The Man in Blak

For one, you should be able to tell from his posts here that Al is not your typical Philadelphia sports fan. He bemoaned the Abreu trade when it happened; his old baseball blog name was called the Bobby Abreu Appreciation Society, for Christ's sake. And, though I think it could have been worded a little better, I think Al's point is that your expectations for Wagner are completely unrealistic. He can't save every game and continuing to assert that he "blows it in the important games" when multiple examples of success (including examples from this postseason) have been cited, is sheer fallacy. Can you really tell me that the 42 games that Wagner has saved this year, which includes the two games against the Dodgers in the NLDS, are "unimportant"? That being said, I think the hysteria behind losing this game could be justified, though not because of Wagner's performance. This was a very winnable game that the Mets should have put away three innings into the evening; Carpenter had absolutely nothing - you're not going to see too many outings where he walks more batters than he strikes out, let alone walks four batters at all - and he still managed to limit the damage and go five innings. Randolph grossly mismanaged the bullpen, which threw over 100 pitches in last night's game, and effectively took Mota and Wagner out of the running for today's game. The Cardinals, who are coming up with some momentum, have been a significantly better team at home and, if they can chase Trachsel early, they could chew up even more innings out of the bullpen going into Game 4 with Oliver Perez (~9.00 ERA on the road) and Tom Glavine on short rest. I believe I said in the Dodgers/Mets thread that New York could potentially see some issues with their pitching in a longer series - Randolph burned up a lot of innings in the LA series and, so far, looks to be on pace for a ton of innings in this series. If Trachsel doesn't step up for tonight's game, the Mets could be in some serious trouble going forward.

If you think the gameplay on Kingdom Hearts is bad now, just wait until you try to pick it up after playing KH2. We're talking night and day here.

Al, I understand where you're coming from, but here's my question - if you substitute "morons" for "cocksuckers" in his post, does he still get suspended?

If you pair up Piniella with the right play-by-play guy, he can actually be informative, despite sounding like Chief Wiggum at times. As for the actual game...well, this is the Oakland I thought would show up for the Minnesota series. As Bruiser said earlier, if they can't put together some timely hitting, this may be a very short series.

Yep, that's U.N. Squadron. Really good game and one of the earlier releases on the platform too, I believe. (Wasn't it actually a launch title?)

The award itself is named after its first winner, Jackie Robinson. Given that at least three established stars of the negro leagues won the award, I have no problem voting for the Japanese players. I'll admit, if the precedent weren't set in the past, I'm not sure that I would consider the Japanese Players on my ballot. There is enough debate over the quality of the Japanese leagues, in comparison to MLB, but the fact of the matter is that Johjima and Saito have had years of professional experience at the highest level of baseball in their country. It seems a bit odd to consider Japanese imports like Johjima, Saito, and Matsui a "rookie" when they are some of the most experienced baseball players you may find on these teams. Also, it's worth noting that Jackie Robinson only played one year with the Monarchs in 1945 before hitting the Majors and was 27 years old when he won the award - he was still relatively inexperienced, as far as professional baseball experience goes.

I'm convinced that this thread would survive a nuclear detonation.

Yeah, which means it won't happen ever again. Not only because it's Jeff Weaver and he's facing the best offense in the league, but because Anglesault will be camped out on top of one of the light standards, prepared to exact vengeance with a PSG1 and a copy of Catcher in the Rye in his jacket pocket.

My gut feeling is that the Mets sweep and the Cardinals never take a lead in the series, but I'll optimistically pick the Mets in six, with the idea that Carpenter can win his game in St. Louis and Pujols will find a way to steal one of the first two games in New York.

"Gosh, I hope they don't want to get rid of me!"

Well, Lou Piniella has managed ARod before, during his time with the Mariners, so you could actually say that the move to bring in Piniella might be a move in "support" of Rodriguez from Steinbrenner.

Maddux has looked very hittable this year and stands to decline further going forward - I don't think you'd want to bring him to the DH league in the same division where the Red Sox and Blue Jays lurk.

Apparently, Michael Kay is leading the lynch mob on YES right now.

The Cash-man. I think Torre and Cashman hit the street at the same time. I can't imagine Torre emerging unscathed after today's batting order.

Uh oh Leyland doesn't usually fare so well in the NLCS. God dammit.

Cano with the clutch groundout. The Tigers are going on to the NLCS!

Posada apparently scorched a two run homer to cut the lead to five. Cano steps in, ARod on deck. I say "apparently" because I'm listening to the game on radio, since my cable has been out for the last two hours.

That's outstanding.

This is Johnny Damon you're talking about here. I don't think he knows any state of mind other than "chilled out."

A-Rod has let the first pitch go by in virtually every at-bat this postseason. First at-bat today, he anxiously swings after the first pitch and grounds it straight to Inge. There's no positives for ARod here. If he does well in the eight hole, everybody says that he can't handle the pressure of hitting higher in the lineup. If he has a bad day, then he just sucks in the postseason - end of story.

"That bat, like the psyche of Alex Rodriguez, lays shattered in the field" *mute button*

And Monroe follows suit. This could be a long game for Yankees fans, if Wright can't hold on through four.

This is some backwards logic from Torre. He benches Sheffield against the soft-tossing lefty. He benches Giambi against the righty. And then there's batting ARod eighth...which is such a foreign idea that my brain is still having problems taking it in.

This game could be a lot worse, as it seems like the Padres have had runners on second and third in every single inning. Given that we're looking at four innings of bullpen, I'm not optimistic.