Frayed Knot

Lots of times, especially with these AL playoffs, I don't have a rooting interest going in but as things get towards the end I find myself pulling for one side or the other. I just discovered tonight that I'm pulling for the Royals in this one. Not sure why, but I am. And conveniently "my team" has just taken the lead.

Keeping him around is certainly not out of the question - which is kind of funny considering that, upon his signing, probably not even 10% of fans would have bet on him lasting the entire two years of the deal. Hell, only 1/3 of us here at CPF guessed at the beginning of this season that he'd last the year.

Swedish metal band 'Europe' is so hard up for gigs that they'll come play in your company's break room during lunch hour.

Man, the Rangers are building a rough post-season history. Three times a AL West winner over a four year span in the '90s, they got wiped out by the Yanx each time winning just one game (1-9) Then they lost back to back World Series in 2010 & '11 including that Game 6 crusher to StL where they were one strike from winning several times. And since then they've tacked on a WC game loss, and now this. That's a lot of soul-crushing defeats in less than a 20 year span.

El Segundo Escupidor wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: If I cap an half-inning like that with a 2-out/3R tie-breaking HR, I'm flipping my bat halfway to Vancouver. You could have just said Calgary. Gonna flip it to Alberta / the weather's good there in the fall

Zvon wrote: Zvon wrote: All 3 errors were on Andrus? One of them had to be on the 1B Moreland for that throw to Andrus. And I think on the force attempt at 3B it was on Beltre for the (non) catch rather than Andrus for the throw. Yea thanks, I saw that on review. I wasn't paying attention at the innings start. It was Andrus taking the throw at 3rd from Beltran, tho, I think. Andrus dropped that. Right, the bunt was Beltre to Andrus covering not the other way around. So 2 errors on Andrus plus the one on Moreland (that Andrus couldn't save).

If I cap an half-inning like that with a 2-out/3R tie-breaking HR, I'm flipping my bat halfway to Vancouver. Tulo's problems are his bad haircut and his man-crush on Jeter.

Zvon wrote: All 3 errors were on Andrus? One of them had to be on the 1B Moreland for that throw to Andrus. And I think on the force attempt at 3B it was on Beltre for the (non) catch rather than Andrus for the throw.

That list is comprised almost entirely of wild card era teams. Well of course it is! Any list of anything dealing with anything with the qualifier 'since 1986' is going to comprise of mostly WC era seasons. Although if you want to get technical here: there have been 30 seasons since 1986, 28 really since we should throw out the shortened innings of '94 & '95 which made winning 100 much harder. So 7 of those 28 (25%) were non-WC years and 3 of the 100+ win misses (20%) were from that era. That's a higher rate since the additional rounds were added, but not absurdly so. Point being that it happened prior to the WC era too. Did the commentators give any reason for why 100 win teams aren't winning the WS? Just saw the stat somewhere, didn't hear commentary on it. But I'm guessing that it has something to do with teams having two or three chances to lose instead of just one, but I'd have to study up on it further to know for sure.

Now THAT was one freaky half-inning!!! And it still ain't over.

Honestly don't think I've seen that before. That it's a live ball makes sense but I can see as how the first reaction is to think the opposite. No excuse for the home plate ump not to know that though.

The still quirky but less dumb stat of the day from out of the StL/CHC series. The 1986 Mets remain the [u:27q7od2d]last NL club[/u:27q7od2d] to win 100 or more games AND win the WS that same year. 100+ has been reached 15 times since, including this season's 100-win Cardinals team, but none of those teams went on the win the WS 1) 1988 NYM - 100 wins, lost in NLCS 2 & 3) 1993 Braves - 104 wins, lost to PHI in NLCS -- also the SFG that same year who won 103 but didn't even qualify for the playoffs in that final non-WC year 4) 1997 Braves - 101 wins, lost to Marlins in NLCS 5 & 6) 1998 Braves - 106 wins, lost to SDP in NLCS -- also 102 win Astros who lost to SDP in NLDS 7 & 8) 1999 Braves - 103 wins, lost to NYY in WS -- also the 100 win DBacks who lost to the Mets in NLDS 9) 2002 Braves - 101 wins, lost to SFG in NLDS 10 & 11) 2003 Braves - 101 wins, lost to (88 win) Cubs in NLDS -- also the 100 win Giants who lost to Anaheim in the WS 12) 2004 Cardinals - 105 wins, lost to Boston in WS 13) 2005 Cardinals - 100 wins, lost to Houston in NLCS 14) 2012 Phillies - 102 wins, lost to StL in NLDS 15) 2015 Cardinals - 100 wins, lost to Cubs in NLDS

