Hit and Run (1)...
- From: "Bob-Nob" <bobnob15@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:31:39 -0500
Some thoughts on baseball...
(1) The Sox were a good team this year. About as good as
any in baseball. (I think that gets lost sometimes in the
up-and-down of a long season). The same team that was
leading the AL early in the year is the same one that had
losing streaks in September. The team is likely neither as
bad as it looked when losing nor as good as it looked when
winning.
(2) Actually, that's not quite true: the Red Sox of
June did not have Martinez, did not have Gonzalez and
did not have Buchholz in the rotation. If the earlier
team was winning more games, I would not be surprised
to learn that it was a function of luck and scheduling
and surprisingly good performances in a short sample
than from any real difference in quality.
In other words, I think the team is better now than
when it started the season (or even where it was
halfway through the season). I thought that this team
was as good as any in baseball and I still mostly think
that... although I think the Angels are better now than
I thought they were at the beginning of the year or
midway through the year (ugh, Kazmir?!!) and the Yankees
are slightly better than I thought/hoped they'd be.
(3) And of course the playoffs are a very different in
terms of determining quality. It doesn't matter if the Sox
have the best fifth and sixth starters among playoff teams
since one (Wakefield) will not be on the roster and the other
(Bird) is only going to pitch if games go deep into extra
innings or if one of the other starters gets shelled. And
as far as top three/four pitchers go, the Red Sox are quite
good, but not markedly better (at least on paper) as what
the other three AL teams will be putting up. Offensively,
the Sox are a tick worse than the Yankees, but probably
as good or better than anyone else.
(4) I take it as given that the shorter a series is, the
more likely a weaker team will win -- i.e., over time,
quality is more likely to win out, so over a short series,
quality is less likely to win out. Given that I think
at least the Angels and Yankees are about as good as the
Red Sox, I think any of those three teams can win and any
can lose. Which I find somewhat of a relief: knowing
ahead of time that anything can happen will help if/when
the games are close (or if they're not close and the
bad guys are winning). Although I'd always rather have
the better team (all other things being equal), sometimes
it can be a comfort to acknowledge ahead of time that the
opponent may well have as good a team (or an even better
one) -- takes the rpessure off, ya know?
(5) My wife and my cousin and I are going to Game 1 in
Anaheim. We got tickets sitting in the right field bleachers.
Anyone else going to be there?
(6) Speaking of going to Game 1 -- WTF?!! How does MLB
allow the AL top seed to wait so long to announce which
playoff format they want? This is ridiculous. (Kerry,
Josh, and I still don't know whether we have to arrange
our schedules to go to the game at 1 in the afternoon on
Wednesday or 6 in the evening on Thursday). Lousy stupid
Yankees...
I'll probably follow this post up with some more thoughts
on specific players. I'll almost certainly fire up a
spreadsheet and post a DIPS report for the one or two
people who are curious...
Catch you later.
--Robert Machemer
--
Robert Paul Aubrey Machemer | For each time he falls, he shall
Amherst College, Math & Classics | rise again, and woe to the wicked!
Space Judge!!! | --Don Quixote (Man of La Mancha)
"He had everything a man could want: power, grace, and style..."
.
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