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2015 ALCS - Toronto Blue Jays (93-69) vs Kansas City Royals (95-67)

They still won more playoff games and series than the Leafs have in over a decade and they brought legitimate excitement to sports in a city that was starved for it. It hurts like hell right now but it was a great run filled with tons of great moments.
 
This will still go down as one of the greatest Jays teams in history and brought myself and others great joy so nothing to be ashamed of!

Now that the season is over I look forward to a few Jays collecting some hardware, starting with Donaldson as A.L. MVP!

I can't wait for next year!

LETS GO BLUE JAYS!!!
 
Beowulf said:
They still won more playoff games and series than the Leafs have in over a decade and they brought legitimate excitement to sports in a city that was starved for it. It hurts like hell right now but it was a great run filled with tons of great moments.
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United the whole country really, from the trade deadline and on. Going to be some huge chips on their shoulders next spring.
 
I mean, the thing is you can't really say that any particular flaw got exposed here. The Jays weren't a team that can't field or run the bases or get big hits. They did those things all year. It wasn't a "baseball team vs. a softball team". This was just a case of one good team running up against another good team and some breaks not going their way.

There are some areas you'd like to see them improve on. They need a better bench and more depth in the rotation but there's really no one thing that needs to be addressed for this team to be right back here next year.
 
Thank you Blue Jays for a fantastically incredible season and an equally exciting playoff run.

Whoa, what a ride it's been!

Blue Jays, you made us proud!
 
Nik the Trik said:
I mean, the thing is you can't really say that any particular flaw got exposed here. The Jays weren't a team that can't field or run the bases or get big hits. They did those things all year. It wasn't a "baseball team vs. a softball team". This was just a case of one good team running up against another good team and some breaks not going their way.

There are some areas you'd like to see them improve on. They need a better bench and more depth in the rotation but there's really no one thing that needs to be addressed for this team to be right back here next year.
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It's going to be a somewhat different team next year, that's for sure. 

Without jumping on speculation too quickly I would imagine Navarro, Pennington, Revere, Buehrle, Lowe, maybe Dickey.  I would like to see them bring Estrada/Price back but that might be tough to compete financially with some other teams.  It's going to be a similar team but a few important changes will have to come. 
 
Patrick said:
bustaheims said:
Awful strike zone, but going 0-for with runners in scoring position is what cost the Jays the game - and the series, really. Gotta be better than that.
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Indeed, it turns out a baseball team beats a softball team when things really matter.
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Come on. It could have gone either way in a 7 game series. KC played over their head for a short series. Jays weren't a HR or nothing team over 162 games.
 
Condolences to Jays fans. That was a heck of a game last night. I rarely watch a whole ball game where the team I follow is not involved. But I did last night and enjoyed the game. very exciting
 
Just so I can continue to lose my sanity...strikezone plot by Jeff Nelson vs. LHH [red squares are called strikes for KC]:

map.png


Two of those 3 called strikes well outside the zone for the Royals were Navarro and Revere in the 9th.

EDIT:

And while I'm at it, I don't think Aaron Sanchez gets enough appreciation as a reliever:

Over the last two years, if you set a minimum of 50 innings, no reliever in baseball allowed a lower OPS than Aaron Sanchez. Not Aroldis Chapman; not Wade Davis. Sanchez
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http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/theres-something-about-the-royals-or-something/
 
Going down 0-2 is what killed them. They had to play catch-up the entire series, and most people wrote them off after that. The fact that they made this a series right up until the very last out is incredible.
 
Interesting stuff:

Something caught my eye in the Gordon at-bat. Price threw Gordon a 2-and-2 changeup that was over the plate but down. Gordon barely flinched at it. The fact that it was over the plate and not off the plate?it looked more like a strike, which makes it much harder to dismiss?told me Gordon wasn?t the least bit fooled. (Price would then throw two fastballs, one a good one away that Gordon fouled and another one over the heart of the plate that he ripped for his double.)

I replayed the inning in my head. Moustakas was all over a 2-and-2 changeup from Price?a good pitch that was down and away but that didn?t fool him either. Wait?how many times did Price even throw a 2-and-2 changeup to a lefthanded hitter all year, as he had done to both Gordon and Moustakas? The answer was just 10.

Then I thought about the Hosmer at-bat: a 1-and-1 changeup down and away that he also hit while firmly on balance. How many times did Price throw a 1-and-1 changeup to a lefty this year? Another rarity: just 16 times.

So now I had three lefthanded hitters batting against a lefthanded pitcher in counts when a changeup could not be expected and yet all three of them were on balance for the pitch.

The next day I looked at the tape. Pitching from the stretch when he threw a changeup, Price would take an extra deep breath, one where you could see his shoulders shrug, and he would hold his set a beat longer. I didn?t have access to the preferred camera angle on every pitch, but from the small sample I saw it appeared to me the Royals knew the changeup was coming when Price was in the stretch. Days later, as the series resumed in Toronto, I ran my theory past two Royals sources. Both confirmed it: Price tipped his changeup?maybe not 100% of the time, but enough for Kansas City to buy in.

There had been rumors about Price tipping his pitches when he faced Texas in the Division Series. A Toronto source told me then that such rumors sometimes pop up, and that the Blue Jays heard that Price had been tipping his pitchers earlier this season when he was pitching for Detroit, but ?we looked into it and didn?t see anything.?

Conroy and Gibson are both 55-year-old former journeyman major league pitchers and now advance scouts for Kansas City. They had been watching the Blue Jays exclusively since late August. They knew every tendency about Toronto, such as how Josh Donaldson had become a more aggressive hitter as he chased Mike Trout in the AL MVP race; or how Kevin Pillar and Ben Revere had stopped being aggressive stealing bases down the stretch, perhaps simply to let Donaldson, Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion swing the bats; or exactly how Price threw his changeup out of the stretch.
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http://www.si.com/mlb/2015/10/24/royals-blue-jays-alcs-clinch-pennant
 
What annoyed me was hearing over and over how the Jays were cheaters and stealing signs. Where did this come from? That one accusation 5 years or whenever ago? And really stealing signs is something exclusive to the Jays? Every other team are full of Saints?
 
Joe S. said:
What annoyed me was hearing over and over how the Jays were cheaters and stealing signs. Where did this come from? That one accusation 5 years or whenever ago? And really stealing signs is something exclusive to the Jays? Every other team are full of Saints?
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No no Jays are a team full of cheaters but every former player has agreed not to go on the record about it for some reason.
 
Potvin29 said:
Joe S. said:
What annoyed me was hearing over and over how the Jays were cheaters and stealing signs. Where did this come from? That one accusation 5 years or whenever ago? And really stealing signs is something exclusive to the Jays? Every other team are full of Saints?
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No no Jays are a team full of cheaters but every former player has agreed not to go on the record about it for some reason.
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I heard someone say that it isn't even technically against the rules. If you don't want your signs stolen, make them tougher to steal.
 
CarltonTheBear said:
I heard someone say that it isn't even technically against the rules. If you don't want your signs stolen, make them tougher to steal.
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As long as it's being done by the guys on the field or in the dugout/bullpen, it's absolutely fair game. Always has been. Baseball has a long history of "cheating." Form spitballs and other substances pitchers would put on the ball that used to be legal, to sign stealing, to the whole steroid thing . . . it's just part of the game.
 
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