I always feared (but thought it would, more, manifest in an I-80 Cardinals/Royals World Series) that they would try to add football intensity to the baseball playoffs in all the worst ways possible.
Just now, only about halfway into the division series, we've had two bench clearers, an obvious opportunity for retribution on Monday (which MLB brought on itself!), and umpires literally making up the strike zone as they go along, as the Yankees in the play-in game and Toronto in at least one of their games, can attest.
It's clear that Manfred wants a certain winner, in a certain number of games, and is not going to trust anything to organically get it there.
Do I know whom yet? By no means. There's a lot of skinny about the Cubs and what having the Cubs there would mean for ratings and the like.
But this fight-level intensity is just getting way fucking out of hand, as is the umpiring.
For example, I put the over-under on the first Met beanball to a Dodger at about three pitches. There will be at least one bench-clearing incident in that game, which would make at least three in this round.
This what you want? You can't beat football, so you'll join it?
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