The Baseball Thread 2007

[Big Al]

Hooray for the Cubs!!! Man, this is sweet!

Congrats to your Sox, Dan! Been a long time comin'. Now if we could just have that Cubs/Red Sox WS!

[alocispepraluger102]

2007 mlb team payrolls.

2 teams, among the very lowest in payrolls, will be in playoffs, cleveland and arizona.

http://rubechat.kfan.com/forums/thread/1667648.aspx

Edited September 29, 2007 by alocispepraluger102

[papsrus]

Hooray for the Cubs!!! Man, this is sweet!

Congrats to your Sox, Dan! Been a long time comin'. Now if we could just have that Cubs/Red Sox WS!

That would be a dream matchup. Seems like they have the bats, but do the Cubs have the pitching?

[jlhoots]

Brewers crap out so I'm done.

Go Packers.

[Chalupa]

The Phils are gonna blow it. Again.

[catesta]

Congrats Cubs. Brewers have some soul-searching to do. Congrats Red Sox. Nice to see them break the Yankee streak. I'm ambivalent about the NL East, but what a collapse by the Mets. You can't go that cold at the end of a season. Looking forward to the playoffs!!

It's not quite over yet.

[Tim McG]

Cole Hamels threw a gem tonight. Man if the Marlins bullpen can just hang on........

And the Met collapse is complete! Phils in first place with a magic number of 2!!!!

They're tied, Dan.

If the Pads lose on Sunday, it's all over [excepting a possible tie in the NL West or a WC tie with the Pads and the Mets] unless the upstart Nats win again.....could happen.

The the Wildcard would be a tangle of playoffs.

Edited September 30, 2007 by GoodSpeak

[Tim McG]

Go Pads!!!

Go Rockies!!!

[Dan Gould]

Well, I don't want to jinx anything but it doesn't look like the Sox are suffering too much of a hangover, up 6-4 in the bottom of the eighth on a JD Drew homer (3 for 4 and up to .270 on the year - yeah, I'm suckin' down that kool-aid big time!). Is it too much to ask for KC to hang on against the Tribe, up 3-2 in the seventh? That would clinch the best record in the majors, choice of ALDS schedules and home field throughout. Me likey.

Meanwhile, they've already announced what I thought would be the case - Schilling will not pitch Sunday, giving him some extra rest heading into presumably a start in Game 2. If he was going later in the playoffs, I'm sure they would have had him throw 50 pitches or so, so I am pretty sure I was right last night - Dice-K was allowed to go deeper in the clinching game because they weren't planning to have him start Game 2 after all.

And in the meantime, the Yankees hung up a ten-spot on the Orioles in the fourth inning but they can't possibly be pleased with Andy Pettite's post-season warmup: 9 runs, 8 earned, in just five innings. He can get the win but it was at the expense of his sub 4.00 ERA.

[Patrick]

Does look good for the Sawx--Wakefield was mediocre and Okajima make it a tad bit interesting in the ninth (a la Borowski) but your team got it done. Meanwhile Westbrook has pitched well after spotting KC 3 in the first (though Pena Jr. has now tripled in the seventh for KC). Lots of Indians striking out and not putting hits together. Blake did score from first on a single by Martinez (full count, 2 outs), but got caught stealing his next time on. So your wish is likely to come true tonight. ...Though the great Rafael Perez just got David DeJesus to ground into a FC, Pena out at home! And after intentionally walking Grudzielanek, Rafael P struck out Teahen. So maybe just maybe the Tribe'll will get at least 1 run in their last two ABs.

Watched a bit of Phillies/Nats on Fox (...a channel I rarely watch for MLB, but hopefully I'll be extremely interested in the ALCS this year). Gotta say, as bad as Joe Morgan is, Tim McCarver is barruttalll!!

Is Peavy really going to pitch tomorrow, and then only be available for 1 start in the NLDS? So says Fox.

[Dan Gould]

Does look good for the Sawx--Wakefield was mediocre and Okajima make it a tad bit interesting in the ninth (a la Borowski) but your team got it done.

I just got caught up on MLB Gameday late in the game, but it looked like Wake couldn't have pitched too badly, with six hits, three earned runs, no walks in seven innings. I guess the two homers really hurt him but at least he never gave up any big innings, just four straight 1 run innings. I'll take the Oki that gets into a little bit of trouble and then slams the door; that's much better than the one we had for six weeks before he got shut down.

