Joe Borowski allows one hit as he earns the save in the 9th. A big win for the Cubs. Ortiz played with fire once two often, and Kerry Wood survived his wildness by being unhittable. Game 2 tomorrow night, same bat time, same bat channel.

Wood is gone after 124 pitches and walking Gary Sheffield to load the bases with one out in the eighth. A great plate apperance by Sheffield, fouling off pitches in the zone, and taking everything outside. Remlinger is in to turn Chipper Jones around to the right side.

Update: Jones grounds into a force out (looked like a DP on the replay). Braves score, it's 4-2 Cubs with two out and two on in the 8th.

Update: Farnsworth comes in and walks Andruw Jones to load the bases again. Javy Lopez can be the hero.

Update: Lopez grounds out to short. On to the 9th!

Kerry Wood just blew away Vinny Castilla for his 9th strikeout. He's overcome his early wildness and just keeps mowing the Braves down. He's getting them swinging at pitches in the dirt; he's catching them looking at belt high breaking balls. A masterful performance.

Marcus Giles tripped over first base in the bottom of the sixth and has been taken out of the game. A serious injury for the Braves if he can't play.

Once again, Alou, Ramirez and Karros load the bases with none out. Last time, Ortiz got out of it with 2 K and a pop out. Hacker Randall Simon is pinch-hitting for Gonzalez.

Update: Simon strikes out. Wow.

Update: Bako hits what looks like a DP ball to Fick, who boots it to Giles who gets the out at first. Score tied 1-1. Then Kerry Wood comes up and smashes a double to deep left center to give the Cubs a 3-1 lead. Wood now has 2 hits to the Braves' 1.

Update: Ray King comes in to get Lofton, but Kenny bloops one to center to score Wood. It's 4-1 Cubs in the top of the 6th, and Cox is making another pitching change.

Russ Ortiz just induced his 2nd ground double play of the game. He could have had three if not for the error Giles made. It should be noted that he only induced nine during the regular season.

With the bases loaded and no out, Ortiz strikes out Gonzalez and Bako, then gets Wood to pop out. Ortiz now has six K through four innings; he's not a strikeout pitcher, but he's taking advantage of the Cubs propensity for the K.

Eric Karros just blooped one into centerfield to load the bases with no one out. I think it's the first time I've seen Andruw Jones not make a play! :-) Just kidding, no one else would have gotten close to it.

Marcus Giles makes up for his error with a solo HR in the third. It was the first hit allowed by Kerry Wood. Braves lead 1-0.

Russ Ortiz pitches a great inning. He gives up a one-out hit to Kerry Wood, and then Giles misplays a good double play ball. With men on first and second and one out, Ortiz strikes out Grudzielanek and Sosa to end the inning. He has four K through three innings.

Neither Ortiz nor Wood were really throwing strikes in the first inning. Ortiz threw 15 pitches, 7 for strikes, and Kerry Wood threw 17 pitches, only 8 for strikes. That doesn't strike me as a ball/strike ratio that can hold up for a whole game.

Kenny Lofton just singled leading off for the Cubs, and cheers went up at Turner Field. Seems a lot of Cubs fans made the trip to Atlanta to root, root, root for the road team. When I was at the 1999 World Series in Atlanta, I remember the Yankees fans being much louder than the Braves fans. It's not that there were a lot of NY fans there; the Braves fans were just quiet.

Giants win 2-0. Yesterday, I tried to write a post about how the Giants have their talent concentrated in two players. The point I made poorly is that concentration of talent is enough to carry the team. That concentration shone through today.

Schmidt pitched brilliantly. He gave up only three hits, no walks and struck out five as he pitched a complete game shutout. It's only the sixth CG shutout in LDS history, and three of those were in 1981!

Barry Bonds did not get a hit, but they walked him three times. In the 4th, his walk moved Aurilia into scoring position, where he scored on an error. In the 8th, with two out and no one on, he was intentionally walked, and scored on a Alfonzo double. So the strategy of walking Bonds resulted in both of the SF runs scoring.

Bonds and Schmidt lifted the Giants on their shoulders today and carried them to victory.

Schmidt and Beckett are ringing up the strikeouts at Pac Bell today. Beckett has five through three innings, Schmidt has four. Each has allowed 1 hit.

Nick Johnson ground out to third base to end the game. A huge win for the Twins, given the home field advantage they enjoy in the Metrodome. The game came down to defense, with the Twins making a big play in the 9th, and the Yankees not making plays in the 3rd and 6th. Game 2 on Thursday. That will give the NY media lots of time to complain. :-)

It's not over. Soriano's infield hit breaks up the shutout. Tying runs on base for Nick Johnson, vs. the lefty Guardado.

Durham on 2nd, 2 out, the Marlins walk Bonds. Can Alfonzo make them pay?

Update: Edgardo flied out to center.

Shannon Stewart made a great catch in the 9th. With Williams on first, Matsui hit one deep that Stewart ran down. Boone then doubled. If Stewart doesn't get to that ball, the Yankees would be in a better position to tie the game. Sierra pops out, and the game depends on Soriano.

Jason Schmidt starts off the game with a strikeout of Juan Pierre.

Update: Schmidt retires the side on 7 pitches. The Marlins were not very selective in the first.

LaTroy Hawkins retires the Yankees 1-2-3 in the 8th. He's faced seven batters and struck out four. He's also got through the heart of the Yankees order and Williams, Matsui and Boone will be batting in the 9th. Twins still lead 3-0.

Pat Gillick has resigned as the GM of the Mariners.

Gillick will remain in his position until a successor is found, then become a consultant for the team.

"After much thought I've decided to step away from my current role with the Mariners," Gillick said in a statement released by the team. "I've had four chances at the brass ring here and think maybe it's time for someone else to take a shot at taking this team to a higher level.

"I believe we have a core of players in place, especially pitchers, that will allow the Mariners to contend for the next several years, at least, and I am looking forward to remaining involved with the Seattle organization," he said.

During Gillick's four years as general manager, the Mariners won more games (393) than any other team in Major League Baseball, appearing in the American League Championship Series twice. He was named the league's Executive of the Year in 2001 when the Mariners tied a record for wins in a season at 116.

Nothing over at the Mariners Weblog yet. Gillick is a great GM, but he's 66 and probably wants to take it easy. It's also possible that he didn't feel he had enough flexibility late in the season.

The Yankees get the first two men on in the 7th. Sierra pinch-hitting for Rivera against Hawkins.

Update: Hawkins fails to get a double play on a comebacker to the mound. 1st and 3rd, 1 out.

Update: Soriano strikes out.

Update: Johnson battles, fouling off a number of pitches, but he also strikes out. The Yankees have had their chances today. They are 0 for 7 with runners in scoring position.

Santana came out after four innings with a leg cramp. The Twins scored two in the sixth. The big hit was a Hunter triple. The Twins led the AL in triples.

Mussina works himself into a bases loaded situation with two out in the 4th, but got Guzman on a foul pop up to third to end the inning. Mussina has thrown 63 pitches through four innings.

Santana got the first two batters in the 3rd, but Johnson walked on four pitches, and Jeter worked a walk on seven. Now Giambi is up with two on and two out.

Update: Giambi strikes out on three pitches. He could not catch up to Santana's fastball, despite choking up with two strikes on him. Twins hold on to their 1-0 lead.

Update: One thing the Yankees did so in that inning was work Santana a bit. He's up to 52 pitches after three innings. Mussina has only thrown 36 through three.

Christian Guzman scores the first run of the game. He tried to go first-to-third on a Stewart single, and Matsui missed him on a close play (the Twins radio announcers seemed to think he was out). Then on a line drive to centerfield, he was able to beat Bernie William's throw to the plate. Guzman is an aggressive runners, as evidenced by his 14 triples this year.

Update: The Twins announcers have now seen more replays, and they contend that Guzman was safe, but the umpire was out of position.

Update: Luis Rivas, who drove in Guzman, becomes the second player in LDS history to have a SF and SH in the same game. Charlies Hayes with the 1996 Yankees was the other.

Hideki Matsui singles in his first post-season AB. Yankees and Twins tied at 0 at the end of two.

Twins-Yankees are underway. Stewart doubles to lead off the game, but Gardenhire wastes an out bunting him to third. And the Yankees, like idiots have brought the infield in.

Update: Mientkiewicz taps back to the box. Yankees got lucky there. A groundout to short finishes the inning.

In the past, starting a lefty against the Yankees was considered a good idea. This year, however, the Yankees have a 26-11 record when the opposition starts a lefty against them, best in the AL and tied with the Giants for 2nd best in the majors. Nevertheless, the Twins send lefty Johan Santana to the mound to face Mike Mussina. The Twins are 65-43 against righties, the third best record in the majors. So the handedness of the starters play to the opponent's strength.

Both Santana and Mussina had good years vs. the Yankees and Twins. Sanatana had two relief appearances and struck out 10 Yankees in 5 2/3 innings without allowing a run. Mike Mussina was 2-0 in two starts, posting a 1.20 ERA against the Twins. A.J. Pierzynski is the only Twin batter to give Mussina any trouble; he's 8 for 15 with three doubles against the Moose in his career. No Yankee has seen Santana much; Giambi has the most AB against him and he's 3 for 9 with a double, a walk and 2 K. One key for the Yankees will be to work the starters in this series to high pitch counts. The Twins bullpen issues a lot more walks than the starters do, and the Yankee offense should be more in gear against the pen.

In San Francisco, Josh Beckett opposes Jason Schmidt. Two high strikeout pitchers against two teams that don't strike out very much. Schmidt has never lost to the Marlins, despite having a 5.20 ERA against them for his career. Bonds is 1 for 2 with a HR and 2 walks against Beckett. The key for the Giants is to get Bonds into situations where the cost of walking him is high; man on first base, low outs. Force the Marlins to pitch to him, or else risk putting men in scoring position. For the Marlins, they have to put the ball in play against Schmidt. They'll run on him, but they have to get men on base first.

In the night cap, fireballer Kerry Wood tries to take the first step in bringing the Cubs their first World Championship in 95 years. He'll face 21 game winner Russ Ortiz. I suspect Chipper Jones and Gary Sheffield will be very patient with Wood until he shows he has his control. Kerry has walked a lot of batters this year, and the Braves hitters are very willing to take a walk. Russ Ortiz is not an impressive 21-game winner. He's been the beneficiary of the best run support an Atlanta starter received this year, 6.5 runs (Maddux is the only starter not in the top 10 of the NL in this category). So you can score against Ortiz; the question is, can your opponent keep the Braves from scoring? Kerry Wood will try.

Black Table, a literary journalism web site in New York, has an extensive preview of the playoffs by Will Leitch. I love their summary of the A's:

Oakland, despite the similarities in philosophies, couldn't be a more different team. The lineup is one of the worst in baseball, so bad that Beane was forced to trade for Cincinnati's Jose Guillen, who might be the definition of the non-sabermetric hitter (few walks, poor plate discipline). What has carried the A's has been the bullpen, led by Keith Foulke (yet another A's closer reclamation project) and Moneyball star Chad Bradford, and a seemingly endless supply of starting pitching. For most of the year, Mark Mulder led the young, cheap staff, but when he went down, rookie Rich Harden stepped in. He hit the rookie wall, so up stepped Ted Lilly, who was once traded for Jeff Weaver. The trio of Barry Zito, Tim Hudson and Lilly might not be as impressive as last year's Mulder/Zito/Hudson triumvirate … but it's close.

That the A's have been so successful for so long on such a short budget is astounding; heck, someone should write a book about it. But, fact is, this is probably the weakest A's team to make the playoffs since Beane began his run. Zito hasn't had one of best seasons, Lilly has been hot but won't be confused with Mulder, and the lineup requires Miguel Tejada and Eric Chavez -- two of the most talented yet maddeningly inconsistent hitters in the game -- to carry them. What Beane has done with the A's is incredible, but a World Series has eluded him, much to his frustration, considering the crapshoot nature of the postseason. It would be ironic, one supposes, if Beane's worst team was the one that actually snuck in the World Series … but when you're facing a lineup like the Red Sox's, irony and two bucks will get you uptown.

There is a misconception here about Oakland and Beane's methods. I don't think Beane cares where the runs come from, as long as there is a large enough difference between the A's runs scored and runs allowed. The offense, despite a lower batting average, OBA and Slugging, only scored 32 fewer runs than last year. Couple that with the pitching and defense allowing 11 fewer runs, and the difference between this team and the 2002 team is 21 runs, or two wins. Last year the team was very lucky and won six more games than they should have. This year, the team won 1 more game than it should have. Yes, it may be the worse team in this run, but it's not a bad team, and it's not that different from last year's team.

Beane doesn't say, "We have to have a .340 OBA." He says, "we have to outscore our opponents by 130 runs to make the playoffs." If he can save money by getting a worse hitter and a better pitcher to do that, he will.

As for the Cubs, no punches are pulled:

The Cubs are everyone's cause celebre these days, but this is not a plucky Expos team, or overachieving Oakland squad. This is a team full of malcontents playing for a greedy corporation that bleeds its long-suffering fans dry in the name of the bottom line, selling nostalgia to drunken overgrown frat boys who usually don't notice there's a game going on until the seventh inning stretch. You'd almost feel bad for the players if they weren't all jerks too.

It's a long read but a great one. Enjoy.

This is bad news.

I've been looking at these two teams, trying to find an advantage for one over the other. They are very close in runs scored, but the Giants are a little better. They both have good ERAs, but the Giants are a bit better. If you look at defensive efficiency, the Giants are much better, but if you do my probabilistic adjustments, they both do as expected. Both team are good at putting the ball in play (not striking out); the Giants had 980 K, the Marlins 978.

Even though these teams are close overall, the way they achieved these stats is different. When you look at the Marlins by batting order, you see a classic lineup, on-base with little power at the top, good and declining power through the middle of the lineup, the poor hitters at the bottom. When you look at the Marlins starting rotation, you see consistency among the five main starters. Only 1.30 runs separates Beckett from Pavano.

The Giants, on the other hand, have two players that stand out from all others; Barry Bonds and Jason Schmidt. Schmidt's ERA is almost a run better than their next best starter, Jerome Williams. No one come close to Bonds offensively. The third and fifth slots in the Giants order have been poor. The third slot underperformed the NL average by over 50 points in OBA and nearly 70 points in slugging percentage. The Giants #5 hitters are also underperforming, but Alfonzo has done much better since moving there. But Bonds is the offense if the middle of the lineup.

What this series comes down to is consistency vs. concentration of talent. Will the two superstars carry the team? Will the Marlins have a different hero every day? Last year the consistent Angels beat the Giants despite a great performance by Barry. These teams are very close. The Giants are a bit better, but if their stars falter, so will San Francisco.

Jerry Manuel was also fired today.

"We have nothing but the highest regard and respect for Jerry Manuel, the person and the man," General Manager Kenny Williams said in a statement. "However, since reaching the playoffs 2000 and despite high expectations, this team has not won enough baseball games. It remains our goal to reach the playoffs and, ultimately, the World Series.

"At this time, we have reached the conclusion that a new direction is necessary."

The talent-laden White Sox led the AL Central by two games on Sept. 9, but then fell apart and finished four games back.

Manuel was 500-471 in six seasons, the fourth-most wins for a White Sox manager. Chicago was .500 or better in each of the last four seasons, and finished below second place only once under Manuel, in 2001.

The White Sox won the AL Central in 2000, earning Manuel AL manager of the year honors. But Chicago was swept by Seattle in the playoffs, and hasn't been back to the postseason since.

"I understand the industry. I understand the business," Manuel said after Chicago's home finale Wednesday. "I'm not in this thing blindfolded."

He won, but didn't win enough. The GM tried to give him a pretty good team this year, and they fell apart just when they needed to win the most.

Daniel Shamah sends this link to the ESPN staff predictions on the post-season baseball tourament. Apart from the typo in Rick Sutcliffe predictions, it's time to see what the experts think.

On the most important question of who will win the World Series, we get the following votes:

Team	Votes	Odds of Winning
Giants	5	27.7%
Red Sox	4	22.2%
Yankees	4	22.2%
Braves	3	16.7%
Twins	2	11.1%

None of the experts gives the A's, Marlins or Cubs a chance to win the World Series.

Another interesting item from this list is the near unanimous consensus that the Red Sox would beat Oakland in the ALDS. Only Scott Ridge picked the A's. The A's did win the season series against the Red Sox 4-3 this year. The Red Sox are a poor road team, and they will be playing up to three games at Oakland. I'm surprised this isn't closer to 50-50.

The experts pick the Cubs to beat the Braves 12-4 in the NLDS, but not one picks the Cubs to win the World Series. They can beat the best team in the NL, but they can't take the series? As I pointed out earlier, the Braves are very good at beating good pitchers. My gut here is that there's a lot of wishful thinking going on regarding the Cubs and the Red Sox.

Update: Michael Davidson writes:

You write that "None of the experts gives the A's, Marlins or Cubs a change to win the World Series". I'm sure you know this, but that's just not true. None of the experts thinks that those teams will win, but I'm sure they'd all give a probability of greater than zero if pressed. It looks like ESPN's survery isn't that nuanced.

Yes, that's true, and I knew that when I wrote it. However, I'm looking at the odds of these teams winning based on the predicitions of the experts. And based on their predictions, the probability of those teams winning is 0. Odds, after all, are no more than the consensus opinion of the betting public. Here, we have a very small public, so you have to expect the odds to be skewed a bit.

Mike Hargrove's tenure with the Orioles is over:

The Orioles fired manager Mike Hargrove today in a morning meeting, ending his four-year run with the team.

Hargrove, 53, guided the team to a 275-372 record after winning five consecutive division titles and advancing to two World Series in his final five seasons managing the Cleveland Indians.

