So how about those Twins? A one game series on Tuesday no less.
As a Yankees fan I am now rooting for a 23 inning game that uses up both bullpens and leaves the winner exhausted as they then need to fly to Yankee Stadium for Wednesday.
Quick poll like question for my fellow fans. If the Friday game is not a night game but lets say a 1pm game. Would you pull your 9 year old son out of school to go to the game?
Is someone starting a playoff thread or waiting for Tuesday night?
Pull him. How often does that opportunity come around? Once a year even in the best case scenario, right? He’ll remember it the rest of his life, though.
From the espn.com playoff schedule, it looks like the Yankees get to decide to play Game 1 on either Wednesday or Thursday. Have they decided on Wednesday?
Pull him! Granted, there will be plenty of Yankee playoff games in his future, but that’s a wonderful opportunity. What could he possibly learn on a Friday afternoon that he couldn’t Sunday afternoon?
It was posted yesterday.
I’m a Yankee fan, but I think the Tigers and Twins got hosed. I understand that the Twins got the home field for the 163rd game due to the season series, but there should be a clause in there that if your stadium isn’t available on that date then you forfeit the home field. Comerica Park would be available today, I think given the unavailability of the Metrodome today then the Tigers should host the 163rd game. Now the winner has to use up their pitchers then go to New York to start the series the very next day.
I’m sure a lot of Yankee fans said that at the end of the 1981 World Series. Or at the end of the 1964 World Series. There’ll always be future playoff games, but sometimes the wait can be a year, or it can be unexpectedly long.
I’m a big fan of education, but I cannot imagine a more wonderful experience for a father and his kid than to take in a big time baseball game in October. I guaratee there’ll be lots more school. You never know when an opportunity like that will come up though.
I took my 4-year-old to a meaningless regular season ballgame just recently and it was about as fun a time as I’ve had in my life.
It looks like the Yanks are playing a 6:07pm EST and the Angels at 6:37 PST on Friday. So I will only be pulling my son out a little early to go. Even my wife agrees with this now.
Joe Girardi told CC Sabathia to get ready for Wednesday night and also the Wednesday series really favors the Yankees bullpen. Allowing Joe to use all his major relievers in every game.
Remember this series means only 3 starters and that gives the Yanks Joba and Hughes to setup Rivera. Joba was lights out in his tune up yesterday. 3 outs on seven great pitches. Hitting up to 97 mph with movement. The rest of the Yankees bullpen is pretty damn good to as I have mentioned.
Tigers or Twins just have no reason to show up.
Sure they do. The Yankees are clearly the better team. But in baseball the better team doesn’t win 100% of the time nor anywhere close. A great team will beat a medicre team maybe 60% of the time. The Yankees are a legimate heavy favorite but it doesn’t mean the Tigers and Twins don’t have a decent shot at sneaking out 3 wins.
Absolutely correct. The favorite is often upset. The lesser team wins. The better team’s ace has a melt down. Strange hordes of bugs might descend on a rookie reliever. The lesser teams gets a super pitching performance from an unexpected source. Key injuries occur in the early game.
These 5 games series are especially prone to upsets. In 1996 the Yanks were a clear underdog against The O’s and Braves and won both to win the series. In 2000 a very old Yankees team found a way to get to the World Series and beat the Mets who upset a pair of teams on the way. In 2003 how many picked the Marlins over the Yanks? Not many that I recall.
On paper the Yanks should win. The games are played on the fields.
I just have to stick my head in here to applaud the Seattle Mariners for finishing 85-77 after going 61-101 last year, and to nominate Don Wakamatsu for Manager of the Year for the job he did turning this team around.
How much did Wakamatsu actually do? I ask in all honesty, because i don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the Mariners.
As far as i can tell from looking at their numbers, the Mariners were pretty much exactly as crappy at hitting this year as they were last year, but their pitching this year was miles ahead of 2008.
In 2008 the Mariners, as a team, hit .265/.318/.389, with an OPS+ of 90 and 671 runs scored. In 2009, they hit .258/.314/.402, with an OPS+ of 90, and 640 runs scored.
In 2008, the Mariners had a team ERA of 4.73, an ERA+ of 89, a WHIP of 1.512, and gave up 811 runs. In 2009, they had an ERA of 3.87, an ERA+ of 112, a WHIP of 1.303, and gave up 692 runs.
