Frayed Knot

Season has been over for all of ten days at this point. Not exactly foot-dragging here.

Lee with another gem. First ever playoff series win for Texas So long Rays - both from this series and to your team as it is currently structured. FAs (Crawford, Soriano, Pena) and money will make this a different team next year - and if they had trouble drawing this season ... Home teams 4-11 overall in this first round btw.

Be nice if Holt could start to straighten himself out. Dude just about fell off a cliff this year.

AL -- All games on TBS Fri - 8 PM (@ Tex) Sat - 4 PM Sun - Mon - 8 PM (@ NYY) Tues - 8 PM Wed - 4 PM Thurs - Fri - 8 PM (@ Tex) Sat - 8 PM NL -- All games on FOX Sat - 7:30 PM (@ Phil) Sun - 8 PM Mon - Tues - 4 PM (@ SF) Wed - 7:30 PM Thurs - 7:30 PM Fri - Sat - 3:30 PM (@ Phil) Sun - 7:30 PM

Cox threw another layer atop those who doubt him actually staying retired when he told reporters that the cruise the team gave him as one of his going-away gifts has already been booked by his wife ... for April 2011.

mcould any of that record be related to an inability or unwillingness to sign players who would demand exorbitant signing bonuses or the like? See: Hochevar, Luke. (A pick/holdout from the previous year, selected over higher-rated Longoria, Morrow, Kershaw, Lincecum, Scherzer, Travis Snyder... and selected due primarily to signing concerns/his being pushed by Boras, who also repped Longoria and several others in the draft.) Yeah, Hochevar was drafted 40th by the Dodgers the year before but didn't sign. He played that year in independent ball and then re-entered the draft where the Royals drafted him 1st, getting him more money than he had been offered earlier but probably less than a "real" #1 could command. Other than him I don't think their 1st round picks have been "reaches" for guys who didn't deserve to be there. With real high picks in most years they had mostly top-10 picks but some just haven't worked out. Maybe the more disturbing trend is that those years yielded almost nothing in later rounds. The more recent Drayton Moore drafts have KC's system on the verge of producing a lot of good stuff according to those in the know.

Actually, Tampa has 'un-tarped' a section of the park in order to open up 5,000 or so more seats for tonight's game. Those are probably the available ones.

I guess I'm not as anti-Philly as most here seem to be - particularly the south Jersey/Penn living crowd. I still voted Giants just for something different, haven't won in over a half-century, yadda, yadda. But if the Phils win I'm not going to cringe and will happily root for them over the Yanx who won the other day while not even playing when the move to game 5 assured them that both David Price & Cliff Lee would out of the running until at least game 3 of the next round.

Sutcliffe is one of my least favorite announcers. Dick Stockton on TV for this series seems to know baseball and has great announcer pipes but was very mistake prone on seemingly routine stuff. AND THE BRAVES TIE THE GAME !!! .... umm, no Dick, they just went ahead.

Looks face doesn't it? Farewell Mr. Cox. Your Braves just couldn't hit.

HahnSolo wrote: While I do agree that a guy like Alderson can be the baseball voice of the organization, and the kind of guy who would command a certain degree of respect from the Wilpons, I can't say I'm doing cartwheels. His best As teams were more than 20 years ago, and they were tainted by both the steroid scandal (looking the other way, Sandy?) and underachieved mightily in two of their three world series. So yeah, he may be the best guy available, but I'd hardly call him a can't-miss. You want your GM to assemble the talent to get you the strongest team possible and into the playoffs. What they do once they get there is pretty much out of his hands.

HahnSolo wrote: Hate the day off here. Am I wrong in thinking that they did not have these travel days before? Never mind that it screws up the rotation for the winning team in the ALCS, but I thought the idea was to speed up the playoffs? For a while - even after going to the 2-2-1 format in best-of-5 series - they tried keeping it to one travel day but I think that ran up against players' union complaints. I remember a Yanx/Oakland series where they had to fly coast-to-coast with no day off after game 5 was forced by an Oakland win. I believe there's not been another one of those since. The other culprit is, of course, television. What TBS doesn't want in the early rounds is 4 games scheduled on the same day to the point where over-lapping games would essentially draw viewers from themselves. That's why one series (Phils-Cin this year) has its 5 games scheduled with 3 off-days built in. In the LCS & WS, FOX wanted more days in between so they could maintain various parts of their standard prime-time sked. I believe they've eliminated one of those extra days this year with an eye towards paring it down to the standard 2-3-2 next season with only travel days in between. Was also surprised to not see more being made of Washington's positively-Jerry-like bullpen usage in game three. Agreed. He was burning through his pen back when he still had the lead and was in real trouble by the 9th inning. He even had Cliff Lee warming at one point. Totally over the top.