His contract, which paid him $1.25 million this season, will expire Nov. 1, and the club told him today that it doesn't plan to bring him back.

"They said they weren't going to offer me another contract," Hargrove told the Associated Press in a telephone interview. "I guess they wanted a different personality."

Four years? It doesn't seem like he's been there that long. But four years is more than enough time to show some improvement, and that's something the Orioles haven't done.

Aaron has a long and thorough preview of the Twns-Yankees series, and makes a point I was going to hit upon as well. He starts out talking about last year's Angels beating the Yankees by putting the ball in play. He points out that while the Twins have very similar stats to last year's Angels, they strikeout a lot more. That plays into the strength of the Yankees pitchers.

My advice to the Twins is to try to become the Angels. Shorten your swings and put the ball in play up the middle. That's where the Yankees are weakest.

This is a few days old, but I just noticed this post by Alex Belth of Bronx Banter. He's congratulating the Red Sox on winning the wild card and writes this:

Oh, and a special congrats go out to Scott Adams, Ed Cossette, David Pinto, Ben Jacobs, and my man, Johnny fuggin' Red Sox---all Red Sox fans of the first order.

I'm surprised that Alex thinks I'm a Red Sox fan. I swore off alliegence to teams when I started working for ESPN, but that had been disappearing on its own anyway. I am a baseball fan. I like to root for good organizations, and the Red Sox certainly are one, but that also includes the Yankees, A's, Twins, Braves and Giants, along with a few that did not make the playoffs. There's not a team I dislike in the championship hunt this year, I'm just hoping to see lots of good baseball.

I was just reading Buster Olney's Crucial Confrontations column on ESPN.com, and this struck me:

Florida speed vs. San Francisco pitchers

Giants catcher Benito Santiago has a good arm, but that's mostly irrelevant. The Marlins' success in stealing bases will depend entirely on how the Giants' hurlers keep them close, or keep them off bases. Jason Schmidt might have the most dominant stuff of any pitcher in this postseason, but you can run on him -- there were 17 stolen base attempts against him this year, and nobody was thrown out.

Yes, you can run on him, but you can't get on enough against him to make the running meaningful. Those 17 stolen bases didn't make a lot of difference:

Schmidt, 2003	Opposition Steals	No Steals
Record	9-3	8-2
ERA	2.89	1.87
Baserunners Per 9	10.0	7.8

So in games where Schmidt allowed more baserunners, there were more steals. It wasn't the steals that raises his ERA, it was his higher runners allowed numbers.

Some of the great pitchers of my lifetime (Palmer, Gooden, Maddux) never cared about baserunners, because they feel that if they get the batter out, the runner won't score. Schmidt may have that philosophy, and if he does, it's a strength, not a weakness.

Update: The Marlins this year stole four bases in seven attempts vs. the Giants. They did not make an attempt against Schmidt this year, possibly because they only had three his and one walk against him.

Just wanted to say hello to everyone who is finding this site via Ernie the Attorney, and give Ernie a big thanks for the link.

The Yankees and Twins pitching staffs finished 1-2 respectively in fewest walks allowed in the American league in 2003. The Yankees issued 375 walks; the Twins 402. No other AL team was really close to them; Seattle was third at 466 BB issued. One thing that not walking batters does is to reduce an offense's on-base average to it's batting average. In this case, a 15-point advantage for the Yankees in OBA is changed to a six point deficit in terms of batting average. So in terms of getting on base, these two teams may be more evenly matched than they first appear.

The Yankees advantage in power will not go down, however. In fact, it might even be enhanced. The Twins allow a lot more HR than the Yankees, and the Yankees hit a lot more HR than the Twins. If they do indeed reach base about the same amount of time, I would expect the Yankees to do a better job of moving those runners around the bases.

BB stands for Barry Bonds and Base on Balls. The two seem to be equal to Jack McKeon:

``We'll pitch to him if we're way ahead,'' Marlins Manager Jack McKeon told reporters in Florida on Sunday. ``We might even pitch to him the first time up in a 0-0 game -- might.

``It might be a situation where you get a guy on first and you still walk him and take your chances on the next guy.''

The Giants have no problem with this strategy:

If McKeon keeps his word, it might be a while before Bonds gets another hit. Then again, the Giants have watched the pitch-around-Bonds strategy all season and yet won the National League West by 15 1/2 games.

``If Barry was hitting behind himself, he wouldn't get pitched to,'' teammate Rich Aurilia said. ``Why would somebody pitch to him in the postseason if they don't even pitch to him in the regular season?''

Added Giants Manager Felipe Alou: ``I believe people should change the strategy -- next year. Not now. I'll take it anytime to win by'' 15 1/2 games ``when they don't pitch to one guy on our club.''

It works fine if you can get everyone else out. Otherwise, you're just increasing your opponents run potential.

There's a stat I like to look at just before playoff time. I compute what the ERA leaders from each league did against each team in the majors. I use 30 pitchers, the top 15 from each league. I calculate their won-lost record vs. each team as well as their ERA. Here's the results from this year:

ERA Leaders vs.       W  L    Pct. GS    IP    ER    ERA
Indians              15  4   0.789 25  160.1   66   3.70
Rangers              30  9   0.769 45  296.1  112   3.40
Tigers               26  8   0.765 42  296.1   77   2.34
White Sox            18  6   0.750 28  193.2   76   3.53
Devil Rays           19  8   0.704 37  262.1   80   2.74
Pirates              14  6   0.700 25  164.1   60   3.29
Mets                 20  9   0.690 37  252.2   70   2.49
Brewers              17  8   0.680 32  215.2   64   2.67
Marlins              16  8   0.667 29  191.1   62   2.92
Royals               14  8   0.636 31  209.0   79   3.40
Athletics            14  8   0.636 31  202.2   76   3.38
Expos                 8  5   0.615 22  143.1   53   3.33
Rockies              11  7   0.611 25  157.2   77   4.40
Phillies             14  9   0.609 29  202.2   66   2.93
Orioles              14  9   0.609 33  217.2   75   3.10
Twins                18 12   0.600 37  257.1   83   2.90
Mariners             14 10   0.583 30  197.2   77   3.51
Padres               17 13   0.567 36  238.0   80   3.03
Reds                 13 10   0.565 32  211.0   67   2.86
Cubs                  9  7   0.563 25  162.2   51   2.82
Diamondbacks         10  8   0.556 24  167.0   52   2.80
Blue Jays            12 10   0.545 26  164.1   79   4.33
Angels               18 16   0.529 44  308.0  106   3.10
Astros               10 10   0.500 25  165.2   64   3.48
Dodgers              10 10   0.500 29  208.0   63   2.73
Yankees              14 14   0.500 34  223.1   93   3.75
Cardinals            10 12   0.455 33  208.1   67   2.89
Giants               11 15   0.423 34  224.0   99   3.98
Red Sox               8 12   0.400 30  196.1  104   4.77
Braves                8 14   0.364 32  204.0   86   3.79

For a team heading into the playoffs, it's good to be at the bottom of the list. The proper way to read the Braves line is, "The best pitchers in the league could only go 8-14 in 32 starts against the Braves, and managed a 3.79 ERA." These numbers are a very positive sign for the Braves and Red Sox. The Cubs have three pitchers in the top 15 in ERA. The A's also have three, but Mulder is injured and will not pitch. And as the Red Sox line indicates, good pitching doesn't always stop good hitting.

This analysis also favors the Giants over the Marlins and the Yankees over the Twins.

Here's an article on why the Cubs-Braves matchup leads off in prime-time for Fox.
I discussed this here the other day.

Once thing that might have really hurt the Cubs was the rainout on Friday. This pushed Mark Prior back a day, so he's going to start Friday in game three instead of Wednesday in game 2. Given that it looks like the Cubs are going with a four-man rotation, I guess it's not a big deal. But if they had decided to go with a three-man staff, Prior could have started games two and five.

The Baseball Crank has lots of good stuff this morning. Start here with Mike Sweeney and keep going backwards through time. Great stuff on Maddux, Pedro and pitchers cutting down on walks.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2411	2412
Attendance	28051	28170

Wow. A pretty good stretch run in attendance pulled the average within 120 of last year. 2002 Was well ahead of 2003 in every month through July.

Average Attendance	2002	2003
March-April	28,321	27,432
August-September	27,402	28,620

I think two things had a hand in attendance catching up to last year:

1. The negative news reports about the labor negotiations drove attendance down last year
2. Exciting pennant races and a more balanced league drove attendance up this year.

Still, MLB has to be concerned that attendance has gone down three years in a row, and this was the lowest average attendance since 1996. It's not incumbent on MLB to build on this late season momentum.

The regular season is over. There were a number of nice surprises. The first the Kansas City Royals who were in the playoff hunt up 'til the last week of the season. They finished with 83 wins, their best season in 10 years and locked up Mike Sweeney.

Second, the Montreal Expos. With no owner, and forced to play a split home schedule, the also managed to win 83 games. They had pulled into a tie for the wild card as late as 8/28. Who knows what will happen to them next, but they put up a good fight. Congratulations to Frank Robinson and Omar Minaya for doing a super job.

And of course, the Florida Marlins. Off to a poor start, they changed managers, and Jack McKeon led them into the playoffs. They're the cinderella story of the playoffs.

There were disappointments as well. The two biggest are Phillies and the Astros. Each made a big free agent signing in the off season. Each was very close to making the playoffs. And each underperformed based on their runs scored and allowed. The Astros should have had a .586 winning percentage instead of a .537, and the Phillies should have had a .563 winning percentage instead of a .531.

In the same vein, the Seattle Mariners should have had the best winning percentage in the majors. Instead, they finished 4th in a very strong league, and didn't make the playoffs. Their offense started disappearing in August, and totally vanished in September. They were 3-8 in 1 & 2 run games in September, costing them a trip to the playoffs.

It was a fun season. On o the playoffs.

I was a bit surprised to see that the prime time games on Tuesday and Wednesday do not involve the Yankees. Usually, Fox likes to get NY at night, so they can have the biggest audience. But this year, the Cubs at Atlanta will be the evening games for the first two days. This makes sense, since Chicago is as big a market as NY, and since the Cubs haven't been in the playoffs in a few years, there may be more interest. Also, since WGN and TBS are national networks, these two teams have more of a national following than the Yankees.

Red Sox fans will be disappointed to see that the game will be late on Wednesday, but I also know that West Coast fans prefer that so they don't miss an afternoon game while they are at work. Twins-Yankees will be in prime time on Thursday.

With the playoffs settled, the battingraces take center stage today. In the AL, three players are separated by two points. Bill Meuller stands at .327, Derek Jeter at .326 and Manny Ramirez at .325. I'm in southern CT right now, and it's raining hard and it looks like it will rain all day, so I don't know if the Yankees will play. If that game is called early, I expect Mueller to sit out. If not, I would expect what happened yesterday, where if Mueller gets a hit, he'll come out of the game. Of course, I expect Manny to try to push him as well, so it should be interesting.

In the NL, Todd Helton and Albert Pujols are tied at .358 for the NL lead. St. Louis is in Arizona and Colorado is in San Diego. Helton has a bit of an advantage as he's facing Jake Peavy, while Pujols faces rookie sensation Brandon Webb. Pujols has never faced Webb, while Helton is 3 for 10 off Peavy.

Another thing to watch is Barry Bonds. He's two HR shy of tying Willie Mays for 3rd on the all-time HR list. I don't know if Bonds will play today, but it would be like him to hit those two today. He'll be opposed by Wilson Alvarez, who Bonds has never faced.

Albert Pujols leads the majors with 50 doubles, but there are five other players at 49. If all five should get a double today, it would be the first season with six 50-double players since there were 7 in 1936.

As of this morning, the league HR leaders each have 47 (Thome and Rodriquez) and the league RBI leaders each have 141 (Delgado and Wilson). I'll leave it to the crack research teams at ESPN and Fox to figure out when the last time the league leaders had the same HR and RBI totals.

And last but not least (actually, I guess they are least), the Detroit Tigers try to finish on a positive note by not tying the 1962 Mets. The Tigers won yesterday, 9-8 for their 42nd win. They'll have a better winning percetage, but could equal the 1962 Mets losses. They send 21-game loser Mike Maroth to the mound; he has an 8.54 ERA over his last five starts.

It's the last day of what's been a real good season. I hope your favorite team wins! On to the playoffs!

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2396	2397
Attendance	27991	28115

Everything went right today for the north side fans. Ron Villone had another poor outing vs. the Brewers, giving up five runs in 5 2/3 innings. (I mistakenly reported earlier that Scott Podsednik had a double and a HR; he actually had a triple instead of a HR, and ended the day with 2 doubles and a triple).

Meanwhile, Mark Prior helped his Cy Young credentials with a 10 K, 6 2/3 inning win in the opener against the Pirates. Matt Clement pitched even better in the night cap, allowing 1 earned run over 7 2/3 innings. He threw 68 of 101 pitches for strikes. And Sammy Sosa added his 40th HR, th 7th forty HR season of his career.

Congratulations to the Cubs! The playoffs are now set, with the Marlins opening in San Francisco and the Cubs heading to Atlanta.

The Cubs have a 3-1 lead on the Pirates in the 5th. Mark Prior has eight strikeouts through five innings. His only mistake has been a solo HR ot Craig Wilson.

Javy Lopez hit his 43rd HR of the year today. What an amazing season, conserding that he looked like his career was over last year. He's set or tied his career highs in runs, hits, doubles, HR and RBI. He's a big reason the Braves have such a great offense this year. It's his 42nd HR as a catcher, which breaks Todd Hundley's record for HR in a season by a catcher.

The Brewers are gounding the Astros again. Villone appears to be outpitching Obermueller, but Milwaukee is 2 for 4 with runners in scoring position, while the Astros are 1 for 7. It's 2-1 Brewers in the 5th. Scott Podsednik has 1/2 a cycle with a double and a HR.

Steven Amamoto send me a link to a press release about the Giants-Mets makeup game:

Baseball Commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig issued the following statement today regarding the potential make-up game between the San Francisco Giants and New York Mets on Monday, September 29, 2003.
"While I believe in the sanctity of completing Major League Baseball's entire 162-game championship season schedule using every practical means at our disposal, the Giants have requested that, due to cross country travel and other logistical issues that have arisen, it would be in their best interest to forego playing Monday's game.

The Giants are making the right decision.

The Yankees have announced their rotation for the Twins Series.

Mike Mussina, Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens will start the first three games of the series against the Minnesota Twins, manager Joe Torre said Friday.

"We'll go through the first three games and then figure out what we're going to do," Torre said. "Wells, in all likelihood, will pitch the fourth game."

I think they are making the same mistake the A's did last year. Hudson got two starts instead of one and had a 6.23 ERA. The A's lost both games. This year, the Twins are 25-28 when a left-hander starts against them (.472) and 65-42 (.607) when a right-hander starts against them (3rd best in the majors). I think the Yankees really should go Pettitte, Mussina, Clemens, Wells and Pettitte so they can get three lefties starting against the Twins.

There are three games that matter today. The Cubs can clinch the NL Central if they sweep the Pirates in a double header and the Astros lose to Milwaukee. Game 1 in Chicago finally match Fogg vs. Prior; see yesterday's games of the day for the Carl Sandberg reference. Game two pits Ryan Vogelsong against Matt Clement. Vogelsong started against the Cubs on the 20th and shut them down for seven innings, allowing one unearned run and striking out 8. Matt Clement has only allowed 2 HR in his last 46 1/3 innings.

Houston hosts Milwaukee as Wes Obermueller faces Ron Villone. Villone has an atrocious record vs. the Brewers. He's 2-5 with an 8.06 ERA against them for his career, and he's 0-2 this year despite a 2.77 ERA against the Brewers. He's also given up five HR in 18 2/3 innings this September.

There's also a bit of a battle left between the Giants and the Braves for NL home field. If the Giants and Braves are tied at the end of the season, the Giants get home field having taken four games out of six from the Braves. But the Giants have a makeup game to play against the Mets. If the Giants, at the end of Sunday's games are a 1/2 game behind the Braves, they have to fly to NY to make up the game on Monday, then fly back to San Francisco to open against the Marlins on Tuesday. My question is, will it be worth the trouble? If I were running the Giants, I'd just forfeit the game and hope whoever wins the Central defeats the Braves.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2380	2382
Attendance	27929	28079

The Marlins are on their way to the wild card. They've been scoring one run at a time, in the first, third, fifth and sixth to lead the Mets 4-1. Juan Pierre is three for three to raise his hit total to 203, a new career high. The Astros are losing 9-4, so everything is going right for the Fish tonight.

Update: The Marlins win 4-3, and they claim the NL Wild Card. The only spot left is for the NL Central champ. The Astros are losing 10-5 in the sixth. The Cubs were washed out and wil play a double header tomorrow.

This is the next article in a series on a system I'm developing which I'm calling a probabilistic Model of Range. If you haven't been following the discussion, you should read these posts first:

1. A probabilistic Model of Range
2. More on Probability and Range
3. Range Rankings

Here is the updated list of range rankings, through Thursday, Sept. 25, 2003.

The Cubs game is in a rain delay. The announcers expect a delay of at least an hour.

The Yankees can wrap up home field advantage today by sweeping a double header from the Baltimore Orioles. Damian Moss faces Andy Pettitte in game 1, and Pettitte is trying to tie his career high in wins with 21. A Yankee victory would also give him 20 wins against the Orioles.

In game 2, Rodrigo Lopez goes against Jorge DePaula. DePaula had a great year at Norwich in 2002, but struggled a bit at Columbus this year. DePaula and Posada form the first Jorge battery in the history of baseball.