Indians just tied the score.

Maybe if both teams just go through the motions tomorrow, we'll end up with a tie and win it on the tie-breaker.

[Patrick]

My comment on Wake may have been a bit quick, but I just noticed the 4 consecutive innings giving up a run, and needing double plays in two of those innings to avoid further damage (...not that there's anything wrong with that). Likewise agree on Oki, he got the job done.

Bases loaded and one out in top of 8th, Tribe can't push across the go ahead run (Michaels and Gutierrez leave the bases loaded). KC has already used 4 relievers, but it's September so they probably have 4 more available...

[Patrick]

Mission accomplished for Red Sox. After tying it up in the top of the 8th, Rafael Perez puts two on in the bottom of the 8th, and one of these scores. So the Red Sox will finish with the best record in MLB.

Amazing that the Tribe got as close as they did, given how listless they were at the ASB.

Dan, you really think Boston will opt for the quicker Division series? I'm not sure that it matters that much to any team, but CC and Fausto twice each would be nice.

[Dan Gould]

And that will do it. The AL seeds are:

1. Boston

2. Cleveland

3. LAAoA

4. New York

Can't wait to hear which schedule Tito, Theo, et. al. will choose. To me it makes no sense to help the Angels get more out of their top two starters but they may think the extra rest helps Oki and Paps. I hope not, I want Cleveland to use it to their advantage. Go five against the Yanks, use CC and Carmona twice, eliminate the Yanks and have no choice but to start Byrd or Westbrook at Fenway.

See Patrick? I'm tryin' to look out for ya, buddy!

[Patrick]

Thanks.

Ya got the script mostly right, you just forgot that the Cleveland/NY series will not go 5 games, so Fausto or CC will be available for game 1 at the Fens, ...against Wakefield.

[Dan Gould]

Thanks.

Ya got the script mostly right, you just forgot that the Cleveland/NY series will not go 5 games, so Fausto or CC will be available for game 1 at the Fens, ...against Wakefield.

[Patrick]

...And it wouldn't surprise me if Wakefield was extremely effective in that scenario (high upside, and downside).

As for the Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles California, any chance Bartolo Colon makes the post-season roster/rotation? The prospect of facing Ervin Santana (7-14, 5.80 ERA) at some point in the first round would be quite useful to an opponent.

[BERIGAN]

Dan,

Will you root against the Sox if the Cubs play them??????

as for pitching, Zambrano, Ted Lilly, and Rich Hill all have over 170 Strikeouts(Rich Hill leads the way of course ) Rich Hill is really good, and still learning. Great breaking ball. Man, I would love to see those two teams. But, IF the Cubbies did win it all, with 85, 86 wins, could you stand it????

[BERIGAN]

Oh Man, would it not be cool to see some of this crap happen??????

NL could be in playoff tiebreakers until Thursday

By Jayson Stark

ESPN.com

(Archive)

Updated: September 28, 2007, 3:15 AM ET

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If you think the National League standings are making you blind, it could easily get worse.

Try looking at the tiebreaker scenarios.

ONE-GAME PLAYOFFS

Potential tiebreaker matchups based on coin flips:

NL WILD CARD

Philadelphia at San Diego

San Diego at Colorado

Philadelphia at Colorado

Arizona at San Diego

Arizona at Colorado

Arizona at Philadelphia

San Diego at New York

New York at Colorado

NL EAST

NY Mets at Philadelphia

NL WEST

San Diego at Arizona

Colorado at Arizona

Colorado at San Diego

If four teams in the East and West finish the season with the same record, we predict business will be booming at all kinds of ophthalmologists' offices near you.

Among the fun possibilities if that happens: The Padres theoretically could play in Milwaukee on Sunday, in Arizona on Monday, in San Diego on Tuesday, in Philadelphia on Wednesday, back in San Diego on Thursday and then in New York on Friday.

But dont write any of that in ink. This is such a mess, MLB had to declare Thursday "Emergency Coin Flip Day," because let's just say some of these matchups didn't look quite this likely a couple of weeks ago.

Ready for the most crazed scenarios? All right, here goes:

Four-team craziness: If the two NL East teams and the top two NL West teams all tie:

Just for the sake of discussion, let's say the Mets, Phillies, Padres and Diamondbacks finish with the same record. Here's how that would work:

• The Mets and Phillies play a one-game playoff Monday in Philadelphia to decide the NL East.

