CHW - LAA 2005 ALCS Thread

The The Anaheim have got them right where they want them with that the strike out of Rodneyguez.

White Sox in 6.

White Sox / Houston would still be a pretty terrible ratings world series, chin up.

http://espycollection.shazamm.net/images/photo_derek_jeter.jpg

White Sox in 6, only to get creamed by the Cards.

What is the postseason record for CS?

Piniella needs to be put out of his misery in the booth. "Darin Erstad plays the game the right way, he plays to win" ... OOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, THE INSIGHT.

*judging from the pre-game show, I would have thought that the White Sox were playing themselves tonight since the Angels were barely mentioned. Surprise, surprise, Fox is sucking on the Curse Teat for the third straight year and hoping that the opposition plays along.

Too bad Garret Anderson had to go and wreck everything with that game-winning home run.

are there any Angels fans on this board?

I mostly kept ESPN radio on, but when I put the TV sound up periodically it took me til the 4th to realize Looo was in the booth.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=second/guessing/2005

A large hunk of space rock was going to hit U.S. Cellular Field around 10:30 Central time, and so the Angels and White Sox had to play their game as quickly as possible so that the field would be empty at that time. That's the only possible explanation for the hackfest the two teams descended into last night...

If you're going up against a team forced to go with its #4 starter, that had played games in two nights on opposite ends of the country, and that got into Chicago early on the morning of the game, don't you have to slow the game down, leverage the fatigue factor, make the Angels have a long, slow night at the end of a long, long journey? At the least, isn't it a good idea not to play as if there's an expiration date on the city?

...The White Sox are not a small-ball team. They're a team with a poor, one-dimensional offense that won 99 games because it kept runs off the board like few others in the league. They will play low-scoring games thanks to their pitching and defense, and to win them, they have to hit home runs. They don't get enough baserunners to be wasting them--someone, please, put up a stop sign for Podsednik, who's been caught on 17 of his last 27 steal attempts--and they make enough outs without giving them up voluntarily....

Look for this series to receive glowing, fawning coverage in the mainstream media, as beat writers fall all over themselves to praise the style of play. In truth, what you'll be seeing is the joy of people whose workdays are going to be that much shorter and who will get back to their hotels in time for a late room-service meal. That may seem unfair, but it's true that the issue of game length is almost entirely a media thing, driven by the people who can't finish their job until the guys on the field finish theirs.

i'm clearly not an advocate, tho i do think smallball has it's place in low-run games & enviros - but the ferocity w/ which it's been engaged (by managers) and defended (by writers (not managers, who have simply to say "poor execution" when it fails, and that's that)) does emphasize that baseball's in a v interesting place right now, that there's a war being fought away from the field that, certainly in the AL anyway, is probably more interesting than the one being fought on it (which looks like it'll play almost like some embarrassingly forceful exhibition of this largely outdated style of play).

(although on the other hand it's easy to argue that neither the Yanks and BoSox (nor Mets) are in the running anymore.)

Until I read CSTB today, I had no memory of Byrd beginning with the Mets in '95-96.

Even after watching 1000000 replays, I don't think any of them are conclusive. The ball appears to kick up into Pall's glove at the last instant, and it's not clear if that's because it short-hopped the ground or kicked up from the webbing of his glove.

None of these replays had sound, which the umps of course did have -- sound being instrumental in getting these sorts of calls correct. Nonetheless, there's a massive element of "duh" at work here, as in "duh, Pall would have just tagged the damn batter/runner if he'd had any doubt that the ball hit the ground, rather than rolling it back to the mound".

So now the Angels have to possibly win five games instead of four. Credit to them for going on the road on zero rest with an exhausted starting staff, an injured ace, and a sick #3, and coming away with a split.

That said, Paul never heard the ump call AJ out, and even that little fist pump strike call could not be seen by Paul, since he was halfway to the dugout by then, so there is an onus on Josh Paul for not being careful in such a tight game to tag the batter just in case. The home ump had no definitive look at if Paul trapped the ball or not, and barring him calling the runner out (which Paul didn't see or hear), the catcher should error on the side of caution.

Tough break and a weird play, that's for sure.

It also enabled Crede to redeem his dumbass baserunning boner.

The worse thing about this call is if the Sox win in seven, this might lead to instant replay for the playoffs.

Anyway that was kind of the weirdest bad call I've seen in ages, basically everyone here is OTM.

Replay was pretty convincing to me, and I think it's important to make sure the right team wins the pennant, so use video in the postseason.

Sheehan:

Eddings made the right call, strike three and out three, but when Pierzynski ran to first, took that as evidence that he'd missed something. What I don't understand is why Pierzynski's action of running to first, which would indicate the ball touched the ground, was necessarily more convincing than Paul's action of rolling the ball to the mound and heading for the dugout. Eddings just chose to "believe" Pierzynski and not Paul or his own eyes, changing his mind based on Pierzynski running.

OUTSAFE should be a possible call.

xpost YES STOP THE BUNTING MADNESS WTF. And to be quite frank these teams have also done the strikeout-attempt-to-fun-to-1st thing a little more often than I'm used to seeing as well, I've seen that MANY times over the course of, like, a week, versus the amount of times I saw people try similar during RS. Is it the playoffs making them all loopy? Stealing bases they cannot possibly make it to, and the bunting, my fucking god the bunting.

A new baseball strategery!

Uh anyway.

Haha I have no problem with long games, I have a problem with NOTHING happening for long stretches of games while I watch umpires huddle around a video screen and I get 72 inconclusive angles of the same damn play.

