Playoff Baseball for 10/14
JMB · October 14, 2006 at 1:00 pm · Filed Under Game Threads, General baseball
Oakland at Detroit, 1:30pm
New York at St. Louis, 5:05pm
Hooray (woosh) for games (ba-dum) with different (buzz) start times (ka-chunk).
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187 Responses to “Playoff Baseball for 10/14”
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Sure, he’s basically Mickey Tettleton at this point
Except he holds his bat properly.
147: Here’s one….
Clemens: xFIP=3.76
Oswalt: xFIP= 3.75
Pettitte: xFIP=3.82
But I have to say, watching the Astros play was painful….
Yeah, the Astros could have done some damage had they made it.
And heck, the Mets had Pedro and El Duque until a few weeks ago, pushing Glavine and Maine to the back of the rotation (though Maine probably would have been in the pen, with Traschel still in the rotation).
And I wasn’t surprised to see Oliver hitting. They need him to rest the pen.
McCarver appearently doesn’t understand that there is going to be a game 4, and a game 5…
There you go, the Astros. A FULL season of Clemens probably gets them in, and then, yeah, a series facing Clemens, Oswalt, Pettite… heh heh.
But then Ensberg crapped the bed, they had to go and get Huff, they got so little from their role players, the back of their rotation was terrible, their bullpen was mostly terrible….
Yeah, you have to have at least a capable rest of the ballclub for my inferred axiom to work.
And El Duque would have matched up nicely against all the Cards’ RHBs.
Who were you going to hit, McCarver? Gimpy Cliff Floyd? Ancient Julio Franco? C’mon.
re: Pedro and El Duque… with El Duque, you never quite know what you’ll get come October, and Pedro when healthy only gives you about 6 innings of good pitching, maybe 7. They still have to overwork that bullpen.
He can’t hit (right now), but Rolen sure can pick it.
Actually, Lowe, Penny and Maddux were a solid combo for the Dodgers. They just… weren’t solid in the NLDS. Hm.
Rolen has basically has three post-seasons lost/tainted with due to being tackled by on-comming baserunners. At least he got a chance to take Clemens deep.
Whaddya mean you don’t know what you’re gonna get from El Duque? In the regular season, maybe. But in the post-season he’s got a 2.55 ERA in over 100 innings.
My point, though, is that even though he and Pedro aren’t Johnson/Schilling, they still get the likes of Perez and Traschel out of the Mets’ rotation. Huge upgrade.
OK Mets, gotta get a couple here.
… and not cough up any more. Go, sweatshop bullpen! Daddy needs more outs! (whoever Daddy is)
re: El Duque… point taken, though I think the durability is the bigger issue than his performance when healthy.
The Mets should be so much better than the Cardinals, its kind of unfortunate for the sport that they had their rotation gutted right before the post-season. Otherwise they most likely would have rolled over the Cardinals, and had a reasonable chance against Detroit.
Now the question is, “Will the National League make it 12 in a row?”
#149:
I’ve seen about 60 games with edmonds in center this season. If he is a good centerfielder then i’m the non-caucasian, female, ex porn star, 7-time divorcee, who is currently having an affair with a married guy named Al Ki-Aida, and who will be the republican nominee for president in ’08….
Then there is that little thing about Edmonds and the left-handed kryptonite….. (which is surprising since the NL isn’t exactly stocked with quality lefties as evidenced by Aurilia’s splits against lefties: .347/.406/.680).
Obviously he is old and oft-injured….but he also isn’t a great defender any longer…
166: 12 what?
12 straight WS game losses to the AL, I’m guessing.
Erm. I guess I was confused. I thought the Marlins and the Diamondbacks were in the NL.
170:
2004 WS: AL swept NL (4 games)
2005 WS: AL swept NL (4 games)
2006 WS: JI wonders if the AL will sweep the NL again
that would be 12 in a row…
Ah. Gotcha. Games, not series.
Darren Oliver with 6 shutout innings in relief, martyring himself to save that overworked bullpen, and with Michael Tucker (?!?!?!?! WHAT’S WITH ALL THE SCRAP HEAPERS IN THIS SERIES?) pinch hitting for him, he is done. Too bad the Mets need an ’86 Style miracle to win this ballgame.
I think Suppan will get the game ball.
He certainly deserves it to some extent, but the Mets fell into a huge hole early and the pressure was on the hitters, rather than Suppan, to perform.
So I just got an email back from some M’s slush-pile reader regarding an angry, stats-filled screed I sent to one of their official feedback addresses a couple weeks ago re: bringing Hargrove back. It was as vague and noncommittal as you’d expect any such thing to be–though they made it clear they’d at least read my first sentence–but it was still funny to see a response in my inbox.
Also, here’s to a Mets-Tigers Series.
Hey Ed,
Yeah, I got one of those back, too.
It’s not on a stick, and man his grinning visage galls me.
JMB, did they give you the same line about how they’re always happy when the fans are impassioned enough to respond, “even if they are angry or disappointed”?
Frustratingly, that strikes at one of the big problems of fanhood. I’d like to think keeping Hargrove is so boneheaded I’d have the conviction to boycott them till he’s gone, but.. they’re still the M’s.
Well, Hispanic can mean lots of things.
It shouldn’t. Hispanic should mean “hailing from a Spanish-speaking country.” By that measure, Brazilians (Portuguese), Haitians (French), Arubans (Dutch), and Americans (English) are NOT hispanic. Ever. But Spaniards are.
I just say Latino instead.