The dumb 'stat' of the day that seems to be getting lots of run this morning is the one about last night being the first post-season clinching game at Wrigley Field EVER!!!! Ummm yeah, ya wanna know why? Because the Cubs had only won ONE post-season SERIES since the building of Wrigley until last night, beating the Braves 3 games to 1 in the 1st round of 2003 and, although they won 2 games out of 3 at home in that series, the clincher for that one was in Atlanta. In fact most "records" which involve the phrase 'post-season' are dumb. Numerous talking heads were crowing about 'Most HRs in one post-season day' a couple days ago. Think that might have anything to do with the idea that four games in a day didn't exist until three years back? Looking through the Cubs record, their two wins over the Cards this week give them just [u:3qsc9leq]10 post-season Games[/u:3qsc9leq] in the history of Wrigley. The Cubs won the WS in 1907 & 08 while getting there but losing in 1906 & 1910. But those were all prior to Wrigley being built (1914). They then got to the WS again in 1918 but switched their home games to the more spacious Comiskey Park (and lost 2 of the 3 home games anyway). So the first WS games to be played at Wrigley were in 1929 when lost to the A's in six games including going 0-2 at home. Went 0-2 at home again in 1932; 1-2 in 1935; 0-2 in 1938; and 1-3 in 1945 Since the advent of expanded post-season they've lost six series and now have won their second while going 8-9 in home games.

Keith has made it quite clear over the years that he had no interest in investing the time or discipline it takes to be a major league coach or manager. "It would interfere with cocktail hour", he once said. He only reluctantly warmed up to the idea of broadcasting after some time spent away from the game. I think he enjoys it now that he's doing it but especially enjoys the fact that he's be able to keep it to a 100 or so days per year gig leaving the rest of the time for relaxing, enjoying cocktail hour, and trolling for wimmen.

I feel better about deGrom vs Greinke than I did Matz v Kershaw. Don't like the fact that there's no room for error but whatyagonnado?

deGrom vs Greinke for all the marbles. Now THAT sounds like fun.

Fman99 wrote: Mets Guy in Michigan wrote: Damn. Bright side is that we wore down the closer. He does have three more outs to get and still has d'Arnaud, Cespedes and Duda to deal with. And Wilmer, hopefully. Took him 14 pitches to get one out. That's essentially a full inning's worth. So while he may have a handful of four-out saves to his credit, this is going to be more like a full two-inning job for him.

Dang! I had all kinds of visions of Murph slashing one to LF in that AB.

That 2-2 pitch to Wright could have been a swing, could have been a tip, could have been a called strike - but was none of them

And so it begins ...

Elster88 wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: Benjamin Grimm wrote: Nymr83 wrote: Good Starters should be used in relief on their throw day more often. Do you think if he pitches tonight he'll be able to go on Thursday? For a couple of batters, yes. What I suspect was that deGrom was Terry's guy if we needed to get out of that last inning unscathed. But now that the reliever is in to start the inning it's Bartolo. But he was warming up while the Mets were hitting Not initially. But, yes, he did continue to throw after the Mets were up, but at that point it just may have been getting his normal allotment in. I'd be shocked if he's not out of the picture for tonight now.

No nail polish tonight for d'Arnaud.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Nymr83 wrote: Good Starters should be used in relief on their throw day more often. Do you think if he pitches tonight he'll be able to go on Thursday? For a couple of batters, yes. What I suspect was that deGrom was Terry's guy if we needed to get out of that last inning unscathed. But now that the reliever is in to start the inning it's Bartolo.

Probably his 'throw day' which could make him available for a batter or three. Still gotta think they're saving him for Thursday though. I was actually thinking that we could see Syndergaard tonight.

Isn't this fun? Not at the moment.