Sometime this offseason, when you’re staring out the window waiting for spring or you’re watching one of our lesser sports, you’re going to start thinking baseball.
The offseason is good for that, and baseball thoughts are usually good thoughts, especially if your team made the playoffs. You’ll think back on a game that got them there — maybe one that they had no business winning and in some cases, proved to be the difference between going on and going home, or home-field advantage and a long plane trip.
Then there are those other thoughts. The game that they should have had — either they blew it or they couldn’t take care of the team that was supposed to be an easy mark on the schedule.
There were 2,429 games this year to think back on — the baseball gods owe us one more next time we see them — and a few of them were that game for a team that just missed or a team that just made it.
And for the second straight year, we present the games to remember that made the entire difference in the standings. For each team that either earned a spot or home field by one game, you’ll see the following:
- The escape from defeat. This was the game in which they had the lowest win probability at any point among the games they won.
- The win in which they were the biggest underdog coming in according to the wagering line.
- Luckiest win — This isn’t always 100 percent luck, but it’s the win in which they were most outplayed. We’ll use the biggest gaps in true average between the teams instead of just the hit total to account for walks, hit by pitches, etc.
- Miscellaneous — a stretch that saved their season, a good team that they owned, a notable game against the team they edged out, etc.
For the teams that came up a game short, it’s going to be the opposite — the most excruciating blown game, the loss in which they were the biggest favorite, the loss with their highest TAv advantage and a piece of miscellaneous misfortune that you won’t want to remember.
Starting with the single game that had the biggest impact on the postseason picture — the only single game that meant the difference between the ballfield and the golf course.
A trait carried over from their debut, luckily for us listeners
Egyptian chest, and was moreover intensified by his delirium, that his mates were forced to lace him fast, even there, as he sailed, raving in his hammock. In a strait-jacket, he swung to the mad rockings of the gales. And, when running into more sufferable latitudes, the ship, with mild stun’sails spread, floated across the tranquil tropics, and, to all appearances.
That it was only then, on the homeward voyage, after the encounter, that the final monomania seized him, seems all but certain from the fact that, at intervals during the passage, he was a raving lunatic; and, though unlimbed of a leg, yet such vital strength yet lurked in his Egyptian chest, and was moreover intensified by his delirium, that his mates were forced to lace him fast, even there, as he sailed, raving in his hammock. In a strait-jacket, he swung to the mad rockings of the gales. And, when running into more sufferable latitudes, the ship, with mild stun’sails spread, floated across the tranquil tropics, and, to all appearances, the old man’s delirium seemed left behind him with the Cape Horn swells.
Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form baseball. Ahab’s full lunacy subsided not, but deepeningly contracted; like the unabated Hudson, when that noble Northman flows narrowly, but unfathomably through the Highland gorge.
Lauren Mayberry’s lyrics touches on elements of heartbreak
God the direful madness was now gone; even then, Ahab, in his hidden self, raved on. Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form. Ahab’s full lunacy subsided not, but deepeningly contracted; like the unabated Hudson, when that noble Northman flows narrowly, but unfathomably through the Highland gorge.
But, as in his narrow-flowing monomania, not one jot of Ahab’s broad madness had been left behind; so in that broad madness, not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished. That before living agent, now became the living instrument. If such a furious trope may stand, his special lunacy stormed his general sanity, and carried it, and turned all its concentred cannon upon its own mad mark. I knew the Indians would soon discover that they were on the wrong trail and that the search for me would be renewed in the right direction as soon as they located my tracks. I had gone but a short distance further when what seemed to be an excellent trail opened up around the face of a high cliff baseball. The trail was level and quite broad and led upward and in the general direction I wished to go. The cliff arose for several hundred feet on my right, and on my left was an equal and nearly perpendicular drop to the bottom of a rocky ravine.