• The Padres and Diamondbacks play a one-game playoff Monday in Arizona to decide the NL West.

• The losers then play Tuesday to decide the wild card. A Diamondbacks-Phillies game would be played in Philadelphia. A Padres-Phillies game would be in San Diego. And if the Mets are involved, they would play Arizona or San Diego at home, but they would have to go to Coors Field if they wind up playing it off with Colorado. Amazingly, the Mets and D-backs didn't find any of that out until Thursday, because back when the original wild-card scenarios were determined, nobody at MLB apparently envisioned that those scenarios would include New York or Arizona. Uh, oops. So a whole lot of frantic coin-flipping went on Thursday to sort all this out.

More four-team craziness: If two NL West teams and the two NL East teams all have the same record:

• It's still possible that the Phillies, Mets, Padres and a fourth team (either the Diamondbacks or Rockies but not both) could all have the same record. But that creates two different scenarios -- one if there is a tie for the NL West title, another if the NL West clubs finish tied for second (and the wild card).

• If there's a tie for both the NL West and NL East titles, there would be tiebreaker games Monday in Philadelphia and San Diego.

• Then the two losers would meet Tuesday. Here are the sites of those potential games:

• Phillies-Padres in San Diego

• Phillies-Rockies in Colorado

• Phillies-Diamondbacks in Philadelphia

• Mets-Padres in New York

• Mets-Rockies in Colorado

• Mets-Diamondbacks in New York

• But if the two teams tied in the NL West finish second, we have a whole different game plan. The only similarity is that the Phillies and Mets would play Monday in Philadelphia to sort out the NL East.

• The loser then would then move on to a three-team wild-card tournament that would work the way we laid it out above. But here is how baseball would decide which team would get the option of one road game or two home games

• In an Arizona-San Diego-New York three-way: Diamondbacks.

• In a Colorado -San Diego-New York three-way: Rockies.

• In an Arizona-San Diego-Philadelphia three-way: Diamondbacks.

• In a Colorado-San Diego-Philadelphia three-way: Rockies.

So that's the lay of this goofy land. Everybody have it all straight now? You'd better. There will be a quiz in the morning.

[Dan Gould]

Dan,

Will you root against the Sox if the Cubs play them??????

My father called with his congratulations Saturday afternoon and I informed him that if both teams make the World Series, I will root for the Cubs to win it all. Not against the Sox, mind you, but for the Cubbies. I told him that we had our thrilling championship a few years back, and with the looks of this team now, I am comfortable in the belief that they will win again soon.

[Dan Gould]

I heard the announcement last night that the Red Sox had chosen to start the ALDS Wednesday but I had already shut off the PC and the ESPN guy didn't give any indication whether this was the long or the short schedule.

Turns out, its the long schedule, and I seriously do not understand their reasoning. Why help the Angels? The only way it makes sense is if they figure that John Lackey's lack of success against the Sox means that getting two shots at him, if necessary, is going to be a good thing. The Globe is also reporting what I've been saying, that Schill will go in Game 2 and Dice in Game 3. That would at least line up with Dice starting Game 1 of the AlCS, which if he performs, can be a better prospect than most teams starting their number 3 in the first game.

But sorry Patrick, we won't be helping you out against the Yanks.

[Dan Gould]

Well, that weird brawl between the Mets seemed to energize them yesterday, but it really energized the Marlins today. Already 4-0 and they are still batting in the top of the 1st. That's got to energize the Phils, as if they need it.

Update:

5-0, only 1 out, and Glavine is gone. How can the Mets possibly have hope when they're into the pathetic bullpen with 8 2/3 to go?

Edited September 30, 2007 by Dan Gould

[T.D.]

Well, the Mets'll pitch starters or whatever it takes from this point (eg El Duque), but they've gotta score a boatload of runs.

The grotesque Glavine pitching line:

IP H R ER BB

T. Glavine 0.1 5 7 7 2

I feel sorry for Glavine, who I like, but not for the Metsies....

[Dan Gould]

I have to say its neat for the star-crossed Philly franchise to be on the positive end of a miracle collapse instead of the other way around.

[Quincy]

2-8. Season over.

Not quite.

Congrats on your team's 10,000th loss and one of the great comebacks!