In the NL, the big race now is between the Cubs and the Astros. Pittsburgh visits the windy city this afternoon, and Josh Fogg will walk in on little cat feet to face the intimidating Mark Prior. Prior is 9-1 since the start of August with a 1.42 ERA. He's struck out 85 in 76 innings over that period.

The Astros will host the Brewers tonight, knowing if they have to win to keep pace or take the lead. Wayne Franklin faces Jeriome Robertson. Robertson is 2-0 in three starts against the Brewers this year, despite walking 9 batters in 18 2/3 innings.

Enjoy!

Jeff Kuhn writes:

The reader that e-mailed you was exactly right. There were some unenlightened fools in the back saying "Yankees Suck", but whenever that gained steam, it was drowned out by "We Want Oakland". Also, some people have written about the excessive celebration that happend. For your benefit (I know you weren't one of them), I just wanted to bring up 2 points.

1. The Red Sox are the only team that is in the AL playoffs this year, that wasn't last year.
2. They didn't celebrate by themselves, they were on the field from 10:14 when the last pitch was thrown until 11:15, when the police started to usher fans out. Players went into the clubhouse, but almost always came back on the field. I honestly think the celebration was for the fans, who are among the most intense in baseball.

This Red Sox team has a very different feel to it. You get the feeling that this team really likes each other, and really like the fans, and the fans return the love. Jeff has his own blog on the Red Sox, The House that Dewey Built. He writes more about last night here.

The Dodgers go out with a whimper. A 6-1 loss to the Padres in Sand Diego sealed their fate. With all that great pitching, they just couldn't generate enough offense to win some game. Shawn Green and Fred McGriff should have been enough to propel them to the playoffs, but poor or injury filled years by both left Los Angeles short of that goal. It will be interesting to see how the Dodgers address this next year. One logical move would be to replace Cesar Izturis with Miguel Tejada. While Izzy is a tremendous defensive player, he's an offensive black hole. Although Cesar puts up a couple of more defensive winshares than Tejada, over all Tejada had 16 more total win shares. That's five games in the standings.

My hesitation would be age. Izzy is only 23, four years younger than Tejada. Ozzie Smith and Omar Vizquel were poor offensive players when they were young, but each developed a good batting eye which led to good on-base percentages. And Izzy is going to be cheaper for the next few years. It's going to be an interesting call for the Dodgers.

Update: There lots of good stuff on the Dodgers over at Dodger Thoughts. Just start at the top and keep scrolling.

In reporting on the end of the Red Sox game last night, I heard chants of, "Yankees suck!" which I thought was thinking too far ahead. Joanna Esperas clarifies what went on:

I was at the O's-Red Sox game and just wanted to clarify what we were chanting. During the last few outs there was some sporadic chants about the NY American League ball club, but what I heard most was "We want Oakland!"

Good. The problem, of course is that if you denigrate the abilities of another team, and that team defeats you, then whatever you said must be more true about you. "We want Oakland!" is the right attitude to have. Recognize the greatness of others, and when you best them, you'll be great, too.

Joanna was also nice enough to send this picture (click on picture for a larger image):

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2366	2367
Attendance	27881	28066

The Marlins complete a sweep of the Phillies with an 8-4 victory, knocking them out of the NL Wild Card race. The Marlins clinch a tie, with the Cubs, Astros and Dodgers still in contention. The Astros are winning 6-1 in the top of the ninth, and the Dodgers are behind 1-0 in the 2nd. If both those teams lose, the Marlins clinch outright.

Update: Astros win, tying the Cubs for the Central lead, and staying in contention for the wild card.

Carlos Delgado added to his earlier total by hitting his fourth HR of the game. A nice way to end a superb season.

Despite outhomering the Reds 4-1 (including two by Sosa), the Cubs lose 9-7. The Astros are ahead of the Brewers 4-1 in the 8th, so it looks like the Central is going to stay interesting though Saturday at least.

The Red Sox are three outs away from clinching, leading the O's 14-3. The leadoff man is aboard for the Orioles.

Update: With one out, Red Sox fans are shouting, "Yankees suck." They should worry about the A's first.

Update: Ramiro Mendoza strikes out Brian Roberts looking. The Sox clinch the wild card! They're number two!

AL is set now. Twins play the Yankees, the Red Sox battle the A's.

Update: Visitors from Bambino's Curse should also read this post.

Correction: I orignally listed Sauerbeck as striking out Roberts to end the game. It was Mendoza, and I've made the correction.

An RBI single by Adam Everett in the fourth, and a solo HR by Morgan Ensberg in the fifth put the Astros back up 3-1. Cubs are losing 8-5 in the 8th.

Jim Thome is three for three in strikeouts tonight. He just K'd with two men on base in the sixth.

The Tigers have come back twice in their game against the Twins, and are now tied 4-4. They're putting up a good fight in an effort to keep from losing 121 games.

Richie Sexson hits a solo shot of his own to tie the Astros at one. It's Sexson's 43rd of the year, two away from his career high.

The Reds have taken the lead in the bottom of the 6th. Stephen Smitherman had a big pinch single batting for Van Poppel to start the runs across the plate. Carlos Zambrano is out, and Dave Veres is in to try to stem the tide.

Update: Good news for the Astros. A two run HR by Sean Casey extends the Reds lead to 8-4 after six.

Carlos Delgado has five RBI tonight to set a new career high at 140. He's gotten them on three HR. It's the fifth 3-HR game of Delgado's career, but his first since April of 2001.

Unfortunately, the Blue Jays pitchers aren't matching his performance. Up 5-1 in the 6th, the never say die DRays now lead 7-6.

Craig Biggio hits his 34th career leadoff HR to give the Astros a 1-0 lead over the Brewers. A win keeps the Astros in the wild card race, and will let them keep pace with the Cubs.

Sosa homers again to pass Mickey Mantle and put himself alone in 10th place on the all-time HR list. It's been a relatively quiet year for Sammy, with his OBA down 40 points and his slugging down 50 points from last year. Now would be a good time for Sammy to get hot. It's the first time he's hit HR in consecutive games since Aug. 6-7th. Cubs lead 4-2 in the 6th.

After Miguel Cabrera drives in Juan Pierre, Juan Encarnacion makes up for the umpires bad call by hitting a three run HR. He's six for ten in the series with two HR and four RBI.

The Red Sox and Orioles are only in the fourth inning, but it's looking like a wild card wrapup. Boston is up 9-0 already. Every one of the starters has reached base except Kevin Millar. On top of that, Derek Lowe has not allowed a hit through four innings. Boston is clinching in style.

Update: Kevin Millar reaches base in the 4th with a three-run HR to make the score 12-0. It's the third HR of the game for the Red Sox.

Juan Encarnacion was thrown out at the plate in the bottom of the 2nd. Alex Gonzalez hit a bullet to left that Burrell fielded on a slide. Pat fired to Jimmy Rollins, who made a perfect throw to Lieberthal. Encarnacion was called out. When I saw the play live, I thought he was safe and the umpire had a bad angle. The replay confirmed that. It wasn't a blatantly bad call, no one argued, but he sure looked safe to me. The ump saw the throw beat Juan, and Lieberthal's foot blocking the plate, and called it based on that. It's 0-0 in the top of the third.

Update: Placido Polanco gets an infield hit with two outs and drives in the first run of the game. Gonzalez slipped on the wet infield. It's raining, and I believe that's keeping the crowd small.

The Red Sox send Derek Lowe to the mound tonight against Baltimore's Omar Daal. With the Mariners off, the only way the Red Sox can clinch today is to win this game. Daal has faced the Red Sox twice in interleague play and has won both times, allowing only eight hits and two walks in 13 innings. I'm sure the Red Sox would like to clinch at home, although my guess is that there will be plenty of seats in Tampa Bay if Bostonians want to make the trip.

Florida goes for the sweep and elimination of the Phillies tonight. Randy Wolf faces Brad Penny. Wolf has been solid down the stretch, going 4-0 with a 3.73 ERA in his last five starts (the Phillies are 5-0). But he's only 2-8 lifetime against the Marlins, with a 5.32 ERA, including a 1-1, 4.09 this year. We're in a new moon, so Wolf won't be howling. :-)

The Cubs go for a sweep of the Reds with Carlos Zambrano challenged by Todd Van Poppel. Zambrano has a 0.74 ERA against the Reds in his career. And, as an aside, it's nice to see Van Poppel back and pitching well.

Meanwhile, the Astros will host the Brewers. Doug Davis goes against Tim Redding, and Davis has been effective since joining the Brewers from the Rangers. His 5.00 ERA with Texas has dropped to 2.33 with the Brew Crew. Tim Redding seems to be over his summer slump, and has posted a 3.46 ERA since August 1st, after a 4.47 ERA in June and July.

Enjoy!

Sam Donnellon of the Philadelphia Daily News is starting the criticism of the Phillies management:

The Phillies are a loss away from elimination from a wild-card race they once owned, a loss away from the frustrated finger-pointing that has followed their last three seasons. And like the previous two, it will start with management. Where was Tyler Houston in the eighth inning of last night's 6-5 loss, Jim Thome standing on second as the tying run with one out? Would that have even been needed if it was your team, not the Marlins, who traded a touted prospect for ace reliever Ugueth Urbina back in early July? Needed if it was your team that added a player like Jeff Conine (can you say, Brian Giles?) for the stretch run?

For the third loss in a row, the Phillies found themselves in desperate need of Houston's .448 lefthanded bat, instead putting the fate of a ballclub they spent $118 million to upgrade in the bats of utility man Tomas Perez and promising promoted rookie Chase Utley. For the third loss in a row, they desperately needed their leftfielder to do something, anything.

They desperately needed Rheal Cormier to enter the game two innings earlier than he did, desperately needed the kind of closer the Marlins got in the Pentium-chip Urbina while the Phillies bought a less-dependable processor, Mike Williams.

You build people's hopes up like the professor in "The Music Man," you have to expect the vitriol. You double-clutch at the trade deadline and in late season again, especially while the Marlins pick up two guys who have beaten your butt over the last 10 days, especially while you are using public money to build a new ballpark, you invite it.

You dump a productive pinch-hitter who could have won you a few games down the stretch, you invite it.

You hire a manager whose body language garners as much attention as the Harry Potteresque bat of your $85 million slugger, you invite it.

I'm real interested to see if Bowa survives this.

The Marlins magic number is now two against three teams; the Phillies, the Astros and the Dodgers all have the same number of losses. So a win tonight by the Marlins eliminates the Phillies, but they also need losses by the Astros and Dodgers to clinch. 28,520 in Miami last night. Maybe they'll sell out this evening's game to see if the team can clinch a tie.

My good friend Jim Storer pointed out to me today that Brooks Kieschnick started in left field last night for the Milwaukee Brewers and batted 5th. Kieschnick has had a really good season hitting; so good that the Brewers have used him as a DH in the past, but this was his first start at a fielding position. He has 7 HR in 63 AB. Not a bad ratio for anybody. Makes you wonder why he failed as a batter in the past.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2356	2356
Attendance	27899	28096

Urbina gets the side 1-2-3 in the 9th for the save. Marlins now up three on the Phillies, and are looking very strong for the wild card.

Estes completes the shutout. It's his first since April of 2002. Cubs remain 1 game ahead of the Astros.

The Phillies have gotten to the Marlins in the 8th. With the score 6-0, the Phillies have scored four runs off Beckett and Tejera Chad Fox is in with two men on and none out to try to put out the fire.

Update: Chad Fox bends but does not break. He allows another run to score, but gets the side and the Marlins hold on to a slim 6-5 lead.

Shawn Estes just needed a cool night. He's shut out the Reds for eight innings, allowing only three hits and a walk.

The Cubs are answering the Astros win this afternoon with a drubbing of the Reds. Chicago scored six times in the top of the third to make the score 7-0. Sammy Sosa hit his 37th HR of the year, and 536th of his career, tying him with Mickey Mantle for 10th all time in HR.

The Mariners offense continues to resemble the Detroit Tigers. They were shutout today by John Lackey, who pitched a five hitter. It's the fourth time they've been shutout in September, after having been shutout six times in the previous five months. The loss allows the Red Sox to clinch a tie for the wild card. A Boston win tonight would give them the wild card outright, but John Burkett got hammered in the first and the Sox are losing 7-0 in the third.

Ivan Rodriguez just doubled in a run, and a bad play by Pat Burrell (no error charged) allowed Pudge to go to third. It gives the Marlins a 2-0 lead. When Rodriguez beat the throw at third, he came up cheering and pumping his first. He's clearly enjoying winning and playing with this team, and he's proving to be a terrific signing.

Mike Mussina probably blew whatever chance he had of winning the Cy Young award with his performance in the six inning today. The White Sox were not fooled, and they laid hit after hit on Mussina. He allowed four hits in a row, got an out, then allowed five hits in a row. By the time the dust had settled, Mike let in eight runs, and got tagged for the loss.

Congratulations to Esteban Loaiza, who got his 20th win of the season. A great comeback year for him.

Juan Encarnacion takes Brett Myers deep to give the Marlins a 1-0 lead in the 2nd.

Jose Vizcaino drives in two runs in the bottom of the 7th to give the Astros a 2-1 lead. Ponson hit Jeff Kent with two outs and that was followed by a Berkman double. The bases were intentionally loaded, and the Astros decide to pinch hit for Ausmus with Vizcaino. First of all, if Jose is the best hitter you have on your bench, something is wrong. But he delivers a two run single just when Houston needed it most.

Again, that's what I love about baseball. Players like Jose can be the hero.

Update: Oswalt comes back with a 1-2-3 inning in the 8th, retiring the side on 7 pitches. Sixty of his 86 pitches have been for strikes.

The announcers are wondering if you go to the bullpen in the 9th. I see no reason to do that.

Update: Billy Wagner is coming in to pitch the 9th. It's a knee-jerk managerial move by Williams. Oswalt is pitching great and he hasn't thrown that much. But if Williams loses this way, he'll get a lot less grief than if he loses by leaving Oswalt in. And Bonds is pinch hitting.

Update: Wagner gets the job done, retiring the side in order. Astros are now 1/2 game behind the Cubs.

After less than 1 1/2 hours, the Giant and Astros are in the bottom of the 7th, with the Giants leading 1-0. Ponson and Oswalt continue to keep their pitch counts low. Ponson has thrown 64 through six innings, Oswalt 79 through seven. Ponson has walked three, but he's also been helped by three double plays.

Giambi and Bernie Williams go deep for the Yankees in the 2nd to give them a 3-0 lead over the White Sox. Yankees have now hit 31 HR in their last 16 games, including today.

The Yankees-White Sox game was delayed by rain but now is underway. It looks like the Yankees are serious about getting home field advantage, as all the regulars, including Posada are in the lineup.

The Giants Astros game is moving right along. They are in the middle of the fifth, and after four innings pitched, Ponson has thrown only 38 pitches. Oswalt is also being very efficient, throwing only 49 pitches through five innings, 35 for strikes.

For the Giants, that is as Pedro Feliz hits a solo HR in the 2nd to give the Giants a 1-0 lead. I suspect the Astros feel Scrooged, however.

The Twins are taking a page from the Yankees, Red Sox, Braves, etc. and starting their own local cable channel. I just recieved an e-mail explaining this:

The purpose of this letter is to notify you that the Sunday, September 28th game at Detroit will be the final Twins telecast on Fox Sports Net North. Beginning with the completion of the coming postseason, the rights to Twins Baseball will move to Victory Sports One. Victory Sports One is owned and operated by Twins Sports Inc. which also owns the Minnesota Twins.

As always, the Twins organization is focused on maintaining a competitive ballclub for years to come. Three elements are central to our ability to meet that objective: First, we are excited about the enhanced competitive balance across the game which is clearly a result of the historic labor agreement reached a year ago. Secondly, we continue to work toward a new ballpark solution and are encouraged by the leadership and vision of Governor Pawlenty on the sports facility issue. And finally, the Twins need to secure fair value for our television rights while establishing our own regional sports network to better entertain and communicate with our fans. Thus we are launching Victory Sports One on October 31, 2003.

They then give Twins fans numbers they can use to call their satellite and cable providers to ask them to carry the channel. It works well for the clubs mentioned above, both for tax reasons and for maximizing the revenue they get from television. And with the Twins winning, it's a good time to launch such a venture.

Bleacher Dave has the facts on the Durazo steal:

Durazo's "sreal" came on a failed hit and run. Ramon Heranandez waved at a nasty slider for strike 3 and I said to my girlfriend, "strike 'em out, throw 'em out." Fortunately for the A's, the throw tailed to the LF side of the bag, and Durazo just got in. A throw to the bag would have nailed him. How sweet it 'tis!

The Wall Street Journal has a nice article on the woes of being an official scorer (paid subscription required). If you don't have an account, it should be in the print version.

Mike Mussina and Esteban Loaiza don't have a pennant to fight for anymore (although the Yankees still need to cement home field), but they will be fighting for a shot at the Cy Young award. Loaiza's poor recent outings have cost him and his team dearly. Meanwhile, Mussina is 2-0 with a 2.90 ERA over his last five starts.

Good news for the Red Sox. Seattle plays at Anaheim this afternoon, so the Red Sox will know if they can clinch the wild card tonight. They can clinch a tie, but if the Mariners lose, I suspect they'll be playing with a little more adrenaline. Ryan Franklin tries to keep the Mariners' hopes alive, while John Burkett will be on the mound in the Red Sox post-season push.

A similar afternoon-evening affair for the Astros and Cubs. In losing two to the Giants, the Astros are not playing like a team that would do well in the post-season. The Cubs will know if they can reduce their magic number to three tonight by the time they take the field. The Astros send their ace, Roy Oswalt against the Giants Sidney Ponson in the matinee, while Shawn "The Wilting Man" Estes gets to pitch in the cool of the evening against the Reds.