... while scoring a total of 4 runs (3 earned) over 3 games. Hell, they had almost as many errors (7) as they did hits (11)

Would have been nice if the Reds made a show of things, although I never really held out much hope for this series. The Twins, on the other hand, I really did think were going to at least be competitive which is why I found that one much more disappointing. Their game 1 give-away was 2000 Mets-ish in how it set the tone for the whole series. After that, getting humped by an old and shaky Pettitte was almost expected.

Giants win 3-2 with two of their runs (including the game winner) coming directly off errors by Brooks Conrad (sounds like a secret agent) their all-purpose guy playing 2B today as Omar Infante covers 3B in the absence of the injured Martin Prado. And not that we know for sure what really would have happened but Los Bravos missed Billy Wags today. Giants starters so far: 3 games; 23 IP; 1 ER (reliever allowed an inherited to score); 11 hits ... and they were within a 9th inning error of going down 2 games to 1 IF they advance that pitching is going to be a bitch for anyone.

SINGLE ... TIE GAME !!!!

Kimbrel goes: PO, BB, K, 1B and now is himself pulled for one of Cox's myriad of LHPs he has out in his pen (Michael Dunn). So it's 1st & 2nd, 2 outs. Aubrey Huff up.

Man, did anyone besides me (even before the fact) hate that Bochy pitching change as much as I did? Giants have lefty Jonathan Sachez tossing a 1-hit gem thru 7. A lead-off single is followed by a failed sac bunt at which point Cox then sends up the righty swinging Troy Glaus (who did all his hitting this year, it seems, prior to about June 15th) in place of Rick Ankiel. Bochy then comes out of the dugout at a gallop to pull Sanchez for his RH reliever Sergio Romo. OK, Romo's had a decent year, except that Cox immediately yanks Glaus in favor of the lefty-swinging Eric Hinske and Bochy is now check-mated. That Hinske followed with a 2R HR to erase the 1-0 SF lead almost served him right. Braves now trying to close out the 9th with rookie (21 ML IPs) Craig Kimbrel in the absence of Wagner. Billy the Kid was officially removed from the roster today in favor of T. Saito (not sure why he was left off intially).

G-Fafif wrote: They call them the Twins 'cause every one of their Octobers is identical. In that case they ought to be called the quadruplets.

Joel Sherman makes the case for Sandy Alderson http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/mets/mets_must_hire_alderson_as_gm_StpRnEyR6lULxiMChSMqSK

So I think the deal is that we need this one to finish up on Sunday with a Rangers win. Otherwise Texas will be forced to spend Cliff Lee in game 5 and throw off their whole rotation for the Yanqui series while Sabathia sits around resting for his probable three starts out of seven if necessary. Ergo I'm pulling for the Rangers but if they don't win today I'm switching my allegiance to Tampa in a game 5.

I think the surprising thing here was that Kyle Farnsworth was actually able to close down a tight game.

Here are the almost comical 5th - 6th & 7th innings for the Phils: 1B FO FC - too slow for a DP (classic NYY-type move) so at this point there's 1 on and 2 out E4 - Phillips slid for a grounder he didn't look like he needed to leave his feet for E5 - Rolen both bobbled it then made a bad throw 2 RBI 1B - both runs unearned of course K 6th inning: Walk Pop-out * change pitchers* K - again, two outs and a good chance to get out of the inning SB HBP *change pitchers* HBP Walk - 1 RBI GO 7th inning: *new pitcher* HBP (on an 0-2 count, and it looked like it missed) K FC/no out recorded - Basically Rolen threw to the wrong base trying to get the force when he should have gone to 1st. Ump might have missed the call at 2nd too. So essentially another error even though not scored that way. E9/E4 - this was the killer. Bruce whiffed on the soft liner then Phillips dropped the relay throw to allow the 2nd run to score 1B RBI GO - a slow bouncer hit too shitty to get the DP and end the inning even with the catcher running, a true NYY moment. 1B *change pitchers* GO So, if I've got my math right, Reds pitchers faced 22 batters to get those 9 outs even though the Phils got all of 4 hits and all of them singles.

HahnSolo wrote: These Phillies really give me a late-90s Yankee vibe, and I really don't want to live through that again. Yup. At one point there was something like 7 straight Phils who reached base did so without a hit. Walks, HBPs (3 in a 5 batter span), errors, more errors, plays simply not made, throws to the wrong base, etc. Positively Yanqui-esque.

It was still a pretty close call (his toes weren't more than inches from the base and the tag was somewhat high) and I think his rather funky slide made it tough to call in live action. Nobody on the Braves complained. Hell, even Cox didn't squawk and he only argues on days when the sun comes up in the east. But my main point was that it's no surprise that all the losing teams are finding fault with the umps when they really should be looking elsewhere. Plus it seemed to me that, with a no-hitter, a two-hit shut-out, a Pettitte comeback game, the best team in the AL on the brink, etc. all in a two-day span, there were a number of media types over-selling the idea that the over-riding story in the playoffs so far was umpire incompetence. That, in my view, was because a number of them came into the week with that idea in their heads and are only too anxious to mold the facts to fit the pre-written story.