Frayed Knot

https://www.mlb.com/news/jared-young-resting-at-home-getting-treatment-after-concussion

'And we'll see you in Game Three' OK, so that doesn't have quite the ring as Jack Buck's call back in '91, but no sweep in this series anyway. Game ended on a K/ABS challenge with two on. Realmuto had about an 80% successful challenge rate over the season and this one justnipped the zone. Francisco Alvarez, of course, would have run out of challenges six innings earlier.

Alex Bohm HRs w/2 out in top 10, 4 - 3 Phils But can their pen hold on?!? Andrew Painter (mostly a starter) who pitched a scoreless 9th will give the 10th a try.

And they're going to extras .... without the Clown Car rules!!!!

Game 2: Bottom 7th w/one out/runner on 1st, 1B Alex Bohm makes a bad decision for the lead runner on a Sac Bunt attempt putting runners on 1st & 2nd. Next AB saw Harper misplaying a fly to RF turning it into an RBI 2B. An IW loads the bases which was followed by a Sac Fly and the end of C. Sanchez's day. 3 - 1 Braves, end of 7 But then while I was typing the above, Schwarber leads off the 8th with a HR, followed by Harper doing the same (both were rockets!!) and suddenly it's 3 - 3. Lefty Dylan Lee -- no HRs to a LHB this season prior to today -- was the victim.

From the Braves/Phillies thread: A bunch of unsold seats in Houston also, about 7,000 or so. Even the players noticed/commented on this; they also noticed/commented on the intermittent booing they got but I'll write that off to a meh/.500 season plus the lousy results in Game 1. Be nice if MLB takes notice of this if and when they contemplate expanding playoffs.

I fell asleep with the Yanx up 2 - 0 Woke up to the Grand Slam making it 9 - 0 ... then immediately wen to bed. In the four years / 16 playoffs that these best-of-three matchups have existed, the team winning the first game went on the win the series 15 times with 11 of those series being 2 - 0 sweeps. Only the BoSox last year won game one (vs the Yanx) but then lost the next two. Ranger Suarez vs Gerritt Cole Sonny Gray & Max Fried in game two. Same bat time, same bat channel as last night.

The good news is that I found a linnk on 'Bet MGM' where I can bet on from which section the fan who assaults the first opposing player comes from.

White Sox 6 - Astros 3

Yup. They wanted at least six out from him and he got the first five straight. But then, with two outs/bases empty, came IF single, HBP, then a first-pitch 3R HR. So it's not like they smacked him all over the park, but he was undone by that one pitch. Raisel Iglesias then countered with a quick/clean 1-2-3 top 9th for the save.

Game 1: - Ozzie Albies triples in the 6th to give the Braves a 2 - 1 lead - JT Realmuto's 2-out/2-RBI triple in the 7th flips the lead to Philly 3 - 2 - Austin Riley's two-run 3R HR oin the 8th ff closer Duran gives Atlanta a two-run lead - Phils get the leadoff runner on in the 9th but that's followed by a GiDP - fly to LF and the Braves win!!

Aaron Judge will NOT be on the Yanx' roster for the first round vs Boston.

I saw the thread title and was worried MLB had roped the Mets into playing a regular season series in Egypt next season.

Also listed as a Peacock only game, not that us east-coasters are going to see a lot of it anyway. Cubs pitcher is currently list as TBA. Padres counter with former Yanx reliever turned good starter Clay Holmes Michael King: 32 starts, 3.21 ERA / 1.18 WHIP

The six AL playoff teams are a definite case of Big Three/Little Three. The big boys [TBR, NYY, BOS] are a combined 71 games over .500 while the little three are just a collective +14. And one of those Big Three will be eliminated in the 1st round and two of the three are guaranteed to be gone prior to the ALCS. And so it starts with these two. Boston calls on Payton Tolle, the immense [6' 6" / 250] rookie left-hander, just two years removed from being drafted (2nd round - 2024) who went 9 - 6, 3.03 / 1.096 in 26 starts. Yanx counter with likely AL CY winner Cam Schlittler. And then maybe the bigger news is will/how much Aaron Judge plays. Yanx won 7 of 13 during their regular season play.

