Kimbrel struck out four Marlins in the ninth inning tonight.

Foooooour!

I'm kinda disappointed it took him more than 12 pitches to do it.

#20 for Harper!

So, wow. The Cubs really want to win the race to 100 losses.

(down 6-0 with men on second and third, one out, in the top of the seventh, had a man thrown out at third on a fly ball to LF. The run didn't score). Now rain delayed.

Sadly, PIT also lost (also 6-0), so the race for "most wins since 2010" is still tied.

The Dodgers will end the season with about the record I had guessed in March but, wow, what an interesting journey to get there.

Let's see, you've got a team that started the season going 42-25, and then took their roster which already had last year's Cy Young and MVP runner-up, and added seven veteran players who have a combined 15 All-Star appearances and 18 seasons getting MVP votes. And at the end of the season every starting pitcher has an ERA+ over 100 except Joe Blanton (9 starts) and Nathan Eovaldi (10 starts), and they also have four relievers who have made more than 40 appearances with ERAs of less than 3.

Oh, and A.J. Ellis and Luis Cruz both had an OPS+ over 110.

Obviously that team is going to end up around 82-80.

Just look at the black holes they've had in the lineup all year, at various points they've had these guys as regulars: Dee Gordon (329 PA, 57 OPS+), Juan Uribe (179, 50), Juan Rivera (331, 74), Tony Gwynn Jr. (277, 58), James Loney (359, 78), Shane Victorino (205, 68) - that's a huge amount of playing time given to unplayable-level crap, it's staggering. And Matt Kemp's been banged up and in-and-out of the lineup all year, Hanley and A-Gon have underwhelmed. No wonder this offense doesn't work, it's a miracle they have even the 87 team OPS+ figure they do.

The teams that last deep into the fall aren't the ones with the best individual players, they are the ones that get contributions from everywhere - up and down the lineup, the bench, the 4th starter, the 7th inning guy, etc.

Birds aren't making this easy...

Going "only" 4-2 in their games vs. Cubs and Astros means they better go at least 2-4 vs. Nats/Reds, and then they still need the Brewers and Dodgers to lose a couple times each....

The vaunted offense that was averaging over 5 runs a game for most of the season has only scored more than 5 runs three times in the last month.

Craig Kimbrel has now struck out 111 of the 221 batters he's faced. Here's hoping he can finish off the season over 50%.

Nationals offense so far in September: 24 games, 126 runs, 42 home runs, slash line of .281/.341/.489. They are just raking!

The return of Bad KK helped the Nats last night, along with some shaky fielding by the Phils helped the Nats last night. How bad of a jump did Juan Pierre get on that popup single in the 9th? Even with all that, that's a tough lineup top to bottom with some good reserves.

I'm not sold on Ian Desmond as star quiet yet. I was high on him when I first saw him, soured on him the last couple of years. It will be interesting to see if this is some outlier peak year or the new Ian Desmond.

Birds aren't making this easy...

If the Brewers and Dodgers both lose today, it should be over.

Dodgers had 284 PA from guys with a 50 or less OPS+ (not counting pitchers of course). 1627 from guys with a 51-79 OPS+ = 1911 PA total by very sub-standard hitters or enough for 3 full time slots in the lineup. Ouch. No wonder their team OPS+ is 88. A killer pitching staff can compensate for only so much bad hitting.

But if the Brewers and Dodgers both win today, it gets very interesting.

Birds have the day off before playing the Nationals Friday, and let's say they lose to the team that has been raking, as noted above: The Brewers have Gallardo going against Houston, and the Dodgers have Kershaw going against a Rockies team looking to avoid 100 losses.

All of a sudden you have:

StL 84-73
LAD 82-75
Mil 82-75

with 5 games to go. Now THAT could make for a crazy last week...

Ned Colletti has done many things that infuriate Dodgers fans, but, for me, nothing can match his feat of making me actually having to hope that Shane Victorino succeeds at baseball.

And with the Dodgers, he's been a spectacular failure.

Ouch. No wonder their team OPS+ is 88. A killer pitching staff can compensate for only so much bad hitting.

I'm not sure exactly how B-Ref calculates their park factors, but I suspect that there is something wrong with their numbers. Right now, 22 out of the 30 teams have a team OPS+ under 100, and only 8 are 100 or higher! The idea that over two-thirds of the teams have below average offenses doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me. I suspect that they haven't yet fully adjusted to account for the new lower-offensive era that we're clearly now in.

I'm not sure exactly how B-Ref calculates their park factors, but I suspect that there is something wrong with their numbers. Right now, 22 out of the 30 teams have a team OPS+ under 100, and only 8 are 100 or higher! The idea that over two-thirds of the teams have below average offenses doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me. I suspect that they haven't yet fully adjusted to account for the new lower-offensive era that we're clearly now in.

100 is the average without pitchers, but the team numbers all have pitcher hitting in them.

100 is the average without pitchers, but the team numbers all have pitcher hitting in them.

Maybe, but Team ERA+ numbers seem pretty extreme to me too. I think the Dodgers, Reds, and Braves are all over 115 or 120, and those are only the teams I've looked at recently. That park factors are lagging behind the actual run environment would be a good explanation.

But park factors are all calculated relative to other parks. If they're wrong that might skew one team's numbers, but overall they're still going to balance properly.

If something's wrong, it would be because the wrong average ERA is being used for the whole league before park adjustments.

The average ERA for the NL this year is 3.97. Those three teams (and the Nats) are all at 3.49 or better. That would be a 114 ERA+ without any park adjustments. The Braves and Reds play in hitters parks, but the Dodgers in a pitchers park are at 112 ERA+ (which would be 116 in a neutral park).

####### Axford.

Wow, that was brutal; one out away and then he chokes spectacularly. You can probably stick a fork in the Brewers after that one.

####### Axford.

Somewhere--I think it's Chris Jericho's first book, though I may be wrong about that--he has a line about someone's gimmick saying they used it all the time, if they won a match, it was because of the gimmick and if they lost it was because of the gimmick. That's basically been the Brewers this season. Their bullpen killed them for months, and then started pitching better and then went on a run, but then at the very worst moment their bullpen killed them again. Vince McMahon would be proud of that kind of dedication to a gimmick.

Bucs come up a run short in the ninth, Dickey gets #20. Need to sweep the Reds and Braves at home to get to 82. Not happening.

-- MWE

Do we have any good way of deciphering which teams will play in which NLDS games at this point? For instance, one series starts on sat, one sun. Do we know if the sat starting series is the wild card/1st place?

The WC games are on Friday. So presumably, the #1/WC LDS will start on Sunday. The 2/3 series should start on Saturday. ... at least that's what makes most sense from the schedules they've posted.

Thanks, chris. Damned if i could find it on the internets.