Morbius your case for the "right team" winning the game would be better if baseball didn't have a history of weird calls which have decided ballgames (and those weird calls being as exciting and argument provoking and memorable in their own way as any boneheaded fielding error or breathtaking home run.) The team that wins is in the end the RIGHT team and I think there is a pretty strong case to be made for the subjectivity of umpiring being more important than making sure that every single call is as clear cutly right as can be (and slowing down the game to a crawl every time a manager decides that he's damn damn sure his runner didn't get tagged out.)

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20051013/capt.cx10110131652.white_sox_image_cx101.jpg

vs.

http://sportsmed.starwave.com/media/pg2/2002/1028/photo/g_thunderstick_i.jpg

Something like the blown call at 1st in the KC/STL WS is your ordinary, run of the mill blown call. It was a close play, the ump blew the call, and that's it. He made a mistake.

Yesterday, the batter was called out, NOBODY OVERRULED IT, and the batter ended up being safe just because he happened to run to first. He essentially made his own call. None of the other umps could confirm or overrule this because none of them had bothered to pay attention -- and why would they, when the batter had just struck out and nobody except AJ was thinking anything other than "the inning is over"?

There is something of a resistance to calling this what it is. I think people want to blame Paul, or the Angels, or credit Pierzynski for a heads-up play. No one really wants to say that Doug Eddings made one of the worst big-stage decisions in baseball history, changing the course of a critical game and perhaps the seasons of two teams.

That's what happened, though. Doug Eddings was absolutely wrong, the White Sox got a baserunner they had no business getting, and they won the game in regulation because of it. It's a shame, because Buerhle does deserve credit and Crede did get a big hit and those things matter. It's just that they didn't matter as much as the call did...

Not to pick a fight, but it's things like the Eddings call that give life to the notion that the playoffs are a crapshoot. In 162 games, bad calls wash out, and you have plenty of time to recover. In a best-of series, turning one win into one loss is devastating. One win can turn into one loss on a bad call, or a bad bounce, or a bad day by someone who might have five bad days in a year.

If the Angels lose this series, it will be impossible to separate their abilities and their performance, relative to the White Sox, from the game where they should have been tied going into extra innings.

Yeah well there are unique OKAY THIS CALL IS DECIDING THE GAME CALLS LIKE THIS, but it only appears that way in retrospect. If Crede strikes out next instead of singling, this call would've gotten a little press, but probably not much more than Cano's baserunning thing. It's only in retrospect that a play like this can be so huge! During the game there is often nothing to distinguish one tight call from another. Also you say it like debating calls is a BAD thing! I think it's a great thing! I think it's great that after a zillion replays that 1/3 of the people who saw that video think that it looks like Paul trapped the ball in his glove!

See MIR above about what separates this and the runt Maier from Denkinger, Cano (altho that call was proven correct by replay), etc.

How about having that "supervisor of umpires" parked in front of a monitor in the pressbox during the playoffs just for an autonomous fix-it when needed?

I'm reading elsewhere there's some super-blown up image on which the ball appears to hit dirt; anyone seen this?

Video replay would ruin the subtlety of a game that existed BEFORE television. Here's an idea, since we at home are so omniscient with our camera angles, why not have viewers vote on close calls via a 99 cent Nextel text message. Fox made plenty off this on American Idol.

Yeah I agree that in retrospect this was a little "weirder" or more aggregious than the Cano call or the KC/STL one, but in the heat game I think that it's harder to tell which one's are the weirdest or the most ridiculous so to be "safe" umpires would start start relying on replay every time a potentially game effecting call is a really close one. I don't think that's a hard scenario to imagine at all.

Boy yer all so whipped up about the NL series.

But that's why you do the NFL thing and somehow put a limit on the amount of times a manager can call for replay. I mean if you've blown your replay on lame-ass obvious calls just to be a dick, it'll bite you in the ass on a close one at the end of the game.

Botched weird controversial calls still happen with replay anyway!

take away their DH!

(by the way, is Matt Lawton really so bad that in game four of NYY-LAA, Torre chose to forfeit his DH and put Bernie in the outfield rather than Lawton?)

If the Angels lose this series, it will be impossible to separate their abilities and their performance, relative to the White Sox, from the game where they should have been tied going into extra innings.

it's a best-of-seven series. if the angels lose, it'll be because they lost MORE GAMES THAN THE WHITE SOX, period. ok, so maybe one of them was lost on a blown call, but so fucking what?!?!? if one game is such an insurmontable challenge, maybe the angels DESERVE to lose. and maybe those people whining about it should remember the red sox coming back from 0-3. jeez.

This was meant to say "I don't mean to keep..." I wanted to clarify that.

try telling that to orioles fans, stence. the o's fucking had that series before jeffrey fucking maier.

i know, i wasn't happy about it either, but so fucking what? that's baseball. it doesn't always, nor should it always, make sense.

-- mookieproof (mookieproo...), Today 1:44 PM. (mookieproof)

(or as touched on elsewhere, having Giambi play a defensive position?).

OMG HSTENCIL IS JOHN STERLING

DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE

:)

DIE DIE DIE

Yeah if they lose this series in 7 games it'll be even worse! It'll be like in my mind they are both tied force to relive that 9th inning over and over. TIED TIED TIED. HOW WILL WE SLEEP AT NIGHT??!?!

What was that 0-3, one out of 130 in history? (don't bring up instances in other sports, pls) Yeah, the Angels will maybe have lost one more game WHICH WAS SNATCHED FROM THEM LIKE A YOUNGLING, OR A YUENGLING AFTER LAST CALL!

Stenc & Alex, Hawk Harrelson's progeny!

Oh but man you shoulda seen that time the Buffalo Bills was down by 40 points at half and came back and won the game by a decent margin against Houston!!!!!!11111

(don't bring up instances in other sports, pls)

;)

yeah, so?

