A Look Back to Game One and a Look Ahead

Would have been nice for the Royals to snag that first one, but opportunities await.

I didn’t know what to write about the first game of the ALDS. I had a lot of thoughts, but there was just so much that happened in that first game and I struggled to organize them in my head. Right now, you’re probably thinking that I’ve never worried about organizing my thoughts before, but they just kept swirling in my head. The Royals lost on two fronts on Saturday night. They played poorly in many ways, but they also found themselves on the short end of some really bad calls. In my brain, I was just having a tough time trying to sort out which was more important in the loss.

The answer is the same as the answer in the Miller Lite commercial that is one of the 11 Bally Sports had sold throughout the season, which means we got to see it approximately 2,473,891 times throughout the year. It was both. There’s this need for some to say that the officials of any sport aren’t to blame for anything. Simply play better, and none of their calls matter. In a lot of ways, that’s accurate. But in a real-world situation, I don’t think I could disagree more. Sure, don’t walk in two runs and don’t give up the hit after a bad call and it’s a different game. But the thing those arguments tend to forget is that the other team is trying to win a game too.

This goes back to the idea that I keep pushing. We only see games through the lens of the team we root for, so therefore, a loss can be broken down easily into “well, just play better, and it would have been a win.” Again, in a very pedantic way, that’s accurate. But let’s look at the fifth inning on Saturday night for the Yankees and why that’s not fully fair.

Here is a pitch chart of every pitch called a ball throughout the bottom of the fifth.