#82 Meet the final four

Oops. The two best games of the postseason came and went and now feel a little too long ago to be worth re-hashing and we somehow missed our chance to say anything about them. We were trying to follow the cadence of the postseason but the four Division Series don’t always track together, so we hesitated and now the Championship Series have started and it’s time to look ahead.

Real quick though. First the Phillies and Dodgers played an “instant classic” “badass baseball game” for 11 innings that ended on one of the most confounding errors you’ve ever seen.

Watching Orion Kerkering end the Phillies’ season — if not an entire era — by mistakenly throwing home, poorly, instead of settling himself and getting the easier out at first I was struck by something: We don’t often see someone fuck up for no reason at all.

People make mistakes out of malice or delusions of grandeur. They have a faulty premise or somewhere along the way there was a miscommunication. They’re trying to do something beyond their capabilities or beyond their bandwidth given the other demands. They’re tired or hurting in some way. They give 90 percent when the task required 100. Or the task only required 70 but they gave it 50. They were a little lazy; or maybe they just miscalculated. Maybe they did their best, 100 percent, but someone else did a little better in a way that thwarted their efforts.

I think it’s actually pretty rare that you simply do the wrong thing with earnest intent but no good reason, and immediately recognize your inexplicable error. Your own brain betrays you because when you run back the fateful seconds, you see the correct path so clearly. How could you have missed it? Actually, it’s hard to even find your path looking at it now with an overlay of logic.

It’s been sort of heartening to see most people respond to Orion Kerkering’s season-ending error with recognition that to be struck by such an inopportune brain glitch has more to do with misfortune than inability. And the rumination it surely inspires is certainly punishment enough. Ugh, I hope he’s ok.

Then! The Tigers and Mariners one-upped that well-matched marathon with a 15-inning game that featured Tarik Skubal, Jack Flaherty, George Kirby, Logan Gilbert, and Luis Castillo all pitching at points — plus all the actual relievers who were rested enough to go as well.

The Mariners ultimately prevailed. But before we fully leave the Tigers behind, let’s marvel at a couple Skubal stats:

This guy is the consummate big-game pitcher and it would have been cool to see what he could do on an even bigger stage.

That said, how incredible is it that the Mariners have now won four games against him this year (regular and post- season)? They extra deserve to be in the ALCS.

Ok, now let’s take some time to get to know the remaining four teams…