Beaneater

Speaking of superstitions, through two innings Jon Lester has a... oh, never mind.

Here's msubulldogs21's prize: Autumn's last chill rain Falls on steaming asphalt-- More pink Yanks hats now And rhet's: rhet wins talksox pool A Bronx win becomes his own-- Cold, tainted vict'ry Feel free to have them printed on T-shirts.

OK, final results here. example1, rhet, and msubulldogs21 all finished atop the board with 8 points. rhet and msubulldogs21 nailed the first tiebreak -- a 6-game World Series. Neither of them bothered to fill in a WS MVP, so they're both disqualified and I declare myself the winner. On second thought, maybe I've been in the Third World too long. That's how elections here work half the time. The prizes, custom haikus, will be forthcoming. I will even generously donate one full haiku for each winner. And yes, with the Yankees' WS win, this postseason pretty much qualifies as the most useless waste of time in playoff history. Seriously -- the teams I was rooting for went 6-24 this postseason. That bites.

Well, here's the pre-WS update: Beaneater - 3 points, 3 max Dojji - 3 points, 3 max Jacoby_Ellsbury - 4 points, 4 max Quinny - 2 points, 2 max Christian Snyder - 2 points, 2 max yeszir - 4 points, 4 max example1 - 4 points, 8 max ORS - 4 points, 4 max rhet - 4 points, 8 max Paradisecity - 5 points, 5 max BSN07 - 1 point, 1 max TheKilo - 2 points, 2 max msubulldogs21 - 4 points, 8 max Basically, if the Phillies win, Paradisecity is the the talksox champ. If the Yanks win, example1, rhet, and msubulldogs21 share the crown. So the teams I'm rooting for are 0 for 6 this postseason. All it will take is a Yankees victory to seal the craptacularness of this October.

Well, I'm not sure how much we care about baseball at this point, but here's an update on the Showdown. Each participant has some points (or point) in hand, with the chance to get more if things fall their way. Here's the rundown: beaneater - 1 point, max of 3 Dojji - 3 points, max of 5 Jacoby_Ellsbury - 2 points, max of 10 Quinny - 2 points, max of 2 Christian Snyder - 2 points, max of 2 yeszir - 2 points, max of 2 example1 - 2 points, max of 8 ORS - 2 points, max of 4 rhet - 2 points, max of 8 Paradisecity - 3 points, max of 11 BSN07 - 1 point, max of 1 TheKilo - 2 points, max of 2 msubulldogs21 - 2 points, max of 8 Paradisecity will walk away with it if the Angels win it all. Several others will do well if the Yanks win. BSN07 gets the prestigious "First to be Assured Last Place" Award, thanks to his courageous pick of Twins over Yanks. I may still join him with 1 whopping point. Anyone have rooting preferences among the remaining teams (obviously there's no need to voice an opinion about the Yankees)? My second team was going to be the Rox -- I have a brother who's been in CO for many years so I root for them by osmosis or something. I dislike the Phils and am pretty much neutral about the Dodgers. So I guess it's Angels by default. Then again, considering that my preferred teams went 0 for 4 in the first round, maybe I should trick the baseball gods into thinking I'm rooting for someone else. Hey, uh, go Yankees! Yeah, Yanks-Phillies in the WS all the way!

From your keyboard to God's ears.

You made almost the same picks as me. That's probably a bad sign for you. Care to provide tiebreakers? Or I can do them for you... Cards in 4, Smoltz MVP.

I don't see a comprehensive playoff prediction thread around. Maybe there is one and I'm too dumb to find it. Anyway, here's the place for your random guesses, clever predictions, gambling insights culled from fortune cookies, peyote-inspired visions, and other assorted prognostications. 1 point for each Division Series winner you pick, 2 for the Championship Series, and 4 for the World Series. Number of games in WS is the tiebreak. Series MVP is the double tiebreak. Winner gets undying glory and maybe a custom haiku from me if he/she so desires. I suck at predictions, so it might be a good idea to pick the opposite of whatever I pick. Here are my calls: AL Sox over LAAAAAA Yanks over Twingers Yanks over Sox (booooooooooo) NL Rox over Phils Cards over Dodgers Cards over Rox WS Cards over Yanks in 6 (Wainwright MVP) I guess in theory this should wait until we know who the AL Central champion is, but I don't suspect that many people will be picking either of the candidates to beat the Yanks in the ALDS.

