Game Threads
Will The Yankees Choke? World Series Game 6 Preview, Phillies vs. Yankees, Wednesday 11/4, 6:57 CT
by Al on Nov 4, 2009 11:09 AM CST
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197 comments
This is the first World Series that's gone this far in six years, since 2003 -- also involving the Yankees, who lost to the Marlins in six games that year.
Joe Girardi, whose management of his pitching staff has come under justified criticism during the postseason, will roll the dice and have Andy Pettitte start on three days' rest tonight -- something Pettitte hasn't done since 2007, and that was a strange circumstance where he threw four innings in a start, pitched an inning of relief with two days' rest, then started again with one day off. (See Pettitte's 2007 game log for details; it happened in April.)
Pedro Martinez will go for the Phillies. Pedro pitched well enough to win in game two; that day, A. J. Burnett shut the Philly offense down. Meanwhile, the Phillies hit Pettitte pretty hard in game three on Saturday; Jayson Werth homered off him twice and Pettitte also issued three walks in six innings, throwing 104 pitches, a Zambrano-like outing. If the Phillies are patient tonight, I believe we'll see one last 2009 game tomorrow, and Girardi will have to go with yet another pitcher on three days' rest, CC Sabathia, going on three days' rest for the second time in this series after having not done that all season. Sabathia is approaching 270 innings pitched this season; that might be too many even for a "horse" like him.
It'd be nice to see a seven-game World Series, no matter who wins. We don't get to see enough winner-take-all games in baseball; in the last ten seasons, going back to 2000, there have been only 13 such games in all the playoff rounds, out of 70 postseason series.
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The Season May End Tonight: World Series Game 5 Preview, Yankees vs. Phillies, Monday 11/2, 6:57 CT
by Al on Nov 2, 2009 1:00 PM CST
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107 comments
Grudgingly, I give the Yankees credit. Every time they've needed to come up with a big hit in a key situation in this series -- in fact, in the entire postseason -- they've done so. George Steinbrenner & Sons have bought themselves a championship this year, if they win tonight, by buying CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira, two of the most important components of this Yankee team.
Still, they have to get past Cliff Lee tonight first -- and Lee has been the best pitcher in the 2009 postseason, winning three of his four starts, throwing two complete games, and allowing only two earned runs in 33.1 innings. I think we'll have at least one more game after today, game six in New York on Wednesday, because I think the Phillies will win tonight. And after that, who knows? Both Andy Pettitte and CC Sabathia would have to pitch on short rest in games six and seven -- unless Joe Girardi wants to give Chad Gaudin a start, something I'd think would be about on par with Joe having both his arms sawed off.
Coming back from a 3-1 deficit in the World Series has been accomplished five times: 1925, 1958, 1968, 1979, and 1985. There have been 36 seven-game World Series that ended up four games to three, so based on history, there's about a one-in-seven shot for the Phillies to pull off the comeback.
I hope they do -- not only because I've been rooting for them, but because there hasn't been a seven-game series in seven years and I'd like to see one.
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Replay Review, Your Table Is Ready: World Series Game 4 Preview, Yankees vs. Phillies, Sunday 11/1, 7:20 CT
by Al on Nov 1, 2009 11:00 AM CST
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100 comments
In a roundabout way, perhaps we can thank Fox-TV for the latest evidence that replay review is not only useful, but necessary in modern-day baseball.
Last night's hit to the deep right-field corner by Alex Rodriguez, correctly ruled a home run after replay review, hit a TV camera that would not have been there during the regular season. The umpires had discussed this before the game had even begun:
Umpiring crew chief Gerry Davis said that the umpires had already determined while inspecting Citizens Bank Park prior to the game that a ball hitting the camera would be a home run. "Because we cannot control what the cameraman does with the camera, one of the specific ground rules is when the ball hits the camera, home run," he said.
And that made it easy. Four of the six umpires left the field; Fox showed all of us the monitor (geez, could they have made it any smaller?) on which the umpires review the play, and after a delay shorter than the ones in which Fox shows us those endlessly repetitive and ridiculous Blackberry ads, they returned, correctly calling it a home run. The Gordon Edes Yahoo column linked above quotes baseball's fearful leader:
Even as his umpires have come under unprecedented fire this October, baseball commissioner Bud Selig said he is reluctant to expand the use of replay.
