Says an NL fan. 
Lighten up, Francis.
I think he is a Baltimore fan.
Way to stop the skid Reds! Erupting for four runs in the 10th to break a 2-2 tie against the A’s…with THREE homers in the final inning by Joey Votto, Scott Rolen (talk about resurrecting a career!) and Ramon Hernandez…
Where’s that AL superiority now?
Last night’s D-backs dismantling of the Yankees was priceless. The D-backs have been a huge disappointment this year and it sucks to fill the stadium with the opposing team’s fans. I imagine the ESPN commentators started talking about Brett Favre around the second inning since their beloved Yankees were getting embarrassed by a last place team.
You do know that Morgan dislikes the Yankees don’t you? ESPN itself likes the Yanks and Red Sox for the ratings they draw but their lead announcer has a strong anti-Yankees bias. Or do you mean the studio drones at ESPN baseball tonight?
It’s still the A’s, friend.
It’s worse than I thought.
Correct, although the team i root for has no relevance to my observation about ElvisL1ves’ silly assertion regarding the significance of the results of a single, three-game series.
sniff
Well, they are better than the Mariners.
It’s even worse than that.
How is Brennann Boesch viewed by other around the league? He has been clutch and we Detroiters love him. i know it is soon, but he has been around for a while and has not dropped off. He is getting pitched around a bit now. They pass him to face Guillen who is a 300 hitter.
Sure, and I’d happily bet $100 Jiminez will not win 13 out of every 14 games with an ERA just over 1 from here on in, as I’ve said three or four times. But up until now, he has, and so his performance has been amazing.
I agree, but from what I can tell, Incensed does not; his argument is that Jiminez has not, in fact, been all that awesome.
Except that he’s said in basically every post that Jimenez has been awesome.
I think I have seen every one of Ubaldo’s games this year. The Rockies are a very good defensive team (although now Tulowitzki is out), but they haven’t been doing anything special when Jiminez pitches. He just has tremendous movement on a high-90’s fastball, and he induces hitters to drive the ball into the dirt around home plate. This leads to easy ground ball outs. There is only one time I can remember where he got what seemed to be a lucky break - it was the last pitch of a complete game shutout. IIRC, it was his 128th pitch of the game and the hitter lined out hard right at the left fielder.
There have probably been some other instances, but I don’t remember them. The point being that the balls that get put into play against him are soft grounders for the most part.
So the Reds get swept by the lowly Mariners, and then sweep the average A’s.
I can’t figure my team out, though I know that they are traditionally just horrible when they go on the road to the West Coast.
Is there any credence to teams accustomed to playing in EST just getting their shit all out of whack because to them, the night games start after 10:00pm? Does the travel and time change really screw with them? You’d think they’d be used to it.
Fair enough, but I don’t think he’s been “top three or four in the league awesome.” He’s been season for the ages awesome. So far.
Thank you for that.
Given that the two most recent outs Ubaldo recorded (prior to tonight) were on a line drive double play that saved 1 possibly 2 runs (not to mention the resulting baserunner/s), and that the highest leverage pitch Ubaldo’s thrown all year resulted in a line drive that was caught, saving 2 possibly 3 runs (and the baserunner), and given Ubaldo’s line drive rate nearly doubles in the situations most likely to change the outcome of the game…well given all that, I have to think your eyes have deceived you.
Look, what I’m talking about is probably on the order of 10-30 ‘lucky’ plays, At 'em balls, what have you. Not a whole lot, in and of itself, but when combined with the fact that that luck has come predominately in critical situations (see post 109) it’s plain that the man’s ERA is warped considerably.
Alright, I give up.
Ubaldo Jimenez is having a season for the ages.*
*contingent upon his being the first confirmed possessor of telekinesis and actively (but discreetly) willing balls into his fielder’s gloves at appropriate moments.
Well the Sox got to Jiminez last night, although they subsequently blew it anyway. But let’s get off that topic and start talking about something fun; Terrible teams.
Now on one hand we’ve got the Orioles. Does anyone remember how just 3 months ago people were talking about how the Orioles were an up and coming team who would definitely get out of the basement this year and kick Toronto’s ass? Um, so that isn’t happening:
- New York, 45-27, -
- Tampa Bay, 42-29, 2.5
- Boston, 43-30, 2.5
- Toronto, 38-34 7.0
- Baltimore, 19-52, 25.5
While granting that the Blue Jays are a somewhat atypical fourth place team, the Orioles are further out of fourth place than any other team in the major leagues is out of FIRST place. Ouch. At their current rate of misery the Orioles would go 44-118.
But wait; there’s the Pirates. The Pirates are 25-46, but in fact have been LUCKY to win 25 games; their Pythagorean projection is a lofty 20-51.
Could the Pirates outstink the Orioles? Both teams have sucked all year and sucked recently, too; they’re both 2-8 in their last 10. (Actually, both teams have sucked for years and years.) Will the Orioles put on a scorching 6-4 run to overtake them? Or can the Pirates hold them off?
We also have the Diamondbacks with one of the historically bad bullpens. Overall a better team than the O’s or Pirates but hard to win games these days with an extremely bad bullpenand a lack of stud starters. Their closer, Chad Qualls is 1-4 with only 12 saves and a 8.88 ERA. Most of their bullpen has a 6+ ERA. Actually the best thing you can say about the Snakes is they have some power.
Cleveland is pretty bad themselves.
One thing interesting about baseball is that you have to be a pretty good player to set some of the more “dubious” records.
Take Mark Reynolds for example. He’s a strikeout machine, breaking the record for most K’s in a season with 204 in 2008, then coming right back and breaking his own record with 223 in '09. His “strikeout average” for his career is a robust .382, or 16 points higher than Ty Cobb’s batting average.
Yet Reynolds still had a really good season last year, with 44 HR’s, an .892 OPS and 24 SBs in 33 attempts. This year his average has gone into the toilet (.215) and he’ll again break his strikeout record if he gets as many PAs as he did last year. But he’ll still probably finish with around 40 HRs and 100 RBI.