Please no. I call for a moratorium on all X-Xxx nicknames. "A-Rod" is OK. "K-Rod" is questionable. "D-Ped", "A-Gon", and their ilk must all go away. On the other hand, it's fun to think of ridiculous ones: D-Ort J-Dre J-Low (hey, that's not bad!) B-Wag T-Wak etc., etc....

I second what Dipre said earlier. We are going to be sooooooo glad we didn't trade this kid.

Shouldn't Kotchman be in "questionables"? Or is he ineligible for the postseason?

Alright, I looked at some data, probably the same graph you're linking here. The pitch was in the strike zone. Not by much, but I won't argue the point. However... * That pitch was not consistently called a strike last night by that umpire. Boston pitchers threw three pitches higher than that one that were called balls. * In fact, to put it bluntly, the ump was terribly inconsistent at the bottom edge of the strike zone. Looking at his calls for the whole game, it looked like he just flipped a coin when the ball was at/below the knees. "Tails? Then that one's a STEEEEEE-RIKE!" * The ump did job the Angels in general. The Sox got way more pitches outside the zone called strikes than the Angels did. I'd count them, but I'm too lazy. All in all, looking the data, that call was not an aberration. Bad call? Maybe. Another reason why I'd like to see pitch-calling become 100% automated. Of course, there's no way a sport as blessed with tradition as baseball will entirely dispose of the ump's pitch-calling duties. But they could just put two little LEDs inside his face mask. Red light goes on, he calls a strike. Green light goes on, he calls a ball. He still gets to do his little crowd-pleasing fist-pumping-and-yelling schtick for strikes in big situations. I'm only about 25% kidding. Really my last thought: whatever happened during Greenie's AB last night is totally irrelevant in the bog scheme of things. The Angels will still win the AL West. The Red Sox will still win the WC. And we'll still hose them in the ALDS . EDIT: It's irrelevant not just in the bog scheme of things, but also in the big scheme of things.

I couldn't agree more. The check swing wasn't particularly close. The last pitch was low -- framed nicely, but low. Could it have been called a strike? Sure. Worse pitches get called strikes all the time. But it was by no means an obvious strike. At best, it was in what you might call the discretionary zone. And I think someone here said that the ump had been squeezing both sides all night. So the ump has been calling close pitches ball all night... what's the big surprise that he does it again here? Let's put it this way: I'd be pretty hacked off if a Red Sox batter got punched out on the same pitch to end a game. Here's the takeaway: * Fuentes stunk last night. That's indisputable. * Green had a pretty ballsy at-bat. And the big one... * Our B-squad beat the Angels with Paul Byrd on the mound. EVEN IF you think the Green AB was highway robbery, our B-squad put 7 runs on the Angels. Heh.

I think Gonzalez has picked up the shamrock that Green was using earlier this year.

Yeah, like, what he said too.

And how. If we had been told before today's Tazawa/Burnett matchup that the final score would be 14-1, I think most of us would have said, "Oh crap." I think that this reinforces the idea that we're not afraid of the Yankees in a hypothetical playoff matchup. Sabby =/= postseason awesome, and we can lay the hurt on Burnett (not that we always do, obviously). And if Chamberlain pitches in Fenway, we can always just open the Can o' Millions of Midges that I assume we have stocked somewhere.

Yeah, I was thinking that too. NY's line looks really weird. 10 hits through 7 innings, with only one run. I believe the accepted term is "tap dancing through machine-gun fire", right?

'Twas a joke. Statistical analysis need not apply.

This is getting out of hand.

And most anything is high to Mr 5'7". Or was that too obvious?

Thanks for the ump-performance update. GameCast must be screwy because I swear it's shown both pitchers having at least 6 pitches in the heart of the strike zone called balls.

Is the ump's strike zone as unutterably bad as GameCast makes it seem?

Mike Lowell infield single? That's... unusual.