(don't bring up instances in other sports, pls)

there aren't any. doesn't change the fact that if the angels lose the series, it will be because they lost FOUR games, not just one. duh.

and dave, i don't see why what we're saying is that unreasonable, or worthy of slander on the level of the harrelson comparison. sure it was a bad call, i don't think anyone's disputing that. but these things happen, and do you really want a replay option?!? i mean come the fuck on.

At least two working managers would probably enjoy the cockpunch.

I understand the arguments against replay, I just think maybe it's something to try. If it is a terrorshow you get rid of it after a season, easy.

http://timotay15237.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/vlb40405.jpg

http://www.colosseumbar.com/images/pearlroom/rocknight/rocknight_01.jpg

I agree with the statement that the catcher failed just as badly as the ump, whoever made that (might've been King Kaufmann and no one here for all I know).

Either of the Amazing Molina Brothers would've tagged the runner, tho. They're clutch.

It was a real treat to watch.

It was a real treat to watch.

Other than Cabrera's home run, I don't think the Angels hit another solid ball the whole game. I was impressed how many times Garland jammed a hitter and they hit a little nubber either back to the mound or right in the middle of the infield.

When you see the White Sox pitching performing such as this, it isn't suprising they got so hot early this season and won their division.

VOICE OF THE PEOPLE (LETTER)
Difference between North and South Sides

Thomas Condon
Published October 14, 2005

Chicago -- Can everyone please stop all this nonsense about the White Sox being cursed? Lately pundits and sports writers have been trying to conjure up some kind of curse to explain the White Sox not winning the World Series for 88 years.

Get this straight once and for all: There is no White Sox curse.

I think all this curse nonsense started because so many sports writers are so accustomed to writing about the Cubs and their problems with curses, and misbehaving fans, and anything else they can blame their bumbling performance on.

On the North Side, it has always been "boo-hoo, that mean billy goat won't let us win the World Series . . . it's not our fault, we're cursed . . . wahhhhhh!"

What a bunch of babies.

On the South Side, we don't need to hide behind a curse. We take our lumps, make no excuses, claim no curses and show up and root for our team, win or lose.

This is an essential part of the difference between the North Side and the South Side. The North Side is home to the more "tender" Chicagoans, those latte-swilling, status-car-driving dandies who think that Lincoln Park is a tough neighborhood. Many are just enjoying their "urban experience" for a few years before moving back to Schaumburg and buying the inevitable minivan.

The South Side is where the real meat of Chicago resides. These are the people and neighborhoods who built America with steel mills, won World War II with manufacturing and continue to supply the real muscle for Chicago's economic engine.

And we aren't moving to Schaumburg. Ever.

The South Side has always been tougher, and always comes out on top. Want an example? Remember what happened on St. Valentine's Day in 1929? That was a little dispute between Al Capone's South Siders and Bugs Moran's North Side gang. Guess who won? That's right, the South Side.

So take that curse baloney and stuff it. We've been here through all the tough times, and stood by the White Sox without whining about a curse. So what if we haven't won the World Series in a long time--you got a problem with that?

The umps also blew a Podsednik pickoff, called Pods safe at second on a steal where he was tagged out, and denied Iguchi the phantom tag of second base on a sure double play. 4 bad calls (3 against the Angels, 1 against the Sox), 1 of which factored into a certain extra run (Podsednik scored from second on the blown steal call), another which would have meant bases loaded 1 outs for the Angels instead of a double play. Even if the Angels scored all those runs on base with a grand slam, the Sox still win 7-6.

After hearing McCarver and Buck gnashing their teeth for most of the game about these blown calls, I'm not in the mood to listen to more whining. The Angels -- or at least a good part of their lineup -- are playing like crap and the Sox are pitching great. That's the difference in this series, not blown calls by the umps.

In all seriousness, which might be a stretch for me: I know Molina was donged with a pitch during the ALDS, so that might be coming back to affect his play (which was gonzo). And Vlad's had back issues in the past, and could very well be sucking it up. Though, really, if Vlad was sucking it up and trying to help his team, one would think he'd maybe take a pitch once in a while.

TOO MUCH PITCHING.

Freddy Garcia pitched an amazing game last night.

It was a real treat to watch.

Hey BBT I will give you a call.

When AJ Pierzynski (11 HRs in 2004 and 3 in the last week) is your #2 offensive threat, you're treading in deep water.

Yeah unless 1) he isn't (Konerko, Crede and Podsenik are all putting up better offensive #s) and 2) your pitching staff is completely shutting down the other teams offense. Obv anything is possible vis-a-vis comebacks, but it doesn't strike me that the White Sox post-season success is a fluke based on Pierzinski (why are you giving his home run stats for LAST YEAR btw when he wasn't even playing for the Sox?!?!) "overperforming". They've definitely benefited from some missed calls though. Sometimes it is good to be lucky.

Stormy Davis, a couple of posts earlier: Never mind the OBP, how are those PYTHAGOREAN WINS working out for all the slapnuts on this bored? How many more PYTHAGOREAN WINS do the Sox need to clinch?

i just thought that there would be more discussion of the interference after 100 posts about the strikeout.

of course the white sox have been hitting well in these two series. vs the red sox they teed off on weak/injured/tired/not very good arms, and in this series it's been very similar. the angels just aren't that good, and neither were the yanks. i really have no idea who the chisox would face off better w/ in a potential world series matchup, but i do know that a hou-chi series would be nothing but 2-1 games, which = teh hotness.

Nor would I call it "bitching at anyone who dared to doubt the team's talent." I'm merely laughing and poking fun at PYTHAGOREAN WINS. I mean, it's pretty funny right?

http://www.allfunpix.com/humor/pics4/mathquiz.jpg

BTW, I'm still not convinced that the 2005 White Sox were better than the 2005 Blue Jays, particularly in the context of a short series with a healthy Halladay.

