Bunch of simultaneous games today, but I’m thinking the one to watch, the highest-leverage, is the Astros’. Keep tabs on Rangers-Angels, and switch to that if the Astros’ ends quickly or becomes a blowout either way.
It’s kind of fun…if the Angels beat the Rangers there WILL be a game tomorrow regardless of what Houston does. If the Angels lose, there won’t.
That’s a good way to look at it.
Game Score of 104–second only to Kerry Wood’s 20-K game among nine inning affairs, which clocked in at 105. (Of course Wood hit a batter but HBs are not counted…and again I ask why not?)
Kershaw with 300 strikeouts in a season.
Good for Kershaw!
An unpleasant way to go out for Mark Buehrle, if indeed this is the end of his career: eight unearned runs in less than a full inning against Tampa.
And I do believe that settles the question of who should get the NL Cy Young this season. 
I’ll give you 2-1 odds that a Dodger walks away with the hardware.
Pity they can’t tie the award.
It’s possible they could.
Honestly, and I say this without wanting to diminish how amazing Arrieta has been, but I don’t understand the case for him as the Cy Young award winner. If ERA is your metric you have to give it to Greinke who posted the best ERA since the dead ball era (or something). If your metric is war or fip or strikeouts or peak dominance or anything like that you have to go Kershaw. Arrieta has wins, but he also has more losses than Greinke which should mean something. He faced more hitters than Greinke but Kershaw more than him. He had amazing individual games but Scherzer just smoked him in that category and no on thinks he should get the award and Kershaw has been more dominant over the same run of Arrieta being insane in everything but ERA… In which case you have to go back to Greinke.
What am I missing. This isn’t sarcasm I haven’t seen the case made. Everyone talking about Arrieta talks like the case is self evident. It isn’t to me. I may well be missing something.
There are a group of people who believe that wins are all that’s important for pitchers and if you lose a game 1-0 then you didn’t pitch well enough. For that group if you’ve got the magic 20 wins and are near the top in everthing else then you got it done while the others couldn’t. These people shouldn’t be allowed to talk about baseball let alone vote.
So the Astros don’t quite manage to get home field for the wild card game despite the Yankees trying to hand it to them; still a nice end and a great season for them. I don’t really see them going deep in the playoffs with all the low-OBP guys in their lineup.
The Yanks are going to have to get by without CC Sabathia. He’s going to rehab instead.
I wonder if CC’s alcohol problem had something to do with his mediocre record and his tendency to have a complete meltdown in at least one inning in every game? The Yanks will probably do just as well without him.
My prediction: They aren’t going very far in this playoff anyway. Even if they win Tuesday’s one-game playoff, they will then run into the Royals, who will squash them flat.
It seems to me the likelier problem with Sabathia is just that he’s older and has thrown a zillion innings. The end comes to us all.
New York is an 87-win team with Sabathia and and 87-win team with any random AAAA pitcher in his place so really this makes no difference.
I’m going to post DS predictions after the Wild Card games but why try to predict the WC games? One game, who knows. Maybe Dalla Keuchel strikes out 12 men, maybe he doesn’t make it out of the third. Maybe Jake Arrieta no-hits the Pirates, maybe he loses 1-0 to Gerrit Cole. Anything could happen.
Regarding Sabathia - things have changed a lot since the days of Grover Cleveland Alexander (some of whose best pitching including in the World Series came when he was hung over).
So I just found out that tonight’s game is only being broadcast on ESPN and I can’t watch it on MLB.tv. I’m going to be pissed if I end up missing all of the games that aren’t on broadcast which is basically just the ALCS and World Series.
All it takes is money:
I have postseason tv but it won’t let me watch the AL wild card game. So I’m listening to it…