2006 MLB Thread

[Dan Gould]

A colossal collapse. They won, 95, 96 games? The lost 21 of their last 50!

If they'd only managed to win two or three of the last five, they'd have home field through the playoffs instead of the Yanks. Their collapse was almost as bad as the Indians was last year, except that they didn't collapse all the way out of the post season.

[chris olivarez]

My heart is with the Dodgers but my money would be with the Pads. San Diego may not have the best pitching staff but they have the healthiest and if they turn it over to the pen in the 7th it's lights out. My guess is that it will be San Diego against the New York Mercenaries-er Yankees!!!

[Randy Twizzle]

I know it's unlikely, but I'm still pulling for another Subway Series.

Unlikely? I don't get it. It's more than likely. And this time it will be competitive, as opposed to that dreary 2000 series.

[Noj]

The Mets have been the best team in the NL all year. However, the Dodgers are playing great ball right now. The MLB Playoffs have been exciting the last few years, hopefully this year will not be an exception. Go Dodgers!

[Dan Gould]

I know it's unlikely, but I'm still pulling for another Subway Series.

Unlikely? I don't get it. It's more than likely. And this time it will be competitive, as opposed to that dreary 2000 series.

Likely? Not nearly as likely as it seemed at mid-summer. The Mets have a deep lineup and a closer. Everything else is a question mark and they've been playing like crap for several weeks. NL champion will come out of the West.

[Randy Twizzle]

I know it's unlikely, but I'm still pulling for another Subway Series.

Unlikely? I don't get it. It's more than likely. And this time it will be competitive, as opposed to that dreary 2000 series.

Likely? Not nearly as likely as it seemed at mid-summer. The Mets have a deep lineup and a closer. Everything else is a question mark and they've been playing like crap for several weeks. NL champion will come out of the West.

They have excellent middle relief, and just finished the season with a sweep of the Nationals. Wright finished with a 12 game hitting streak. They're ready.

[Chalupa]

Fearless predictions...

Yanks, Twins, Padres, Dodgers.

[Soulstation1]

AL

NY Yanks in 4 vs Det

Minn in 5 vs Oak

ALCS

NYY in 6 vs Minn

NL

NY Mets in 5 vs LAD

St. Louis in 4 vs SD

NLCS

NYM in 7 vs St Louis

World Series

NY Mets in 6 vs NY Yanks

Edited October 3, 2006 by Soulstation1

[ghost of miles]

Can you imagine the riot in Detroit right now had another team made the wild card? What a colossal choke to end the season: getting swept by the lowly Royals! And then, to top it off, coming in second after leading the division all season!

Hard to call a playoff team a disappointment, but man, what a way to end the season!

Can't recall which edition of the Yanks it was--probably the 2000 team--which just sucked & sucked throughout September & continued to suck after several "let's-get-it-together" pep talks from Torre. (I remember Jeter or somebody else saying something to the effect that it's really demoralizing to get yourself all revved up, say, "Yeah, let's turn this around!" and then still get clobbered 15-1, 11-2, etc., by mediocre teams.) I think they finished with 87 wins, or some rather anemic figure by late-1990s NYY standards. When the playoffs began, they suddenly seemed to find their groove again, and went on to win the WS.

[Neal Pomea]

Athletics v Padres

For an all west coast series, would they start their games at 5 or 6 for the east coast audience?

[Dan Gould]

Athletics v Padres

For an all west coast series, would they start their games at 5 or 6 for the east coast audience?

Of course. The start times are already set: around 8:25 PM ET for every game.

[Dan Gould]

As the play-offs get started, here's something for everyone whose team isn't playing anymore. While it deals specifically with the demise of a Red Sox season, it surely has a lot of universal appeal.

From A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti

by A. Bartlett Giamatti, et al

"The Green Fields of the Mind "

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.

Somehow, the summer seemed to slip by faster this time. Maybe it wasn't this summer, but all the summers that, in this my fortieth summer, slipped by so fast. There comes a time when every summer will have something of autumn about it. Whatever the reason, it seemed to me that I was investing more and more in baseball, making the game do more of the work that keeps time fat and slow and lazy. I was counting on the game's deep patterns, three strikes, three outs, three times three innings, and its deepest impulse, to go out and back, to leave and to return home, to set the order of the day and to organize the daylight. I wrote a few things this last summer, this summer that did not last, nothing grand but some things, and yet that work was just camouflage. The real activity was done with the radio--not the all-seeing, all-falsifying television--and was the playing of the game in the only place it will last, the enclosed green field of the mind. There, in that warm, bright place, what the old poet called Mutability does not so quickly come.