-- Alex in SF (clobberthesauru...), Today 12:40 PM. (Alex in SF)

I actually lied, AJ is leading the team in OPS (what measure are you using Alex?):

2005 Postseason leaders CWS:
A.J. Pierzynski .292/.370/.750 = 1.120 OPS
Scott Podsednik .320/.469/.560 = 1.029 OPS
Paul Konerko .286/.310/.714 = 1.025 OPS

Crede is registering .709 OPS for the record.

CONGRATS WHITE SOX.

What a game. I had no problem with Ozzie keeping Contreras in, since the World Series doesn't start for 6 days and because of what the previous 3 starters did. It was truly the piece de resistance on the whole series.

The ChiSox look relaxed and on cruise-control both offensively and on the mound.

The NL champ (who I will be rooting for) has got to be intimidated.

When you're six outs away from a league pennant, it's a dumb time to be playing mind games with your (undetermined) WS opponent (and its not like "intimidation" works at this level of pro sports, particularly because both the Cards and Astros have pitching staffs that are just as good). Contreras was shaky at times during the first few innings -- what if he had coughed up the tying run in the eighth and they had to return to Chicago? Is the extra trip + one more start for Buerhle + possibly having to use at least one more starter (possibly in relief) + not being able to set your ideal WS rotation worth playing mind games that exist only within Ozzie's ears?

At least in this year's playoffs, this is a true statement.

That set me off to casting other characters/actors in this years playoffs. This is my best one...

Steve Buschemi as Brian Cashman

And CONGRATS WHITE SOX GET YOUR RELIEVERS SOME WORK BEFORE THE FIRST GAME

Jeff: one way to take advantage of it is to say, "Hi, I'm Mark Buerhle." Wait until the season's over, tho.

Nice to see Al Lopez (won both non-NYY AL pennants during Stengel's reign) in the stands, I was wondering yesterday if he was well enough to attend.

I thought Lou Pinella made some nice in-game observations about defense and how to pitch to some of the players.

GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK, BARRY. "got lucky," my ass. you do realize your pythagorean baseball theorem is completely HYPOTHETICAL, right? for all the dismissal of "counting stats," (which to be fair, is usually morbs's rant), the only stats that really matter are the ones in the W-L columns.

congrats, white sox. if my pal the bearman can somehow get ws tix, i'm gonna find a way to get to chicago.

The Pythag numbers are just meant to reflect the EXPECTED record of a team's RS/RA profile. The Sox' 35-19 one-run games record this year is ... hard to attribute to skill. (As is Arizona's 28-18.)

In other words, its future relevance re the '05 White Sox comes when they likely post a win total in the 80s next year. Til then, enjoy!

>the only stats that really matter are the ones in the W-L columns.<

"Now batting second for the Big Red Machine, #8 ..."

exactly my point. barry brought them up to use to reflect comparative worth between teams from different years, when those numbers are just expectations, not real records nor really reflective of anything except a formula that can't take things like luck into account.

The Sox' 35-19 one-run games record this year is ... hard to attribute to skill. (As is Arizona's 28-18.)

that's true, but it hardly matters. a win is a win is a win - no matter how it's won. and as far as i can tell, that's the only way teams are actually compared. barry can say the blue jays are the better team all the live-long day, but they didn't have as many wins (lucky or otherwise), and they didn't make it into the playoffs.

tell that to the nationals? and "as far as i can tell, that's the only way teams are actually compared?"??? i think someone is being DELIBERATELY OBTUSE. teams can be lucky or unlucky w/ hit/run distribution, health, freak occurences, etc, that the w/l column won't take into account but which do in fact contribute to the quality of a team.

i'm guessing this is me, but i have no idea how, or why.

The playoffs are largely luck, and a major injury (Halladay) can mean the difference between the playoffs and fishing. That doesn't mean that Chicago doesn't deserve to win the World Series. I mean, the A's were better than the Yankees in 2001 but the Yankees won, fair and square. The healthy Giants were better than the Padres, and the healthy Dodgers might have been better than either of them.

The White Sox did a lot of things right... they hit a lot of home runs and their pitching was excellent, both their starters and their bullpen. The Blue Jays are also an excellent team, although I think their pitching would have been a problem after Halladay. Chacin is a rookie, and the rest of the guys... eh. Batista?

http://www.vh1.com/sitewide/promoimages/movies/e/8_mile/thumbnails/clip_cheddar/184x66.jpg

"The last time I listened to him, he gave Carl Everret an 'attaboy' for stepping out of the batters box."

He added, "God help us all."

*as a closer

Francisco Rodriguez

IP 1.1
H 2
R 2
ER 0
BB 3
SO 2
HR 0

*flounces off*

Sure, if the other Sox starters hadn't thrown CGs, I'm sure Contreras would have been lifted by the start of the 9th, but I have to admire the statement that Ozzie wanted to make by leaving him in there -- not to fuck with the heads of the Angels or the NL champions, but to make history (or at least modern history). Because Contreras' pitch count was still not excessive, and there's 6 days to reset the rotation, I just don't see it as a big deal. He did it because he had the luxury that he could.

JOSH TOWERS, dudes:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/profile?statsId=6712

Damn good numbers (and check out the walk rate)

Bullpen: Batista needs to wash his truck or go tobagganing, but Speier, Schoenweis, and Frasor were really good.

Record in one-run games:

CHI 35-19 (best in the majors)
TOR 16-31 (worst in the majors)

Those numbers, by and large, are due to luck, and that's the truth no matter how many games those teams won in real life (Congrats White Sox, again) or how many times hstencil Joe Morgan tries to claim otherwise. Swap those numbers and I guarantee you that the Sox are sitting at home right now.

