Frayed Knot

Thanks for doing the heavy lifting on this one Al. Nothing like a complete game 2-hit shutout to even things up. Of course the Mets were getting 2-hit into the 9th themselves, but then got five of their seven hits for the game in the top of the 9th to turn a 1-0 cliffhanger into a (somewhat) comfortable 5-0 win and a split in the Queen City.

Y'know, Reggie is sounding more and more like ARod - or maybe the other way around seeing as how Reggie cam first and Rodriguez has admitted going to Jackson for advice (or is it Reggie bragging about how he's Alex's mentor? ... I can never keep these things straight).' But think about it: the whole 'I really wanted to play with this team' ... but I also wanted to play with that team' ... and how good would it have been if I wound up with those guys?', yadda, yadda. It's no different then Arod three decades later claiming he really wanted to be a Met ... except that he said the same thing about the Braves (until they wouldn't give him a no-trade) ... and then he loved working out the trade to the Yanx, but only after his attempts to work it out with Boston didn't work out when he was trying to get away from the deal he originally signed with Texas which was, at the time, the place he said he wanted to be all along. And he loved being a Yank until he opted out at the first possible moment (and in the middle of a WS game). It's the whole neediness despite all the stardom, fame, and money. They both want and wanted all that stuff so much that only later on does it occur to them that they want to be loved by everyone also.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: A's WIN!!!!!!! But not without some near fireworks in the 9th. Oakland closer Grant Balfour was pitching to Victor Martinez with one out in the 9th when suddenly the two were walking toward each other and there were quite audible "FUCK YOU"s flying in both directions and in various accents (Balfour is Australian, Martinez Venezuelan). Still not clear what caused it, possibly each felt the other was stepping out/off too much. Martinez eventually flied out. Pirates getting no-hit thru 6 by StL rookie Michael Wacha 2-0 Cards

Baseball America ran a story, maybe ten years back, about HS catchers and the draft during the time Joe Mauer was working his way through the minors. Anyway, in it there was the inevitable sidebar article on Chilcott. The story they told was that the Mets went into that draft divided on the Chilcott/Jackson question before eventually settling on Chilcott. Whitey Herzog, who was then the NYM personnel director (or whatever the specific title was), supposedly went around to his (then 19) counterparts after the draft to ask who they would have gone with if they had the #1 overall pick. The supposed result of this informal poll was 10-9 in favor of Reggie, meaning it was a flat 10-10 tie with the Met vote thrown in.* Bottom line being: - this story is neither new nor is there anything new here to confirm it - the idea that the Chicott pick was a known mistake all along is revisionist history which largely became gospel to some based on the result - that the "snub" was racism based on the Mexican girlfriend and/or Jackson's "uppity" (in the parlance of the time) attitude, while certainly possible, still appears to have Reggie as its only source - ASU coach Bobby Winkles is still alive but I've never heard whether he backs the story or not including in Reggie's earlier bio where co-writer (read: writer) Mike Lupica was more interested in cashing in on the story of the moment then he was in being an actual journalist and so just tossed all that aside and never bothered to confirm the story with the then still very active Winkles. - And if Winkles DID tell this to Reggie who told it to Winkles? Or did he just infer it from sketchy information himself? - Reggie is a known bullshitter and incessant self-promoter who would probably claim to have solved the Lindbergh baby kidnapping if he could just believably alter those damned dates on his birth certificate. * and now I see that I told that same story in the linked piece

* One review I read, from a confirmed 3D skeptic, said that this is the type of movie that 3D was made for and that should be seen in 3D * Bullock, even with a best actress Oscar already on her shelf, still seems to carry the rep of a light (or, at best, middle) weight among portions of the general public. Perhaps this will begin to change that. * Ed Harris space movies are almost becoming numerous enough to be their own sub-genre: as John Glenn in THE RIGHT STUFF, as Gene Krantz in APOLLO 13, and now 'voice' in GRAVITY. Two more and you've got a whole Jeopardy category.

And in the case of these specific two playoff games that we're comparing, we know that the difference in walks (1) & Ks (3) & batters faced (2) was only minimal and that there was actually one fewer out needed to decide the longer game. So if we figure that between-inning commercial time is about double now (a mandated 2:55 now as compared to an estimated 90 seconds then) then the 17 half-inning breaks accounts for an added 25-1/2 minutes. Throw in another two minutes say for the lone in-inning pitching change (one on Saturday, none in the '73 game) plus maybe two more for some miscellaneous shit I'm not thinking about right now (was there an 'Up With People' display during the 7th inning stretch?) and we've still accounted for less than 30 of the extra 83 minute difference. That's either a heckuva lot of extra foul balls and deep counts or a whole lotta standing around.

