Frayed Knot

This pitcher's name sounds like the town in Mexico that Andy DuFresne escaped to.

Utley HR'd in the 7th 8-6 in the Philly half of the 8th Tampa Bay hung a 6-spot up on the Yanx, lead 6-5

Valadius wrote: WHAT WAS THAT?!?!?!? - It was Delgado ranging too far (Castillo had that lined up) - Reyes assuming that Castillo was getting it so he didn't cover - And then Sosa assuming the play was going to 2nd so HE was late in covering 1st - Oh yeah, and Delgado bobbled it. Other than that it was played perfectly.

* Manny Acosta shut down the Phils in their half of the 6th * Cubs losing 4-2 in the 9th in Florida

I woulda PH-ed

* Braves re-tie it at 5 in the 6th * BoSox up 3-1 on Oakland Manny returned after taking a month or so vacation ... and has already been pulled for a pinch-runner

* Howard & Werth go deep and they're tied in Philly * ARod's GS starts the final nail in Detroit's coffin * Cubs losing 4-0 to Florida

It's not easy beating Green

metsguyinmichigan wrote: Didn't the Dodgers and Padres a few years back have a playoff game to decide the division -- even though whoever lost would be the wild card so each would be going to the playoffs anyway? Don't think so. The only time they have play-in games at this point is when it makes a difference between a team making or not making the playoffs. If it's just to determine seeding they resort to various tie-breaking procedures a la Yanx-Boston in 2005; they tied after 162 but the Yanx were declared division winners due to head-to-head. Houston won a division from StL the same way a few years back.

Is Milledge available today or is it one more game?

Maybe some game somewhere will go our way cuz the one here certainly isn't. * Braves 3 - Phils 1 after 1 Tiexeira & Rollins have traded HRs * Pitt leads Ariz 2-0 in the 2nd * StL @ Milw at 8PM * Col @ LA - late * SD @ SF - late * Yanx lead TB 1-0 in the 1st and we have a Kei Igawa sighting!! Subbing for the injured Rocket who won't pitch until at least the weekend * Oak @ Boston - tied at 1 * Tiggers hosting Minnesota - scoreless in the 2nd

That's the way I understand it. Which isn't to say that Willie doesn't like his coaches, only that they weren't necc his choice except for the one recently canned.

The Yanx this season might actually prefer the WC seeing as how it looks increasingly likely that it'll hook them up against Cleveland instead of Anaheim in the first round. Boy would THAT attitude turn around under this proposed system!

Nymr83 wrote: a 1-game playoff round is too un-baseball-like for me. its different when 2 teams tie in the regular season because then we're just playing a 163rd regular season game To me this is very similar to the play-in game for tied teams, only it's a play-in game for the two top non-winners. No division winner is being made to jump through another hoop, nor is the post-season being extended for another half-week which it would be with a 2-of-3. ]but to have the 93-69 WC team play 1 game against the 82-80 WC team is a bit silly to me. Very unusual that the two teams records' would be anywhere near that disparate. And the solution to not being subject to that kind of one-off knockout is to win your division!!

Madden was just on M&MD show, mostly about this column (didn't catch all of it). - Says he did NOT talk directly to Willie about this (despite M&MD's insistance for 2 days that this article was virtual Willie dictation) - Stands by implying that the front office is less than enamored with Willie although stops short of saying Omar feels that way. But Jeff's recent comments and Tony Bernazard's rathr public schmoozing with Acta can't be making Willie feel all that comfortable. - Says that Willie's extension last winter was slow in coming given that they hired him with no mgr experience and asked him to become a face about the community and he did all that AND won a division title (soon to be 2?) and has been in first place virtually every day for the last 300 games or so. - Stuck by his Rickey commnets despite LoDuca's dismissal of them My only concern stems back to that Madden-penned take-out slide on then Met minor-league honcho Gary LaRoque (discussed widely here) in which he made numerous errors and stated various "facts" weren't at all seemingly because they fit into his pre-determined conclusion. Madden's obviously been around forever and I'm sure has enough contacts to get the nuts and bolts of a brewing story if there is one. But I do wonder if he doesn't sometimes over-rely on those higher-up types he goes way back with and simply take their word as law instead of also spending some time in the clubhouse in an effort to see if the spin he's being given passes the smell test - which is probably where LoDuca's P.O.V. come from.

