The Sports Saturday

Red Sox late game explosion

The Dodgers were leading 4-0 and looked to be back in the series, until the Red Sox finally got their bats going and stormed back for a 9-6 win.

The Red Sox are good. Their ability to score with two outs is amazing. They are resilient and never out of a game. They continue their dominance and are coasting their way to their 4th championship this century. Which is incredible. Boston is title town. Between the Red Sox and the Patriots it is disgusting how many rings they have.

Texas is not all the way back

Texas lost last night to the Oklahoma State Cowboys. Their return to dominance is looking more like a 3-5 year project, instead of an immediate turn around. Coach Herman has improved the program, but they need to figure out how to be more consistent. They shouldn’t have lost to either Maryland nor Oklahoma St. But, so goes college football. Everyone, besides Alabama, seems to lose to someone unexpected.

BYU should get comfortable with mediocrity

I’m not sure what the problem of BYU is, but they are becoming more and more irrelevant every year. The recruiting challenge of finding someone willing to adhere to the BYU standard pits them at a disadvantage. Utah being in the Pac 12 also hurts them. The fact that they don’t receive as much money for their football program is also hurting them. Also, that they are so limited in their coaching hires because of their religious requirements. It will be hard.

7 Hours and 20 Minutes

The World Series game last night was fun. All of it. As neither a Red Sox fan nor a Dodgers fan the outcome wouldn’t determine by enjoyment of the game. The game didn’t have a ton of offense… I mean each team averaged basically 1 run every nine innings. Which makes me think of a larger point. Is baseball too long? Do they need to shorten the game by speeding up gameplay? Putting timers on pitchers?

When you have 162 regular season games and you’re in the middle of July, and the game is 3 hours long, I can understand it. Analytics are having pitchers come in to pitch to one batter and using more pitchers every game it has increased the length of the game. I don’t enjoy all of those interruptions. I would prefer if they wouldn’t allow in inning pitchers to warm up on the mound. Send them in and make them pitch immediately. But, in post-season baseball? I am ok with all of it. When the result of the game has major impact on the baseball season I will enjoy all 440 minutes of it.

So the main point is, games aren’t either too long or too short, but what they are is entertaining or boring. Regular season games can be boring at times, but when the individual game has impactful meaning on the season, it is just more entertainment. Which is why I think that baseball should be lengthening their post season and minimizing their regular season. Because when a game matters, I don’t mind going to bed at 1:30 am, even though I have to wake up at 5am the next day for work. What an exciting game and hopefully after last night it leads to an exciting rest of the series.