This Week In Baseball: 9/22-9/30

[Guest Smues]

Awesome, go Twins.

 

And Tampa's magic number is 1. Crazy.

[Bruiser Chong 0]

Lee you magnificent bastard!

[NYU 0]

The Mets have only themselves to blame for this loss tonight. Absolutely awful hitting, and our starting pitcher was God awful too -- as he has tended to be many times this season.

[Bruiser Chong 0]

FWIW, the Mets still have three outs and a shaky Kerry Wood on their side.

[Bruiser Chong 0]

Aramis you magnificent bastard!

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Awesome, go Twins.

 

And Tampa's magic number is 1. Crazy.

And in case anyone runs the math themselves, the Rays and Red Sox have both clinched playoff berths. In the event of a divisional tie, the Rays would win the division thanks to their h2h record against Boston.

 

ARAMIS~!

[NYU 0]

And just to complete the trifecta:

 

Horrible hitting + Terrible starting pitching + ANOTHER bullpen collapse.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

As good as this result may be for the Phillies, it is MUCH more important for the Milwaukee Brewers.

[snuffbox 0]

Too bad tomorrow is the last game they get to play against the Pirates.

 

 

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Too bad tomorrow is the last game they get to play against the Pirates.

True, but if nothing else the Brewers control their own destiny.

[NYU 0]

Can I ask why the Mets are so dedicated to offering Omar Minaya a four year extension? The situation with the bullpen this year is entirely his fault because these pitchers were just as bad in 2007, and he decided to hold onto nearly all of them. The only move he DID make in the offseason was adding Matt Wise and that was a complete bust considering he was totally useless before he got injured, and he's been on the DL indefinitely since then. Oh ho, not to mention the 4 year contract for Luis Castillo that was head-scratching when he did it a year ago, and now it just becomes sickening. So what has Minaya done to deserve an extension here?! If the Mets don't make the playoffs this season, he needs to be gone. Even if they DO, he might need to go.

[strummer 0]

and we are tied in the NL Wildcard.

 

Nights like this make me hate baseball

[Bruiser Chong 0]

What a game. I love the battling attitude this team continues to show.

 

And for what it's worth, none of that happens if Castro delivers a decent throw. Theriot was a dead duck.

[strummer 0]

The last game at Shea on Sunday could be sad, ugly and hilarious at the same time

 

and Willie Mays will get to see it in person!

[Guest C*Z*E*C*H]

The Brewers are bringing Yovani Gallardo back. Okay.

 

Bars and restaurants around Wrigley Field will be asked to stop serving alcohol after the seventh-inning stretch -- just as they do inside the ballpark -- to prevent Cubs playoff celebrations from turning ugly.

 

Ray Orozco, executive director of the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communications, said the proposed seventh-inning cutoff -- discussed at a playoff security meeting Monday -- would occur "only if it's a clinch game." Liquor sales could resume once the game is over, he said.

 

The voluntary moratorium would be effective on Sheffield between Newport and Irving; on Clark from Irving Park to Newport; and on Addison from Wilton to Racine.

 

"We're asking bar owners in the area to participate in the interest of public safety so we celebrate in the most responsible manner possible," Orozco said.

 

"It stops people from drinking for probably at least an hour. If they choose to, they can pick it up again. You're assuming everyone is going to start drinking again [after the final out]. I don't know if that's necessarily so. But if you stop drinking at 3:26 p.m., you won't be as physically impaired at 4:26 p.m."

 

Bar owners -- who hadn't been briefed on the city's plan -- reacted angrily to the idea of a temporary pause in liquor sales. They argued that customers who don't get served will get up and leave and never come back.

 

"It'll be one hour, maybe more, without offering service," said Sam Sanchez, owners of John Barleycorn, 3524 N. Clark. "Customers will be unhappy. We'll lose business. There's no reason for them to come back. We're sending a bad message to the world that Chicago cannot host a large event at a time when we're hoping to bring the Olympics to Chicago."

