What You Missed Last Night: Cardinals make playoffs after having ‘negative 400%’ chance
On Sept. 7, the St. Louis Cardinals lost their fourth straight game, falling 7-2 to the Dodgers, and their record dropped to 69-68.
Exactly three weeks later, on Tuesday, the Cardinals won their 17th straight game by beating the Brewers 6-2 in St. Louis and clinched the second wild-card spot in the National League playoffs.
With an 88-69 record, the Cardinals’ postseason odds went from negative 400% to 100% in just three weeks.
Hold on a second. Negative 400%? Who is the source on that? Ah, it’s Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright.
“FanGraphs had us at like a negative 400% chance to make the playoffs, and we just proved everyone wrong,” Wainwright told MLB.com after the Cardinals clinched. “We’re going to try to keep doing that.”
In reality, MLB.com’s Sarah Lang said FanGraphs had the Cardinals’ playoff chances on Sept. 7 at 2.8%, which doesn’t seem like much of a chance, right? In fact, it’s the lowest percentage in September for a team that ended up making the playoffs.
On Twitter, FanGraphs had a little fun with Wainwright’s comment.
Pedro Martinez roasts umpires
It seems former Red Sox/Expos pitcher Pedro Martinez has seen enough with the balk calls in Major League Baseball this season.
While on the MLB Network’s studio show, there was talk of a potential balk in the Giants-Diamondbacks game. But Martinez was having none of it.
“Well, the umpires don’t know (expletive) about what they’re doing,” Martinez said on the air.
Here is the clip and you can hear him curse (while others laugh):
A 106-foot pitch
OK, if you read that mini-headline, you may be wondering how a pitch could be thrown 106 feet when the pitching rubber is just 60 feet, 6 inches from home.
Well, when the Twins’ Willians Astudillo called for a timeout as Detroit’s Tyler Alexander was delivering a pitch, Alexander improvised. Rather than stop his delivery, Alexander hurled the ball into the stands behind home plate.
You don’t often see this at a game:
Catch of the day
When you see a player make an amazing catch over the wall, you immediately think a home run was robbed.
But Rangers right fielder Adolis Garcia made an incredible catch on a foul ball. Garcia went full extension on a ball that would have been foul and made a phenomenal grab against the Angels:
Wild WNBA game
The playoffs are underway in the WNBA, and there was a doozy of a game on Tuesday.
The Chicago Sky beat the Connecticut Sun 101-95 in double overtime of a semifinal series.
The Sky’s Courtney Vandersloot had a triple-double and 18 assists, which is a WNBA postseason record.
Arlington Heights Bears?
The Chicago Bears signed an agreement to purchase the Arlington Park racetrack, a spokesperson for Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Tuesday night, per WLS-TV.
The Daily Herald said horse races at the park, which sits on 326 acres, likely will end Saturday.
The Bears’ lease at Soldier Field runs through 2033.
