There is a rumor that October has been canceled this year for he first time since 1994. Is there any truth to these horrible rumors?
Damn, just damn!
Good luck to all you fans that have teams that are still in the hunt.
Losing 2 of 3 to Seattle is just a stake through my heart.
Toronto is basically an all-pitching-and-defense team. They win games 1-0, like today. Their offense is very dry, with no real offensive A-list stars, no power, and no speed.
Players to watch:
Young Travis Snider’s fun to watch; he started this season in A ball and went through AA and AAA to make the majors. He’s still tentative, but the kid has power. Only 20 years old.
If you’re lucky, **Roy Halladay’s **start will come around during the Boston series. (Since they play a doubleheader Saturday, it’ll probably have to.) Toronto has a ridiculously awesome pitching staff - they are by a significant margin the best pitching-and-fielding baseball team in the world - but even among the leagues’ best staff Halladay stands out, a giant among men. If you’ve never seen him pitch before I urge you to get as close to the plate as seating will allow. He is an underappreciated genius at his craft, the best pitcher in the majors and a wonder to watch.
Also be sure to watch **John McDonald **play shortstop, if he starts a game or two. He’s little known because he can’t hit, but defensively he’s a marvel.
Toronto has been a very good team since **Cito Gaston **became manager, so it shapes up to be a really fun series. It’s unlikely at this point Boston can miss the postseason, so it might not be meaningful, though.
Weren’t you the one who was ready to crucify Ricciardi a few months ago for making the horrible choice of that obvious has-been Gaston as manager? 
This confuses me. The Mets were up 3 for the final week, but there are more than a week of games in the season’s final month. We were up as many as 7 in September.
I’m sitting six rows behind the Sox dugout, so I expect I’ll be able to see him as close as Fenway security allows. My host is allowing me to pay for the tax on my seats (bringing daughter #2 along), and that comes to a hefty $50 a pop, so I think these are in a pretty prime location.
Thanks, **RickJay **(and Telemark, too!) for the info. I thought Vernon Wells was a big star–is he less stellar than I’d thought? From what I’ve heard, I thought he was the Jayss superstar, fast, powerful, all that and a bag of chips. No?
I love pitching and D teams. Are the two kids you named (Snider and MacDonald) playing regularly? Who plays when they sit? Any other talented fielders?
For defense, Pedroia at second is a real Gold Glove candidate. If Youkilis is back at first he’s extremely good but less flashy. In the outfield and on the basepaths keep an eye on Ellsbury who is pretty much always the fastest player on the field. Last year he scored from second on a wild pitch; that was a thing of beauty. And amazingly Coco Crisp has come back to life as a hitter and his fielding is always fun to watch. With him and Ellsbury in the outfield they cover a lot of ground.
And wait until the Sox resume allowing Becket to use his elbow to its fullest potential. Beck in the Saddle Again - Dirt Dogs - Boston Red Sox Nation
On September 14th of last year, the Mets were up 6.5 games on the Phillies. This was right before the Phils’ three game sweep.
No.
I criticized the move not because of the relative merits of Gaston - at that point in the season they were dead and it would not have mattered if they had hired Karl Rove to manage the team - but in the sense that I was criticizing Riccardi’s lack of a plan in general. I’ve been ripping him for that for years; if you look back you’ll find I tore him for releasing Frank Thomas four weeks into the season. It’s not that I was enamored with Frank Thomas or thought they’d be a worse team without him; it’s that there is clearly something wrong with your strategic planning when you think on April 1 that you want Frank Thomas and then decide on April 25, with no additional unexpected information, that you do not.
So it was with Gibbons. Gibbons’s strengths and weaknesses as a manager were just as well known in April as they were the day he was canned. It’s not like he hadn’t been managing the team for three years already. There weas nothing he or the team were doing that was new.
The Mets briefly surged up to 7 games ahead on September 12, so I was wrong; that was the first 7-game-behind comeback after Sept 1 in major league history. I think.
I know nobody ahead by seven games ON SEPT 1 has ever blown it. The Mets appears to have outdone that, getting up to 7 games ahead and then blowing it with less than three weeks left.
Tigers and A’s are playing a good old-fashioned game of “who can suck at pitching the most”. 12-8 tigers in the 5th. Detroit had a 6 run 3rd and Oakland just got 5 in the 5th.
Mike Gonzalez blew a save today for the first time in four years - granted, he only had about forty opportunities in all that time, thanks to Tommy John surgery and the occasional demotion to set-up man. Fortunately, the Braves managed to win in extra innings somehow, bringing their record to 3-10 in such situations on the year.