Finally, the Marlins can make the wild card race a foregone conclusion with a win tonight against the Phillies. Brett Myers faces Josh Beckett, and they are headed in opposite directions. Myers has a 6.92 ERA over his last five starts, while Beckett has posted a 1.56 ERA over the same period. If the Phillies lose a close one tonight, I'll be looking for the fire Bowa articles tomorrow.

Enjoy!

Marcus Hayes of the Philadelphia Daily News has an excellent column on the Phillies blowing the game in the 7th last night.

They might blame Phillies starter Kevin Millwood, or manager Larry Bowa for leaving him in as he struggled early in last night's seventh inning. Or Mike Williams and the flagging bullpen. Or general manager Ed Wade, representing the brain trust and purse strings, whose trade-deadline acquisition of Williams marked the Phillies' big move.

But what they all will recall is The Seventh.

That's the inning that ended the hopes.

The frame that spelled the end.

Five Florida runs, including a key three-run homer by Jeff Conine, turned a gem into garbage, a shutout into a shootout, hopes into regrets. The Marlins won, 5-4, delighted 25,311 fevered Fish fans and moved two games ahead of the Phillies in the National League wild-card race, shaving their already slim chances.

Read the whole thing.

It was clinch night in the AL as the Yankees, Twins and A's all posted victories, and in the case of the Twins and A's, had their persuers lose. It wasn't easy for the A's. Ryan Drese pitched a high quality start against them. Only last minute heroics in the 9th and 10th by Dye and Melhuse gave them the win. And Durazo stole a base in the 10th! He had only made one attempt this year, and he was caught. I don't know who called for the steal, and I don't see much in the news stories about it. I'll keep my eyes open.

I think this should lay to rest two notions (or maybe it's two different ways of looking at the same notion). One is that you have to be rich to win. The other is that the A's are a fluke. This article on SI.com has a list of team salaries.
The Yankees are #1 in the majors and the AL. The Twins are 8th in the AL. The A's are 12th. They've figured it out. They've figured that everyone else is way overpaying for their wins. I really want to hear Bud Selig say the A's are a fluke now. He should be holding them up to the other clubs as example of how to save themselves millions of dollars.

The other thing I like about the way the post-season is shaping up is the diversity of stories. You have the Yankees, who stride across the baseball world, confident, imposing, daring others to knock them off, never doubting that they can win any game at any time. You have the Braves, the team that despite it's greatness for 12 consecutive years only has 1 World Series title. You have the cursed teams potential in the Cubs and the Red Sox. You have the never won the series potential in the Astros and Mariners. You have the little teams that could in the Marlins and Twins. You have Alou and Bonds, trying to cement their greatness with a sereis win. And finally, you have the Oakland A's and the press just waiting to show that Beane isn't the genius that he professes to be. It's going to be a great October.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2341	2341
Attendance	27915	28133

The Seattle Mariners offense could use a cup of that famous Seattle coffee. They are down 1-0 in the fourth, and Scott Shields of the Angels has yet to allow a hit. With the Red Sox winning, the Mariners cannot afford to lose tonight. Red Sox magic number is down to three.

The Tigers end their 10 game losing streak and knock the Royals out of the pennant race. The Twins, for the 2nd year in a row, are AL Central champions. Congrats to the Twinkies for showing that small market teams winning are not a fluke.

Just to put an exclamation point on the evening, Jason Giambi hits a grand slam to give the Yankees a 7-0 lead in the ninth. The gives Giambi 40 HR for the 3rd time in his career. It's the first slam of the year for Jason, and the 10th of his career.

Update: Yankees win 7-0, with Rivera finishing the game. Contreras pitched eight strong innings, allowing four hits and striking out nine. The White Sox have been eliminated; it was a good run, they just ran out of gas. The Royals are down to their last out, losing 15-6. If that gets recorded, the Twins win the Central.

Tough loss for the Phillies tonight. Leading 3-0 most of the game, the Marlins come back and defeat Philadelphia 5-4. The Phillies now need to win the next two games to get their destiny back. The Marlins can eliminate the Phillies if they sweep.

A good crowd for the Marlins, 25,311. Not a great crowd for such an important game, but I hope the word is spreading and the next two nights will be even bigger.

The Twins defeat the Indians 4-1 on a great game by Kenny Rogers. He goes 8 2/3 innings, allowing only 1 run. The Yankees are up 3-0 on the White Sox in the 9th, and the Royals are losing 15-6 to the Tigers. My guess is the Twins will watch these games to see if they can celebrate.

Todd Walker, representing the tying run with two out in the ninth, hits a 3-2 pitch into the bullpen for a three run HR and a tie game. Yankees may have to clinch on their own now, and if Seattle is watching on television, they have to be a little disappointed. Brown K's to finish the inning, and the Orioles and Red Sox go to the tenth.

Update: David Ortiz leads off the 10th with an opposite field HR into the Monster Seats. I was impressed with the reaction of the Red Sox. They all gathered at home plate, and when Ortiz touched it, there was a huge group hug, with the players jumping rhythmically. I can't remember seeing a Red Sox team that tight. This doesn't appear to be a 25-separate cab group. Sox magic number for the wild card is three.

It's a final in Cincinnati as the Cubs beat the Reds 6-0, and move 1/2 game ahead of the Astros, who are being creamed by the Giants. You'd think the Reds could win a game to honor Gordon Jump.

The Expos and Braves are locked in a scoreless duel in the 8th. Shane Reynolds went seven scoreless innings, giving up seven hits. Vazquez has thrown only 84 pitches through seven, and he's only given up two hits. Braves still battling for home field advantage in the NL playoffs.

They are still batting in the 7th, and the Marlins are now leading 5-0. Williams and Plesac were not able to get an out, each giving up a hit and a walk.

Mickey Matos is looking like Mickey Mantle in the field as well. He just made a great catch going back in center to save a run and the lead for the Orioles. They lead 3-2 after 8 innings.

The Tigers are in the process of blowing a 7-2 lead. KC scored four in the 4th to pull within 1. The Tigers should probably take Mike Maroth out now so he won't collect his 22nd loss.

The Marlins score three in the bottom of the 7th to tie the Phillies. The big blow; a three run shot by Marlins legend Jeff Conine. Neither Millwood nor Willis will figure in the decision.

Jose Contreras and Mark Buehrle are both pitching well in the 5th. Both have five strikeouts. The difference is a solo HR by Nick Johnson in the first inning. If the Yankees win or the Red Sox lose, the Yankees clinch the division.

Jose Lima does not get out of the fourth inning. He's given up seven runs to the Tigers so far, and leaves with two on base. The Royals are down 7-2, and with the Twins leading early, the Royals could be out of the race by the end of the evening.

Willy Mo Pena breaks up the Wood no-hitter with an infield single in the 7th.

The Giants keep batting in the 2nd. They've scored 10 runs already, including a grand slam by Edgardo Alfonzo. It's looking more and more like the Cubs will be alone in first place by the end of the night.

Update: It's over. A Bagwell error makes five of the ten runs unearned. Miller is out in favor of Ricky Stone.

Kerry Wood has extended his no-hitter through six innings. He's walked two and struck out 11. Nine outs to go, and I haven't seen the Reds hit a ball hard.

Marquis Grissom homers off Wade Miller leading off the second for the Giants. Grissom is now 6 for 17, .353 career against Miller. He's batting for the 2nd time in the inning, now with the bases loaded and the Giants up 5-0.
(He popped up, making him 6 for 18, .333.)

The Cubs are up 5-0 on the Reds, blowing open that game in the 6th.

Aramis Ramirez breaks the tie in the Cubs-Reds game with a solo shot into the upper deck. It's his 27th of the year, and 15th as a Cub.

Update: Wood continues to be good. He's keeping up his rate of two strikeouts an inning, giving him 10 through five innings. He's yet to allow a hit. Cubs lead 1-0 after five.

Update: Wood does it with the wood as well. He singles leading off the 6th.

Luis Matos has a three-run HR off Tim Wakefield to give the Orioles a 3-1 lead. He's done his best sluggng against Boston this year. With his 1 for 2 through four, he's 13 for 45 with 4 HR and 9 extra-base hits against the Red Sox.
He also has 11 RBI.

The Phillies get another run in the third on singles by Byrd, Abreu and Thome. Byrd and Thome get credit for a run and an RBI, but Abreu's contribution is lost in the stats.

Kerry Wood has been super so far. Through three innings he has not allowed a hit and has six strikeouts to go with two walks. He has been working, however, throwing 56 pitches through three. Scott Randall has only given up one hit for the Reds so far, helped by a couple of great defensive plays by Jason LaRue and Ray Olmedo.

My good friend Jim Storer called me today to ask about a stat he heard concerning Greg Maddux. It seems that in his last win, Maddux had gone five innings and thrown only 43 pitches. Jim wondered if this was the fewest pitches a starter threw this year to pick up a victory, and indeed it was. The next closest was 58.

I just looked back to 1988, the era in which STATS, Inc. has accurate pitch data, and found this ties the lowest number of pitches for a starter in a win. Sid Fernandez, on April 14, 1993 won throwing only 43 pitches against the Rockies. Maddux actually makes the top six three times, with a 48 pitch win on Sept. 23, 1996 and a 49 pitch win on Sept. 27, 2002.

I get home from our nightly constitutional, and go to turn on the Phillies-Marlins game. What do I find? It's not on MLB Extra Innings! I guess there's no cable feed of the game. I'm very disappointed.

Luckily, I have in-progress box scores. The Phillies got to Willis in the 2nd, with a double by Jimmy Rollins driving in two runs. Marlins are batting in the bottom of the 2nd.

Phillies at Marlins. Millwood and Willis. Larry Bowa and Jim Thome vs. Jack McKeon and Derrek Lee. And newpaper reporter Jeff Miller is trying to get the fans out:

OK, South Florida. Show your soul. Now's the time, like it never has been before.

Not in baseball. Not in the regular season. Not in anyone's lifetime, least of all the Marlins' lifetime.

Your team returns home tonight, a 6-3 winner over the Braves on Monday, with a one-game lead on the Phillies in the NL wild-card chase. So who awaits them? The Phillies, for three games almost as weighty as that time the World Series came to Pro Player Stadium.

I'm not real big on telling fans how to spend their money. Not when I walk into games for free, eat barrels of complimentary popcorn and generally could help myself to anything that's not nailed down, up to but not including Ugueth Urbina's clavicle.

But if this isn't the time, then when? If a game like tonight's, with Dontrelle Willis -- the biggest draw in this franchise's 11 seasons -- facing Phillies ace Kevin Millwood, doesn't put your rear end in Pro Player, what will? The Marlins giving away Jeff Conine dolls? The Marlins giving away Jeff Conine himself?

Forget Wayne Huizenga and the some-disassembly-required Marlins in 1997. Forget John Henry. Forget the stadium issue that hangs over this team like the blade of a guillotine. Forget even, at least for now, all those negative stories you've heard and read about Jeffrey Loria, some of which came from right here.

Forget it all for the sake of a season you might never forget. The Marlins weren't supposed to advance to the playoffs, a fact thought to be as bulletproof as the fact the Angels couldn't win the last World Series.

Yes, Marlins fans, do come out. The 1997 World Series was fun. The place was packed with people. Fill this ballpark again!

The Marlins are 10-6 vs. the Phillies this year, despite a 4.44 ERA. They've allowed 79 runs and scored 86. Florida has won the 1 & 2 run games 4-2. Each has a big blowout, with the Phillies winning one 14-0, the Marlins another by 11-4.

Willis has faced the Phillies twice, and has been good, not great. He's given up 3 HR in 12 2/3 innings, but has struck out 14. He does not have a decision in those two starts. Millwood started nearly a third of the Phillies games against the Marlins. In five starts he's pitched 27 innings, twice getting knocked out in the 4th. He's given up 21 runs, 18 earned for an ERA of 6.00. He did pitch seven brilliant innings against them on July 4, but otherwise he's been at best okay.

The math is pretty simple. Each team needs two wins. With two wins, the Marlins will be in total control going into the weekend. With two wins, the Phillies force a tie, and at least can guarantee themselves a playoff game if they sweep on the weekend.

High heat tonight. From the climate, from the pitchers, from the managers and I hope from the fans. Tune in anyway you can, it's going to be fun.

Jay Hook, a pitcher for the 1962 Mets, has some advice for the 2003 Tigers.

As the man said, we lost games every way there was to lose them. Our pitching was weak, the hitting was spotty and the fielding was not too good either.

Yet one of the great things about baseball is that there is always a new game tomorrow — at least until the season ends. The Mets may have been the supreme optimists because, as a team, we always believed we were going to win the next game out.

We may have lost, but we were never defeated.

Link via Priorities & Frivolities.

Irina Paley discusses possible nicknames for Jeff Weaver. :-)

Brian at Redbird Nation disagrees with Bernie Miklasz on the demise of the Cardinals. Brian sees it as the organization not giving the front line players the supporting cast. Bernie blames La Russa for not motivating the players down the stretch.

I have to side with Brian on this one. The Cardinals have four players with win shares over 20. But then you fall off to JD Drew with 12. The other teams in contention have their win shares much more evenly distributed.

You know politicians are getting desparate when they resort to using baseball loyalties to attack their opponents.

Kerry's camp, reacting to news that Dean will hold a rally today in the senator's hometown, brushed back the former Vermont governor by claiming he's a New York Yankees fan.

Those are fightin' words, especially within four months of the crucial primary in New Hampshire, a key state in Red Sox Nation. Dean, who grew up in New York, says he dumped pinstripes for Red Sox three years ago.

"When you move to New England, you put your old loyalties behind you," said Dean campaign co-chairman Steve Grossman, a Massachusetts businessman. "You've got to have a sense of humor about this."

The "flap" began when Kerry's campaign said Dean's Red Sox switch was just the latest in his quest for the presidency.

"Of all the flip flops, this is the most inexplicable and indefensible," Kerry spokeswoman Kelley Benander said yesterday. "It's like switching from the Redskins to the Cowboys or from Carolina to Duke."

Dean told the Boston Herald that the Yankees accusation was the "biggest insult" hurled at him so far. He says Roger Clemens' beaning of Mets catcher Mike Piazza in 2000 was the final straw.

I expect John Kerry will lead a throng of his thousands of loyal supporters to the Dean rally tonight to chant, "Yankees suck!" That is, if Kerry actually has loyal supporters.

Also, notice the caption below the picture of Dean. I thought he was running for a higher office.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2326	2326
Attendance	27934	28166

Daniel Drezner thinks the Red Sox will win the World Series.

The key to the Red Sox success this year is that they have refused to allow heartbreaking losses to affect their overall equilibrium. It would obviously be better if they had no such losses. The key, however, is that such reversals don't cause the team to go into a tailspin.

This is why the Red Sox will win the whole shebang -- playoff baseball is all about heartbreakingly close games. The team that wins the playoff series is the one that can live with temporary disappointment and then come back the next day and play better baseball.

The obvious example is the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks. Despite two dramarically blown saves by Byung-Hyung Kim in Yankee Stadium, a manager that had no touch in terms of pitching changes, and a powerful symbolism that suggested the Yankees should win in the wake of 9/11, Arizona gutted out the series and won in it in seven games.

Most teams that enter the postseason are used to success and unaccustomed to staggering reverses. The 2003 Red Sox, on the other hand, are veterans of this sort of emotional workout.

Of course, they also have Kim as their closer.

We'll see. I thought the Red Sox would win the AL East, and that's not going to happen. They have a great offense. If they get to the playoffs and match up with the right pitching staffs, they could easily win it all. But they still have to make it to the playoffs first.

Moyer and Zito are each pitching shutouts in the fifth in their respective games for against Anaheim and Texas, and both have big leads. The Mariners are keeping pace, but they are not getting any help from potential spoilers tonight.

Magglio Ordonez hits a three-run HR off Jeff Weaver in the bottom of the tenth to give the White Sox a 6-3 victory over the Yankees. The AL East title will have to wait another day for NY, while the White Sox stay in contention for another day. The Royals were big winners over the Tigers, so Minnesota's magic number does not go down either.

Mike Bynum, who had given up 27 runs in 27 2/3 innings coming into tonight, is shutting out the Dodgers 7-0 through four innings tonight. If the Dodgers lose to this pitchers, they don't deserve to win the wild card.

With the score tied in the 9th, the Astros brought in Billy Wagner to hold the Giants for one more inning. He gave up three hits, including back-to-back HR by Feliz and Durham. These are the first runs Wagner has given up since 8/22, and the first time (and only the fourth time overall) since June of 1999 that Wagner has given up two HR in a game.

With the bases loaded in the top of the ninth and the score tied at three, Manuel brings in Tom Gordon to face Derek Jeter. Jeter did not come close to making contact, and Gordon strikes him out to give the White Sox a chance to win with a run in the bottom of the ninth.

Derrek Lee had a big game tonight with a HR and four RBI in the 6-3 Marlins victory over the Braves. Lee has not played well against the Phillies this year, going 13 for 57 with 1 HR and 5 RBI in 16 games. He's 23 for 68 in September, and the Marlins have to hope that's the way he hits over the next three games. Marlins magic number is six.

In my original post on the probabilistic model of range, I ranked teams based on the ratio of balls turned into outs to expected outs. I didn't really like that, but again, I was in a hurry on Friday.

One of the nice things about long bike rides is that you can think about these things, and I decide what I was really doing was figuring out expected and actual DERs, and I could just rank teams by the difference. So here's the data (updated through yesterday) ranked by difference in DER.