1) This idea HAS been around for years 2) Leiter's plan (IIRC) was more of an expand it even bigger and let more teams and and MORE MONEY FOR EVERYONE!! kind of strategy. I forgot all the details of his but I remember I didn't like it. 3) I like this one! - The idea is that it gives real meaning to winning the division versus getting in via the wildcard. Teams like this year's Yanx or even the Mets to a lesser extent would fight tooth & nail for the div crown rather than coast the final week knowing you had the WC as a fall-back. Strategies woud develop as to whether you use your best pitchers down the streatch to seal the deal or risk "saving" them for Round 1. The current carrot of the extra home games is barely a factor and even making it 4-1 (H/R) instead of the current 3/2 is window dressing mostly. Home teams win less than 55% of MLB games and recent post-season games have been closer still. So this year we'd most likely be looking at Yanx v Tigers (with Seattle still hoping) ... one-game play-in ... Wang vs Verlander ... for the right to face probably Cleveland or go home (you'd probably want to get rid of the no in-division in the 1st round rule) In the NL you'd see maybe Philly v SD, Peavy v Hamels. And in both cases the WC survivor would not only have a days less rest but would be without their #1 starter until later on ... or do they chance getting by with #2?!? As long as you're going to let non-Division winners into the party, this should have been the system all along IMO.

The thing about the 'Player of the Year' award that Keith was talking about is that although it was award given from outside MLB itself, TSN was so highly regarded within baseball circles in those days that it was as good as MLB's own awards like the MVP. They may still give that award for all I know, but TSN abandoned their full-time coverage of baseball in order to attract fans of other sports and wound up pleasing no one. I too used to subscribe years ago but gave it up as it started heading downhill. ]Not only do I rarely open up TSN when it comes every week but I usually just toss it right in the garbage without even looking at it. I've told this story before; but I followed an on-line link to a free 1-year subscription for 'The Sporting News'. I discovered I was being overcharged.

metsmarathon wrote: 15 baserunners and we only score 4? that's not terribly good offense... All starting when the first baserunner of the game erased himself. After that it was all downhill from there.

One coaching tidbit I read about a few weeks back involved the well-respected Texas hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo. The gist of the article (I forget the source but it was national rather than Met-specific) was that his contract runs out at an odd time - like upon the final day of the season rather than after the WS as is usual - thus making him the first 'coaching FA' of the off-season. Jaramillo had a bout with cancer a year or so ago but is supposedly back healthy. He was also, you may recall, a one-time rumoured NYM manager candidate and with his Tex Ranger roots and Latin last name he'll no doubt be labled as another one of Omar's "obsessions". All of which is just a long way of speculating that the whole dump-Down in favor of the Rickey/HoJo tandem was just to: a) shake things up, and mark time until a hitting coach with a better resume makes himself available. HoJo, I'd guess, could still stay on in some capacity while Rickey gets shifted back to a ST/roving guy rather than a full-time dugout presence.

Delgado - 1.0 Beltran - 0.7 Castillo - 1.0 LoDuca - 0.7 Gomez - 0.4 Feliciano - 0.2

Green walked Reyes bounced out - run scored - runners to 2nd & 3rd Castillo bounced out to end the inning after an 11 pitch AB 7-3 after 6 -- but we needed more runs that inning.

Hey I got a good idea ... let's give up some more walks followed by 2-out hits.

What Wright has going for him above most of the other likely suspects is OBP - a whopping .414 at the moment - which is why many of those metrics above rate him so high. Only Helton, Chipper & Pujols are higher in the NL (w/enough ABs). The other is that certain voters (wrongly IMO) will eliminate those not on a playoff team (as if missing by a game or two makes one less valuable) so this week's games could eliminate Fielder & Holliday on some ballots, and maybe Utley & Rollins as well. I believe I heard Adam Rubin say a few weeks back that he has one of the NL-MVP votes this year.

Yanx lose to the jays and get rid of the annoying 1/2 game thing they've had with Boston for so long. They thought they were catching a break when they came to the stadium today to discover that AJ Burnett was called away for some family thing and they were facing Jesse Litsch instead -- but Litsch skunked them on 4 hits. So with 6 games to play: Boston 92 - 64 they host Oakland & Minnesota NYY 90 - 66 games at Balt & Tampa Yanx hold the tie-breaker so Boston will have to win the division as a tie makes them the WC just like in 2005 Tiggers sit 5 games back of Yanx at 85 - 71 In the race for league's best record: Native Americans - 63 losses, 6 to play Angels - 64 losses, 6 to play BoSox - 64 losses, 6 to play Yanx - 66 losses, 6 to play

The Mets weren't considered for any of the WC considerations??? It's certainly still possible.