This article is part of our Collette Calls series.
I normally write on Sunday mornings, but the awesomeness of seeing my favorite team clinch the American League pennant for the first time in 12 years led to a rather unproductive Sunday unless you consider laying around being productive. My favorite part about this run at a World Series title is both of my children can enjoy it with me as my kids were 3 and 1 the last time Tampa Bay made it this far.
The baseball this postseason has been a welcomed distraction from everything else in life these days. We saw both league championship series go seven contested games coming down to the final inning in each game. The NLCS had more offense than the ALCS overall, and it will be an interesting showdown between the big bats and salaries of the Dodgers and the pitching and defense ballers on a budget of Tampa Bay.
The other great part about these games has been the interactions on Twitter from different folks. Two tweets in recent days got me thinking about how to approach hitters in 2021. The first one comes from Joe Sheehan (subscribe to his newsletter!) regarding groundballs:
I'm not sure how I'd even go about measuring this, but it seems to me that infielders are better than ever at turning double-play chances into double plays. Ground balls are death.
— Joe Sheehan (@joe_sheehan) October 18, 2020
Joe is right, and Mike Petriello found that the league converted a recorded high of 32.7 percent of groundballs