Team	Expected Outs	Expected DER	Actual Outs	Actual DER	DER Difference
Mariners	2931.0	0.703	3001.0	0.720	0.01678
Phillies	2892.0	0.687	2958.0	0.703	0.01568
Cardinals	3064.6	0.685	3125.0	0.698	0.01350
Dodgers	2649.5	0.696	2690.0	0.706	0.01063
Angels	2946.9	0.693	2982.0	0.701	0.00825
Braves	2998.1	0.689	3032.0	0.697	0.00778
Expos	2938.5	0.684	2969.0	0.691	0.00711
Padres	2844.9	0.688	2874.0	0.695	0.00704
White Sox	2849.5	0.694	2878.0	0.701	0.00694
Reds	3045.3	0.681	3068.0	0.686	0.00507
Astros	2838.3	0.698	2858.0	0.703	0.00483
Brewers	2990.4	0.680	3010.0	0.685	0.00445
Royals	3059.0	0.688	3078.0	0.692	0.00427
Orioles	2979.8	0.683	2985.0	0.684	0.00120
Cubs	2658.7	0.689	2661.0	0.690	0.00060
Marlins	2869.1	0.690	2871.0	0.691	0.00046
Indians	3098.7	0.698	3094.0	0.697	-0.00106
Athletics	3007.5	0.716	3000.0	0.714	-0.00178
Twins	3099.8	0.702	3089.0	0.700	-0.00244
Giants	2966.0	0.710	2955.0	0.708	-0.00263
Rockies	3060.2	0.681	3048.0	0.679	-0.00272
Devil Rays	3080.4	0.708	3068.0	0.705	-0.00285
Tigers	3170.8	0.691	3140.0	0.685	-0.00672
Mets	3012.5	0.694	2982.0	0.687	-0.00704
Blue Jays	3009.1	0.688	2975.0	0.680	-0.00780
Rangers	3007.0	0.688	2954.0	0.676	-0.01212
Diamondbacks	2840.2	0.705	2784.0	0.691	-0.01393
Pirates	3162.3	0.706	3092.0	0.690	-0.01568
Red Sox	3012.4	0.701	2939.0	0.683	-0.01706
Yankees	3012.6	0.695	2935.0	0.677	-0.01791

I like this ranking better. It's a good starting point to start looking at individual positions and fielders on a team.

The Red Sox defeat the Orioles 7-5. Suppan went six good innings, allowing 2 runs. Jones and Embree gave up three runs in 1 1/3 innings, but Timlin and Kim closed it out for the win. Seattle needs to win to keep pace.

After a rain delay in the first with the score 1-0 Marlins, the weather cleared in Atlanta and the Fish continued to fry Mike Hampton, scoring three in the first and three in the second. Mark Redman is perfect through four as the Marlins try to give themselves a one game lead in the wild card before facing the Phillies tomorrow.

Soriano hit his 2nd HR of the game to give the Yankees a 2-1 lead. Last year, Alfonso was trying to join the 40-40 club, and went into a slump after his 39th HR. Over his last 11 games, Soriano went 11 for 47 (.234) with three doubles and 12 strikeouts, and his slump carried over into the post season. There's no pressure on him this season, as he came into the last week at 34 HR and 34 steals. But he's now hit 7 HR in his last eight games with one steal (including tonight) and now has 36 HR. It's not a stretch to think that he can hit four more HR this week and reach 40. The the problem will be the steals. But I'm sure the Yankees are happy he's going into the post season on a hot streak.

Rob Bell gave up two hits in the 7th to WElls and Kielty, resulting in a run. Gaudin came on to finish the inning, but Bell left with a 5-1 lead and is in position to get the win.

Last Friday, I wrote about the beginnings of a probabilistic model of range for fielders. In doing so I neglected to cite the work of Michael Lichtman, leading Michael to make this comment in a thread on Baseball Primer:

David's work is EXACTLY the same as my UZR and it would be nice if he referenced it as such. A person doing work in an area has a responsibility to research the work already done in that area.

Park effects CANNOT be included in these kinds of results, other than the effect that the park (weather, altitude, turf) has on the speed of the batted ball and to some small extent, the percentage of line drives, fly balls, and ground balls. So you might see SOME park effects reflected in this kind of analysis, but not much. The Oakland and Coors Field thing may be more of a coincidence than anything else.

Also, a significant part of park effects is the size of the foul territory (e.g., Oakland and LA). That normally doesn't show up in any kind of defensive measure, including Pinto's version of UZR...

I have apologized for my oversite, and Michael has thanked me for that. However, I'd like to disagree that our systems are exactly the same, and point out what I see as the differences.

First of all, what Michael deserves credit for is the methodology. He looked at the probability of getting outs in a zone for an average fielder and is comparing that to a given fielder. This is a probabilistic model, although he doesn't state this explicitly. His model is p(o,f|zone), or in English, the probability of an out by a fielder given the zone the ball is hit into. If you look back at my post I state my model as the following:

I'm asking the question, what is the probability of a batted ball becoming an out, given the parameters of that batted ball?

There's an important difference here. Michael is starting with zone ratings, and putting them in a probabilistic model. I'm starting with a probabilistic model, and I really don't care what the parameters turn out to be, as long as they work. The difference can really be seen in part II of Lichtman's post. Here, he's adjusting for all kinds of different factors. He figures out an adjustment factor (for example, a park effect), then multiplies his original figure by that. In my model, these factors would just be more parameters. No special adjustments are needed.

Also, in this work, I'm trying to get rid of any sort of defined zone. In order to decide if a ball is in a zone, you have to know the distance it traveled. But that distance depends on the whether or not a fielder stopped the ball. So two line drives that are similar otherwise will look very different if a fielder catches one but not the other. Does it make a difference? I'm not sure, but the idea of a zone is an artifical construct, and I would rather have it fall out from the parameters of the batted ball than from post-contact factors.

One of the other things I never liked about zone ratings (by the way, I worked extensively on the zone rating code when I was at STATS, Inc.) is that they do nothing to rate pitchers and catchers, and Michael kept this feature in his UZR. One reason for this is that zones are hard to define for these fielders. But since this work moves beyond the zone, it's not a problem. We can measure catcher and fielder stats as well as any other position. I consider this a big improvement over zone ratings.

Finally, the treatment of errors. STATS and Lichtman treat errors as if they were actually balls on which the fielder recorded an out. I once witnessed a lively discussion between Bill James and John Dewan over this. Bill thought this was wrong, that if you don't make the play you shouldn't get credit for getting to the ball. John disagreed. I did not have strong feelings about this at the time, but I've come down on Bill's side. One nice thing about this, you don't have to make a separate adjustment for the errors, as UZR does. There are just two types of balls, outs and non-outs. It doesn't matter if the non-out is an error or not; the fielder's probability will be lower, and since you would expect the errors to occur on easier balls, the fielder will pay a big penalty for his errors automatically (I have not proved the previous statement, but should be able to see if it's true once the complete system is in place).

Michael Lichtman deserves the credit for coming up with the idea of thinking about fielding in terms of probability of balls in a zone. My work has extended that idea and formalized it, making it easier to compute, and extending it to fielders not previously covered.

The DRays got to Halladay in the 6th on a solo HR by Julio Lugo. Bell still has his no-hitter through five. He's walked 1 and struck out 2.

Update: After giving up the HR and a single to Huff, Halladay hit Baldelli in the back and got ejected. He won't get his 22nd win tonight.

Alfonso Soriano homers leading off the game to put the White Sox in a 1-0 deficit. It was his 13th lead-off HR of the season, breaking the record held by Brady Anderson.

Marquis Grissom, batting 2nd for the Giants, hits a solo HR for the Giants in the first to give them a 1-0 lead over the Astros in the first. Neither the White Sox nor the Astros can really afford to lose at this point.

Rob Bell is giving Roy Halladay a real challenge as the Blue Jays pitcher goes for his 22nd victory. Bell has not allowed a hit through three innings, but has walked 1. Meanwhile, while the Devil Rays have three hits off Halladay, he's struck out seven through four. It's nothing-nothing in the bottom of the 4th.

Jason Johnson almost gave up the cycle in the first inning vs. the Red Sox. Boston had a single, double, triple and a walk to lead to three runs. The BoSox lead 3-0 in the bottom of the 2nd.

It appears that Elephants in Oakland got a reporter fired. The reporter was watching games on TV and filing his stories as if he were at the ballpark. The blog complained to the Bee about this, and the reporter was fired. Great job, 'Phants!

Update: Welcome to everyone who is coming over from Instapundit. In case you've ever wondered what an instalanche looks like, here's my traffic by hour, saved 20 minutes after the link from Glenn.

Boston's quest for the wild card continues tonight as they host the Orioles. Jason Johnson will face the disappointing Jeff Suppan. In four starts against the Red Sox this year, Jason Johnson is 2-1 with a 2.84 ERA. He's only given up 1 HR to the Sox in 25 1/3 innings against them.

Also in the Wild Card hunt, Seattle send Jamie Moyer to the mound in Anaheim to face Jarrod Washburn. Moyer is going for his 20th win, and has been one of the few bright spots for the Mariners lately, going 4-1 with a 1.96 ERA over his last five starts.

In the NL, the Marlins and Braves finish up their four game set, and the Marlins would like to win this game to give themselves a one-game leading going into their series with the Phillies. They'll send Mark Redman to face Mike Hampton. Hampton has emerged as the ace of the staff going 8-2 with a 2.42 ERA starting 7/28/2003.

The Astros also try to extend their lead to one game as they host the Giants tonight. Jerome Williams faces Ron Villone. Although the Giants have clinched the West, they are only a game behind the Braves for home field in the NL playoffs, so I don't expect them to take it easy on the Astros. Villone's strikeouts have been high lately, but so has his ERA. And his left-handedness doesn't seem to bother Barry Bonds, who is 4 for 9 with three HR against Villone. Bonds is three HR away from tying his godfather, Willie Mays, for third on the all-time HR list. Bonds has five HR in 12 games at Minute Maid Park, one every six AB, so it's a good place for him to inch closer to the Say-Hey Kid.

Enjoy!

David Bloom, who writes the D-Rays Blog, gives out his first annual awards to the team.

I was away for the weekend, and my only baseball information game from game scores I could pick up on my cell phone browser. In the AL, the division leaders each cemented their leads. The Yankees won all three of their games, and one more win gives them the division. Three gives them home field throughout the playoffs. For all the flaws this team has, they still have the best record in baseball, and will probably win 100 games.

The Twins swept Detroit, and with KC taking two out of three from the White Sox, the Twins magic number stands at two. The Twins have won nine in a row, and are playing their best ball of the season going into the playoffs. And congratulations to the Royals for reaching 81 victories and guaranteeing them at least a .500 mark this year. That voids the out clause in Mike Sweeney's contract.

The A's only had to win one game against the Mariners, and they did that yesterday. It reduces their magic number to three, so one win against Texas and one win against the Mariners next weekend, and the west belongs to them. With the two losses to the Mariners, however, the A's are unlikely to beat the Yankees for home field.

The Red Sox and Mariners maintained their 2 1/2 game separation. The Red Sox need to win five games, and they are playing the Orioles and Devil Rays the rest of the week. The Sox only have a 7-8 record against the Orioles, so that might be an interesting four game series. The odds are, however, that Boston wins the wild card. If they should fall to the Mariners, it will be just another arrow in the curse quiver.

In the NL, the Central and wild card were the only undecided races going into the weekend, and they are still undecided. The Astros hold a 1/2 lead over the Cubs. Neither team had a great weekend. The Cubs only managed a split of four games with the Pirates, while the St. Louis Cardinals, trying to stay in the race, took two out of three from the Astros. The Cubs have the easier schedule down the stretch, playing the Reds and the Pirates, while the Astros host the Giants and Milwaukee.

The Phillies have the day off while Florida finishes it's series with Atlanta, then tomorrow starts the big wild card series as the Phillies travel to Miami to meet the Marlins. I hope Flordia gets big crowds for those games. Dontrelle Willis goes against Kevin Millwood tomorrow night. That should really bring the fans out. One advantage Flordia has is that they finish against the Mets, while the Phillies play the Braves.

And of course, lurking in the shadows are the Cubs and Dodgers. They'll want some kind of split of the three games so they can gain ground. The Cubs best chance is still the division, so they'll be concentrating on that, but the Dodgers, by losing four of their last six, have blown a golden opportunity to gain ground. They finish with 4 games with the Padres and 4 with the Giants.

Should be a fun last week of the season.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2317	2322
Attendance	27945	28166

I guess these pennant races have really made a difference. This year's attendance is now within 225 of last year's on a per game basis.

The bike ride went very well. 95 Miles in two days on Cape Cod. The weather was great, and we raised a lot of money for the American Lung Association. Back to blogging tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone who came to visit the site this week, as it had a record number of visitors!

Measuring the ability of fielders to turn batted balls into outs is one of the most unyielding areas of baseball research. Part of the problem was that for a long time, we didn't have good information. What we'd like to produce is a number that represents the player's range. Early attempts at this looked at plays per game; as we got defensive innings, we were able to make this plays per 9. But this did not adjust for important elements; how many batters a pitcher strikes out, or the handedness of the staff.

When STATS, Inc. started keeping data, it also collected parameters about the batted ball; its distance, direction, how hard it was hit, the type (ground, fly, etc.) and with that they created Zone Ratings to try to compensate for the unknown information. Zone Ratings gives you credit for all balls a fielder turns into an out, while penalizing them for balls not fielded within their zone. The problem with zone ratings is that all balls in the zone are treated the same. One might imagine that balls hit to the edge of the zone are harder to field than balls hit in the middle of the zone (where you would expect the fielder to position himself).

One of the big discoveries of recent years is that pitchers don't seem to effect fielding stats that much. A recent discussion of this can be found in this previous post. Let's just say that the amount a pitcher effects balls in play going for hits is up for discussion.

I work at the CIIR at UMass, and our much of our current work involves using probablistic models to understand and retrieve documents (where "document is a very generic term, not limited to text). So I thought, why not apply these to fielding? I'm asking the question, what is the probability of a batted ball becoming an out, given the parameters of that batted ball?

I've used the STATS, Inc. database to obtain three parameters for each ball; its direction (a slice of pie fanning out from home plate), its batted type (ground, fly, line, bunt or pop) and how hard the ball was hit (soft, medium or hard). I then did a maximum likelihood estimate of the probability of an out given those three parameters for each of the nine fielders. Mathematically, you might write it p(o,f|d,t,h).

Let's look at a specific example. Take a ground ball up the middle to the leftfield side of 2nd base, hit with medium speed. The probability of the batter reaching base is .416. The probability of the pitcher turning it into an out is .312. Shortstop, .258; second base, .013; catcher, .0009 (these may not add up due to rounding). If it were a line drive instead of a ground ball, the probabilities change:

Batter Reached	.749
Centerfielder	.193
Pitcher	.04
Shortstop	.018

Now, how do we use this information? These probabilities can be thought of as expectations; if a team has 1000 balls hit as line drives to the above direction with medium speed, 25% of them would be turned into outs. So if a team is turning more than 25% of those into outs, they are exceeding expectations. So my first attempt at using this information is to figure out, for each team, how many balls put into play against them should have been turned into at least one out. I'll then compare that to how many they actually turned into outs, and see what teams exceed expectations the most:

Team	Expected	Actual	Ratio
Mariners	2878.0	2947.0	1.024
Phillies	2851.9	2916.0	1.022
Cardinals	3003.4	3063.0	1.020
Dodgers	2588.2	2635.0	1.018
Expos	2871.4	2911.0	1.014
Angels	2894.2	2927.0	1.011
White Sox	2790.3	2821.0	1.011
Padres	2790.8	2819.0	1.010
Braves	2939.2	2964.0	1.008
Brewers	2931.3	2952.0	1.007
Reds	2995.5	3011.0	1.005
Cubs	2590.7	2602.0	1.004
Astros	2783.2	2795.0	1.004
Royals	3002.0	3014.0	1.004
Orioles	2918.9	2930.0	1.004
Athletics	2955.1	2952.0	0.999
Marlins	2813.7	2810.0	0.999
Indians	3044.8	3040.0	0.998
Twins	3043.8	3036.0	0.997
Rockies	2996.7	2988.0	0.997
Devil Rays	3018.4	3009.0	0.997
Giants	2912.0	2899.0	0.996
Tigers	3116.0	3091.0	0.992
Mets	2950.0	2924.0	0.991
Blue Jays	2950.7	2911.0	0.987
Rangers	2952.2	2901.0	0.983
Diamondbacks	2796.2	2739.0	0.980
Pirates	3089.5	3020.0	0.978
Red Sox	2963.2	2888.0	0.975
Yankees	2959.6	2876.0	0.972

I will eventually extend this to each position on the team, then to individual fielders. One think to note, the Phillies do better here than they do in DER. I'm gone until Sunday night, but I hope this gives you something to think about. Enjoy your weekend!

Update: I mistakenly did not look for other research in this area. I'll point you to two posts on Baseball Primer by Michael Lichtman for a stat call UZR, or ultimate zone rating. Part I is here, and part II is here. The methodolgy is the same, although I think there are minor differences in the way we treat the data. I have to digest Michael's system a little more, but I'll be commenting on this soon.

Correction, 12/23/2003: Corrected a typo. Changed "So my first attempt at using this information is to figure out, for each team, how many balls put into play against them were turned into at least one out. I'll then compare that to how many they actually turned into outs, and see what teams exceed expectations the most:" to "So my first attempt at using this information is to figure out, for each team, how many balls put into play against them should have been turned into at least one out. I'll then compare that to how many they actually turned into outs, and see what teams exceed expectations the most:"'

With their magic number at five, the Oakland A's can clinch the west this weekend with a sweep of the Seattle Mariners. Five games out, the Mariners cannot really afford to lose any of the six remaining contests they have with Oakland. Ryan Franklin of the Mariners faces potential Cy Young award winner Tim Hudson tonight. Typical of the Mariners lately, Franklin is 0-3 in his last five starts, despite a 2.97 ERA. I suspect the Coliseum will be rocking this weekend.

