We miss having Vin Scully on the air for the Dodgers games. I liked Jon Miller when he was doing the Orioles.

The boys in blue Dodged a bullet last night, but there's two more in the barrel yet. I'm betting they don't make it. And what if the 'Stros win it all with a sub-500 regular "season"? Playoffs get too much weight in almost every sport. "Preserving $u$pen$e" (and milking it) kicks out "overall performance."

Anticipating a Blown Save by one team or the other tonight.

Two-fer time: either LA or Tampa Bay will get two championships this year. The Lakers got the basketball title, the Lightning got the Stanley Cup. One of them will get the Meat Loaf title in a week.

Bottom of the 9th inning tonight: THAT was a Grade A double f*-up! Maybe the Dodgers WS jinx is still intact. Tune in tomorrow, same BAT-time, same bat-channel for Episode 5, The Umpire Strikes Back.

And the Dodgers do it. First since 1988.

Major Trivia Time: Tonight was the first World Series game EVER to have more than half the outs made by Strikeouts - - 16 of the 27 Tampa outs and 11 of the 24 Dodger outs, 27 out of 51 total.

Two major controversies emerged from the game: Turner celebrating, often maskless, with the team and their families; and the decision to pull Snell.

On Turner, I'd say it was foolish, but his and their choice to make. The season is over, the bubble is no longer relevant, it's now a question of not being there for a literally once-in-a-lifetime moment vs. uncertain risk to each person's lifetime. Personally, I'd stay safe and celebrate later, but I totally get that others wouldn't, especially in such an emotionally charged moment.

On Snell, I agree with the critics that it was STUPID to pull him (and I live in Dodger-land). I'm an analytics guy by trade; have been for decades. But I know that analytics isn't perfect, and I've learned and taught others to see when to use it and when to override it. Last night was a classic case of poor application. If your starter is having a "typical" outing and your relievers have been having "typical" save results, then yes, make the move. But Snell was having a significantly above-norm outing, and the relievers had been shakier than average recently. In analytics, the good_ practitioners pay attention to data outliers and factor them into the decision-making. Analytics says, "X% of the time, pulling the pitcher is better" where X is something over 50%. Fine. Maybe X is even 75% here. But that other percent of the time, it's the wrong move. You've got to know when you're likely to be in that other 100-X%. For me, there was enough evidence here that this was a needed exception to the "pull" rule. Too many people treat analytics as if X was 100%; it's not.

All my Dodger-fan neighbors are delighted, of course. Plus it sure saved us the problem of when and if game 7 would have been played after Turner tested positive!!

Quoted from SunnRAT:
That analytics crap is way overrated.

Quotes from CrazyLevi:
Yeah for 20 years baseball teams been winning with analytics and one Possibly bad decision last night proves it’s all hogwash!

Analytics works, but has its limitations. Too many non-math people treat the output as gospel rather than as a directional indicator. It's important to know what variables are NOT reflected in any model and keep them in mind before making a final decision.

Same in Pinball, BTW. If the "statistically best" strategy on a game is shot or shot sequence X, but you're really dialed in on Y today and or are tending to brick shot X, you're probably better off sticking with Y. Having a "typical" day? Stick with X.

In both the baseball and pinball cases, a "more robust" model would reflect not only the raw odds of a given strategy outperforming one or more other strategies given "average" shot accuracies but have some sensitivity analysis of how great a deviation from "average" accuracy is required to flip the switch on the optimal choice. For Tampa, how much better an ERA or OBPCT or % K's result says keep the guy out there even if the batters see him a third time. For the pinballer, how much does your "hit shot Y" percentage need to go up (or shot X down) from average before you should go with shot Y vs. shot X?

Meanwhile in Dodger-land, they've got a bad case of both scruffy pitching and power-failure offense. There'll be no comeback from down 3-1 this year. Braves & 'Stros in the series won't get the ratings LA-Boston would have, but might be the better pairing.