I'm returning to an earlier theme: the issue of team identity, more likely, the lack of one. Who are these guys? What can you expect? It's easy to think they're going to get demolished every night, then they lose a low-scoring one-run pitchers' duel. You're pretty sure they're going to blast out 4 homers a game, then they're lucky to get two hits. Just lots and lots of inconsistency.
I don't have the analytics on this, but I'm getting the sense that some of this inconsistency has its roots in breakdowns in pretty basic rubrics of baseball. In pitching, it comes from first pitch balls, first batter walks and hit yielded on two-strike counts. Batting 3-2 called strike outs, failure to hit to the right side. Base running mistakes: out at home on contact, wandering off base and getting picked off. Defensively? Outfield throws to the wrong base, failure to get the lead runner, passed balls, only getting one out in a possible double play.
Note these are the kinds of mistakes that lose games and are almost all mental errors. These are not failures tied to physical limitations. These are breakdowns in thinking that give your opponent an extra at bat, rob your offense of a run, extend an opponents' chance to score runs.
Killers one and all. Maybe all fixable with more experience and cosching.
I recall Chuck Knox explaining something about football that applies just as well to baseball. In the course of a game there are three or four moments that explain the outcome. When they occur they are often small and unnoticed. But in the end they make the difference. These mental mistakes I've enumerated occur all too frequently with the Ms and explain why so many of these losses are hard to explain (and even harder to digest).
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