The end of the 2011 regular season was unlike anything baseball had ever seen. The wild cards in both leagues, once belonging to the Braves and Red Sox with historically impenetrable leads as late as early September, fell in the season's final hours to the Cardinals and Rays. The thrilling conclusion of the 162-game slate was all the more significant as it played out on a Wednesday night instead of a Sunday afternoon dominated by football.
That night, the Rays erased a 7-0 deficit in the eighth inning to win 8-7 in extras. A blown Jonathan Papelbon save in Baltimore just minutes before Evan Longoria's walk-off homer meant Tampa Bay would be headed to October in the most dramatic way possible.
The drama of September felt like a mere appetizer compared to what took place on Thursday night.
Certain contests in sports are so gripping that you don't know where to start, even in analyzing them a few days after the fact. My role as a Rangers fan (which I have written about on a couple of occasions on this site) makes it all the more puzzling to try to break down what we saw that night.
In the immediate aftermath of Game 6, as a fan, I regarded it as something that I wanted to forget. After all, if the Rangers were to win the next evening, the Cardinals' heroics would be remembered like Carlton Fisk's home run in 1975: an iconic part of baseball lore that belonged to the losing team of the series.
In trying to be as objective as possible, Game 6 should be remembered as the most heart-stopping baseball game in history. The fact that the Cardinals prevailed in Game 7 adds to its historical standing. Many have called it the greatest World Series game or greatest postseason game ever. Due to the five errors in the contest, as well as the sub-par pitching, I'm not sure that title can be given.
It was of course a surprise that the Rangers couldn't close the deal after having the Cardinals down to their last strike twice, having a 3-run lead in the bottom of the eighth, and 2-run buffers in the ninth and 10th. Yet it wasn't the absolute shock to me that it might have been to others who haven't been following the Rangers as much.
In both the Division Series and the ALCS, the Rangers bullpen was stellar. But in the middle of the season, the relievers struggled. Manager Ron Washington and team President and CEO Nolan Ryan went so far as to call out closer Neftali Feliz for a lack of focus. At the trade deadline, the Rangers were 11th in the AL with a 4.42 bullpen ERA. Mike Adams and Koji Uehara were acquired to shore up the bullpen.
Even though Uehara struggled after being picked up to the point he wasn't on the World Series roster, the bullpen was much better in the final 60 games and was a key reason why Texas won the AL West by 10 games and had home-field for the first two rounds of the postseason.
Once the World Series started, the bullpen issues seemed to come back. Alexi Ogando, who had been an AL all-star as a starter before moving to the pen in the playoffs and excelling against the Rays and Tigers was figured out by the Cardinals. Feliz was able to finish all three Rangers wins in the World Series without giving up an earned run in those contests, but had command issues that wound up being extremely costly in Game 6. Scott Feldman (another former starter) had been effective, but then struggled in the Series. Adams had generally been good since being acquired, but he too was below his average level against the Cardinals. Plus, at no point with Texas this season was he as dominant as he had been with San Diego. And then there's Mark Lowe, who when Washington put into Game 6, I grabbed my jacket at the bar I was at in anticipation of a likely quick ending.
I'd like to be able to chide Washington for several calls he made in Game 6, including the decision to pinch-hit the awful Esteban German in Feldman's batting spot in the 10th, but I can't do it without sounding too harsh on him. For one, it was probably unrealistic to expect that Washington was going to outsmart Tony La Russa again after outdoing the recently-retired legend in Game 5. Also, Washington has more than proven his worth as a manager after going through a rough patch involving illegal drug usage before the 2010 season. Despite some of his calls, he guided his team to within one strike of a World Championship. At some point, the players have to buckle down and get the final out.
It's easy now in hindsight to say that there was a point where you could see the collapse coming. However, the truth is that I didn't really see it coming until David Freese's fly ball sailed over Nelson Cruz for an incomprehensible triple. But when Allen Craig hit a home run in the eighth to make the score 7-5, doubt started to creep in. By that point, the Cardinals' at-bats still had purpose, while the Rangers had resorted to a baseball version of declaring at the plate.
By contrast, the Rangers appeared to be a broken team when their turn came up in the corresponding innings in Game 7.
In this rudimentary analysis of "How the heck did this happen to MY team?", I wish to take nothing away from the Cardinals. Down more than 10 games to the Braves with only about a month to go and then down to their final strike twice in Game 6, St. Louis showed that they were not to be denied when the chips were down.
If "Legends Are Born in October," as MLB's promotional team kept reminding us throughout the month, Freese's legend was incarnated in a most unbelievable manner. As if his domination of Milwaukee in the NLCS (1.691 OPS) wasn't enough, his Game 6 ranked as the best postseason performance of all-time based on a metric that measures win probability added for the team based on game situation. The fact that he is a bad defensive player, even in the era where defense is better measured and means more to front offices, can be overlooked with such an all-conquering level of skill at the plate.
Before moving to Texas 11 years ago, I was a Braves fan, having grown up within Atlanta's general fan footprint in South Carolina. Now, I wonder if the second team I've called myself a fan of is the 2010s version of the 1990s Braves. Perhaps they are, which means I might have to prepare myself for a couple more World Series losses before the end of the decade. Yet I still have faith that this main nucleus of players with Texas can have a 1995 before everything is said and done.
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