I can't believe people are seriously questioning Ozzie's choice to use Contreras for all 9 innings last night. As if using two or three relievers to close out the 8th and 9th innings are going to make much of a difference when the World Series starts in a week.

It makes a huge difference if Contreras blows a narrow one-run lead and the series shifts back to Chicago, which was the situation I outlined somewhere upthread. The 2001 World Series wasn't THAT long ago ... re: the best possible example of mismanaging a pitching staff and still winning in the end. Just because it worked out for Ozzie doesn't mean it was a sound decision (see also: the wisdom of bringing in FRod with the season on the line -- what other choice did Scioscia have?). And I ask again -- what would basically every other manager in the game have done, a) save his starters' arms and bring in rested relievers to nail down the series once and for all, or b) engage in potentially risky CG cockwaving?

what award will every other manager in the game not be receiving this year?

Swap those numbers and I guarantee you that the Sox are sitting at home right now.

WELL NO FUCKING SHIT, SHERLOCK. but, again, the sox are in the WORLD MOTHERFUCKING SERIES and your jays are jerkin' it. but c'mon, please continue to claim toronto as the better team. really, c'mon, do it. it makes a LOT of fucking sense.

Winning 1-run games is not mostly a matter of luck. That's horseshit. Execution under pressure wins a lot of close games.

GIVE ME A STAT PLEASE. you need some thing to back up your jays' lack of EUP!!!!

Winning 1-run games is not mostly a matter of luck

WHICH IS IT OH MY OBTUSE ONTARIAN FRIEND?!?!?

Would you agree that Al Gore is the 'better' Presidential candidate?

xpost - dude, put down the crack pipe.

not sure i get your analogy, milo, but yes, al gore was a better choice for president (though perhaps not a better candidate - those are different things) than george w. bush, which is why i voted for him. but again, not seeing your point.

xpost - barry, c'mon man, i'm not nearly as excitable as our friend david r. i really worry about him sometimes.

Toronto may have been a 'better' team (I don't care enough to really look at it) - had they played the same schedule as the White Sox, or had they gotten a few breaks in those one-run games, they would have had a better regular-season record.

But no, by my reading that isn't what you were saying at all - or else you were misreading Barry's statements in your responses.

You mean the Red Sox/Yankees east, where the Orioles weren't half bad until the break? Easy division. Cake, baby, cake.

HELLO DERE TAMPA BAY. not to mention that "toughness" notwithstanding, no team in the east had dominating pitching like that of the top three teams in the central.

But no, by my reading that isn't what you were saying at all - or else you were misreading Barry's statements in your responses.

um, looks like you're misreading my alleged misreading.

-- MindInRewind (mbvarkestra197...) (webmail), October 11th, 2005 2:34 AM. (Barry Bruner) (later) (link)

Anyhow, acknowledging that a 90-92 win team got lucky and won 99 games doesn't have to interfere ONE BIT with one's reasons for rooting for said lucky team. White Sox fans on ILB don't seem to understand this.

Anyhow, acknowledging that a 90-92 win team got lucky and won 99 games doesn't have to interfere ONE BIT with one's reasons for rooting for said lucky team. White Sox fans on ILB don't seem to understand this.

Anyhow, acknowledging that a 90-92 win team got lucky and won 99 games doesn't have to interfere ONE BIT with one's reasons for rooting for said lucky team. White Sox fans on ILB don't seem to understand this.

Anyhow, acknowledging that a 90-92 win team got lucky and won 99 games doesn't have to interfere ONE BIT with one's reasons for rooting for said lucky team. White Sox fans on ILB don't seem to understand this.

Anyhow, acknowledging that a 90-92 win team got lucky and won 99 games doesn't have to interfere ONE BIT with one's reasons for rooting for said lucky team. White Sox fans on ILB don't seem to understand this.

Anyhow, acknowledging that a 90-92 win team got lucky and won 99 games doesn't have to interfere ONE BIT with one's reasons for rooting for said lucky team. White Sox fans on ILB don't seem to understand this.

Get it in your heads, foolios.

and yes we will CONTINUE to cheer for them in the WORLD SERIES.

It's pretty tough to misread "to say that the jerking off teams are better than those in the playoffs is ridiculous," dude. Unless by that you meant "it's entirely possible to argue that teams not in the playoffs were better than those in the playoffs."

Did they do the little things that help a team win?

BBT, you probably didn't watch the majority of Blue Jays games this year. I did. I think you're talking out of your ass. # of wins don't always tell the story of how a team actually performs.

(Or, these days, you could learn to walk a few more times every week.)

nope, i mean barry's claim of the jays as the better team is complete hokum. i don't see how it could be argued otherwise. the "better" team would make it to the post-season. yes i'm gonna make that argument. for serious. that's the whole point of the playoffs, right? the criteria for "better" is pretty wide, as we know, and isn't determined by what the supposed number of wins a team has, but the actual number. it shouldn't really be that difficult to figure out.

Did they play the right way?
Did they do the little things that help a team win?

of course, you could always just misrepresent what i'm saying to the point of slandering - saying that i'm claiming some sort of joe morgan nonsense - but it really has nothing to do with that buffoon, or a hatred of stats for that matter. it's more an annoyance with the tiresome nature of people who think that "moneyball" gave them a license to spout all sort of stat-related, yet ultimately useless nonsense. guess what guys? bottom line, billy beane still cares about WINS and MAKING IT TO THE PLAYOFFS. i guarantee you if the A's hadn't done either under his reign, "moneyball" wouldn't even have been written.

but that's sort of irrelevant, except for the morgan-esque slander. but hey, you brought it up first, so...

xpost - # of wins don't always tell the story of how a team actually performs.

uh, yes, # of wins does "tell the story."