This game is available only via Peacock apparently. I guess NBC figures no one will watch anyway so why take up network airspace. Chicago pitcher is listed at TBA. Houston going with AJ Blueballs Blubaugh, a rookie making his first start of the season (he had 3 GS in a trial run last year). Like Philly, these teams had to go down to the last day of the season to secure and/or fight for a spot so they couldn't exactly set-up an ideal rotation.

Game 1, Tuesday 9/29, 2:00 EDT, NBC & Peacock Jesus Luzardo vs Chris Sale You figure the Braves would have the edge in most games with Sale going, but more than usual in this case as the Philly pitching, which was great though top-heavy to start with, now has less depth to it. They used Wheeler on Sunday just to make sure they'd even get to playing meaningful October baseball. Plus Nola pitched (badly and briefly) on Saturday, and Sanchez pitched Friday (well, but not well enough because Philly's offense is also feast of famine). So what about Luzardo? Well he also pitched Sunday though just one inning in relief. The bigger problem is that that inning was his first appearance since September 7th. He pitched a CG 2-hit shutout that day but then when on the IL with left shoulder inflammation. Not exactly coming in on a roll in other words.

The final report card, Minor movement as you'd tend to expect towards the end of the year and with only 12 days since the last check. My purpose in starting this way back when was the idea that they HAD to get better, even if only by accident, as the year went on. And, yeah, they did, but certainly not as dramatically or as completely as we hoped. The lengthy absences of Soto and Lindor were a factor but every team has injuries.

aka: less than one more productive position player per team

That was my point all along. Of course the East lost a majority of games to the West, there's no way for the division to be under .500 otherwise. But assuming Edgy's math above is correct: the '73 NL East won out-of-division games at the rate that a team going 78 - 84 over a full season wins them [77.6 wins/yr if you want to get technical). That's not a good team but also not a horrible one. This year's AL West crew was collectively akin to a team winning 68.7 G/yr, 2+ games worse than 1973's last place Phillies.. One team lost 100 games, another just missed (64 - 98), and even the 3rd place team was worse than the '73 NLE was as a whole. 1973 NL East: a mostly mediocre crew [top five clubs a collective 10 G-under .500] with one bad team (- 20). 2026 AL West: a whole lotta suck (83 G under .500)

I'm going to wait for the movie.

So the Phils finally won a game down the stretch here and snagged the final NL WC slot in doing so. They tried very, very hard to blow a four game lead with five to play but couldn't even accomplish that correctly. In the AL the Astros are about to win [9 - 0 Houston heading into bottom 9th in West Sacramento] but it doesn't matter because the Rangers already lost so the 'stros are division winners even IF they have the worst 9th inning ever (and they didn't: A's went down 1 - 2 - 3). What the Houston win does do is avoid the embarrassing case of a sub-.500 division winner ... even if having an exact .500 division winner is scarcely better. So NL seeding: Brewers #1, Dodgers #2 so both sit out the 1st round Braves #3 vs #6 Phillies in a best of three all in Georgia while the #5 seed Cubs head to #4 San Diego In the AL: Rays #1 and Cleveland #2 get the Byes* #3 Astros host #6 White Sox and the #4 Yanx host #5 Red Sox (that one might draw some minor interest) Exact times of games will be announced once the commissioner asks the Yanx what time is most convenient for them. Then the other games can be jiggered around that.

Apparently we're the only team that doesn't hit the Nats' bullpen.

Ugh Ronnie.

GKR talking about this year's AL West and 1973's NL East, but they were really very different stories. The NL East that year was a collective 30 games under .500 that year, 20 of that belonging to the Phillies [Mets +3, StL even, PIT -2, MTL -4, CHC -7, PHI - 20] iow, it was mostly a division bunched towards the middle rather than a basket of deplorable.s. This year's ALW is a collective 81 games under .500 with no one above break even. At the moment it's HOU & TEX and one game under, then SEA at -9 followed by ATH at -33 and LAA at -37 Now part of the is the current set-up. A smaller pct of games within division can lead to wider dispersal. But in 1973 both Atlanta and San Diego had worse records than Philly iow, in '73 the NL East bet up each other to a greater degree than they did get their collective asses kicked by the West. This year's AL West simply suxx.