"The more baseball people I talk to, there is a lot of trepidation about it and I think their trepidation is fair," Selig said in New York Tuesday. "I don’t want to overreact. You can make light of that but when you start to think you’re going to have more intrusions, it’s something that you have to be very careful about. Affecting the game on the field is not something I really want to do."
You don't want to affect the game on the field? You mean, you'd rather have your umpires make wrong calls, take hits and possibly runs and wins away from teams, and apologize profusely later, than get it right with a minimum of fuss? What kind of idiotic thinking is this?
Replay review is used in the three other major sports, with zero ill effects and, generally, praise for getting calls right. There is NO reason not to use it in baseball for everything except ball and strike calls (mostly because doing that would slow the game down untenably). This is particularly true since the current system of home run replay is not only used as it was last night, but also to determine, if questionable, whether a ball that has HR distance is fair or foul. How is this different than reviewing whether Joe Mauer's hit in Yankee Stadium in the division series is fair or foul? Why do one and not the other?
My proposal, which I know has been echoed or expanded on by many others here, is after the jump.
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Same Time, Next Year: World Series Game 3 Preview, Phillies vs. Yankees, Saturday 10/31, 6:57 CT
by Al on Oct 31, 2009 3:00 PM CDT
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With the new hope engendered to Cubs fans after the Ricketts family was introduced as new owners yesterday, perhaps we can be forgiven if we dream -- just a bit -- about the potential for the Cubs to be in the World Series a year from now.
Meanwhile, there's a chance of rain in the Philadelphia area this evening -- as if there haven't been enough weather problems with the postseason already this year. The Good Phight wonders if this will change the Philly rotation.
And in addition to the World Series going on at Citizens Bank Park, Pearl Jam is appearing at the nearby Spectrum (in the final event at that arena which hosted the Flyers and 76ers for decades), with their show scheduled to begin at the same time as the game. Not only that, there's still a chance that Philadelphia transit workers will go on strike tonight at 6 pm.
Meanwhile, here's an article looking at the Cubs' ownership change from a business standpoint that gives us a first idea on how much Wrigley Field renovation and debt service might cost:
Thomas Ricketts spent $845 million for, among other assets, a baseball team that in a good year will record a profit of around $30 million.
The new owner of the Chicago Cubs will have to repay loans of $425 million he obtained for the purchase. That's an expense the Cubs' seller, Tribune Co., never had.
He'll have to look at costs of Wrigley Field renovation to facilities that sorely need improvement -- and to create revenue. Ricketts said he's looking at work spread over five to seven years and costing "significantly less" than $200 million.
Jeff Passan at Yahoo keeps the pressure on, calling again for replay review to be instituted. Couldn't agree more, after two more bad calls on Thursday night.
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History Is Not On Their Side: World Series Game 2 Preview, Phillies vs. Yankees, Thursday 10/29, 6:57 CT
by Al on Oct 29, 2009 11:00 AM CDT
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104 comments
Chris DeLuca in today's Sun-Times tells us what the Yankees are up against in trying to win the World Series:
The last six teams to win Game 1 -- and 10 of the last 11 -- all went on to win the Series.
The last team to win Game 1 and not win the Series? Dusty Baker's Giants in 2002.
More history: as you likely know from watching the game last night, Cliff Lee was on target, before Jimmy Rollins' bad throw, to throw the first CG shutout in a World Series since Josh Beckett's clinching shutout in Game 6 of the 2003 World Series. That was also the last CG of any kind in a World Series; to show you how rare such events now are, since the division series round was added to the playoffs in 1995, there have been only two other complete games thrown in a World Series: by Randy Johnson in Game 2 of the 2001 World Series and by Greg Maddux in Game 1 of the 1995 World Series, in which he gave the Indians only two singles and both runs he allowed were unearned.
So the Yankees have an uphill climb, and I think Pedro Martinez is an inspired choice to start tonight for the Phillies; a similar choice was made by Connie Mack in the 1929 World Series against the Cubs for another Philadelphia team, with excellent results (for Mack's team, not for the Cubs).
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A Tale Of Two Franchises: World Series Game 1 Preview, Phillies vs. Yankees, Wednesday 10/28, 6:57 CT
by Al on Oct 28, 2009 11:01 AM CDT
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184 comments
Historically, you couldn't come up with two more different franchises than the Yankees and Phillies.