By the way, if the A's decided they would rather play the Twins than the Red Sox, they could throw the games against the Mariners. I don't think the A's care, and I don't see that happening, but it's one of the drawbacks of the current wild card system.

In the NL, the Marlins hold a slim 1/2 game lead over the Phillies. Florida will host Atlanta tonight as Russ Ortiz goes for his 20th win for the Braves, while the Reds visit the Phillies. This weekend favors the Phillies regaining first in the wild card race.

Meanwhile, it's possible that the Cubs could overtake the Astros for first place tonight. Chicago is in Pittsburgh for a twi-night double header. Game 1 lists Zambrano vs. Fogg, a battle of hot pitchers. Look for the offense in game two, as Juan Cruz takes on Salomon Torres. The Astros face a healthy Matt Morris, who has a 1.29 ERA over his last five games.

Lots of great action left. Enjoy!

Benton McCune points out this article on Baseball Primer which concers itself with predicting future HR totals. It's starts with the Favorite Toy as a model and improves the prediction accuracy. I have not had time to digest the article yet, but I'm looking forward to reading it more thoroughly.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2272	2277
Attendance	27835	28139

Eddie Guardado is in for the ninth inning. He's gotten two out and allowed two base runners. Sandy Alomar is up trying to extend the inning, or even tie the game. It will be an exciting finish.

Update: Sandy Alomar pops up to Guardado in foul territory to end the game. The Twins magic number is now seven, so if they sweep the Tigers, the Twins win the division. Looks like Chicago is gone.

White Sox fans have to be a bit disappointed, but they made good trades and played very well in the 2nd half. And as much as I think it's over, it really isn't yet. But it sure looks bad.

An excellent start for Javier Vazquez tonight, although it's too little too late for the Expos. He went seven innings, walking none and striking out a dozen, while allowing no runs. Chad Cordeo is out in the 9th to try to hang the 1-run loss on the Mets.

Update: Cordeo got the side in order in the 9th with 2 strikeouts to preserve the 1-0 victory.

The Astros pitchers put nothing but nothings up on the scoreboard this afternoon as they blanked the Rockies 6-0. Wade Miller walked five in his 6 1/3 innings, but only allowd 2 hits. It's the first time the Rockies have been shutout at home since 7/4/1999 when the Padres beat them 11-0.

One run made all the difference today. Seattle's offense was shut down again, as five Texas pitchers held the Mariners to 1 run. The Seattle staff was equally effective, also allowing 1 run through nine innings, but in the 10th, sparked by A-Rod's leadoff double, the Rangers had four straight batters reach against Hasegawa to give them the win.

In Boston, an error by Todd Walker led to a run and a threat by the Devil Rays in the 9th. Kim was able to hold them off for a 4-3 win. Wakefield allowed three runs, only 1 earned, as an earlier error by Garciaparra also led to a run. Boston's magic number for the wild card is down to eight. Cleveland, Baltimore and Tampa Bay and are the final opponents for the Red Sox, while the Mariners have six against Oakland. Things are looking up for the Sox.

It's Jacque Jones night at the Metrodome. He's two for two with two HR and four RBI. With a 4-2 lead in the fourth, the Twins are trying to put the final nail in the White Sox coffin.

The game is a final, tied at 1. The stats will count, and the game will be made up if necessary.

Wade Miller is pitching a fine game against the Rockies in Colorado. He's struck out six through five and has only allowed 2 hits and 3 walks. Miller has only pitched six innings at Coors previous to this in which he gave up 8 runs, 7 earned.

After Polonco homers in the 7th to tie the game, Thome homers leading off the 8th to give the Phillies a 5-4 lead on the Marlins. Thome started slowly this year with four HR in April, but he's been improving, hitting 10 August and now has six in September. It's also his 5th off the Marlins this year, and his third of the series.

Update: Phillies win, taking two out of three from the Marlins. The are 1/2 game behind the Marlins, one game down in the loss column. They face each other three times in Florida next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Kip Wells through seven shutout innings today to help the Pirates defeat the Reds 7-0. Wells is 3-1 in September with a 1.57 ERA. He's not the greatest pitcher in the league, but many teams could do worse than to have him as their #2 starter. Good to see him finishing the season strongly.

You can tell by the background at A Small Victory.

I'm trying to find out what happened in the Yankees game. STATS is showing it as a final, but it may be suspended.

Phildelphia scores three in the fifth to tie the game with the Marlins. A solo HR by Tomas Perez and a two run double by Lieberthal were the big hits of the inning. Willis has K'd 7 through five, Millwood five through five.

Update: A six inning HR by Miguel Cabrera gives the Marlins the lead, 4-3.

The Marlins got to Millwood in the fourth inning. Two hits and an error have led to three runs. Willis has not allowed a hit through three.

Update: The Phillies got a hit and are batting in the fourth. The Yankees game has been delayed after five innings with the score tied at 1.

Kip Wells is perfect through five for the Pirates this afternoon, as he's locked in a pitching duel with the Reds' staff. John Bale started and went two hitless innings, and he's been relieved by Scott Randall.

Update: Scott Randall, the relief pitcher, breaks up the pefect game in the top of the 6th. According to the Pirate annoucers, J.J. Davis, the right fielder, could have charged the ball and thrown Randall out at first, but Davis wasn't thinking about that. It was Randall's first plate appearance of his career! That'll be a good story for his grand kids. Of course, he wastes the hit by being thrown out trying to steal.

Looks like the Yankees-Orioles and Marlins-Phillies are underway. I just tuned in on the internet to see what conditions are like. Mussina and Hentgen are striking out batters; Mussina 5 through 3, Hentgen 4 through 4. Maybe the wind is blowing the pitches off course. :-) It's 1-1 in the fourth.

Neither Millwood nor Willis has allowed a run. Millwood has allowed 2 hits, Willis 2 BB and he's hit a batter. It's 0-0 in the third.

Listening to the Orioles game, it appears to be raining a bit, but the wind is really tough for the fielders to deal with.

Looking at the national radar, I don't think neither the Yankees-Orioles nor the Marlins-Phillies will be played today. The Philadelphia game was going to pit Willis vs. Millwood. That would have been fun. We may be looking at a potential makeup game at the end of the season, depending on how close the division/wild card/home field races turn out to be.

The two most important games in the AL are for the wild card today, with Tampa Bay coming off a good win against the Red Sox and the Mariners knocking around a poor Texas pitcher last night. TB send Rob Bell to the mound against Tim Wakefield tonight. Wakefield is 7-1 against the DRays in his career. The Red Sox offense has been flat of late, only scoring 14 runs in their last five games, and eight of those came Monday.

Seattle sends Freddy Garcia against Joaquin Benoit this afternoon in Texas. Garcia should be the ace of this staff, and lately he's been pitching more like one. Despite a 1-2 record, he's posted a 3.13 ERA over his last five starts. Benoit pitches well for a Texas starter. He doesn't give up too many hits, but he does give up a lot of walks and a whopping 22 HR in 97 innings. That puts him just out of the top 25 in HR allowed in the AL. His 2.04 HR per 9 is the highest in baseball for someone with at least 95 innings pitched. The Mariners, however, rank 13th in the AL in HR hit, so that may not be a problem for Benoit this afternoon.

The most important game in the NL in terms of division races is Houston at Colorado. The Astros lead is down to 1/2 game, and with the Cubs off, the Astros can extend it. Wade Miller (2.61 ERA over his last five games) faces Jose Jimenez. The Astros have the same problem as the White Sox; the Cubs have an easy schedule of the Pirates and Reds, while the Astros face the Cardinals , Giants and Brewers. Luckily, for the Astros the Giants have clinched. Unfortunately, they are still fighting Atlanta for home field advantage. Should be a fun last week of the season.

Irina Paley responds to my criticism of her post on the subject of Soriano and Henderson.

After last night's win, the Twins have pretty much wrapped up the AL Central. I'm sorry to disappoint my readers who are White Sox fans, but the odds are in the Twins favor right now. The Twins magic number is 9 to win the division outright, and they have ten games to play. Of those 10 games, seven are against the Detroit Tigers. Two are against the Indians, and one is against the White Sox tonight. The Twins should be able to take six against the Tigers. In the upcoming three game series, they are sending Milton, Santana and Radke to the mound. The Tigers may get to 120 losses just against the Twins.

So six games against the Tigers takes the Twins magic number to three. I guess they split with Cleveland, which takes it to two. Meanwhile, the White Sox have seven games against the Royals, and three against the Yankees. The Yankees are still fighting for home field, so they won't go easy on the Sox. The Royals would love to finish strong and end up in 2nd place. It's had for me to believe that White Sox would lose less than two games to these teams.

The Twins schedule is easy, the White Sox have it tough. Chicago needed to bury the Twins and they didn't do it. Sure, anything can happen, but it's not very likely.

Update: Aaron Gleeman agrees with me, but I at least gave the White Sox an extra day. The Twins Geek, however is more restrained:

It ain't over yet folks. Even if the Twins win tonight (and they'll need to beat a pitcher of the month candidate to do so), they'll need to keep winning the last week. And before we thing that's a slam dunk, remember the last time this team faced a slam dunk. Back in June, the scheduled looked easy, the lead was large, and the postseason looked assured. And then....

And nice to see 40,000 fans at the game last night.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2259	2264
Attendance	27851	28171

The Marlins get revenge for last night's drubbing with a drubbing of their own. They move the lead back to 1 1/2 games, and reduce their magic number to 10.

A number of start times for tomorrow are changing. The Orioles and the Phillies have both moved their games to early afternoon starts to try to avoid the storm. Please make a note of it.

Victor Zambrano of the Devil Rays is shutting out the Red Sox through six innings. He's only allowed three hits, but he's also allowed five walks! Luckily for him, the walks have all come at the top of the order, and the hits have all come at the bottom of the order. Tampa Bay leads 6-0 in the 7th.

The veterans are paying off for Minnesota. A great game by Radke last night, and this evening, Kenny Rogers is shutting out the White Sox through five innings. He's only given up three hits, no walks and has only thrown 60 pitches. I will reiterate that if the Twins win this game, I believe they've won the division. They lead 3-0 in the fifth.

Halladay shuts out the Tigers for his 2nd shutout of the year. His ERA is down to 3.18, and he took only 102 pitches to finish the game, 72 for strikes. The more I see him the more I like him.

The Moyer-Drese matchup has lived up to its billing so far. Moyer has allowed 1 hit through three innings, while Drese last 3 1/3 allowing six hits, two walks and five runs. He failed to strike out a batter. His ERA is now 7.91. He has been replaced by Mickey Callaway, whose ERA is a mere 7.66.

Is there a rule that all 7+ ERA pitchers have to be under contract to Texas?

Roy Halladay continues his push for the Cy Young award. He's shutout Detroit through six innings tonight, walking none and striking out six. His ERA is down to 3.22.

Jeff Conine follows up his two run double in the first with a solo HR in the 4th. Fish are flying 4-3.

Mike Hampton hit his 2nd HR of the year in the Braves 14-4 rout of the Montreal Expos. Hampton never hit a HR until he arrived in Colorado in 2001, but in last three years he's hit 12, twice as many as any active pitcher.

The Marlins have gotten all their offense in the first inning tonight. Three hits, including a two-run double by Jeff Conine gave them a 3-0 lead. Brett Myers is pitching well otherwise, having struck out six through three innings. It's now 3-1 in the bottom of the third.

Update: Thome just hit an opposite field blast to tie the game at 3. It's his 42nd of the year.

From the broadcast, it sounded like Dusty Baker sent Tom Goodwin out to pinch hit for Wood in the eighth, but Kerry talked Baker out of it. He's going to try to complete the game, despite throwing 119 pitches through eight innings. I think Dusty was right, but I admire Kerry wanting to finish his own game.

Update: Cubs win. Kerry Wood beats the Mets 2-0 in a great pitching performance. Nine innings, four hits, one walk and eleven strikeouts. He only used six pitches to retire the side in order in the ninth. He threw 125 pitches, 80 for strikes. Al Leiter pitched well enough to win, allowing 2 runs over seven innings (the Cubs only had four hits as well, but two were solo HR), but ran into a better pitcher today.

Back-to-back doubles by Tejada and Hatteberg gives the A's a 1-0 lead over Anaheim in the 2nd. While the A's don't have the best record in the majors in the 2nd half this year, they are 37-22, fourth best, and only 1 1/2 games behind the ML leading Twins in that category.

Kerry Wood is pitching a great game against the Mets this afternoon. He hasn't allowed a run, struck out seven, and walked only one through six. We'll see if that holds up. The last time he had a start where he walked only one batter was 6/24. Since then, he's had nine starts where he walked at least 4.

The Baseball Crank has a nice tribute to long-time Mets announcer Bob Murphy.

(With apologies to Karl Ravech.) Doug Glanville leads off the game for the Cubs with his first HR since joining the team this year, and his first as a Cub since 1997. It's only the 14th HR Leiter has allowed this year. Cubs lead 1-0 after 1.

Steven Den Beste has an interesting post on Anna Kournikova and her failure to win a major tourament. Den Beste is one of the bloggers I enjoy reading. He's an engineer and looks at almost every situation from that point of view. His thesis is that Anna never became as great as she could have been because she did not want to trade her beauty for greater strength, since she would make more money off her beauty (remembering, of course, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder).

Den Beste then goes through the major sports and discusses the body types that are need to be successful in them, and concludes that most sports require athletes to be statistical outliers (he calls them freaks). But not baseball:

Of all the major sports, the one which seems to have the most balanced requirements is baseball, and that's demonstrated by the very broad range of physical characteristics of the men who play it professionally, especially those who excel. I don't know of any sport where there's as much variation in height and weight, for example, and when you meet a baseball player, unlike most other sports professionals he generally looks like a man who is optimally developed without being freakish. Baseball requires both arm and leg strength about equally, since it involves running, throwing and batting. The one thing it doesn't require to the same extent as most other sports is stamina. Most baseball players who are on the field spend most of the time standing around, without the kind of sustained activity present in other sports. There's no single aspect of the game which particularly favors some particular physical trait over others, the way basketball favors height or the way jockeys benefit from slight build. That's why baseball players don't look like basketball players or jockeys.

It's also why, once societal racial barriers were finally eliminated, baseball ended up with a greater racial mix than most other sports. No single racial group has a genetic advantage. (Soccer and other sports which primarily emphasize stamina also tend to have a very broad racial mix, since no single racial group has a genetic advantage when it comes to stamina.)

One of my stated reasons for liking baseball is that anyone can be the hero. Den Beste gives a physical reason why this is so. Thanks, Steven!

Jamie Moyer will try to stop the Mariners slide out of the playoffs as he faces the Texas Rangers tonight. He'll be opposed by Ryan Drese, who has allowed 30 ER in 35 1/3 innings this year. I'll give the nod to the Mariners in this one.

The Twins try to win the AL Central tonight. That statement may seem a bit extreme, but last week, given the Twins and White Sox schedule, it was clear that a split of the seven games would greatly favor the Twins chances of winning the division. A win tonight will mean that Minnesota will take at least four out of seven from the White Sox, and give them a 2 1/2 game lead. It's Jon Garland (who's pitched well lately) vs. Kenny Rogers (who hasn't). The next two are really must wins for the White Sox.

I like the matchup on the north side of Chicago this afternoon, as Al Leiter and the Mets face Kerry Wood. Both pitchers have great career records against their opponent. A good reason to play hooky and watch the game on ESPN.

Finally, Arizona at LA offers a good, young pitching matchup, as Brandon Webb faces Edwin Jackson, the youngest pitcher in the majors.

Enjoy!

Mark Bridgers writes:

The talk around Atlanta is that Maddux does not keep himself in shape, like Clemens or other pitchers. He literally runs out of gas around 80 pitches, and seems content with that. I don't think he's begging out early to protect his ERA, he just can't go more than 6 innings very often anymore. I believe that's why he didn't get any offers last offseason, and I doubt he will this one either, unless he either gets on a treadmill, or cuts his asking price dramatically.

I asked him about the famed Braves conditioning program:

The conditioning program, "Camp Leo", is optional. Maddux has never taken part. All the others, especially new guys like Hampton, Byrd, and Ortiz, show up eager to learn. Until this year, whatever Maddux did or didn't do was working quite well, so why mess with it? This year, however, his age and relative lack of condition are really showing up. It is a little sad to see the greatest pitcher of my generation not try to extend his career. At least not yet. I doubt he'll be in Atlanta next year, unless things change like I mentioned earlier.

If this is really true, maybe a game like last night will make Maddux wake up and try harder. If he got in shape enough to finish games, he might start posting 20 win seasons again.

Aaron's Baseball Blog has a nice wrap-up of the game last night.

When they faced Loaiza last week, I was impressed by the incredible patience that Minnesota batters showed in nearly every at bat against him. They took borderline pitches, they worked counts, they made him get the ball up - and they beat him 5-2.

Last night, the level of patience from the Twins was something I have never seen before. Aside from Jacque Jones, they took pretty much every single borderline pitch that Loaiza offered up. He threw 32 pitches in the first inning and 31 in the second inning. Loaiza probably would have broken the 70-pitch barrier in the bottom of the second, but Jones, who swung at a pitch headed for his ankle in the first inning, decided it was a good idea to try to bunt for a hit on the very first pitch he saw - with two outs and two men on base. He nearly beat it out, so I guess I can't blame him too much.