119 fewer runs given up by your pitching is HUGE.
They also got unlucky last year, and lucky this year. Last year, they ended up 6 games behind their X W-L, whereas this year they were 10 games over, making them the luckiest team in the majors. They were 35-20 (!) in one-run games this season.
It wasn’t their pitching that was much better. It was their defense, which went from poor to historically good. Of course it wasn’t the manager who got Gutierrez to play center, so I don’t really have an answer to the managerial influence question
Yeah, i knew they were at the top of the fielding heap. but i don’t think i realized just how good their fielding really was. The Hardball Times has them just below average in Fielding-Independent Pitching, but right at the top of the league in Fielding Plays. Their fielding +/-, from this page, is +76!
Let me start by saying that I have absolutely no idea what OPS+ (On-base Plus Slugging plus what?) or ERA+ or X W-L are.
That said, the biggest thing the guys on the radio talk about is the attitude and “belief system” that Wak instilled in the players. I really believe he was largely responsible for the difference in “clubhouse chemistry” between 2008 and 2009; from everything I heard, the clubhouse was pure poison last season (somebody mentioned team parties requiring four different restaurants because of the number of players who couldn’t stand each other). Griffey and Sweeney were huge helps in that regard, but it started with the manager.
“Lucky” … I guess that depends on how you’re using the term. They were plagued by injuries to key players more this year than last. Erik Bedard missed most of the season; Ichiro missed more games than he’s ever missed and spent time on the DL for the first time in his ML career; we were without Beltre for much of the season; Branyan, our best power hitter, missed most of the last couple months; we never really got to see what Endy Chavez could do because of that that bozo Betancourt plowing into him and ending his season. We got Jack Wilson to replace Betancourt after we traded Yuni away, but then Wilson got hurt. The whole left side of the defense (3B, SS, and LF) was basically a revolving platoon of AAA callups.
OTOH, David Aardsma racked up 38 saves despite not taking over the closer role until the 6th week of the season (and having 0 career saves going into this season), and we somehow survived having Miguel Batista in middle relief all season long.
OPS+ and ERA+ are simply somewhat different ways to represent the OPS and ERA stats. Instead of giving an absolute number (.824, or 3.67), they take a player’s (or a team’s) OPS and ERA and place it on a scale, compared to the rest of the league.
In both cases, league average is 100.
So, an OPS+ of 90 means that the Mariners were below league average in team OPS this year. And an ERA+ of 112 means that their team ERA was somewhat better than league average. These stats are sometimes more useful than the raw numbers, because the raw numbers might mean different things in different years, depending on the overall offensive environment. The “+” figures tell you where you are compared to the other players and teams.
X W-L is a formula that predicts expected wins and losses based on runs scored and conceded. It’s also sometimes referred to as the pythagorean number. Which actually ties into one of your other points:
I wasn’t referring to things like injury.
The X W-L number, as i said, gives some idea of how many wins and losses a team should have, based on runs scored and runs conceded. A team that beats its X W-L by a considerable amount can be said to have been somewhat lucky, although some also argue that it can be a measure of “clutchness.”
And that’s also why i brought up Seattle’s 1-run games. One-run games are, in general, subject to more luck in their outcome than games decided by larger margins. Often, all it takes to win a one-run game is a lucky hit, or a single fielding error by the other team. Most teams tend to be around.500 in one-run games. But Seattle this year was 35-20 in those games, which is HUGE, and suggests that they got some luck.
This is where the “clutch” thing comes in, because some argue that, rather than luck, some teams or players have a special clutch ability that allows them to succeed in these close games. Most sabermetric dudes believe that clutch ability is probably a real thing, at least for some players, but that it’s generally far outweighed by overall skill and also by luck. Basically, over the long run, the players who are good in the “clutch” are simply the players who are good, period.
Anyway, as far a Wakamatsu goes, the folks at Baseball Prospectus seem to agree that he’s done some good things this year:
I think this is where the “attitude” and “chemistry” came into it this year. In way too many games last year, the M’s had a lead of several runs, only to have their opponent close to within 1-2 runs, at which point the M’s sort of threw up their hands and said, “Why does this always happen?” and essentially gave up. Then all the finger-pointing would start. In similar situations this year, if an opponent closed a lead there was an attitude of, “Oh hell no you don’t!” The pitching would buckle down and not give up that lucky hit, and the defense would refuse to make those stupid errors.