So you're defining 'better' solely as 'who has more wins.' OK, fine - but that's a rather narrow and useless measure as far as I'm concerned. Don't get jumpy when other people look at 'better' in a different light, or try to understand why one team won more games or how they might do it again.

You're defining "better" using abstract criteria, or at least criteria that is not necessarily directly tied in with winning a game
Actually, Barry was defining better based on the pythagorean (ps, that little rant was your low-point, hstencil) records of the teams. Pythagorean records are a product of 'real' criteria that are directly tied in with winning a game (ie 'runs scored' and 'runs against' among other things).

but that's a rather narrow and useless measure as far as I'm concerned.

I just don't know what to say to that. You must've lost a lot of pickup basketball games or something.

How to post like Joe Morgan, a step by step guide:

1) admit that you don't even know what we're arguing about
2) stand your ground
3) rely on what you claim you saw with your own eyes
4) talk handwavingly about the intangibles that separate teams that know how to win from teams that don't

Sometimes the 'better' team loses.

And, to be honest, I think far too much emphasis is placed on 'winning championships' in sports. People have their careers graded on something that's not necessarily within their control. A lot of mediocre and crappy players rode the Yankee train to a lot of World Series rings back in the day, that doesn't mean they were better players.

Where I argued, in very general terms, that Boston JUST MIGHT come back from being down 2-0 in the series, by noting that other teams (which happened to be Red Sox teams) also came back from 2-0 very recently.

Also, stence, what exactly are you trying to prove by excerpting random comments/predictions of mine. Yes, I correctly predicted that the Angels were worn down and would lose the ALS -- so what? While you and milo reread the ALDS thread, you might want to reread my opening comment where I said that the Sox had slipped in the second half but that their starting pitching was starting to look dominating again.

The STL-HOU game we just saw is a perfect demonstration of my argument about Contreras. What if he gave up a two-run shot in the eighth or ninth and the Angels had won? Ozzie would have been wishing that he didn't make Garland and Garcia throw nine innnigs so that they'd have more in the tank for starting/relieving in Game 6 and possibly Game 7. Managers need to consider this stuff.

Barry's first post there seems OTM to me - the White Sox had a weak second half, their pitching was inconsistent and they got lucky. A lot. They got luckier the first half (with some insanely improbably one-run winning percentage, I'll have to look through Neyer's old Insider articles to find it) than the second, even. And also that they have good pitching and a terrible offense. Right now their good pitching is great and that's helping them out.

xpost - World Series are nice. They are not necessarily an accurate barometer of an individual's worth or a team's value and skill. I don't see anything contradictory in valuing the regular season and the playoffs. THE PLAYOFFS ARE ALL THAT MATTER would make life very boring for most sports fans.

As for relying on what I saw with my own eyes, I'll take that over some stats-obsessed ponce who doesn't follow my team, the only team whose games I cared about this year, with the same diligence and interest as I do. I could go back and review the PBP of each game the White Sox won by 1 run this year for you, so that I'm not "hand wavingly" talking about "intangibles," but it's not worth the energy.

honestly, i don't really care. i'm not sure why i should care, really, about a hypothetical situation, especially if it's not as compelling as what really happened. this isn't literary fiction, and you're not phillip k. dick.

Ozzie would have been wishing that he didn't make Garland and Garcia throw nine innnigs so that they'd have more in the tank for starting/relieving in Game 6 and possibly Game 7. Managers need to consider this stuff.

i'm sure ozzie (since you're on first-name basis with him, apparently) considered all sorts of things. i'm not arrogant enough to think otherwise. it's pretty insulting, even, to think think that some internet nerd in toronto thinks he knows better than a team's own manager.

Excuse me, I have to go lock every ILB thread now, because it's obvious that none of us are qualified to talk about this sport.

again, barry, post some compelling statistical evidence (ie. NOT PYTHAGOREAN RECORDS) as to why contreras shouldn't have pitched a complete game last night, or as to why the blue jays are a better team than the white sox this season. we're waiting.

Jor-el, meet self-parody.

READ YOUR COMMENTS ON THIS THREAD, SPANKY.

I've never argued otherwise!

ahem:

The White Sox had the 4th best Pythagorean record in the league, which is a much better indication of how good they really were during the regular season. Behind them were the Red Sox (one game back), the Yankees (two games back) and the Blue Jays (three games back).

If Halladay hadn't been knocked out of the season by a fluke injury, then they very well could have made up that three game deficit. So in response to you -- yes, a reasonable argument can be made that the Blue Jays were better than the White Sox this year.

the difference between your slander and mine, barry, is that i'm right. oh, and that i never compared you to anyone as onerous as joe morgan, but that's perhaps due to most stathead-types being rather easily ignorable.

(heehee, this is fun!)

this dust-up seems kin somehow to a common phenomenon on ILB: when rotisserie concerns butt up against watching the games played by the actual teams of major league baseball. i don't play fantasy teams, because i don't really have the managerial mindset, but i think it's been great for the focus it brings to overlooked players. and when there are personal stakes involved, naturally you're paying much closer attention to, i dunno, ryan doumit than you ever would have before. in a way, it's an even more immediate kind of fandom because the success gained by each player on your fantasy team measurably helps you out in this game you've got with people, work buddies, friends, whoever. i dunno where i'm going with this really, it's just interesting to me. i see people watching a game almost visibly adjusting their rooting frameworks depending on the situation.

as far as complete games go, i figure this is the playoffs, these are your best guys. it's not like you're working them like this all season. and what better way to announce to the national league that you are TOUGH AS NAILS.

but my real-life team is in the world series!

this is why i only do fantasy in sports i don't really care about

xpost hah

I've never argued otherwise!