Retarded. First of all, this is just going to make the drunks angry. You don't want to withhold beer from the drunks. Second of all, this is going to encourage some sort of frontloading mentality, in which everyone tries to ingest as much booze as possible before the 7IS, and the amateur drinkers are going to severely fuck themselves up. Third, this can be circumvented by selling wristbands at the beginning of the night because then technically they're not selling alcohol after the 7th. Fourth, what if it's a bar on the other side of Irving Park Rd.? This is just completely ridiculous. You can't enact a mini-Prohibition in one section of one neighborhood of the city, and City Hall's "this is voluntary but we're going to make you do it anyway" is disgusting in that special Chicago politics way, and that rhetoric doesn't make the city look prepared for the Olympics, it makes them look like a bunch of thugs and goons with mob ties, which I suppose is pretty much what they are. Sorry, Daley, but you're going to blow your precious Olympic bid for bigger reasons than drunken fratboys in Wrigleyville.

 

EDIT: What about people who can't make it in from the burbs? Are you gonna drop the hammer on a TGI Friday's in Naperville? I heard Naperville can get a liiiiittle crazy. Do the White Sox have a Designated Prohibition Zone in Bridgeport? Wait, I have an idea. Maybe we can just make the Wrigleyville bars purchase an "October baseball bar license" and use that money toward maintenance for county president Todd Stroger's private elevator.

[Guest Smues]

Apparantly Hank Steinbrenner doesn't like the fact that the Dodgers will be going to the playoffs while the Yanks sit at home with a better record, and he wants the teams with the best records to go to the post season, and not because they won their division. So not only does he was to ignore divisions, he wants to ignore leagues. I can't be the only one who thinks that's insane, can I?

[jimmy no nose 0]

Apparantly Hank Steinbrenner doesn't like the fact that the Dodgers will be going to the playoffs while the Yanks sit at home with a better record, and he wants the teams with the best records to go to the post season, and not because they won their division. So not only does he was to ignore divisions, he wants to ignore leagues. I can't be the only one who thinks that's insane, can I?

He doesn't even try to make sense, he just says things. He's the same guy that said pitchers shouldn't hit in the National League because that comes from a rule that's 100 years old. I was going to explain how it's a stupid argument to make because different divisions play against such different schedules, then I realized that even teams within a division have a ton of variety in scheduling because of the unbalanced schedule and the 6 team NL Central and 4 team AL West.

[bob_barron 0]

I told my friend who is a Mets fan that it's okay to cry.

 

He told me to go fuck myself

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Can I ask why the Mets are so dedicated to offering Omar Minaya a four year extension? The situation with the bullpen this year is entirely his fault because these pitchers were just as bad in 2007, and he decided to hold onto nearly all of them. The only move he DID make in the offseason was adding Matt Wise and that was a complete bust considering he was totally useless before he got injured, and he's been on the DL indefinitely since then. Oh ho, not to mention the 4 year contract for Luis Castillo that was head-scratching when he did it a year ago, and now it just becomes sickening. So what has Minaya done to deserve an extension here?! If the Mets don't make the playoffs this season, he needs to be gone. Even if they DO, he might need to go.

I addressed this earlier, but I believe Minaya has done more good than bad with the Mets organization. Their bullpen is extremely shaky, but that is the one area of a ballclub that is most subject to year-to-year variation. Last year it wasn't the bullpen as much as the starting rotation, and that was addressed (the Mets are looking at Santana Sunday, a far cry from Glavine a year ago). Minaya made the trade for Santana, brought in Carlos Beltran, traded for Carlos Delgado, and made the Mets a team that wins around 90 games. Now if there's a GM around that consistently creates 95 win teams, he's not on the market.

 

The Mets are flawed, but so are most other teams.

[cabbageboy 0]

Oddly enough I think Hank Steinbrenner might have a point buried somewhere in that ranting, but he's not really someone to say it right now. The whole idea of 8 teams regardless of league is silly, but I can see getting rid of divisions and taking the best 4 teams from each league.

[Bruiser Chong 0]

Hank's problem is that he only seems to piss and moan about problems that are directly affecting his team. When he complained about the pitcher hitting in the NL, it was because that had led to his pitcher getting hurt. I doubt he's saying this latest blurb if the Yankees are the one with a suspect record heading to October baseball.

[Guest C*Z*E*C*H]

Even though the Dodgers are going to finish with 83 to 86 wins, I feel like every team in the playoffs is going to be a legitimate contender. The White Sox, Twins, and Brewers have proven at times that they're October-calibre, but their inability to clinch with four to go makes one wonder if they're only going to make it past the first finish line. It's not like last year, when the Cubs were simply the best of the bad bunch, or the Diamondbacks were unsustainably lucky with an anemic offense, or a few of those mid-2000s Twins teams that you knew in your heart were just first-round fodder. This is going to be a really great October.

