The Tigers were getting healthy, but now Sheffield is out indefinitely. Rodney has been an animal out of the pen and Zumaya is finally back. I still don’t see the Indians winning the Central, but its going to be down to the wire.
Same here. As I posted in another thread, the massacre would have never happened had Earl Weaver been at the helm. He would have spontaneously combusted OR killed someone with a baseball bat and the game would have been called much, much earlier.
Lived and died with the Cubs since 1984. We actually have a magic number (36) which is a big step up from most seasons.
Inevitable?? What do you mean?? You guys don’t have a long enough history for anything to be “inevitable.” 
Try the inevitability of the Cubs not being in the World Series. Now THAT’s inevitable. :eek:
How did my Brewers fall from 7 games ahead to 1 game behind? Especially to the Cubs 
The Cards are back from the dead; Pujols once again looks like he might be some kind of demi-god; even Rolen has started smacking the ball again. And .500 might end up being good enough in the NL Central. So, I’m ready for a fun pennant race (if you can call hurtling toward .500 a race).
ZipperJJ has pretty much written what I would have about the Cleveland Indians. Deep down, though, I’m still optimistic (even crazy). The World Series doesn’t seem too far-fetched as a possibility for the Tribe this year. We shall see.
Mets continue to hang on to first place, where they have been since April, and yet for some reason every caller on the local talk radio wants to talk about how disappointing they’ve been. Carlos Delgado is having a brutal season by his standards, but the offense is clicking again with Moises Alou back from injury and not yet injured again. It’s actually sort of amazing that they are where they are, considering.
I mean, pitching is a huge concern going into the playoffs. At this stage of his career, Glavine’s going to keep you in a lot of games but not win any by himself. John Maine has been just awful in the last few weeks. Oliver Perez’s ERA is up half a run since the last time we had this conversation. Only Orlando Hernandez keeps pitching well on a consistent basis, and that’s about as frightening a statement as I’ve ever made about a baseball team.
And when Damien Easley and his .824 OPS coming off the bench went down, the Mets went and brought in a 41-year-old first basemen with an OPS under .730 to take his at bats. Oh, and the starting catcher at the moment is Mike DeFelice, but that’s OK, because his backup is Sandy Alomar. And this is a first place team.
But Pedro’s coming back. Hope springs eternal.
Those of us with long memories remember the O’s getting swept in a 4-game series by the then-abysmal (2nd-year expansion team) Blue Jays in 1978, with one of those games being a 24-10 loss. (O’s motto: if you’re going to lose big, at least make it look like a football score!) Weaver had 2 position players (Larry Harlow, Elrod Hendricks) pitch a combined 3 innings of relief to keep from wearing out his bullpen.
Oh, and my team, the Nats, is doing surprisingly well. They’re currently only the 10th worst team in the majors, after having been preseason picks to not only be the worst, but potentially rival the '62 Mets. They’ve followed up their 9-25 start by going 49-45 since then.
I have no idea how Manny Acta’s doing it - mirrors, I expect. With 506 runs scored and 598 given up, they should be about 53-75 at this point, but they’re 58-70.
My team is doing okay at the expense of your team. However, the Yanks are only five games back, and there are six games left between the two teams, so who knows? The Sox have already blown quite a lead (14 games at one point), and nobody should think they’re not capable of blowing the rest of it.
However, it makes for a better postseason if the Yanks get the wildcard, so in spite of my ever-present fear they’ll win the division, I’m hoping for that. Of course, I suppose it’s possible for the Yanks to win the division and the Sox to win the wildcard, which would be like deja vu all over again.
The Indians are a puzzle. Starting pitching is extremely good since they dumped Lee back into the minors. They can’t score runs at all, which is baffling. They essentially have a two-pitcher bullpen in the two Raffys. (In my household, we call 'em Raffy (Betancourt) and Gilligan (Perez).)
Harlow ended up with an ERA of 67.05 or something like that. You have to love it.
What terrific memories of watching them on WMAL (Channel 2) and rooting for Al Bumbry - a hometown guy.
It will be an exciting 34 games or so. If, if the Yanks can pull it down to two or three back by September 14th, it will be one of the biggest regular season showdowns in a long time.
So far your closer has held up really well. I think this is at least a mild surprise from spring training talk and predictions.
JIm
They say in the paper they’ve been consciously sparing him. But not to worry, in any case we have Gagne!
I whoosh easily, that was meant as a major joke right?
It sort of depends on what day it is.
67.50, actually (5 runs in 2/3 of an inning), but good recall!
And a fine CF and leadoff hitter. He was on the DL for most of 1978, which is a good part of the reason they won ‘only’ 90 games that year, as compared with 97 and 102 in 1977 and 1979, respectively.
Not that the Red Sox have ever blown a lead of that size before! (While we’re speaking of 1978…:p)
We just dumped Tomko (Good Riddance!) to sign…David Wells? WTF?
Desperation time, I guess. I don’t know what Wells has left in the tank. But we are short on pitchers with Wolf and Schmidt going bust, so we had to do something. Guess there wasn’t anything promising in the farm system, so we hired on someone San Diego let go. Whatever. Can’t be any worse than Tomko, in any case.
God the Blue Jays suck.
The GM has said he plans to bring pretty much the same team back next year. He thinks they’re just fine the way they are, that it’s a championship club. They’re 64-63. What’s that cliche - that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results?