I've never argued that the Blue Jays (or the Indians, or the A's or the Mariners ...) *should* be in the playoffs while the White Sox sit at home. The White Sox won 99 games and were the number one seed. The Blue Jays won 80 games and have been sitting at home for three weeks. I have never argued that there's an injustice there. The White Sox -- even if they were rather lucky during the regular season -- won a shitload of games. They are going to the World Series. CONGRATS WHITE SOX. They kicked ass in the ALCS. The Blue Jays didn't, because they weren't there.

I've said as much several times already. Try to keep up.

You may want to start paying attention to how the teams of Oakland, Boston*, Toronto and Los Angeles (Dodgers that is) are being managed because what you may observe as petty rotisserie concerns are actually quite vital to the shift in front offense management.

*Particularly the guy listed here under Baseball Operations - Front Office: Senior Baseball Operations Advisor named Bill James... he's written a few dozen books on these trivial matters.

But "wins are the only thing that matter" - and the only measurement of success/skill/etc. - is a viewpoint that doesn't really allow any leeway for discussion of the game or teams. OK, the White Sox won 99. See you next season, if you don't care about the hows and whys.

I've actually tried to take a more 'stathead' approach in my money leagues the last couple of years - buying/drafting guys with strong secondary stats (indicating health and age), avoiding the overpriced mid-range players, etc.. It's been a good strategy for hitting - nobody else wanted Abreu down here, I got a few more players cheap with bad reps. Pitching has been more troublesome, I took a lot of fliers on respected young guys this year and it bit me on the ass (fuckyouGreinke).

But in my experience, rotisserie fans are more apt to be people like hstencil, decrying the existence of 'statheads' and funky new math and so on.

And fantasy baseball isn't gambling. I mean, all the leagues I've played on but one have been free. To me, fantasy baseball is the art of deriving meaning from traditional box scores, and box scores are the DNA of a game. As a kid, I used to go through the box scores with my grandmother and we'd talk about the game, and try to figure out what had happened.

Fantasy baseball stats are a different kind of stats... they're not the story of the game but the story of the player, and the milieu of the storytelling is traditional... home runs, batting average, rbi. Things that don't actually equate to wins and losses, but tell you an awful lot about a player.

Hardcore stats are about trying to tell you everything else about the player that can be gathered without looking at a guy. I just re-read Moneyball, and I especially liked the idea that Beane/Depodesta's stats fixation wasn't robotic at all... it was a fiscal necessity, but for Depo, it was also judging baseball players not based on how they looked but on the content of their character, and their character was defined purely with respect to performance, not whether they were too fat or too short or the wrong color or whatever. I like that.

http://teamrankings.com/mlb/27confratings.php3

not only did the white sox feast on their own division -- hello kc, detroit and minnesota! -- but their interleague games were against the nl west -- aka the worst division in the entire game.

the al east, meanwhile, was second to only the al west in ALL OF BASEBALL in terms of schedule strength. stencil, i know you probably watched every white sox game with your own eyes, and thus you should be the one judging the gumption of their opponents, but according to win-loss records -- AKA THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS -- they had an easier run this season than any of their al counterparts.

Be nice. There's nothing wrong with luck.

>fantasy baseball is a gateway drug for statheads.<

Not all; I've always thought fantasy a ridiculous waste of time and energy. (And "seamheads" is my peferred term, as I couldn't tell you how WARP is calculated with a gun to my head.)

I'm not even sure if you're equating "rotisserie concerns" with stat/SABR analysis but I jumped to that conclusion. No biggie.

BRILLIANT!!! :D

but whatever, i'm this year's bad guy, so i'll back off now.

I think you missed 80% of what I wrote because you couldn't concentrate over the sound of your fingers banging your keyboard. I posted a few numbers and you were all "I PISS ON YOUR STATS", then I made different (written) arguments and you vented "WHERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE? SHOW ME NUMBERS? ARE YOU AFRAID????". Convenient.

Of course, we should all stop talking about the Angels and White Sox because none of us understand those teams as well as their managers do, so what point can this thread possibly serve? Also, we should all show more respect to ex-pro athletes by never referring to them by their first names.

not at all. but we shouldn't declare them a better team than the nl club.

(beats dead horse)

OK, maybe in the Internet era. The only non-money league I've played in is ILBB's. But it started out as gambling, and it's almost always a form of gambling when you get a live group together to play.

The statheads I know frown on fantasy/rotisserie because you buy/draft pitchers based not on their quality but on a variety of factors (a bad pitcher on a good team may pay off better than a good pitcher on a bad team if you count wins or saves). So you're buying something a few levels removed from their actual game-impacting performance.

It seems completely similar. You are trying to win the game by focusing on undervalued commodities (steals? saves? wins?). Fantasy baseball is not about determining who wins actual baseball games, but the methodology is the same.

And, to be honest, I think far too much emphasis is placed on 'winning championships' in sports.

Then by extension doesn't that mean far too much emphasis is place on winning, period? Should runs be just one factor used in computing a team's score? Average the team's OPS divide by its WHIP and multiply by its runs!

People have their careers graded on something that's not necessarily within their control.

Well winning isn't the sole criteria used in evaluating an athelete, but sure some value should be given to it? The goal of any athlete should be to win, end of story. Jordan wasn't universally hailed as the greatest b-baller ever until he proved that he could win, yet even before he did many thought he was. Dominique still gets respect for the incredible skills he displayed, but...being a consistent winner/delivering in the clutch AND posting impressive stats is what seperates the good and the great from the best.

A lot of mediocre and crappy players rode the Yankee train to a lot of World Series rings back in the day, that doesn't mean they were better players.

No it means they were on a better team!

If you mean individually, yes. 'Wins' is an overrated stat for pitchers, quarterbacks and the like.

