You’re underestimating the difference in quality between the AL and the NL. It’s at LEAST a margin of 50 points in winning percentage. The average AL team, in interleague play in 2006, was the best team in baseball:
AL vs. NL: .611
Yankees: .599
Mets: .599
Twins: .593
Tigers: .586
The average NL team, when playing an AL team, is about as good as the Royals or the Devil Rays. This is not across a small data sample, either, it’s 252 games, IIRC.
The A’s were 93-69 as an AL team; had they played in the NL they likely would have won 98-100 games or more. The offense would have looked much better, relatively speaking, and the pitching/defense would have been the best in the league. The Mets, had they played in the AL, would likely not even have made the playoffs. Any NL team playing them will be faced with a better pitching staff than any they have faced in the NL, by far.
This Dodger fan sadly thinks that you may be right. Unfortunately, if they do get to Game 4, the Dodgers may start a gimpy Brad Penny or Lowe on short rest and Perez could win against that.
I don’t know, something about this seems wrong to me. I agree that the NL has more bad teamsthan the Al right now and has lost the All-Star Game for the last 47 years. Because of the DH the lineups are deeper. But you’re essentially saying that the NL is now officially Quad-A ball, and that every player in the AL would be better if placed in the NL, and that just ain’t true. Good offensive NL players do fine when traded to the AL, and AL pitchers do not all dominate when traded to the NL. And putting aside what every NL team did against every AL team this year, the Mets had a winning record against the dominant AL. And I think the Tigers just showed that the conventional analysis isn’t always even close to being right.
And the Mets are now making Greg Maddux look like an old guy.
Don’t talk shit about Ernie. There’s going to be a few feet in your ass if you talk bad about him. His voice is that of baseball. Talking bad about him is like talking bad about Vin Scully.
Michael Kay can suck a dick, though.
SUCK A DICK!
SUCK A DICK!
SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUuuuuuuUUUUUUuuuuuUUUUUCK A DICK!
heh…
Of course, counting those four ALDS games, they’re dead even.
I favoured the Yankees to win, but I was appalled at the media’s seemingly universal decision to anoint them as AL Champions almost before the first pitch of the series. Sure, they might have looked LIKELIER to win before Game 1, but no series is a certainty between any two teams, and in this case it was a close call, not a mismatch; Detroit was just two games behind New York and had the best pitching staff in the major leagues this year.
Yet the announcers tonight made it sound as if we’d just seen a high school football squad take out the Pittsburgh Steelers, or Danny Bonaduce beat up Joe Frazier.
Detroit winning is a mild upset. It’s no big shock at all.
And then they said that we, in Detroit, have an inferiority complex. I went to school in Buffalo. THAT’S an inferiority complex. (Cleveland might have one, althought I haven’t done any time there.) Detroit has the “Us Against the World” vibe and “chip on a shoulder, with something to prove” patented.
Pitching wins in the playoffs. It’s been that way for almost literally a hundred years (with a few blips along the way). I think what got the media so drunk was the “best lineup ever” meme being tossed about like salad. Apparently, the media thought the lineup was so good that they’d render the pitching useless? Meh. 3 down, 11 to go.
A disgusting end to the Yankees season. Friday, I plotted out when I’d be going to postseason games under every possible scenario. Turns out, I get NO postseason games. At lease hockey season started, even if my team is losing on the west coast.
whoa there, pardner. Don’t count your chickens before they cross the road. “They” all said the Dodgers would roll right over us, or at least make us fight for it and look what happened.
It’ll be an interesting series, tho. You were our biggest threat in the mid 80s. now, not so much:)