The Yankees have been, by far, the winningest team in American League history -- their .568 winning percentage puts them almost 2300 games over .500, and 855.5 games ahead of the second-place Boston Red Sox, if you were keeping an all-time major league standing. Put it another way: say the Red Sox started winning 100 games a year, every year, and the Yankees suddenly got bad and started losing 100 games a year, every year (that would make a 38-game difference between the two teams). It would take 23 consecutive seasons of doing that before the Red Sox could catch them. The Yankees' pennant is their 40th; to date they have won exactly two-thirds of the World Series in which they have appeared, and they have appeared in at least one in each decade since the 1920's.
Meanwhile, the Phillies have, up to very recently, been the sad sack team of the National League. Much was made of the Pirates recently breaking the Phillies' record of 16 consecutive losing seasons from 1933-48. But had the Phillies not won the last game of the 1932 season to finish 78-76, they would have had thirty-one consecutive non-winning seasons from 1918-48; in 12 of those 31 years, they lost 100 or more games. The franchise won two pennants (1915 and 1950) in its first 97 years of existence, and won only one World Series (1980) until last year. The Phillies are the only major league franchise to have lost over 10,000 games (10,167), despite the fact that the Cubs and Braves were around for seven years before the Phillies were created in 1883. The Phillies stand 1129 games under .500 -- put that another way, too: if they started winning 100 games a year, every year, it would take 30 consecutive seasons to put the franchise over .500.
(That ought to also give you a little perspective on Cubs history. Doesn't look quite so bad now, does it?)
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Let's Try This Again: ALCS Game 6 Preview, Angels vs. Yankees, Sunday 10/25, 7:20 CT
by Al on Oct 25, 2009 12:00 PM CDT
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82 comments
Partly because they each swept their division series, the Yankees and the Angels have played just eight games in 20 days since the end of the regular season. In a session with Los Angeles-area writers on Saturday, Angels Manager Mike Scioscia made his feelings clear.
"Ridiculous," Scioscia said. "I don’t know. Can I say it any clearer than that? We should have never had a day off last Wednesday. We should never have three days off after the season. You shouldn’t even have two days off after the season.
"It just takes an advantage away for a deep team, which everybody feels very strongly is an asset. It takes that advantage away and I think that’s something that Major League Baseball hopefully will consider looking at."
Exactly correct, in my view. Don't blame the extra round of playoffs due to the wild card being added starting in 1995 -- in 2002, the last time we had a seven-game World Series, Game Seven took place on October 27, which is a full nine days earlier than a Game Seven will happen this year. That is, if we don't have any more rainouts. The 2002 postseason took 24 days (October 3-27). The 2009 postseason, if it goes its entire length (meaning, a seven-game World Series), will encompass 29 days, with multiple off days in various series, not to mention the postponements we've already had. TV is the reason -- Fox and TBS were able to get the dates spread out in order to not have any games head-to-head in the early rounds, and as few games as possible in the daytime in the LCS round.
That's not a good enough reason. Mike Scioscia is right. If anyone can wake Bud Selig up, let's fix this before the 2010 postseason. Here's more from Jeff Passan and Gordon Edes on this topic.
Oh, and if you're a Yankees and New York Giants fan? Better have multiple TVs available today, as Ed Valentine points out at Pinstripe Alley.
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Weather Permitting, Again: ALCS Game 6 Preview, Saturday 10/24, 6:57 CT
by Al on Oct 24, 2009 3:15 PM CDT
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35 comments
UPDATE: Game 6 postponed to 7:20 pm CDT on Sunday.This forecast doesn't look very conducive to playing baseball tonight in New York:
Late Afternoon: Showers and possibly a thunderstorm. Some of the storms could produce gusty winds and heavy rain. High near 71. South wind around 18 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New rainfall amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.If there is a rainout tonight, the Angels might consider bringing John Lackey back on short rest for game seven Monday:
Tonight: Showers and possibly a thunderstorm before midnight, then a chance of showers between midnight and 2am. Some of the storms could produce gusty winds and heavy rain. Low around 55. South wind 10 to 16 mph becoming west. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New rainfall amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible.
"Yes, we've talked about a lot of different scenarios," [Mike] Scioscia said. "I think we're going to let this thing unfold a little bit and see how the weekend goes. If there is an opportunity to look at bringing a guy like John back, it's something we would certainly consider. We've talked about a bunch of different things."
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