The only stat that's appreciably different is strike-outs -- today's game features nearly 45% more than in 1973. Then I think there's the inference that the lessening of stigma attached to the strike-out in turn leads to fewer 'just put it in play' type of defensive two-strike swings which leads to more AB-lengthening foul balls en route to that increased K-rate. Or maybe not, maybe a higher pct of Ks today are of the 3-pitch variety for those same reasons. Walks per/game were actually around 10% lower in 2013 as compared to 40 years earlier while runs scored are virtually the same.

I agree that the number of pitches per game is probably higher today than it was back then, although without data it's hard to know that. I also suspect that mound meeting are up (even with Posada's retirement) both the pitcher/catcher ones and the ones involving visits from the dugout. But still, when a 1-0 game with a minimum of hits that doesn't even go the full nine innings can't end in under three hours there's almost no hope for most other post-season contests to get in under three and a half or four.

Yo Ryu: Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life son. (I'm watching about 15 minutes behind real time)

Dusty has long been a target of some baseball scribes, and particularly the number-crunching (sabremetric) types, who feel, among other things, that he overplays veteran players at the expense of younger ones.

A tale of two playoff games played 40 years (minus a day) apart. Oct 6, 1973 - Game 1 NLCS, Mets @ Cincy Oct 5, 2013 - Game 2 ALDS, Tigers @ A's Oct 6, 1973Oct 5, 2013Total Runs Scored31Combined Hits912Walks45Ks1922Pitchers Used46Total Batters6567Time of Game2:003:23 So two games playoff games, both of which ended in 'walk-off' wins in the bottom of the 9th, one with one out, one with no outs. Both had roughly the same amount of "action": two more pitchers used in yesterday's game and also two more batters faced. Pitch counts are not available for the 1973 game but yesterday's had one more walk plus three more strikeouts. The major difference: this year's game took just shy of 70% longer to play.

Saturday, October 6th, 1973 I had forgotten that MLB used to leave such a long gap between the end of the regular season and the beginning of the playoffs, in this case the Mets had Tuesday through Friday off and the Reds one day longer. So the pitchers are all rested which means Seaver gets to start two consecutive games as would Cincy�s Jack Billingham. The Mets had two singles and a walk in the top of the 1st, but a Cleon Jones GiDP ended the threat with no runs scored. In the 3rd, Buddy Harrelson drew a two-out walk and was doubled in by Seaver himself for 1-0 lead. The bad news is that double would turn out to be the final hit for the Mets that day. Billingham went 8 innings and wound up with a line of 3 hits, 3 walks and 6 Ks.. Tom Hall walked Staub to begin the 9th but then Pedro Borbon came in to get the final three outs (and, no, he was not pinch hit for by Manny Mota) In the 8th Seaver gave up a one-out HR to Pete Rose which tied the game ... and then in the 9th a one-out game-winning HR to Johnny Bench Seaver: 8.1 IP, 2 Runs, 6 Hits, 0 BBs, 13 Ks

My only question is that I've seen cases in the past where umps seem to treat the 'transfer' rule differently for outfielders than for infielders, but yet they didn't do so tonight. I'm honestly confused as to what the real rule is supposed to be in these cases. The list of players I expected NOT to see in sanctioned post-game shows was headed by Gary Sheffield ... and yet there he is.

Vote for Vogt!!

metirish wrote: "I'm hanging up, there's not player named Alburquerque, ya think I'm stoopid?" I was just about to ask if the Tigers were allowed to use a player who doesn't exist.

If I have one complaint about Darling it's that he plays the 'I wasn't a very good player' card too much. That's either false humility or maybe he really does feel inferior in the presence of HoFers like Ripken or just plain guys with superior careers like Hernandez. Either way, it's not a good trait for announcers. Paul O'Neill does the same thing. The guy was a lifetime .288 hitter who swears that he was like 1-for-30 against every pitcher from his era whose name happens to come up. In the meantime, that one Toriiiii Hunter caught then dropped in the transfer last inning. Didn't we have a game like that, either earlier this year or maybe last, where the ruling was that an OFer has to have a "clean transfer" in order for it to be called a catch? That seems to be a very arbitrarily applied rule.