 

Not for me, of course! Even if the Cubs don't get pantsed in a short series, I'll still be so irritable and edgy the whole time that I'll have to suspend myself from the board to avoid taking out my frustration in what I know realistically speaking is a safer venue than real-life interactions but I still don't wanna piss everyone off even more than I already have. But for the rest of you guys? Oh, boy! A memorable October. A toast to baseball! To baseball!

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Schedule highlights today:

 

Tampa Bay (Scott Kazmir) @ Detroit (Armando Galarraga), 1pm. A win and the Rays are YOUR AL East champions.

 

Arizona (Doug Davis) @ St. Louis (Joel Pineiro), 2pm. An Arizona loss would give the Dodgers the NL West title.

 

Chicago Cubs (Rich Harden) @ NY Mets, 7pm. The Mets determine if they will be one or two games out heading into the weekend. Also tied with the Brewers, every game is crucial.

 

NY Yankees (Carl Pavano) @ Toronto (Roy Halladay), 7pm. Halladay goes for win number twenty. Pavano makes his final start as a Yankee.

 

Pittsburgh (Zack Duke) @ Milwaukee (Yovani Gallardo), 8pm. Gallardo returns after months on the DL. How will he fare? If he dominates and the Brewers reach the playoffs, they suddenly become a far more potent team.

 

Chicago White Sox (Gavin Floyd) @ Minnesota (Kevin Slowey), 8pm. Winner takes first place in the AL Central.

 

San Diego (Jake Peavy) @ LA Dodgers (Greg Maddux), 10pm. If the D'backs win, this is the Dodgers' chance to take the division.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

I've said it before, but Hank Steinbrenner is soon going to make Yankees fans pine for the thoughtful and reasoned public leadership of his father. The guy only whines when stuff goes against the Yankees. It's not like he's calling for these rule changes because he thinks they'd be what's right for baseball, or anything like that.

[jimmy no nose 0]

Sports Illustrated is doing a Top World Series Moments poll. The 8 options they have are:

 

1977 Game 6 Reggie Jackson 3 HR

1956 Game 5 Don Larsen Perfect Game

2003 Game 6 Josh Beckett complete game shutout

1991 Game 7 Jack Morris 10 inning shutout

1993 Game 6 Joe Carter walk-off homer to end the series

1988 Game 1 Kirk Gibson pinch-hit homer

1991 Game 6 Kirby Puckett walk-off homer

1975 Game 6 Carlton Fisk 12th inning walk-off homer

 

All great moments obviously, but how do you leave out Bill Mazeroski hitting a walk-off homer in game 7 in 1960? It's one of two homers that ended a World Series and the only one to come in a Game 7. It had to be one of the biggest upsets in World Series history and came from a career .260 hitter who only hit more than 15 homers twice in his career.

[CanadianChris 0]

Mark Reynolds of the Diamondbacks just became the first-ever 200 strikeout guy in major league history.

[CanadianChris 0]

All great moments obviously, but how do you leave out Bill Mazeroski hitting a walk-off homer in game 7 in 1960? It's one of two homers that ended a World Series and the only one to come in a Game 7. It had to be one of the biggest upsets in World Series history and came from a career .260 hitter who only hit more than 15 homers twice in his career.

Yeah, that's a strange omission. I'd also put in Luis Gonzalez's Series-winning single off Rivera in 2001.

[Guest C*Z*E*C*H]

A perfect game isn't a moment; it's the result of nine innings of work. The three-homer game and shutouts don't belong there either. They left off Gibson v Gossage, too.

 

Speaking of the Diamondbacks, how did that whole thing fall apart? What happened there? Baffling.

[sfaJack 0]

You could ask the same question as to why they won 90 games last year.

[Slayer 0]

How did Beckett's game from 03 get included on that list? Good performance, to be sure, but as far as WS moments from this decade, the golden standard belongs to the 2001 WS, which had Jeter's "Mr. November" homer in Game 4, the Brosius game-tying homer in Game 5, and the entire bottom-ninth inning from Game 7