Frayed Knot

Dan LeBatard (somewhat intentionally) comes off as a clown on TV (hey, it's what they want) but his background is in newspapers, his base is Miami, and his heritage Cuban http://www.miamiherald.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/dan-le-batard/article104096841.html

Imagine this game with better RiSP hitting (5/18) and fewer LOBs (12)? Batters Faced/Outs Recorded by Marlin pitchers in this game Koehler: 21/11 Cervenka: 4/2 Ogando: 1/2 McGowen: 5/2 Nicolino: 4/4 Brice: 4/1 Dunn: 4/1 Despaigne: 8/4

BP has us up to 86.1% now. St. Louis down to 42.9. And Giants at 71% 86 seems high for being just 1up in the loss column but then I remember even odds here are 66%. Yeah, remember that these odds have to add up to 200% since two teams are guaranteed entry, and in this case (unlike in the AL) it's only split three ways with the Marlins going back down to 0.00% even though they still have a hail mary shot at forcing a play-in game. Mainly the best thing that happened to us yesterday even though all three contenders won (and all three scored exactly 12 runs!!) is the removal of a day off of the schedule. The total number of permutations for the three teams over the remaining week fell from the 294 prior to last night's action down to 180 [5 combos for us x 6 each for SF & StL] and only 20 of those 180 eliminate us. We get in clear via 140, and at least tie for a spot in the other 20. Now again, like yesterday, these are unweighted odds so it's not exact but both my figuring yesterday and again today pretty much mimic the BP stuff: 140/180 = 77% then throw in around half of the 20% play-in odds and you're right there in the mid/upper-80s just like BP Remember also that the Cards have to be at least two wins better than us and now have less time in which to do it (even with one extra game) and the Giants have to notch at least one more win - and if Either/or of those don't happen then we're in. So plainly put: - sweeping our four games obviously gets us in since we can't be caught - but three wins virtually guarantees it also. There are 36 combos of us going 3-1 and we're in free and clear on 34 of them and in some sort of tie via 2 [a two tie for #2 slot w/StL if both SF & StL run the table; a three-way tie if Cards go 5-0 and SF 4-1] - going 2-3 gives us 30 'IN', 4 'TIE', 2 'OUT' - a paltry 1-4 still yields 24 'IN', 6 'TIE', 6 'OUT' - and even 0-5 let's us sneak in almost half the time - 16 'IN', 8 'TIE', 12 'OUT'

Oddly the Giants are 7-9 in Bumgarner starts since the end of June. Sure, at times he pitched well and the team lost anyway but not always -- his ERA is 4.00+ ERA for Aug & Sept -- and it's been 9 starts since he went beyond the 7th inning in part because he's been working with some pretty high pitch counts despite only going 5 or 6 many nights.

6-1 Giants over the Rox in the 6th, so it's looking like no help tonight (although the SFG bullpen will be heard from before the night is over) and will likely be status quo tomorrow only with one more day erased from the schedule.

Frayed Knot wrote: 2R HR by Cincy. Still 8-5 Cards but the Reds not going away easily and they're still just in the 6th. Bah, 11-5 Cards.

G-Fafif wrote: Anybody catch the dig at GKR's predecessor earlier? A clip from 2000 played, Ronnie referred to Mr. "CAHN-fidence," while Gary simply uttered, "Can of corn." Damn, I missed that one. Probably would still be laughing if I did catch it.

So assume for purposes of this exercise that we lock up one or the other of the WC spots and will play next week against either of the only teams still in it at this point, SF or StL, for the right to meet the Cubs Which do you prefer to see? ... a question which, in my mind, suggests who you think will be easier to beat but you can use whatever preferences or reasoning you want.

2R HR by Cincy. Still 8-5 Cards but the Reds not going away easily and they're still just in the 6th.

Fman99 wrote: It's all coming together here -- Duda hitting, Bruce htiting, Cabrera/Cespedes/Reyes all hitting, production from all over the field right now. Now all we need is to get Cespedes running on occasion. Nice that he scored on Duda's hit but it was one batter later than he should have. And one more thing ... SUCK ON THAT you scoreboard watchers out in the mid-west and far-west!!

LOOOOOOOOOOO-CUS

Grand Slam Diaz for the Cards. 5-2 StL in the 4th. Diaz, btw, was a childhood friend of Jose Fernandez and left the team yesterday to spend the day with the Fernandez family.

Nice consecutive K's of Yelich, Stanton, and Bour (by Syndergaard, Syndergaard, and Salas) to end the 6th and start the 7th. Might need Jeurys to do something similar in the 9th.

Cincy up 2-0 on the Cards, still in the 3rd inning, and they've got Wainwright up over 70 pitches already so he's not long for the game. The only problem is that the Reds have left runners all over the place, they left one on in the 1st, 2 on in the 2nd, and just left 'em loaded in the 3rd. Could be a lot bigger.

