Maxbialystock

Ain't that something?

Need the bats, I'm afraid, because Pivetta is suspect. But I said that last night about Bello and was dead wrong. I believe both teams are going with 4 righty starters in this series. Last night Cora started 5 lefty bats--Duran, Devers, Casas, Yoshida, and Valdez, but platooned in Reyes at 2b when I think Seattle brought in a lefty reliever. Valdez was 1/2 and Reyes 0/2.

Nice win. I did watch parts and especially Jansen closing.

Captains Courageous is on right now, 6 pm, on TCM. Terrific movie with Spencer Tracy, Freddie Bartholomew (who's excellent), Lionel Barrymore, and Melvyn Douglas. Based on Kipling novel. Tracy got the academy award for best actor. Freddie plays a spoiled rich kid who becomes a mensch by the end of the movie--thanks mostly to Tracy. Terrific photography of sailing ships off the shores of eastern USA.

There is no SP/rotation depth. Those five "starters" are mostly relievers. Our ace, Bello, had 28 starts last year and 157 IP. Then came Crawford with 23 and 129 and Houck with 21 and 106. I figure Cora will need/use 6 pitchers per game, and the math on that gets ugly.

Not me. I blame Cora for not making chicken salad out of chickenspit. Sure, he did OK back in 2018 when he was well-stocked with hitting and pitching. But good managers can win with anybody.

Hmmm. Looks like pessimism is rampant.

Not the response I wanted to see.

I'm sorta back, having missed all of spring training--except for checking scores and occasionally the stats--and of course all of the winter discussions. I'm a Heels fan and they're still playing--Alabama tonight in LA at 9:40. Looks like a grim year. Sale's gone, no doubt because JH was ecstatic to dump him to the Braves, so the rotation is mostly relievers. If they screw up, Cora will be blamed.

The 84 win Diamondbacks are going to the WS largely because of their pitching.

Yes, but that's the point. I claimed that the four teams--Orioles, Dodgers, Astros, and Braves--who "rested" 6 days between the last season games and the beginning of the division series, were screwed by the schedule. That's now way back in the rearview mirror. On the other hand, the Diamondbacks have played excellent postseason baseball, especially their pitching. I think they are legit, not lucky. And that leads me back to the Sox, who won won 78 games and were just 6 games back of the D-backs. That doesn't mean I think the Sox should have been in the postseason. Not at all. But I do think all the claims by moonslav and many others that Bloom should have been making more moves last December and this past July have new legitimacy. I will add that I personally griped about the Sox weak righthanded hitting, but now agree with everyone who insisted the pitching was far more important. Thus too the new CBO for the Sox is reportedly an expert on fixing the pitching.

You're repeating yourself, but that's perfectly fine with me. You're consistent. Not sure what you mean by smug because these days professional athletes of all kinds seem to relish showing off when they do something right. MLB used to be pretty restrained, but no longer. They go ape for every single--whether or not it drives anyone home. About the cheating. You're right, of course. But I have to say stealing signals has been going on for a very long time--and now seems to be arrested by technology. However, you better believe teams film opposing pitchers hoping to find a telltale that says, "I'm about to throw heat"--or whatever.

Sorry, but I like the ghost runner--or, at least, what the ghost runner accomplishes. The most popular sport in the world by far is soccer/football, and they had to go to a shootout to avoid ties in the World Cup, the most important sports championship in the world. Shootouts are no worse than ghost runners. And, yes, I do know you can have ties in early rounds/games in the World Cup.

Go Diamondbacks!!! Up 4-1 in the 7th--over the Phillies, who I am definitely rooting against. Also rooting against the Rangers, but have to say that has been an excellent series. I'm rooting for the Astros for just one reason: they are the only team of the four teams with first round byes who are still in it. I think the Orioles, Dodgers, and Braves all got screwed by the new format. That said, I don't think there's a bad team in the final four (Phillies, D-backs, Rangers, and Astros). I know the Diamondbacks only won 84 games in the regular season, but they look pretty decent to me.

Agree completely, but you have again ignored the fact that that the worst team--the Diamondbacks-- won 52% of the time in the regular season and the very best team (Braves) won just 64% of the time. That's a measly 12% difference in winning percentage. Last year in the NFL the winningest regular season teams were 14-3, 82%, and the lowest percentage team who still made the playoffs were the Seahawks at 53%. Historically, similar percentages have applied to the NBA postseason teams, but last year the best team, the Bucks, only won 71%. Lowest "play-in" team won 50%. So that's a swing of just 21%.

Because 30 teams is just too many/too long. Right now 12 out of 30 make it, and that's 40 freaking per cent, more than enough. Actually, even with six wild card series (best 2 of 3 games), two ALDS and two NLDS (best of 5), and one each ALCS and NLCS (best of 7), plus the world series (best of 7), they expect to finish the World Series not later than Nov 4, which works fine with the climate heating up.

I admit I used straight math without consideration of comparative strengths and weaknesses. However, everyone on talksox is complaining about what a crapshoot the postseason is without admitting that in fact the winningest MLB teams are not much better than the guys who just sneak into the post season. Specifically, the lowly Diamondbacks won 52% and the Braves 64%. That a difference of 12 freaking percent, which ain't that much.

It's turned into a competitive series between two Texas teams. The Rangers had a big advantage going in because the new format meant the Astros sat on their duffs from Sunday to Saturday--and lost their edge. Then NLCS between the Phillies and Diamondbacks is also competitive.