In related news, their record in one-run games is now 8-27, and they’re playing seven games under what’s to be expected given their runs scored vs. runs against. It’s the third straight year they’ve significantly underperformed.
Sometimes I wonder if Bobby Cox has lost it. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather manage the team, especially since all the players, on and off the current roster, love the guy, but I do wonder.
And Papelbon blew a save after the Sox came from behind in the 8th. sigh
(I’m mostly just replying to subscribe. What’s up with the subscribe function?)
Anyway, the Cards are toying with me again by getting to 3.5 out of the wild card. And to top it off, they beat the Cubs in dramatic fashion last night, just to trick me into thinking they’re making a late run. It would have been better for my blood pressure if they’d just packed it in for the year. I haven’t had much time to follow sports the past two weeks, and now I find that I have to start making myself sick over the games again.
By the way, are we sure Pujols is human? Maybe the reports of his balky elbow have been exaggerated, but it sounds like he’s hitting .360 with one arm behind his back. Damn.
…and then what?
Seriously, what is the fan sentiment like for Manny in Boston? I was a little surprised at the venom aimed at Johnny Damon for simply taking the best free-agent contract he could get, even if it was with the rival Yankees, because what he did as a Red Sox was just too historic (hitting that back-breaking grand slam off of Kevin Brown in Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS at Yankee Stadium).
Then he, a professional baseball player who came to the Red Sox as a free agent with a lucrative contract, left as a free agent with a contract more lucrative than the Sox were offering. The Sox knew what it would take to keep him, and decided not to do it; even after all the magic he’d spun for them, new contracts are always a computation of future return on investment. Subsequent history even shows that they probably got the analysis right (see also: Pedro Martinez).
If I were a Red Sox fan, Johnny Damon, David Ortiz, Curt Schilling and even Dave Roberts, would get a “forever” pass from me, wherever else they ended up playing in the careers or even doing against the Red Sox in another uniform. The guy I’d be pissed about would be Manny Ramirez, because he clearly started to dog it while still signed to a contract. Missing two games of a then-crucial series against the Yankees with a phantom knee problem was absolutely inexcusably unprofessional.
Good Lord. I just looked at the standings and saw that the Dodgers actually have a magic number! Even if it’s an absurdly high one, there have just been so many points in the season where I’ve had a hard time imagining seeing that little parenthetical next to the team name at the top of the standings, it’s making me a little giddy.
What’s funny to me is that the Angels have a magic number of just 2, have been on top of their division since Day One, it seems, and yet no one really seems to be talking about them taking home the championship this year.
Personally, I hate the Angels, but I want to know what the great baseball minds in this thread think about their chances in the postseason this year.
Amazingly, Toronto still controls its playoff destiny, since they’re 7 back of Boston and play Boston 7 times.
I figure the odds of them beating Boston all seven times are more or less 128 to 1 against. They’d then have to win more of their other games than Boston does, which assuming that’s roughly an even chance means that basically they’re still 256 to 1 against making the postseason. I guess it’s better odds than winning the lottery and I still bought a 6/49 ticket today.
There’s probably no stronger argument I’ve ever seen for the old saw that games in April are worth just as much as the ones in September. Toronto might be the best team in the AL now, but they start counting in April, and the crappy team that was running Shannon Stewart out there every day fell too far behind for this team to win.
I always thought the bad rap given to Damon was horribly unjustified. He did what was right for him, and it’s unfortunate that he went to NYY but I can’t blame him. As it turns out, it probably turned out better for Boston then for NY.
Manny, on the other hand, deserves a good part of his bad rap. Boston fans will always have a certain fondness for his awkward kid with the ability to hit persona and he was instrumental in our two recent WS. But, he stopped playing when we needed him (against NY) and he essentially faked injuries, removing himself from the action to further his own cause. I don’t think he’ll be welcomed with open arms when he returns to Fenway. RSN won’t forgive and forget easily.
Trot Nixon was embraced with open arms when he came back, and Kevin Millar has always been treated well at Fenway.
Tigers are going to start Willis and Freddy Garcia next week. That is interesting. They claimed they were not going to play for next season.
Also, someone please check my understanding of how the first round of the playoffs works. I think I’m correct about this.
If the season ended today, the Cubs, with the best NL record, would be slated to play the wild card team. But since the wild card team will almost certainly come out of the same division (NL Central), the Cubs would instead host the division winner with the worst record, which would be the Dodgers. And that means the Mets would have home field against the Brewers, even though the Brewers have a better record.
Am I mistaken about any of that?
That is correct.