
rise and shine meme
Your admired baseball aggregation is now authoritative golf plans. Football doesn't ample the abandoned in your heart. Neither does a month's accumulation of bonbon corn.
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Friends, we accept your answer: the MLB Playoffs Acclaim Guide. With 10 teams set to activity in the postseason, we've accent the best affidavit to base for anniversary of 'em.
Rooting Motivation: Fernando Rodney
I've consistently abiding for s--- disturbers. As abundant as I enjoyed watching Jordan and Magic and 'Nique, I additionally had a bendable atom for Danny Ainge, the absolute advocate who collection anybody nuts. Jose Bautista was a astounding amateur in his prime, peaking with a 54-homer division that looked out of bash in the post-PED era ... but I admired him alike added for authoritative opponents (and opposing fans) abhorrence him. It was abandoned natural, then, that I would booty a flash to Fernando Rodney.
Granted, there are friendlier affidavit to base for Rodney. His fastball-changeup aggregate has been one of the best aboveboard approaches by any abode in years, yet Rodney still baffles hitters with it. His posing with a plantain during the World Baseball Classic became the actuality of meme legends. Rodney ambling into the mini-forest abaft the center-field bank at Coors Acreage a few years ago remains one of the best baseball photos of all time. You can alike acknowledge the animation he brings to the game, able to bang out the ancillary with that fastball-change admixture one night, again get pummeled for bristles runs the abutting ... a aperitive set of abeyant outcomes in a winner-take-all playoff game. But mostly I adulation Rodney because he punctuates every save by cutting an arrow to the heavens. It takes a ton of bluster to bless that aggressively, alive you'll piss off the added team, as able-bodied as admirers of every club that's not yours.
Rodney shoots dem arrows anyway. Because he's the best.
Rooting Motivation: Chris Sale
Remember how the Twins cranked up their breach in the additional half? The Red Sox mysteriously came in 28th, worst of any AL team. The Killer B's of Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi, Jackie Bradley Jr., and Xander Bogaerts were decidedly punchless, a adverse assurance as the Sox accessory up to face aloft casting in the playoffs.
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If the breach continues to attempt in October, Chris Sale would charge to curl to bond the aggregation out. Sale became the aboriginal AL abode aback Pedro Martinez to bang out 300-plus batters in a season. At his best, he's a anesthetic amount to watch, a 180-pound coil of accoutrements and legs, with a casting lefty commitment whose slider actually annihilates aggregate in its aisle (opponents hit .177 adjoin that angle this year, and have never batted aloft .200 adjoin it). Sale was aberrant in his final six starts of the season, alternating three scoreless outings with 12 runs accustomed over 15 innings in three added starts. Still, if he's casting like his accepted ascendant self, Sale could calmly boss two amateur in a five-game series, and advice the Sox beating off a aloft opponent.
Rooting motivation: Javier Baez
MLB.com biographer Joe Posnanski and "The Acceptable Place" creator/big baseball fan Michael Schur afresh came up with a air-conditioned idea: date a contest, in bracket form, to determine the best fun amateur in baseball. A array of berserk absorbing players fabricated the antecedent field, including Adrian Beltre, Byron Buxton, Giancarlo Stanton, and Bartolo Colon. In the end, though, the final vote came bottomward to two players we'll be acclaim for this month. One was Francisco Lindor, the added was Javier Baez. In acceptable fashion, the champ of that final antagonism ... was Baez.
It's not adamantine to see why. Like Lindor, Baez enjoyed a blemish division in 2017, arena in 145 games, mashing 23 home runs, and arena arch defense. But it's Baez's aggregate of style, grace, and joy that accomplish him so abuse irresistible. Do you like sensational acts of gloved thievery? Ultra-smooth, walkoff slides? Off-the-charts exuberance? Even playfully messing with his baffled #funnestplayer finals foe? That's Baez, all the time.
Many of you ability ambition for a new best afterwards the Cubs assuredly concluded their 108-year aridity aftermost year. But really, the added Javy Baez we can get in our lives, the better.
Rooting Motivation: Francisco Lindor
If you can attending able animated Chief Wahoo, you'd be adamantine apprenticed to acquisition a bigger aggregation to base for than Cleveland. You've got the Cy Young-worthy abode who additionally has the best stone-face we've anytime seen, a parrot-wielding slugger, an absorbing all-around player whose helmet does bewitched things aback he runs the bases, alike artists-in-residence who about-face baseballs into likenesses of players on the roster, with a keen eye for little details. Cleveland owning the longest championship aridity of any aggregation in baseball (they aftermost won it all in 1948) abandoned makes them added embraceable.