Ignorance is once again rampant on talksox. To remind: the very best MLB team this year with 104 wins was the Braves, who won 64% of their games. The last place (in the AL East) Sox won 48%. If those two teams played a 5 game series, the Sox would normally win 2 and the Braves 3 games, which means the Sox would only need a break in one game to win the series.

Looking back, I'm inclined to be somewhat forgiving of the Sox staff--for two reasons. One of them is definitely not the the acquisition genius of Chaim Bloom. The two are: 1) the injuries to Sale, Houck, and Whitlock--all were out for 2+ months--and others on the staff to the degree that for 2-3 weeks the Sox were starting relievers in 2 of the 5 rotation spots; 2) the 48 games with just 3 days off from Aug 4 to Sep 20. Given those two big issues, I think the pitching staff did remarkably well. Bello came through with the most innings and most quality starts. Sale had some good moments/games and pitched more innings, 102, in 2023 than he did in the 3 previous seasons. Pivetta seemed to me to get better after being shunted through the bullpen--I think his curve got sharper. Crawford did yeoman service, as did Houck.

Is Eovaldi a better risk and better starter than Sale? Absolutely. So the Sox probably blew it last year when they didn't re-sign him, but the caveat to that is that JH was almost certainly the guy who said no to a Eovaldi contract. He over-learned the lesson of signing Price and Sale to long term contracts. However, Sale is now part of the Sox landscape and no more movable than Fenway Park. With that in mind, I'm hopeful that, after pitching 158 innings in 2019 when the elbow went bad and required TJ surgery, 0 innings in 2020, 42.2 in 2021, 5.2 in 2022 (bicycle injury) and 103 this year (WHIP 1.13, ERA 4.30, WAR 1.7), Sale can go 150 or more reasonably effective innings next year.

Boy, do you have a reading comprehension problem. None of those 100 teams made excuses. None. Nor am I. I'm simply analyzing the nature of MLB. And my first point is that the distance between the penthouse, winning 100 or more games, and the outhouse, finishing well out of the playoffs with just 65 wins, is pretty short. It's the distance/difference between winning 6 out of 10 games and winning 4 out of 10 games. And it's even closer when the wild card teams have all won 55% of their games and the best team, the Braves with 104 wins, won just 65% their games. That's a 10% difference in winning percentage. It's miniscule--but looks huge when you throw in a 162 game season. You of course skipped over all of that and jumped to the 6 day break period. But even there you ignored my example of the Rockies in 2007 who were absolutely the hottest team in MLB history for the last half of September (final 17 games) and their first two postseason series. In that stretch they won 23 of 24 games. Then they did nothing for 9 days and got swept by the Sox. So, before you repeat this malarkey about how the Astros won their ALDS series, please address the Rockies in 2007 and the fact that the difference between winning MLB teams and losing MLB teams is actually quite small, but made to look bigger because of the 162 game season.

Of course there is. Yesterday's NY Times had a column by Jayson Stark arguing that the bellyaching about the schedule is baloney--and then praised David Dombrowski as the pinnacle of GM's/CBO's by citing what he did with the Marlins, Tigers, Red Sox, and now the Phillies. I'm anti-DD, but I have to agree with some of what he said. DD likes to spend money, but he usually gets results (if not long-lasting results). But one of the responses to the column pointed out that the best teams in MLB can be expected to win 3 games in a 5 games series, and the MLB losers can be expected to win 2 games in a 5 games series. That's mostly true--except that this year the Royals only won 35% of their games, the A's 31%, and the Rockies 36%. The point is that any team that makes it to the postseason has a shot. As I've already made clear, I also think the four teams--Orioles, Astros, Dodgers, and Braves--that had a first round bye were somewhat penalized when the wild cards were decided by 3 games series. So those four teams with byes went six days, from Sunday to the following Saturday, between games. The three teams with 100 or more wins--Orioles, Dodgers, and Braves--were swept in their 5 game division series. Actually, the Braves had a miraculous win in one game and so lost 3 of 4 to the Phillies, a team they beat in 8 of 13 games in the regular season. A better example is the 2007 Rockies, who were red hot in September, finishing 16-1. That got them into the postseason with 90 wins. They stayed hot by winning 7 straight games postseason games, beating the Phillies and Diamondbacks, to get to the WS. Unfortunately for the Rockies, the Sox needed 7 games to finish off the Guardians in the ALCS, which meant the red hot Rockies cooled their heels for 9 days--and were promptly swept by the Sox.

Sham, spam. Please name just one MLB team over the past 100 years who stated publicly that they were not much interested in winning, but just wanted to kind of get through the next season. To be honest, maybe the Pirates have said that or even the Orioles. But a wealthy team like the Sox? Never. Bloom had absolutely no choice but to say his intent was to keep the Sox competitive. As for his utter failure to fix the pitching, I blame almost all of that on JH who decided during the 2019 season that never again would he invest heavily in starters--not even enough to keep Eovaldi and Wacha after last season. Along the same line, I believe JH is the one who decided to cut the payroll to an unprecedented 15th in MLB. Thus too the departures of Mookie and Bogey for greener pastures. On the other hand, I agree that so far Bloom's two priciest acquisitions, Story and Yoshida, have come nowhere near earning their pay. Plus a whole bunch of pitchers.

Simply stated, and yet so profound.