I would be interested to know if this was a deliberate team strategy, or if they just realized Loaiza was wild.

West 116th Street pens this comparison of Rickey Henderson and Alfonso Soriano. As Soriano leading off was the subject of my very first baseball post, I'm compelled to comment.

Just recently, I downloaded some video files of Rickey's at bats, and it's completely obvious - when he went up to the plate, he had one thought in mind: to get on base. Rickey needed to get on base, so he could steal. And he needed to steal, so that he could score. If you pop up, or fly out, you can't steal. Rickey hit his share of homers - his career record for leadoff home runs is in that very same safe vault as his stolen base record. But Rickey new that his job was to score, and in his case, the best way that he could reach home was to get a base hit, and advance on his speed. So in most at bats, he didn't swing for a home run, he swung for a single. His career runs scored record (another, very snug and safe record) proves that. It also proves that Rickey Henderson was the best leadoff man in history, and the most valuable player for any team, since the way to win the game is to score runs.

(Emphasis added.) I would disagree with the fact of this statement, but not its intention. Rickey doesn't care how he reaches base. Rickey is just as happy to reach base by a walk as by a hit. Henderson is waiting for a pitch he can hit; if he doesn't get such a pitch, he'll take it. If he does get something to hit, he tries to cream it. Remember, when Rickey won the MVP in 1990, he was 2nd in the league in slugging percentage behind Fielder, so he could hit for power as well as get on base.

Soriano swings for a home run. I always thought that was Sori's biggest problem. That, combined with his awful plate discipline, is what throws him into those awful extended slumps. It is difficult to rectify that, when Soriano's leadoff strategy is rewarded with such coveted honors as consecutive 30/30 seasons, and a climb up the single season leadoff home run ladder. (I suppose I contribute to the problem, since my whole man-over-math baseball schtick makes me the first to jump and cheer for such unlikely feats).

But, according to Joe Torre, I am completely wrong. During this evening's pre-game show on WCBS radio, the skipper talked about how great leadoff home runs are, and how the energy that is created by the homer off the first pitch of the game gives the dugout a boost of inspiration. I suspect, Torre was caught up in the moment, because his bottom line is clear - to score runs and to win games. But those comments made me question my firm convictions about leadoff strategy. As impressed as I am by each one of Sori's leadoff home runs, I never considered that they could add any more value to the team then the one run scored. A 30+/30+ season is a sign of a very good, very well rounded player. But is that the approach that will take one to leadoff greatness of Henderson's magnitude?

Well, those comments shouldn't make you question your firm convictions. Leadoff HR are nice, but getting on base 40% of the time is much better. And being a 30/30 (or 40/40 or whatever) do not make you a well rounded player. They just show that your game is good in two dimensions; and one of those dimensions isn't particularly valuable. The truth is that Rickey's stolen bases had very little impact on his runs scored, that if Henderson had never attempted a stolen base, he'd still be a great leadoff man and still be in the Hall of Fame. Using Bill James runs created formula from the late 80's, with SB and CS, Rickey creates 2147 runs. With SB and CS he creates 2014 runs. So basically, Rickey added about five runs per season with his steals. That's not a lot.

As I've said before, Soriano's strength is his power. His stats (low OBA, high slugging percentage) are more valuable at the end of the offense than at the beginning. He should be batting fourth or fifth, behind Jeter, Williams and Giambi. If the Yankees moved him there for a full season, you might see him post 160 RBI. But unless he has a Sammy Sosa revelation, he'll never come close to Rickey's leadoff greatness.

Gareth Mitchell writes me about the pontential move of the Expos to Las Vegas:

I live in Las Vegas, and read the column in the Las Vegas Review Journal on Saturday mentioning the Expos moving here. A couple points from me living here for 3 years now. This town is made up of people who moved here from many locations, mostly southern California. We fail in just about every sport that comes here. We have the 51s and they only sell well on fireworks night. We have an Arena league team, but they are still new to us, so it is hard to judge, and we are just getting a AA hockey team. Mayor Goodman seems to think this is a major league town, yet we never support anything that comes here. Trying to fill a 42,000 seat stadium 81 times a year would be tough around here. We have several demographics that make anything like this difficult. Being a 24 hour town, we have a lot of people who work unusual shifts, which could make it difficult to make a night game. Also, a lot of people in this town don't make a lot of money. Honestly, I would love to see them give this a shot, and hopefully it would work, but it makes you wonder why every other venture to come to town doesn't work. Although one issue would already be addressed, baseball is played in the summer, and maybe people would go to Cashman Field more if it wasn't 115 degrees during the day. Just thought you would like an opinion from a Las Vegan.

Thanks, Gareth. There are reasons major league teams might do better; for one thing, they are playing for championships instead of just trying to develop players. But your concerns are valid. The Angels were really in a similar situation for most of their existence. People who lived in Anaheim came from all over the country, and often you'd have more fans of the visiting team than the home team at Angels games. But that's okay, as long as people come to the ballpark. Eventually, if the team wins, Las Vegans (love that term) will come to be fans of the 7-11's.

(Note: 7-11's is my name for the team. I've heard no rumors about what the team might be called. I might suggest two names depending on the situation. If they are winning, they could be called the High Rollers. If they are losing, the Craps. :-) )

My last post of the evening last night was on Greg Maddux. After I wrote that, the Braves bullpen blew the lead and lost the game in the 10th inning. Denying Maddux his 15th win, which would set the record for most consecutive 15 win seasons. Maddux had this to say:

"Merck made a perfect pitch; it's a shame we didn't get the call," said Maddux, who's 0-1 in two starts since getting his 14th win. "For me to feel sorry for myself, I'd be the biggest [jerk] in the world. I feel bad for Merck. . . . Ten years ago, I might have finished it. Who knows?"

Greg Maddux is 37 years old, and all he can throw is 82 pitches? Do you see Moyer or Clemens coming out of games after 82 pitches? I've been a big fan of Maddux for a long time, and I always thought Bobby Cox managed him poorly by taking him out of games too soon. But now I'm wondering if it's been Greg all along taking himself out too soon to protect his ERA? Maybe my respect was misplaced? Maddux should want to complete games, should not want to leave his W-L record in the hands of his bullpen. I'm very disappointed.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2244	2249
Attendance	27855	28206

I don't understand this. Greg Maddux pitches seven strong innings, throws only 82 pitches, and comes out of the game. I read somewhere that it's Maddux's choice. It seems, come playoff time, that the way to approach Greg is to work up his pitch counts. Now, that's not easy if he's throwing strikes, but batters could choke up and try to foul off pitches.

Pedro Martinez pitches a complete game. He threw 122 pitches, but allowed runs in the 8th and 9th. His ERA is now 2.34. He's clearly the best pitcher in the AL this year, but will the lack of wins and pitching less than 200 innings keep him from winning the Cy Young award?

Brad Radke has had five good innings against the White Sox so far. Five hits, no walks, all the hits are singles (in fact, all five Twins hits are singles, also). He's thrown only 62 pitches through five, so he sould be able to go deep into the game.

It's 14-0 Phillies over the Fish in the 9th. Mike Lieberthal has six RBI. Padilla pitched 8 strong innings, allowing 5 hits and striking out six without a walk. Assuming they win, the wild card lead will be down to 1/2 a game.

Update: Phillies win. Another win tomorrow puts them in the wild card lead.

Loaiza was chased from the game after 2 1/3 innings and 74 pitches. He threw 36 balls and 38 strikes. The Twins now lead 4-0 and Loaiza's ERA has gone up to 2.87. It strikes another blow against him for Cy Young.

Laynce Nix hit his 2nd HR of the game to give the Rangers an 8-0 lead over the Mariners. All eight runs have come on HR.

Yesterday I complained about Sammy Sosa's lack of offense in the Cubs surge. He's had all three RBI tonight for the Cubs, including a two-run HR. Cubs lead the Mets 3-1.

Esteban Loaiza has walked his fourth batter and loaed the bases again in the 2nd inning. Another golden opportunity for the Twins to break the game open with 1 out.

Update: Great play by Alomar keeps the ball on the infield, and he throws out the batter at first. A run scored, but it could have been two and another baserunner.

Update: Loaiza uncorks his 2nd wild pitch of the inning to bring in the Twins third run. He had only 1 all year coming into the game.

Laynce Nix hit his 7th, Hank Blalock hit his 27th, and A-Rod his 44th to give the Rangers a 6-0 lead on the fast fading Mariners. A-Rod's solo was follwed by Nix's two run shot and Blalock's 3-runs shot. Watch for the grand slam next.

Very unlike Esteban Loaiza. He's walked three in the first inning. He's averaged less than 2 per 9 innings this year. Bases loaded with one out for the Twins.

Update: Koskie gets the sac fly. Twins lead 1-0.

Update: Loaiza gets out of it with just 1 run allowed. The Twins missed a golden opportunity to blow the game open in the first.

Alfonso Soriano broke the scoreless tie between the Yankee and the Orioles with a solo HR in the fifth. That's his 6th HR vs. the Orioles this year; he also has 6 vs. the Blue Jays.

Greg Maddux has throw 44 pitches through 4 innings, being his typical efficient self has he's shutting out the Expos on 2 hits. Tomo Ohka has been almost as good, not allowing a run through five innings. Both are throwing strikes at a better than 2-1 ratio.

Radke started a little shaky, giving up singles to Robby Alomar and Carlos Lee, but then got Frank Thomas to ground into a double play and Ordonez to fly out. It was only the 9th GDP Radke has induced this year.

Pedro Martinez is dominating the Devil Rays tonight. Through four innings he's only faced 13 batters and thrown 52 pitches. Toby Hall has the only hit off Pedro, and his first in eight AB against Martinez. Todd Walker and Nomar Garciaparra swapped 2nd and 3rd batting slots, and Walker came through with the RBI. Sox lead 1-0 in the bottom of the 4th.

The KC Royals chased Billy Traber early. They scored six runs in 1 2/3 innings before David Lee came in to get the final out of the 2nd. The big hit so far was a three-run HR by Joe Randa in the first. Royals need to win and hope Chicago takes two out of three from the Twins so KC can gain on both.

The Phillies batted around in the first, picking up four runs against Carl Pavano. Pavano threw 34 pitches, only 18 for strikes. The Phillies have lost five in a row against the Marlins at the Vet, and are 2-5 against the Marlins there this year.

The White Sox and Twins open their final head-to-head series tonight, as veterans Esteban Loaiza takes on Brad Radke. Loaiza is going for his 20th win, while Radke is trying to win his fifth in a row. Given their schedules, and the split last week in Chicago, the White Sox really need to sweep this series to have a good chance at winning the Central.

The other big game tonight is for the NL Wild Card. Florida visits Philadelphia for a three game series, to be followed by a four game series next week (ironic that a team from Miami is heading north into a hurricane). A good matchup tonight as Carl Pavano faces Vicente Padilla. The Marlins are in good shape, and just need to basically split the seven games against the Phillies to stay ahead. Of course, the Dodgers hope this is what happens, so they can sneak by both teams.

Enjoy!

Jon from Dodger Thoughts wrote about Ishii's overall wildness, and how it doesn't seem to hurt him, in May.

Steve Bonner sends a link to this picture. They say it's a rookie hazing, but I wonder if it's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy gone horribly wrong. :-)

I was going to make this a game of the day, but I'm so shocked I have to write a separate post. I'm seldom flabbergasted by baseball stats anymore. Colby Lewis winning eight games with a 7+ ERA doesn't throw me, because I know he has a good offense behind him. Detroit possibly losing 120+ games doesn't bother me, because you get a team this bad 2 or 3 times a century. But when I looked at the matchup in tonight's DBacks-Dodgers game, I was taken aback. The first thing I saw was that Ishii had a career record against the DBacks of 3-0 with a 1.22 ERA. But then I noticed the context. He's pitched 37 innings against the DBacks, and has walked 24 men! That's almost six per nine innings. How does that jibe with a 1.22 ERA?

I thought that maybe there were one or two games where he walked a lot of DBacks, but looking at the six games, his best outing was 2 BB in 5 1/3 innings. He's given up four HR in those 37 innings, accounting for all five runs he's allowed. And the base runner who scored on the two run homer reached by a HBP! None of the 24 batters Ishii has walked has come around to score! The Diamondbacks have not been able to execute against Ishii, going 0 for 18 with runners in scoring position against him with eight walks.

It's probably all luck, but it will be fun to keep an eye on this game tonight to see if it continues.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2229	2234
Attendance	27869	28247

Barry Bonds hit his 42nd HR of the year tonight, a solo shot in the first. More importantly, it was the 655th HR of his career, putting him exactly 100 behind Hank Aaron. The question now is, will he last?

Colby Lewis won his 8th game tonight. Highest ERA to win at least 8 games in a season:

Pitcher	ERA	Record
Colby Lewis, 2003	7.67	8-9
Jim Walkup, 1937	7.36	9-12
Jack Knott, 1936	7.29	9-17

In his wins, his ERA is 3.83.

Lately it seems that Albert Pujols has been the only Cardinal hitting. Tonight, Pujols is hitless, but his teammates are pouring it on the Brewers. St. Louis has eight hits, including a 2 for 2, three RBI night by Brett Tomko. Tomko is now batting .316. The Cardinals lead 7-1 in the fourth.

A big night for Alfonso Soriano. He's three for three in the fourth innings with two HR and three RBI. It's his first multi-HR game of the year after having four last year. The Yankees lead 7-1.

A.J. Pierzynski is having a good night. He's two for two with a double and two runs scored. He's now batting .306. The Twins lead 7-2 in the 6th, and they are still batting.

The Cubs got off to a 3-0 lead on the Mets in the first inning. Randall Simon got the big hit of the inning, a two run double. Simon now has 19 RBI in 24 games for the Cubs.

Sammy Sosa seems to be missing from the Cubs September surge. Coming into this game, he's batting .236 in September with a .311 OBA and a .436 slugging percentage. He's only had 6 RBI in 14 games.

Derek Lowe has not allowed a hit through four innings. His only mistake was a walk issued to Rocco Baldelli. An unlikely walk, as it was Baldelli's 28th walk of the season. However, it was his 6th walks of September, equalling his monthly high of May.

Lowe is being very efficient in setting down the DRays, only using 54 pitches through four innings.

Update: Marlon Anderson breaks up the no-hitter with 2 out in the fifth.

The first four hits by the Kansas City Royals tonight were a single, double, triple and home run (not in that order). KC lead Detroit 4-2 in the fourth.

I don't know if all of you can get at this article by Dan Le Batard, but it is in ESPN the magazine if the link doesn't work (or you can sign up for ESPN Insider). It starts like this:

Everything hurts.

"I've played most of the season with a hamstring tear," Barry Bonds says. "My knees ache. My hands are done. Two bulging disks. My legs don't work. I make a strong throw, I feel it, all over, the rest of the game. Willie and my dad always said the thing that knocked them out of baseball would knock me out, too -- when the pain became too much."

The pain has become too much.

"Losing Dad was the worst thing in the world," Bonds says. "I haven't slept in a month. My mind is always racing. I can't concentrate. What's been happening in baseball the past month? I have no idea. I'm just taking care of Mom, doing all the things Dad said he wanted done at the end. I'm drained. I'm constantly thinking, thinking. It's just too overwhelming. I'm devastated. I spend all my time just trying not to have a nervous breakdown."

He is talking about quitting.

"I'm done," Bonds says. "The young players, it's their turn. I had my fun, and I keep screwing up and coming back. What for? Why bother? I can't do this anymore. I've already told the guys: a few more games, and I'm gone. I'm day-to-day, man. None of those records mean anything to me. My godfather and my father are the only reason I played, for their approval. I admired the rest of them -- Hank, Babe, Ted -- but I wasn't fighting for their approval. I've always played for the acceptance of my godfather and father. That's it. And now my father's gone."

This may be the most positive article about Barry Bonds I've ever read. As his career winds down, he's making the transition from baseball jerk to baseball great. I think a big part of the change is due to the death of Bobby Bonds and how Barry handled that. I think part of it is that players like Jeff Kent came to be seen as even bigger jerks than Bonds, so their complaints became less credible. It's a very good article, the best that I've seen at exploring Bonds psyche; how Bobby and Willie Mays always pushed him, never let him sit on his laurels for a second. How his father let all that go at the end, and now it's just Mays pushing him. Find it and read the whole thing.

Update: Rob Neyer looks at what a Bonds retirement would mean for the Giants.

Andy Pettite goes for his 19th win tonight, both for the season and for his career agains the Baltimore Orioles. I find the treatment of Pettitte by the media interesting. He could easily win 20 games this year, but no one is touting him for Cy Young (correctly, I might add). Yet that is almost always a standard that is used for such discussions. He has a career .652 winning percentage. If you look at pitchers with 200 starts and 140 decisions, Pettitte ranks 15th all-time in winning percentage (just ahead of Ron Guidry). Yet know one talks about Pettitte as a potential Hall of Famer. Pettitte does what sports writers and the general public love so much, which is win. I'd like to think that people realize that Pettitte has weaknesses and part of the his record come from playing for a great team. (However, the Yankees winning percentage is .602 over Pettitte's career, so he's been better than average on a great team.) But that sort of thinking is in short supply when evaluating other pitchers, so I don't know why Pettitte's record doesn't get him more hype.

A good matchup in Boston tonight as Jorge Sosa faces Derek Lowe, both of whom have been pitching extremely well lately. Sosa has posted a 2.15 ERA over his last five starts; Lowe is at 2.51.