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Still, Francisco Lindor stands out as the distinct bigger acumen to accept this aggregation in October. Lindor is one of the best all-around players in the game, advancing up as a superelite gloveman at short, and crumbling into a adverse hitter who burst 33 homers this year. The best Lindor moment this year came during a September game, while Cleveland was alive crushing opponents on a nightly basis. Afterwards breaking two bats, he affective assistant Abraham Almonte's barge and strode to the plate. The bat was both best and added than Lindor was acclimated to, and he had no abstraction if the artifice would work. But rather than panic, Lindor did what he consistently does on the field: smile. This attempt of the all-world ambush animated as a angle is actuality delivered is one of our admired baseball images of all time. Bonus: He homered on this pitch.
Rooting Motivation: Jose Altuve
It feels like we ability already be demography one of the greatest marvels in sports for granted. Jose Altuve spent the aboriginal three seasons of his big alliance career as a spray-hitting waterbug who blanket a ton of bases, but was added of a little annoyance to opponents than annihilation else. Then, the abhorrent access started. In his seventh season, Altuve won the AL batting title, hit .346/.410/.547, annexation 32 added bases but additionally cranking 67 extra-base hits. He's advised by abounding to be the admired to win the AL MVP accolade this season. And he's listed at 5-foot-6, 165 pounds.
Being this acceptable and this small, in today's era of ample sluggers and aerial Aaron Judges seems about impossible. But Altuve is so talented, he can smack eye-high pitches wherever he wants, or even jump while accepted the bat. The Astros were the best abhorrent aggregation in baseball this year, and they got a gigantic addition aback they acquired Justin Verlander's old, ascendant cocky backward in the year. But if Houston goes from three beeline 100-loss seasons and laughing-stock cachet a few years ago to hoisting accouterments at month's end, Altuve will be the guy we'll appetite to bless most.
Rooting motivation: Clayton Kershaw
Rooting for aberancy in the playoffs has its place, of course. But we additionally appetite to see the best players acceleration to the break aback the stakes are highest. No book would bigger reflect that aftereffect than the best abode on the planet continuing on a belvedere four weeks from now.
Clayton Kershaw's postseason history has been checkered, to say the least. A attenuate Dodgers abode affected the ablaze lefty to appear aback out for the seventh inning of cardinal amateur two years in a row. Anniversary time, Kershaw was active on fumes. And anniversary time, he and his aggregation paid the price. Kershaw did acquisition fractional accretion aftermost year, closing out the Nationals in affecting appearance as the Dodgers' makeshift afterpiece in the chief bold of the NLDS. Still, the abode who's riding one of the best absurd regular-season streaks in baseball history has additionally fabricated six trips to the playoffs after authoritative the World Alternation (let abandoned acceptable one) alike once. This year's 104-win club ability be the best one that Kershaw's anytime played on, complete with a beefed-up abatement band that can acquiesce administrator Dave Roberts to abstain arduous his ace.
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Maybe this time, Kershaw's October adventure will end with the aboriginal Dodgers appellation in about three decades. If it does, we could finally put to blow the comparisons to that added Dodgers southpaw, aback Kershaw would accept able the one affair that the abundant Sandy Koufax still has over him.
Rooting Motivation: Dingers!
The Baby Bombers accustomed their moniker by arch the majors in home runs this season, as AL alarm baron Aaron Judge led the way with 52 continued balls. Judge and his bashing brothers led off the playoffs with a agglomeration added bombs off Ervin Santana (eighth-highest adjudicator amount amid American Alliance starting pitchers) at Yankee Stadium (most homer-friendly esplanade in the AL) in Tuesday's wild-card tilt.
Sure, we're talking about the big, bad Yankees, the aggregation with perennially boundless payrolls, 19 spots a anniversary on civic television, and aphotic armament at the able levels of management. But Judge, Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, and aggregation represent a new bearing of absolutely young, absolutely fun players who accomplish the Yanks agitative to watch. If they assurance Paul O'Neill out of retirement, fine, abhor to your heart's content. Otherwise, adopting pinstripes this postseason is a altogether cromulent advance of activity to take.
Rooting motivation: Dusty Baker
Any administrator account his alkali will acquaint you that the players deserve all the acclaim for any success a aggregation has, and that the job of a skipper is aloof to point the address in the appropriate direction. Still, Baker became persona non grata in analytic circles years ago for overusing his starting pitchers, accepting a big block of the accusation for Barry Bonds-led teams falling short, as able-bodied as the breakdowns of Kerry Wood and Mark Prior in Chicago.
Whatever mistakes Baker might've fabricated in the past, he's bigger for them now. The Nationals skipper now leans on his agents to advice clue angle counts, and understands the cardinal role that bullpens comedy in today's game. But abundant added than that, Baker has consistently been declared by his players as a absolute access in the clubhouse. That's an acutely boxy affection to quantify. But it's additionally the best important job a administrator has -- to accumulate his aggregation airy and motivated over the advance of a 162-game season, to beacon the ship. This is Baker's 22nd division as a above alliance manager. He's 68 years old and ability not be about in this role abundant longer. The aboriginal World Alternation appellation in both Nationals authorization history and Baker's own career as a administrator would be candied accretion for all.
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