But out here, on Sunday, October 2, where it rains all day, Dame Mutability never loses. She was in the crowd at Fenway yesterday, a gray day full of bluster and contradiction, when the Red Sox came up in the last of the ninth trailing Baltimore 8-5, while the Yankees, rain-delayed against Detroit, only needing to win one or have Boston lose one to win it all, sat in New York washing down cold cuts with beer and watching the Boston game. Boston had won two, the Yankees had lost two, and suddenly it seemed as if the whole season might go to the last day, or beyond, except here was Boston losing 8-5, while New York sat in its family room and put its feet up. Lynn, both ankles hurting now as they had in July, hits a single down the right-field line. The crowd stirs. It is on its feet. Hobson, third baseman, former Bear Bryant quarterback, strong, quiet, over 100 RBIs, goes for three breaking balls and is out. The goddess smiles and encourages her agent, a canny journeyman named Nelson Briles.

Now comes a pinch hitter, Bernie Carbo, onetime Rookie of the Year, erratic, quick, a shade too handsome, so laid-back he is always, in his soul, stretched out in the tall grass, one arm under his head, watching the clouds and laughing; now he looks over some low stuff unworthy of him and then, uncoiling, sends one out, straight on a rising line, over the center-field wall, no cheap Fenway shot, but all of it, the physics as elegant as the arc the ball describes.

New England is on its feet, roaring. The summer will not pass. Roaring, they recall the evening, late and cold, in 1975, the sixth game of the World Series, perhaps the greatest baseball game played in the last fifty years, when Carbo, loose and easy, had uncoiled to tie the game that Fisk would win. It is 8-7, one out, and school will never start, rain will never come, sun will warm the back of your neck forever. Now Bailey, picked up from the National League recently, big arms, heavy gut, experienced, new to the league and the club; he fouls off two and then, checking, tentative, a big man off balance, he pops a soft liner to the first baseman. It is suddenly darker and later, and the announcer doing the game coast to coast, a New Yorker who works for a New York television station, sounds relieved. His little world, well-lit, hot-combed, split-second-timed, had no capacity to absorb this much gritty, grainy, contrary reality.

Cox swings a bat, stretches his long arms, bends his back, the rookie from Pawtucket who broke in two weeks earlier with a record six straight hits, the kid drafted ahead of Fred Lynn, rangy, smooth, cool. The count runs two and two, Briles is cagey, nothing too good, and Cox swings, the ball beginning toward the mound and then, in a jaunty, wayward dance, skipping past Briles, feinting to the right, skimming the last of the grass, finding the dirt, moving now like some small, purposeful marine creature negotiating the green deep, easily avoiding the jagged rock of second base, traveling steady and straight now out into the dark, silent recesses of center field.

The aisles are jammed, the place is on its feet, the wrappers, the programs, the Coke cups and peanut shells, the doctrines of an afternoon; the anxieties, the things that have to be done tomorrow, the regrets about yesterday, the accumulation of a summer: all forgotten, while hope, the anchor, bites and takes hold where a moment before it seemed we would be swept out with the tide. Rice is up. Rice whom Aaron had said was the only one he'd seen with the ability to break his records. Rice the best clutch hitter on the club, with the best slugging percentage in the league. Rice, so quick and strong he once checked his swing halfway through and snapped the bat in two. Rice the Hammer of God sent to scourge the Yankees, the sound was overwhelming, fathers pounded their sons on the back, cars pulled off the road, households froze, New England exulted in its blessedness, and roared its thanks for all good things, for Rice and for a summer stretching halfway through October. Briles threw, Rice swung, and it was over. One pitch, a fly to center, and it stopped. Summer died in New England and like rain sliding off a roof, the crowd slipped out of Fenway, quickly, with only a steady murmur of concern for the drive ahead remaining of the roar. Mutability had turned the seasons and translated hope to memory once again. And, once again, she had used baseball, our best invention to stay change, to bring change on.

That is why it breaks my heart, that game--not because in New York they could win because Boston lost; in that, there is a rough justice, and a reminder to the Yankees of how slight and fragile are the circumstances that exalt one group of human beings over another. It breaks my heart because it was meant to, because it was meant to foster in me again the illusion that there was something abiding, some pattern and some impulse that could come together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion; and because, after it had fostered again that most hungered-for illusion, the game was meant to stop, and betray precisely what it promised.

Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. These are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.

From A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett

Giamatti, © 1998 by A. Bartlett Giamatti.

[Dan Gould]

Is it too much to hope that all the visiting teams win today?

[Soulstation1]

Jeter

5 for 5

[Dan Gould]

I know it's unlikely, but I'm still pulling for another Subway Series.

Unlikely? I don't get it. It's more than likely. And this time it will be competitive, as opposed to that dreary 2000 series.