Zvon wrote: Well, duh. Of course it's TV. Maybe in the future they won't even need stands. We'll all pay to sit and watch em from home. It's not a fear that the sport should ignore, and in some ways I think the NFL is already partly over that edge. They cater so heavily to their TV audience (where a MUCH BIGGER portion of their TV dollars come from as compared to baseball) that it's often at the expense of their paying customers to the point where, in some cities, tickets in previously sold-out stadiums are starting to go unsold.

Edgy MD wrote: ... now an adaption of A Walk in the Woods, a book Bill Bryson wrote about walking the Appalachian Trail in 1997, at the age of 46. Redford is 77. He originally wanted to cast Paul Newman as Katz, Bryson's contemporary, school chum, and walking companion. Newman, of course, is 88 and dead at the present time. Apparently it's going to be the now 72-y/o Nick Nolte to play opposite Redford in AWitW - so i gather there's going to be no attempt to recreate the book as it was written. I guess they just substitute old and bucket list for out of shape and getting reacquainted and run from there. Nolte and Redford had a scene or two together in 'The Company You Keep' and I was thinking as I was watching the two on the screen that we are a long time removed from the day when those two were as big as any two blond heartthrobs that Hollywood had, like back when 'RICH MAN, POOR MAN', 'THE DEEP' and 'NORTH DALLAS FORTY' more or less coincided with 'ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN', 'BRUBAKER', and 'THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR' [1976-1980]

Y'know Willets, I was going to answer your first response with an explanation about how the multiple weekday games still would have existed had the play-in games not been a factor (just would have been on a different day) and about how the networks prefer the lesser competition of weekday day games to the greater competition of college or pro football on the weekends. But after reading your second response I'm just going to go with 'Fuck Off! There was nothing in my answer that was in any way condescending nor deserving of the junior high school insults. And if this were the first time or if I were the only target here of such unwarranted rants whenever you get into a mood I'd likely be more likely to attempt to talk it out. But I'm not, and it's not, so Fuck Off.

There were games Thursday and Friday afternoon because they had three or four games to get in and they want as little overlap as possible. With only two games on tap for the weekend days, today's are at 5:30 and 9:00 while Sunday's are at 4:30 & 8:00 so there's not a ton of difference between the two. The answer as to why they're not even earlier has nothing to do with the either the scheduled play-in games or the TX/TB tie-breaker; this format is all quite intentional and has everything to do with television. TV execs know that more eyeballs are tuned in later in the day than earlier so they insist on later start times. If MLB wants the games played during the afternoon they'd have to be willing to take checks with fewer zeros in them from the networks in order to do so. The only sporting event I know of that takes less money in order to dictate their terms to TV instead of the other way around in The Masters.

One way to look at this is to pretend that each of the players on that chart are [u:1wg65vo5]available right now[/u:1wg65vo5] via free-agency but that they [u:1wg65vo5]can only be signed for the years and dollars remaining[/u:1wg65vo5] (the two right-hand columns) on their current deal. So if you want Tulowitski, for example, the only deal you can have him for is for $116mil over 7 years. Reyes would have to be inked $82mil/4yrs or you need to pass. And so on, as if all the GMs got together and got really drunk and put all their high-priced players on waivers. I think it's safe to say that a bunch of the most prized FAs at the time of their deals (Pujols, ARod, Fielder, Hamilton) would NOT be the first ones picked up under this fictional scenario.

And, in typical Sawx fashion, they're in the 5th inning despite being well past the 2 hour mark.

Yeah, they were talking about waiting until around Dec 1 to make a decision so the timing is a bit surprising even if the ultimate decision is not.

Mets � Willets Point wrote: Not sure how this doesn't get called an error. That's on the 'nobody touched it' theory. You figure the Rays play at Fenway often enough that they wouldn't look as bad as they have on balls off the Monster. Again, no official errors but certainly some less than perfectly played balls off the LF wall have allowed the notoriously slow Sox to scamper around the bases.

Zvon wrote: Zvon wrote: So, was the Pirate game pay per view only? MLBN I'll take that as a yes. MLBN is no more of a 'pay-per-view' channel than TBS or ESPN or the NFL network