There are no creampuffs. The worst teams win about 40 percent of their games. The best win about 60 percent. The competition is for the 20 percent in between. The lower teams have some excellent pitchers and hitters too. Cleveland and Chicago were picked by many experts as winner on the Central. Few picked Detroit. Now that we are stomping them, they suddenly are inferior teams.
They have one or the other, anyway. I don’t know who the excellent hitters on Houston and Seattle are. Ichiro has been an excellent hitter in the past and maybe he will be in the future, but not this season.
Chicago, sure, but who the hell picked Cleveland? They were a good team for two months and everybody said they were the MLB’s surprise story. (Along with Pittsburgh.) They they reverted to form just as the Pirates did. Knowledgeable people should not have been surprised by that. Just as a cite, here are ESPN’s picks at the start of the season. I think four guys picked the Tigers to win the Central and two picked them to win the Wild Card. Chicago was the overwhelming choice, but Cleveland was nowhere to be found. In contrast I don’t think a single one of their experts picked the Yankees to the East, and it looks like they will - and I think a division win for the Yanks counts as a mild upset at best. In any case, the Tigers are playing great and deserve credit as a mostly unexpected division champ.
This year, on Houston, Brian Bogusevic (great name) and Matt Downs, though they’re both 27 and have never really done much before. J. D. Martinez might be good going forward; it’s a bit too early to tell with Jose Altuve.
I’m not faulting the Tigers for this schedule, nor am I trying to discredit their incredible winning streak. I’m just saying, as a Tigers fan, that I would have loved to seen a series or two against contenders in these waning weeks of the season, as a measure of how we might measure up in October.
And yes, Cleveland, Chicago, Baltimore, Oakland and Kansas City *are *inferior teams-- to New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit…
That is why Cleveland is 19 w -18 l against the East. They are 19-16 against the West and 11-7 in interleague play. Or the White Sox 19-16 against the West, 11-7 interleague 19-16 against the West and 15-19 East.
A lot of your team results are due to injuries. They are not inferior teams.
Corey Patterson. Why, Og, why?
The Braves are getting killed by the Mets while the Cardinals were up 2-1 over the Phillies. 2 outs, bottom of the 9th, Phils have a man on second. Fly ball to right, and the ball hits off the heel of Patterson’s glove. Run scores, to extras we go.
Hey Toronto, you can keep Rasmus…we’d just like to give Patterson back.
OgDAMMIT!
Trust me, Corey’s defense was no better here.
Corey Patterson is another example of how WAR doesn’t work for some fielders. According to that stat Patterson was an excellent defensive outfielder with Toronto, and in fact is still the best defensive player on the team.
I assure you that is insane. Patterson was an awful fielder in Toronto. He didn’t make any errors, actually, but he was just so terrible away from the ball; hesitant jumps and he never takes a straight line to the ball.
Well, the Rays won 3 out of 4 against Boston, so they’re in it. Just two behind. Bosth team have ten games left:
BOSTON:
4 vs. Baltimore, including a doubleheader
3 vs. New York
3 vs. Baltimore
TAMPA BAY:
4 vs. New York, including a doubleheader
3 vs. Toronto
3 vs. New York
As bad as the Red Sox have been lately that schedule favours them enormously; seven games against a terrible team, while the Rays have no games against bad teams at all.
The AL’s only other possible pennant race would be the Angels catching Texas but they’re now 4.5 back so I wouldn’t get excited about it.
In the NL, it appears Milwaukee has sewn up the Central, but the Braves have slipped and allowed the wild card to get interesting:
Atlanta 87-66 –
St. Louis 83-69 3.5
San Francisco 83-70 4.0
You never know.
As you noted, Boston still has to be favorite with their schedule, but if the Rays do catch them it will surely go down as one of the biggest September meltdowns in team history. On September 1 Boston led the division and were 9 games ahead of Tampa. Since then, the Red Sox have gone 4-12.
If Baltimore can pull off a miracle and take, say, 5 of 7 from the Red Sox over the next week or so, that would go some way to making up for the Orioles’ dismal season. They were never going to make the playoffs, but if they can help keep the Red Sox out, that would be a bit of a consolation. 
Go, go, Orioles…go, go, Orioles…
I am quite sure that would be the biggest blown lead after September 1 in the history of baseball. I think the Mets set the record a few years ago by blowing a 7 or 7.5 game lead.
The Tigers blew a 7 game lead they held in Sept. ,I believe it was 2006. That was devastating.
It was 2009.
Tigers had a 7-game lead on September 6, 2009, and the Mets had a 7-game lead on September 12, 2007.
The Tigers had their 7-game lead with 26 games to go in the season, while the Mets had only 17 games to go. They’re both pretty awful, but the Mets have the slight edge because they gave up their lead in a considerably shorter span of games.
On September 3 this year, with 24 games to go, the Rays were 9 games behind Boston.
Mariano Rivera just got save # 602!
From the NY Daily News:
None of that is news of course, but it is still amazing to contemplate.
More about Mo, from ESPN:
Perhaps most impressive is that at 42 there’s still no sign he’s slowing down. He continues to just blow people away.
Are you sure the Braves won’t beat it in the very year it’s set? Christ, we just lost to the Marlins on a 2-run walkoff (first loss for the Tribe in Miami this year). Lead over St. Louis is down to 2.5 games. What was the lead on 9/1, wasn’t it 8.5 or 9.5?
And has 42 more saves in the postseason. More than the next two on the board. He is so good the 602 saves does not mean he is the best closer, it means he lends his greatness to the saves stat.