Also, I didn’t send a letter to the Mariners, because I knew I’d get the canned response.
“If ever living, breathing proof that clutch hitting really does exist was needed, Scott Spiezio is it. I ask anybody to explain how such an average regular season hitter becomes so good during the playoffs. That’s now 24 RBIs in 21 games and 15 hits in 21 ABs with RISP. Incredible stuff.”
Direct quote from a Cards fan at the UK baseball site I am a member at. If only he knew the truth…
#88– Remember when we were supposed to get Inge for Guillen?
No. I remember when the Ms offered Meche for him straight up and were turned down. I remember Infante was said to be the other choice than Santiago. and (not to sound too prudish) isn’t that screen name skirting a little too close to failing the Guidelines?
#117– When he took his World Series ring from the Marlins and signed with the worst team in baseball, just about everybody thought he was insane, or suggested he was anticipating (or was already hiding) injuries and was expecting to play out a declining career out of the spotlight
I thought everyone thought, wow, Dombrowski is giving Pudge that much money, and for that long?! Did we ever hear what the M’s late (look! Sasaki-money!) offer was to Pudge just before he took the Detroit deal?
#118– FWIW, Spiezio actually married the tattoo-immortalizing girlfriend, not that that precludes him finding other ‘fiancees’
From my point of view, I’m having trouble explaining Spezio’s success in this postseason (and 2002) as just pure luck. Granted, I have no hard evidence to back this up, but is it possible that he has a “playoff gear.”
Logically, though, if Spezio were simply a “streaky” player, and prone to bouts of pure suckage juxtaposed with pure stardom, wouldn’t we have seen him get hot–just once–here in Seattle?
Maybe my memory is clouded, but I don’t recall him ever having a streak remotely like this in his time here. Again this is pure speculation, and perhaps its all the amazing NL pitchers (who wouldn’t make it on most AL rosters) being thrown at him…but I just think its possible that he has some sort of ability to bear down a little more when it counts…
Streaks can last awhile.
Perhaps he lost his motivation in Seattle, so he just wallowed in the aforementioned suckage until he got a change of scenery. Maybe he didn’t like it here, maybe his marriage breaking up contributed, but whatever the reason, he stayed in the rut.
OTOH, maybe a 3-year contact made him complacent, and maybe the prospect of never playing in MLB again (after the M’s released him) was a big kick in the pants.
#60. Catching up, maybe this was a nice excuse to finally dump Lyons for being a crap analyst? having the Lou comments happen on top of having to apologize on air for the comments about the magnification glasses worn by the Mets fan…he was just suspended for the “humorous” Green comments.
and
69. ….I just can’t stand Brenneman (sp?) he’s so gosh-darned, judgemental. I don’t watch games for the stern lectures by the play-by-play guy.
It was Thom Brenneman who made the insensitive comments about the blind Mets fan and his “Jordy” goggles.
#95. LaRussa vs. Leyland. Who gets the better of whom.
They were saying during the Cards/Mets game later last night that Leyland and LaRussa are the best of friends, they talk together ALL the time.
I thought the NY Times had the best summary of both the event & the problems with Lyons & Brennaman:
“…Brennaman is not great. He is mediocre, distinguished mainly by an unmodulated megaphone-like voice that is like a parody of what a sportscaster should sound like. It does not convey a warm welcome, or the promise of excellence, as do Vin Scully or ESPN’s Jon Miller, who was joined for Friday night’s Yankees-Tigers game in Detroit by the retired Ernie Harwell, ever a delightful and welcoming legend.
Worse, for Brennaman, is his usual boothmate, Steve Lyons, a childish personality who has never attempted to live down his nickname, Psycho. Lyons is capable of an occasional insight. But he also made ignorant remarks two years ago about Shawn Green, who is Jewish, regarding why he did not play for the Dodgers on Yom Kippur. Fox suspended Lyons briefly.
In their years together, Lyons and Brennaman have shown no growth as a team. And Fox has yet to show a desire to find a better backup duo for McCarver and Joe Buck. Once upon a time in the 1980’s at NBC, Bob Costas and Tony Kubek backed up the No. 1 team of Scully and Joe Garagiola.
All of which leads to the regrettable incident last Thursday during Game 2 of the Dodgers-Mets playoff series at Shea Stadium. Brennaman and Lyons bonded like spitballing 13-year-olds in a middle school lunchroom to mock a Mets fan who was wearing an unusual-looking device over his eyes to help his poor vision. Stephen Teitelbaum, blind except for peripheral vision in one eye, was wearing a Jordy, a magnifying device, to help him watch the game.
Brennaman and Lyons could not know those details when the camera found Teitelbaum, but they could see that he was not goofing with a child’s toy. Still, they pursued him as if he were the class weakling. What was he wearing, they wondered?
”A Psycho-meter,” Brennaman said, to welcome Lyons to town.
”Maybe he’s in virtual reality,” Lyons said. If he is, Lyons explained, ”he should stay there.”
And maybe, Lyons suggested, the Dodgers should don the contraptions to better hit Tom Glavine. Lyons then hit on the most logical puerile explanation: ”He’s got a digital camera stuck to his face.”
This insensitive nonsense went on for 53 seconds while Marlon Anderson batted, offering a window into stunted imaginations. But it also underscored the failure by anyone at Fox to tell them to let up. Fox could have dispatched someone to Teitelbaum’s seat to report back on his condition. Instead, Teitelbaum’s family called Fox on Friday, leading to Brennaman’s on-air mea culpa early in Game 3 Saturday from Los Angeles.”