. It is only fitting that their manager is a Japanese American, Dave Roberts, who now has three World Series rings. Hall of Fame? I know that Roberts will not be manager of the year because of the Dodgers’ payroll, but he should be. Consider that three of the Dodgers starting four could not pitch: Kershaw, May, and Glassnow. A least four other front line pitchers were out due to injury. Even Yamamoto and Walker Buehler spent time on the DL. The established mantra of MLB is that good pitching beats good hitting. Yet the Dodgers prevailed. Roberts has come under a lot of criticism from the nitpicking, second guessing, super critical media and I am glad to see them with egg in their faces. 

The only negative was – as usual – the missed balls and strikes calls of the umpires. Torres in game one was especially inconsistent. I noticed that they took the strike zone box off the screen so you could not see the missed calls. But they were still obvious. What I don’t understand is why MLB doesn’t assign its highest rated umpires to the playoffs and especially to the World Series. Here are the ratings from Umpire Auditor. Note that none are in the top 10. Shame on MLB .