Go Pirates!
I’m sorry for singing the song, guys. My bad. Uh…
“Let’s go, Mets go, do it again!”
The Cubs got off to a rough start, adjusting to a new manager and some new players, but if you look at their record since, oh, trading away catcher Barrett, they look like a team that at least deserves to make the playoffs, especially when you look at the competition in their division.
I don’t blame the Cardinals’ collapse on the Rick Ankiel story or on anything LaRussa has or hasn’t done, but on the fact that it’s been a long, hard season, they’ve lost an awful lot of players to injury, and many of the ones they have left are pretty worn out. Which is why it doesn’t bother me that they’re not going to make it to the postseason: unlike last year, they don’t have enough left in them to do much even if they got there.
(I think Ankiel’s slump is due, not just to the HGH story, but to the fact that major league pitchers are learning how to pitch to him, and to reversion to the mean after a hot streak. La Russa’s contract is up for renewal and the end of this year, and he refuses to say whether he’ll stay until after the season’s over, so of course people are speculating.)
It’s my fault. “Step on a crack, break your team’s closer’s back”.
It would be bad for America, by which I mean me. Go Tribe!!
I’m still dreaming of a Subway Series even though it most probably won’t happen this year
I would sign up for that in a heart beat as that would mean non-stop baseball talk all through October on the local Sports Radio programs, The Yanks will not only clinch the Wild Card, but get past the Angels. I will take my chances against the Mets. Your manager is not a better field manager than my manager unlike the Angels or Cubs manager. It does not hurt that the AL has home field in the World Series either.
zamboniracer, on behalf of Yankee fans and strangely enough Red Sox fans, thank your Indians for spanking the Tigers almost out of the picture.
Jim
In Dempster’s defense, he was not available because he had problems with fluid loss.
I’m sure there’s more of a book on Ankiel now, but the coincidence of the Cards’ dropping out of the race exactly at the time his name surfaced in connection with HGH–that’s too close for me. St. Louis righted the ship when they finally shook off the bad vibes of injury, arrest and death–having more bad vibes come along was a bundle of logs thrown on a dying fire. Psyche matters in baseball; that’s why I’m astounded by these people who keep shrugging their shoulders and saying it won’t make a difference if Boston gets passed by the Yankees. The hell it won’t. The Red Sox always live with a fragile psyche–getting dumped like that after leading the whole way will have a major impact on them.
Oh yeah, and “fluid loss”? That’s not a euphemism for crying, is it? I could have sworn there’s no crying in baseball.
On the other hand, “fluid loss” could be a euphemism for something much worse… :eek:
Fluid loss is almost always a euphemism for the flu. As in, spent the night puking his guts out and hasn’t been able to keep anything down.
I dislike our current insistance on finding something sinister in everything that happens. Even guys you want to hate sometimes simply get sick.
Jeez, calm down. I was just making a joke, hoping to lead young minds down sick and twisted paths. I wasn’t after anything sinister.
Isn’t that statement oxymoronic? 
Cubs made it in, and I’m happy until whatever it is that will eventually screw the October up for them… :eek:
So what’s the early line on today’s game? Do we like the Padres or Rockies? I think I’m leaning toward the Padres, just based on Peavy starting, but it’s tenuous. The Rockies have it goin’ on, and I don’t feel good about picking against them. What does everyone else think about this?
Agreed. Playing one game at home for the chance to complete one of the most amazing late-season surges ever, I don’t see how you can.
I would personally love to see this kind of play-in game every year for the wild card. Make the Yankees, for example, play this year’s fifth-best record-holder Detroit in a one-game play-in for the wild card. And put that game the day before the division series is expected to start. That would certainly make the wild-card far less appealing than the division championship: You’re stuck in a 50-50 crapshoot, and pretty much won’t have your best pitcher available for the first three games of the division series.
And yes, I know the Mariners tied the Tigers for fifth-best record in the AL, but the Tigers beat them 4-6 in head-to-head games. Make at the tie-breaker for play-in qualification, and you’re all set.
I think Peavy gives the edge to the Padres, but it is at Colorado and no one is hotter right now than the Rockies. I honestly thought the Padres would overtake Arizona. The team is missing two of its best players. So in the end, I would bet with great hesitation on the Rockies winning tonight.
Jim
This would be extremely entertaining, and improve the current system tremendously.
No, this is actually ludicrous. Why punish the Yankees for winning 6 more games than Detroit/Seattle? Why reward those teams for losing 6 more games than the Yankees? At some point the records have to count for something.
I understand wanting to make the wild card team even more of a wild card, to make finishing in that position less appealing, but if you’re going to just nullify the regular season results, I think that goes way overboard. If it’s going to be that much of a crap shoot who gets in, why not really make it a shooting match–instead of playing baseball, have both teams compete in a one day skeet shooting tournament to see who gets in. That would be just as relevant as whimsically tossing aside the regular season records and giving teams that lost out a seemingly endless series of chances to get in.
Tweak the wild card team’s rules of engagement–make them play all first round games on the road, something like that–but don’t lose all perspective.
IMO there shouldn’t be a wild card at all, so the argument that the Yankees would be “punished” doesn’t wash. They shouldn’t be there to start with; the Red Sox had a better record in their division.
It’s admittedly a semi-facetious argument, but it’s pretty clear after 10+ years there is absolutely no playoff advatage to winning your division in baseball. At least this year the Padres and Rockies will be taxed for their less-than-championship status as wild-card contenders.
Yep, I like that. It’s essentially three division winners plus two Wild Cards, where the Wild Cards have a 1-game series to decide who moves on to play the division winner.
The only problem with this is you’d have to ditch the rule about the team with the best record not playing the WC if the WC is from their division. The team with the best record in the division should get the advantage of playing the team that had to play the extra round, no matter the division.