"Well, Joe Bob won three championships while Jimmy Jim didn't, so clearly I have to say that Joe Bob was the superior player" is the type of stuff that makes me allergic to sports media.

But yeah, I find blaming one player for his franchise's failure to win a championship to be rather weak sauce.

xpost yeah obv taken that way, wins as a absolute and sole barometer is no good. but aren't you impressed that MJ won 6 times in 6 straight seasons*? or awed by what Bill Russell did, even though Chamberlain no doubt had more skills? (sorry for the bball refs but that's my sport). You seem to be doing the same thing as anti-rockists ie seeing that the pendulum needs to be swung back, but swinging it too far the other way and throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

But yeah, I find blaming one player for his franchise's failure to win a championship to be rather weak sauce.

That's not the same as giving more honors to those who do win championships.

*in seasons where he was with the team from the first game.

"Wins don't mean much" as a line of reasoning has nothing to do with espn or fantasy leagues.

ESPN is perhaps the biggest source of "Wins mean everything", since they're the guys who brought you Joe Morgan, John Kruk, Sean Salisbury, Dickie V., Stephen A. Smith, Around the Horn, etc.

Fantasy leagues have had zero negative impact on athletes who own a lot of rings. Tom Brady and Derek Jeter are probably lauded more today than they would have been pre-fantasy. The only difference now is that there is a voice for people who think ARod and Peyton might be better players.

One, I'm talking about 'wins' as an indicator of skill and performance. There's nothing wrong with 'wins' - they're obviously important for the team. As Barry said earlier, by arguing that a team is 'better' - in skill, statistically, etc. whatever - that does not automatically equate to saying that the losing team was robbed or should have made the playoffs.

The number of wins a team has is often indicative of their relative level of play, but sometimes there's a fluke. The White Sox got very lucky this year in certain situations, something they're unlikely to repeat. (And, again, their failure to be lucky in this particular way for the second half nearly cost them the playoffs.)

What Barry's trying to do is say 'all other factors being equal, this team was/would have been superior to this team.' (Of course, in doing that he's ignoring the A's injuries and they would have whupped them all. Boo-yah.)

Likewise, championships (in a team sport) can be the topping to a career, but they shouldn't be the definition of a career. Going to another thread that I can't remember - I judge MVP/Cy Youngs differently from, say, Morbius. I think that when you're talking about championships, awards and such, you don't have to toe the stathead line - in looking back, going by subjective measures is prefectly fine. I have no problem giving David Ortiz the MVP because he was more 'clutch' than A-Rod.

Jordan would have been the greatest ever even if he never won a championship. Maybe the Bulls never put pieces around him - does that make him a 'bad player'? In my eyes, no.

I got tired of hearing about what a horrible player Shareef Abdur-Rahim was last year, because by God he'd been in the L for however many years without making the playoffs. Like it was his fault, and his alone, that the Hawks were a shitty team. A lesser form of this can be seen in the fawning that went on over Dwayne Wade (vs. Lebron). Suddenly Wade is the golden child because Lebron was unable to make and dominate the playoffs by himself. Nothing against Wade, but I hated that 'he's better than Lebron' argument - let's see what happens if Shaq joins the Cavs, y'know?

grr, Tom Brady isn't helping my fantasy team all that much.

not true. there are enough basketball players (who was that big donk at Syracuse the last several years?) who never get the ball, never score, etc. a basketball player can take over a game offensively, yes, but can also largely disappear.

"Far less" is not the same thing as "none at all"

unless he's y'know a pitcher. or a batter hitting a home run. but besides that...

Jordan would have been the greatest ever even if he never won a championship. Maybe the Bulls never put pieces around him - does that make him a 'bad player'? In my eyes, no.

way to load the argument. either he's the greatest ever or he's a bad player.
I do agree with your position to a certain extent, but I think you're grasping for strawmen: only complete idiots dismiss, say, Tony Gwynn or rank James Worthy over Karl Malone because James won several rings and Malone has none.

i sorta agree with what stence just said, with the caveat that I do love to see an incredible individual performance, regardless of whether it results in a W. I'd rather watch Iverson than Duncan any day. But who's the better player? Impossible to say.

Did Jordan play every 5th game? How many 3/4 court-length shots did he make per season?

Whereas a top-flight player is in on every play, 40+ minutes a night.

way to load the argument. either he's the greatest ever or he's a bad player.
Except that variations of this are part of the average sports conversation around. (cf. Abdur-Rahim, switching golden boys, etc.)

(at any rate, any flack Tony Gwynn takes for not winning a title is more than covered from his being overrated for his average)

Well let me try to answer anyway: The Giants didn't make the playoffs this year because of their indefensibly rancid starting pitching, injuries to all three of their geriatric outfielders (Barry/Marquis/Moises), being without their closer for 4.5 months (Benitez), do you really want me to go on?

2005 Winshares courtesy of The Hardball Times.

Let me see if I can dig up last years...

You know, they changed that photo maybe 18 months ago.

The Yankees are finding out that, although their 2001-2005 teams have been about as good as the '96-00 editions, the main reason Jeter was such "A WINNER" is that they had more than their share of October hotness (positive-streakiness? any word but luck) in the first period. Or that's what they SHOULD be finding out.

Torre got lucky a whole lot during that run with some of his lineup choices with guys like Jim Leyritz, Jose Vizcaino, Chad Curtis, Rickey Ledee and other no name players having big games/series. Besides that, they platooned some ex-stars like Strawberry, Raines, Chili Davis, Cecil Fielder, and Boggs, who seemed to all come up with a timely hit or two in those playoff runs.

The Yanks roster seem to get a bit more top heavy every year with the bottom rungs getting worse and worse.