Too many LOBsters out there. Hope this doesn't come back and bite us later on. Can't have too big a lead with Stanton & Bour out there.

I see David Price hasn't forgotten to suck against the Yanx (4.44 career ERA in 34 starts) - a 2R 1st inning HR (to Gary Sanchez of course) and 3 runs on 7 hits thru 5 3-0 Yanx in the 6th

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Cole Hamels has 32 starts against the Mets. Hamels was the one guy I thought about.

So is any active pitcher (he says while looking in Grimm's direction) even close to Tom Kohler in starts vs the Mets? Tonight is 21st game vs the Mets and his 18th start. Even the other NL East squads aren't all that close WAS (13), PHI (14) and ATL (12) so it just seems that his starts line up against ours each time the teams meet. I figure if anyone has more it would have to be an older pitcher (Kohler just turned 30 this year) but there's no one currently in the NL East with that long a career under his belt and the unbalanced schedule wouldn't give out of division guys that many chances.

DiComo on mlb.com: Mets starter Steven Matz will undergo season-ending surgery imminently to remove a bone spur from his left elbow, according to a team source. The club has not confirmed the news. So it's essentially nothing additional on top of what we already knew, just that it apparently can't be put off until the off-season. Or rather that IT IS the off-season starting now as far as Matz is concerned.

As they say on the schoolyard ... 'That's gonna leave a mark' oe: just saw the replay of his injury. He just jumped up for a high throw and came down and folded. Totally a non-contract injury. And he's a FA this winter too, coming off probably his best season.

Frayed Knot wrote: The longest Syndergaard went between games was July 8th thru 19th Other double digit missed game streaks: d'Arnaud = 50 Duda = 107 Walker = 33 Cabrera = 17 Wright = 115 Cespedes = 14 Lagares = 16 + 47 Flores = 16 + what's looking like the final 20 Reyes = 17 Ruggiano = 15 + 34 Matz = 45 Harvey = 80 Niese = 37 and then consider that Reyes, Niese, and Ruggiano weren't even on the team from the start, so their combined 103 games missed is out of a possible max of only 195

The longest Syndergaard went between games was July 8th thru 19th

But can he close for them?

Magic Numbers: Mets over Cardinals: 5. Mets over Giants: 6. And the good thing about those magic numbers is that we only need Either of them come through. It reminds me a bit of 1999. As we all recall (and if you don't you'll be banned) it was the Mets sweeping the Pirates AND the Reds stumbling twice against a bad Brewers team over the final weekend which forced that WC play-in game which in turn led to the Pratt win over Arizona which in turn led to the GS Single and the almost win over the Braves. 'We got lucky' and 'backed in' some claimed on account of the fact that we couldn't have earned it on our own and needed the unlikely result of the Cincy/Milw series. Except what is often NOT so well remembered is that Cincy started that final weekend locked in a dead heat with Houston for the NL Central crown which means we merely needed EITHER team to stumble in their final series whilst we were taking care of our sweep. The Astros wound up winning twice vs the Dodgers (lost the first but then came back in games two & three) but the mere presence of having two teams in the mix doubled our odds for that year's 'miracle' post-season spot. And now this year looks to play out in similar fashion: in running from the bear that is a post-season-less October, we don't have to out-run both SF & StL we just have to out-run one of them and let the bear eat the other. I mean, sure we'd prefer beating both, but the difference between finishing ahead of neither and finishing ahead of one is a whole lot larger than the difference between one and two.

As simple as I can make it, there are six different ways the Mets can play out the schedule [0-5, 1-4, 2-3, 3-2, 4-1, 5-0] and seven different ways each the Giants and Cardinals can play out theirs given that they have six games remaining rather than five. So 6 x 7 x 7 = 294 different combinations that things could still turn out (ignoring the Marlins for the moment). The way I figure it, 227 of those have us winning one or the other WC outright. Of the remaining there are 30 more scenarios where we'll need a play-in game because we either tied for the second slot or wind up in a three-way knot. And then there are 37 outcomes where we wind up on the outside looking in. Problem is, not all of those outcomes are equally possible. It's far more likely, for instance, that the Mets go 3-2 or 2-3 than it is 1-4 or 4-1, and even those outcomes are more likely still than 0-5, 5-0. Those same 'squishing towards the middle' odds apply also to SF & StL. The odds therefore of each team running the table for instance is not 1/294 (0.34%) but a rather ridiculous 0.00076% These odds are all generic, btw, and don't take into consideration the quality of opponent and pitchers, or the hot-ness or not-ness of each team, but it's the best we can do here. I assume that places like BP take all those factors in and so it's probably just best to follow their daily updates. At the moment they've got us at 83.3% in although 'IN' might still entail a 50/50 shot via a play-in game. Either way, with so few games remaining the odds have the ability to rise or drop fairly dramatically with each game played and the volume of possibilities will drop quickly. Bottom line: The odds are pretty good as things stand right now that Sunday will not be our final game of the season ... but stayed tuned for further updates as they become available.