MLB post season: 2009

A starter who has already been told it’s his last inning, at least probably, has a tendency to dig deep and go after batters with a few more MPH on his heater. That gets guys out in that inning but leaves him unable to go further.

Seeing Pedro should have reminded you of that. :wink:

<grumble grumble> Cubs pitchers would undoubtedly give up runs to Cub hitters if we looked closely enough… :mad:

Teams that score more runs than the other team tend to win more games?

I’d always suspected that.

Tell that to the 1960 Yankees.

See, i think there’s an important difference here; it’s a distinction in the effect of the diacritical mark.

The accent in Panama/á really only indicates emphasis; it tells you where to place the rising inflection of your voice when speaking the word. The eñe, on the other hand, fundamentally changes the way the word is pronounced, and actually constitutes a distinct letter of the Spanish alphabet.

Saying ee-ban-ez is quite different from ee-ban-yez, and it’s the tilde that tells us about that difference. If there were no chance of confusion, i’d be less concerned. But there are people with the last name Ibanez, and people with the last name Ibañez; the two are not the same, and i think it’s useful to make the distinction.

It’s clear i’ve lost this battle before i’ve begun. If FOX isn’t already doing it, they’re unlikely to change anyway.

Nah, Burnett was pretty steady all game. I didn’t notice any extra intensity in that last inning. His pitch counts in innings 5 - 7 were 12, 11, 10 respectively.

Anybody spot the trend?

Or what about this one?

Or this?

Or this?

What’s sad is that gonzo is now going to believe none of us think pitching is valuable or a huge part of the game as well. Not that he ever did…

Ibanez: I know, right? What is he, a guitar? :smiley:

OTOH, Ibáñez, like Alex Rodriguez, is American born and raised. I have a hard time lumping either of them into the group of “Latin players”, a tag which seems to me should apply only to players who are actually from Latin American countries. I mean, I never hear Oakland A’s catcher Kurt Suzuki (born in Hawaii) being lumped in with Japanese players.

ETA: Not to mention all the “black” players who would be considered “black” players were it not for the fact that they’re from Latin American countries.

McCarver and Buck both pronounced the name correctly as Ibáñez every time I noticed. But I wasn’t keeping track.

Game three is Pettitte vs. Hamels. What are the chances on Lee going in game four? I’m sure Sabathia will pitch that one and I don’t really think Philly will ask Blanton or Park to start.

Since when does English make an effort to spell foreign names the way they are pronounced? It used to be fairly common to see French François spelled with the cedilla in English, but I usually just see it as Francois now.

An alternative way to spell Ibáñez in English without the tilde would be Ibanyez, just as we spell cañon as canyon. However, English is not too prone to deal with diacriticals from other languages in this way, even if we sometimes spell German Müller as Mueller.

Yeah, the commentators get it right. And it’s spelled Ibáñez on the back of his uniform.

I don’t dispute a word of this. I’m not arguing “This is how it is.” I’m arguing “This is how it should be.” English has become even more of a default global language since the advent of the internet, and i think that respecting the accent marks of other languages, especially when they actually help us with pronunciation, is a small and fairly simple step.

Anyway, i’ve probably hijacked the thread enough with this language discussion. I think we should go back to talking about how hitting shuts down pitching (or was it the other way round?).

One more quick hijack:

My comment on Latin players was simply designed to observe that, given how many Hispanic names there are in baseball, and how many players actually come from Mexico and Central and South America, i think it would be good if they were spelled with the accent marks. Whether Ibáñez was born in Cleveland or Cuba, Dayton or the Dominican Republic, doesn’t really change my argument.

Well, yes it does. If Ibanez is born in America, his name is not Ibáñez, but Ibanez. That’s what will be on his birth record, and that’s his official name. The fact that it would be written Ibáñez in Spanish is irrelevant.

Or, as I pointed out, do you insist that we spell Swedish/Norse/Danish names using the various Scandinavian characters? And what do you want us to do about Poles or Hungarians or Serbs? Greeks? Russians? Chinese? Japanese? etc., etc., etc.

Taken to a logical conclusion, it gets a bit difficult to contemplate, don’t you think?
Back on topic: I thought it was good running trumps good fielding. The heck with hitting and pitching; you do one and the other follows naturally. :smiley:

But good throwing beats good running.

And good stretching beats good scratching.

Definitely not Park, no. I believe that Manuel would be OK with sending Blanton out there, though. If it’s 2-1 Yankees at that point I think there’s a good chance you’d see Lee.

Blanton it is, says Manuel.

That was never the claim. Don’t argue with yourself. I just said the people who just loved the Yankee offense and touted all their great numbers were missing the point. The Yankee offense has not been the big factor in the series. Pitching shuts down hitting. that is where series are won and lost. Hitting has been of little consequence.

No, you didn’t.

This is what you said:

RickJay has already asked you to provide evidence that anyone said this, and i now repeat the call: show us one single person who said that the Yankees would be unbeatable. Put up, or shut up.

You’re right, those home runs hit by Chase Utley were completely irrelevant to the Game 1 outcome, and the dingers hit by Teixera and Matsui in Game 2 also had no connection with the final result.