Likely? Not nearly as likely as it seemed at mid-summer. The Mets have a deep lineup and a closer. Everything else is a question mark and they've been playing like crap for several weeks. NL champion will come out of the West.

They have excellent middle relief, and just finished the season with a sweep of the Nationals. Wright finished with a 12 game hitting streak. They're ready.

And now El Duque is toast. A Met season that was so promising may be hurtling off a cliff.

[Chalupa]

I know it's unlikely, but I'm still pulling for another Subway Series.

Unlikely? I don't get it. It's more than likely. And this time it will be competitive, as opposed to that dreary 2000 series.

Likely? Not nearly as likely as it seemed at mid-summer. The Mets have a deep lineup and a closer. Everything else is a question mark and they've been playing like crap for several weeks. NL champion will come out of the West.

They have excellent middle relief, and just finished the season with a sweep of the Nationals. Wright finished with a 12 game hitting streak. They're ready.

And now El Duque is toast. A Met season that was so promising may be hurtling off a cliff.

Actually, Maine has pitched pretty well the past two months. His ERA is a full point lower than El Duque's for the season. In a strange way El Duque's injury could actually help the Mets. Maine was impressive in his last 3 starts(all wins) against the Phils.

Edited October 4, 2006 by Chalupa

[Guest akanalog]

YOU GOTTA BELIEVE!

[Dan Gould]

I know it's unlikely, but I'm still pulling for another Subway Series.

Unlikely? I don't get it. It's more than likely. And this time it will be competitive, as opposed to that dreary 2000 series.

Likely? Not nearly as likely as it seemed at mid-summer. The Mets have a deep lineup and a closer. Everything else is a question mark and they've been playing like crap for several weeks. NL champion will come out of the West.

They have excellent middle relief, and just finished the season with a sweep of the Nationals. Wright finished with a 12 game hitting streak. They're ready.

And now El Duque is toast. A Met season that was so promising may be hurtling off a cliff.

Actually, Maine has pitched pretty well the past two months. His ERA is a full point lower than El Duque's for the season. In a strange way El Duque's injury could actually help the Mets. Maine was impressive in his last 3 starts(all wins) against the Phils.

Yeah, I know Maine has pitched pretty well. The fact that he was going to be left off the roster before Pedro's injury doesn't say much about Randolph's managerial skills. Certainly Maine is a better choice than Trachsel.

I still say that with two big injuries and Glavine pitching like he's 40 lately, the Mets are probably done unless they swing the bats.

[Guest akanalog]

i would prefer to start darren oliver or aaron heilman over that loser trachsel.

however the chances of the mets needing looooong relief couldn't be likelier.

[Big Al]

Buck Showalter has been fired. YESSSS!!!!!!

Turns out that he was asked to resign, but refused. So they fired him. So much for Buck taking the chance to leave with dignity. Did he actually think he was doing that good of a job? HA!!!!

So long Buck. And good riddance!

[Dan Gould]

Buck Showalter has been fired. YESSSS!!!!!!

Turns out that he was asked to resign, but refused. So they fired him. So much for Buck taking the chance to leave with dignity. Did he actually think he was doing that good of a job? HA!!!!

So long Buck. And good riddance!

I never understood the super hard-ass approach to managing. It never seems to work for very long, even when you find success.

[Neal Pomea]

Oakland takes Game 2, 4-2.

[mikelz777]

I think Tori Hunter had web gems on his mind when he made that bone-headed play in the outfield to allow the A's to go ahead 4-2 with an in-the-park home run. That just sucks the morale right out of a team.

The final was 5-2.

Edited October 4, 2006 by mikelz777

[Dan Gould]

I could not believe it when the Dodgers ran themselves into two outs at the plate, and of course it has to be the critical play in a 1-run loss.

What the hell is wrong with Kent that he couldn't score from second on a double off the RF wall???? How can you misjudge it? Doug Freaking Mirabelli scores standing up on that play. Papi makes it to the dugout before the throw reaches the plate.

Sending the runner afterwards was dumb, but I don't think the third base coach even saw him.

[Dan Gould]

Ya gotta love it - Tigers even up the series and that puts lots of pressure on an injured Unit to come up big. I like the fact that RJ is a mediocre 7-7 lifetime in the playoffs, and that when he's wrong, he gives up the long ball which it seems like the Tigers regularly swing for. Unfortunately, The Gambler is much worse in October.

I'll tell you this much: Any Tiger fan has to worry every time Todd Jones comes in to close one out. One of these days its gonna kill them, and every one will wonder why he doesn't let the guy who touches 103 (with far better control than Farnsworth has even dreamed of) get those last three outs.