The tie will be broken in the AL Central tonight (barring rain) as Minnesota plays Cleveland while the Chicago White Sox are idle. Johan Santana takes the mound for the Twins. He's 6-0 in his last eight starts with a 2.24 ERA and has emerged as the ace of the Twins rotation. He'll be opposed by Jason Davis of Cleveland. The Twins do much better against righty starters than lefties, so it looks like there's a good chance of the Twins taking over first place in the Central tonight.

Finally, the Mariners have a good chance of breaking out of their offensive slump, as they travel to Texas to face Colby Lewis. They'll send Joel Pineiro to the mound, who hasn't pitched well lately either (5.01 ERA over his last five games). A-Rod has 17 HR in 56 games against his former team.

Enjoy!

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2218	2225
Attendance	27887	28267

I'd like to note that the other day I heard Bud Selig touting the major leagues passing 60,000,000 in attendance during a Cubs broadcast. He did fail to point out that attendance was down from last year, however. But fans are coming back, as earlier in the year, attendance was down over 1200 fans per game, as you can see in my first attendance report here. Last year baseball got hammered by the media over what were the most productive negotiations in three decades. Couple the lack of negativity with the number of teams competing for a playoff spot, and the majors have been able to mostly close the gap.

The Mariners lost a terrific chance to pass the Red Sox in the wild card race. The offensive slump was back today, as the 1-4 hitters in the Mariners lineup went 0 for 13 with 3 walks as Anaheim beat Seattle 2-1. Suzuki and Boone were both 0 for 4. Kevin Gregg, making his fourth major league appearance, limited the Mariners to three hits and 1 run over seven innings and lowered his ERA to 2.42 and his opponents batting average to .192. The Mariners remain 1/2 game behind the Red Sox.

Braden Looper did not do his job today. The Marlins gave him a four run lead to protect in the ninth, and he instead gave up five runs to send the Marlins to an 8-4 defeat at the hands of the Braves. With the Phillies winning, the Marlins will take a 1 1/2 game lead in the wild card race into their three game head-to-head series starting Tuesday.

Josh Hall and Carlos Zambrano are trading 0's in the Reds-Cubs game this afternoon. Zambrano has a 2-hitter through 7, striking out six and walking none. Hall has six K and one walk through six. The Cubs have left seven on base, and are 0 for 4 with runners in scoring position.

A big day for the Phillies offense in Pittsburgh. Every starter has a hit through seven, including a 2 for 2 by pitcher Randy Wolf. Jim Thome has a double and three RBI and Rollins has 2 hits and two runs scored. It's 10-5 Phillies in the bottom of the7th.

The Cardinals season may end today. They are trailing the Astros 4-1 in the bottom of the 6th. They are being three hit by Tim Redding, with two of the three hits coming from Albert Pujols. Redding is using his defense, as he has only 1 strikeout and 1 walk in the game.

If the Astros win, their magic number to eliminate the Cardinals will go down to 8 with two weeks to go. This is St. Louis' 8th game of the month against the Astros or the Cubs. They've only won 1 of them.

The Marlins have a 4-3 lead over the Braves in the top of the 7th inning. Beckett has pitched well, striking out 11 through 6 2/3 while only walking 1. His only mistake was allowing a three-run HR to Gary Sheffield, but that's a mistake a number of pitchers make. It's the 26th HR of the season for Gary, and the 376th of his career.

The KC Royals are going to at least keep pace today as they defeat the Detroit Tigers 7-2. Jimmy Gobble and Angel Berroa had big days; Gobble struck out 7 and allowed 2 runs through 7, and Berroa was 3 for 5 with 3 RBI and 2 runs scored. That's win 76 for the Royals; five more and Mike Sweeney's contract kicks in.

Vladimir Guerrero has hit for the cycle against the Mets. It's the first cycle of his career and the 4th in the majors this year. Expos teammate Brad Wilkerson had on June 24th.

The Twins have to be happy with Eric Milton's first start. He went five innings, did not walk a batter and allowed two runs. He also threw 54 of 72 pitches for strikes. This makes them that much stronger for the post season.

For the Indians, Cliff Lee gave them a strong outing, striking out 7 and walking 1 through seven innings, although he did allow three runs. Neither starter will have a say in the decision, as both are out and the score is tied at 3 in the 8th.

Darren Viola sent me a link to this article about how Steve Stone has been in secret negotiations to buy the Expos and move them to Las Vegas.

Somehow Stone and his partner, Lou Weisbach, managed to keep their pursuit quiet, at least from the press, telling people only on a need-to-know basis. Of course, they've told Major League Baseball all about their plan. And they've told potential investors.

The mayor of Las Vegas knows. Cubs president Andy MacPhail has known (because, after all, he is Stone's boss) for a while now.

Ownership groups in Washington, D.C., Northern Virginia and Portland, Ore., have been vying for the right to save the Expos from San Juan or Monterrey or whatever foreign city commissioner Bud Selig's dart lands on next. Most people figured the Expos would end up in or around the nation's capital. Not so quick. Quietly, Stone might have gained an edge.

"Discretion,'' Stone said, "has been a priority.''

I don't have a problem with a team in Las Vegas per se, but I do worry about how MLB can possibly keep teams from associating with gamblers if the team is there. What does bother me is that the process of moving the team to Portland or Washington has been very out in the open. It's not clear that either of these cities knew they were also competing with Las Vegas. That's unfair.

I also don't know if baseball will work as an attraction:

Stone wants to buy the vagabond Montreal Expos and move them to Las Vegas. He wants to build them an intimate domed stadium in the desert--say 42,000 seats or so. He wants to see the team become the hottest act in Vegas since Wayne Newton was cool.

I didn't know that Wayne Newton wasn't cool. But teams need loyal fans. If the Las Vegas 7-11's are going to be a successful franchise, they'll need more than tourists filling the seats. But from what I can find, Vegas has a fast growing population, so maybe that's not a problem.

I don't like the way MLB has gone about this, but it would not be a bad place for the Expos to move.

Eric Milton makes his Twins season debut today in a start in Cleveland against the Indians. He'll face another lefty, Cliff Lee. Lee looks like a great prospect. His minor league strikeout and HR numbers are excellent. He walks too many batters, but that's been improving. Moreover, in 8 major league starts, he's posted a 2.76 ERA. Look for him to be a big part of the Cleveland rotation next year.

A good outing by Doug Waechter against the Yankees today could set him up as a favorite for the 2004 rookie of the year. He's 3-0 with a 2.08 ERA in a very brief career, which includes 16 strikeouts in 17 1/3 innings. He'll face Jose Contreras, who has struck out 30 in his last 28 2/3 innings.

The Marlins go for the sweep against the Braves today. The struggling Shane Reynolds will try to stop the hot Josh Beckett. Reynolds has given up 21 earned runs in his last 20 1/3 innings. Batters are hitting just .197 against Beckett in his last five starts. The Marlins are slowly pulling away from the pack in the wild card race.

Another young pitcher to keep your eye on is Kevin Correia. In 27 innings with the Giants this year, he's given up 23 hits, only four for extra bases. The Giants have been going real easy with him, starting him against the weaker teams in the league and limiting his pitch counts below 100, and he's done well in that role. He'll face Wayne Franklin and the Milwaukee Brewers today.

Enjoy!

Just how good have the Dodgers pitchers been? In there last six games, totalling 52 innings pitched, opponents have only scored in 4 of those innings ( a total of 11 runs). With consecutive shoutouts of San Diego, the staff has recorded 19 straight scoreless innings. The Dodgers Team ERA now stands at 3.05; that's the lowest any team ERA has been since 1991, when the Dodgers posted a 3.03 mark. It's a shame that this team hasn't been able to come up with a hitter or two to give this staff some support.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2203	2210
Attendance	27876	28270

The biggest gain today was by the Yankees, who swept a double header against the Devil Rays, while Boston lost to the White Sox. That takes the Yankees magic number down to 9. They could clinch by next weekend. The AL Central stays the same for the 2nd day in a row, as the White Sox, Twins and Royals all win.

In the NL, the Marlins defeated the Braves for the 2nd day in a row while the Phillies were losing to the Pirates for the 2nd day in a row. Florida now leads Philadelphia by 2 1/2 games, and are 8 1/2 behind the Braves. I'd love to see the NL East race get a bit closer.

A great pitching duel in Houston, as Morris and Oswalt each gave up four hits over seven innings. Morris walked one and gave up a solo shot to Bagwell, and the Cardinals lost 2-0. The Cardinals are in third place 4 1/2 back, and are in danger of falling out of the race.

The West races are underway at this hour, except for the A's having defeated Texas 9-3 to at least maintain their lead over Seattle. The Mariners and Angels are tied at 0 in the fourth, and the Mariners need a win to gain on the Red Sox.

Eric Karros hits a two-run double in the bottom of the 2nd to give the Cubs a 2-1 lead over the Cincinnati Reds.

I did not like the trade that brought Karros and Grudzielanek to the Cubs. I thought they were players past their prime who would not contribute much. But Grudzielanek is posting his highest OBA since 1999, and Karros is also having his best season since 1999. So I thought I'd check win shares. Despite better numbers than last year, Karros only has six win shares, vs. 18 last year. Grudzielanek has already matched his 13 win shares of 2002. More surprisingly to me, McGriff has 9 win shares! I guess I was right about Karros but wrong about Grudz.

I think a big factor in Karros win share difference is the context of the parks. Dodger Stadium is a great pitcher's park, so offense contributes more to winning there than in Wrigley, where runs are easy to come by.

Ruben Sierra hits a line drive over the centerfield fence to give the Yankees a 6-5 lead. The Devil Rays have outhit the Yankees 14-10, but the Yankees have six extra-base hits (including 3 HR) to the DRays 3 (all doubles).

Update: Yankees win. Their magic number goes down to 10.

Bernie Williams, after never having homered on his birthday, just hit his 2nd of the game. It gives the Yankees the lead after Felix Heredia allowed the Devil Rays to tie the game in the 6th. The bottom of the Yankee order has done all the damage today. The five through nine hitters are 8 for 11 with 2 HR, 3 doubles, five runs and four RBI.

Aaron Boone is finally hitting for the Yankees. In the last six games, including through the fourth inning today, Boone is 10 for 22 with three doubles, two HR and eight RBI. He just scored the go-ahead run on two SB and a wild pitch, the WP coming on his attempted steal of third. Boone's an excellent base stealer. He's now 89 for 110 in his career, and 23 for 26 this year, including 8 for 8 with the Yankees. It's not how often you steal, it's how often you're successful at it.

Bernie Williams just went deep to cut the TB lead to 2-1. It's his birthday today (he's 35), but he's never performed well on this anniversary. Coming into today, he was 5 for 35 with 0 HR and 1 RBI on his birthday.

Josh Schulz is tired of Tony La Russa:

Remember his weird rotation in Oakland? 4 pitchers going short with a long bullpen, I don't remember the specifics. His pitcher 8th bit. Those are all La Russa side tracks that he takes because he's earned some leeway from the general public. But instead of using that leeway for something interesting, like using Izzy and Kline where they'll help the team most instead of in roles defined by a statistic, or moving Vina out of the leadoff spot and replacing him with a player with a decent OPB. Or working his pitchers gently so Williams and Morris don't break down in the midst of a penant race.

The veil has fallen, I've had enough of La Russa. He's not helping anymore, he's hurting. I want out of Tonyville.

Tony seemed like a much better manager in Oakland. I wonder if Sandy Alderson had more control of the lineup than anyone let on?

Although I've linked to them before, I forgot to put Redbird Nation on my blog roll. I've corrected that oversight.

Jeff Weaver gave up hits to the first three batters today. He also walked one and allowed a sacrifice fly, all leading to two runs. The league is now batting .320 against Weaver; if he were a hitter, that BA would be fifth in the American League! I can't believe he's still getting starts for the Yankees. I will be very surprised if he's back next year.

Jon Weisman at Dodger Thoughts has his thoughts on a Tracy-Evans split here. I thought my east coast bias had caused me to miss this, but it appears to have taken Jon by surprise also.

The Eddie Kranepool Society is keeping tabs on the "We've fallen and we can't get up," pennant race. :-)

A nice pitching matchup in Miami tonight as the Braves Russ Ortiz goes for his 20th win against rookie sensation Dontrelle Willis. What's interesting about Ortiz is that he's maintained his winning percentage despite having his ERA go up by a run since the all-star break. Nothing like a strong offense to help a pitcher to a good record. The Braves magic number against the Marlins is six, and the Marlins have been gaining ground lately. It's hard to imagine Florida catching Atlanta at this point, but strange things do happen.

St. Louis and Houston continue their series, with the Cardinals looking more and more like they are on the ropes. Matt Morris faces Roy Oswalt. Morris has been great since returning from the DL, posting an 0.96 ERA in four starts and walking only six in 28 innings. Houston's been on a bit of an offensive roll, averaging 6.5 runs per game over their last 17 contests. They probably should have saved some of their 14 runs scored last night for today. :-)

Two hot pitchers meet in Montreal as Steve Trachsel takes the mound against Javier Vazquez. They have the 6th and 7th best ERA's since 8/1; Trachsel is at 1.91, Vazquez 2.07 (min 35 IP). The best is Wilson Alvarez (1.29) who started the year with a minor league contract and threw a complete game shutout for the Dodgers last night. Welcome back, Wilson!

Having written this column for almost two baseball seasons, I was thinking of trying to join the Baseball Writers Association of America. I went looking for information on the subject, and found this:

You have to be a reporter, editor, or columnist who covers baseball. You can't work for an internet-only outlet. You join after being nominated by an existing member and then being evaluated by the membership committee.

Internet discrimination! How is the writing of bloggers different than the writing of baseball columnists? They have a deadline and I don't? The get paid and I don't? How does that determine the quality of work?

The BBWAA has a nomination and evaluation process. So first, you have to get a member to like your work enough to nominate you. Then you have to go through peer review. One would think at that point only the best writers would be a member of the organization. I don't know if this blog could get past all that, but I know I'd like to try. And there are many other fine baseball writers on the internet who deserve the chance.

Major league baseball has a history of being slow to adapt to new technologies. They were slow to embrace radio and television, even though these both brought many new fans and much wealth to the sport. With all the negative things I write about Bud Selig, under his management MLB has embraced the internet, first with radio broadcasts and now television broadcasts. The writers, however, seem to be stuck in the old mode; afraid of new technology that might rob them of readers, when it fact it will help make all baseball writing better. I hope there are some BBWAA writers seeing this. I urge you to change the rule and give the talented internet writers a chance to proved themselves.

Of course, we could always form the IBWAA!

Back in June I posted runs created against the defense. Basically, I took the most current runs created formula STATS has, took out stats that are attributable to the pitcher, (HR, BB, HBP, K), and figured runs created per 27 defensive outs. Here's the chart through yesterday:

Team	Runs Created Against Defense
Mariners	2.84
Dodgers	2.86
Athletics	2.88
Giants	3.18
Devil Rays	3.29
Angels	3.32
Astros	3.36
White Sox	3.38
Indians	3.38
Braves	3.39
Cubs	3.41
Phillies	3.44
Tigers	3.52
Expos	3.52
Pirates	3.58
Padres	3.66
Cardinals	3.77
Diamondbacks	3.77
Twins	3.77
Mets	3.79
Marlins	3.82
Royals	3.84
Brewers	3.87
Orioles	3.91
Reds	3.94
Rockies	4.03
Blue Jays	4.07
Red Sox	4.14
Yankees	4.23
Rangers	4.37

It looks like the Giants have really improved their defense. They wee ranked 14th in early June, 4th today. The White Sox having a better defense than the Twins was not an anomoly. I think most people would assume the Twins are the better defensive team, but it's just not true. So much for having a great defensive first baseman. The AL East is a waste land. It makes me wonder if these teams have good offenses because they play each other so often. (I just checked, and the Red Sox and Yankees scored higher outside of the division, the Blue Jays score the same in or out). There's lots of room for improvement here. Bernie Williams is 35 today. At this point, I think Matsui is the better centerfielder. It's time to switch the two of them in the outfield. The west coast, on the other hand, is all defense. Five of the top six teams border the Pacific Ocean. I haven't taken park effects into account, so that may be helping these teams. I welcome any comments on this stat.

The Mariners Weblog has a link to the MLB tie-breaker rules.

Idiots Write About Sports think Gary Sheffield should win the Cy Young award, and they make a convincing argument!

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2187	2195
Attendance	27843	28258

Nice comeback by the Marlins tonight. The bullpen went 8 1/3 innings, allowing one run to keep the team in the game. Then, the offense was able to get to the Smoltz-less bullpen. Jaret Wright blew the save, and Ray King lost the game. Since Smoltz went down, the Braves pen is 1-3 with a 4.47 ERA, although this was the first save they have blown. The Marlins now have a 1 1/2 game lead over the Phillies, and their magic number for clinching the wild card is 14.

Ryan Drese got the short end of the stick tonight. He left the game in the seventh with one out, a three run lead, and the bases loaded. Ron Mahay game in, got Jose Guillen to line out, then allowed two hits and a walk to bring in five runs. The A's go on to win 9-3. Mahay got charged with two of the runs, which sent his ERA to 1.38 to 1.83.

The Tigers shut out the Royals 3-0. Mike Maroth went six innings for the win. It was the 5th shutout of the year for the Tigers, vs. 15 times that opponents have shut them down. As the Twins and White Sox are both losing, the Royals have blown a huge chance to gain ground.

Do you think the Orioles and Blue Jays want the season to be over? They played their game tonight in 2 hours and 3 minutes, a 4-2 victory by the Jays. Josh Tower went to 6-1, striking out 9 in 7 2/3 innings. At one point, both teams looked like contenders, but now their seasons are for the birds. :-)

The Yankees pretty much had their way with Victor Zambrano tonight. They knocked him around for 11 hits in less than five innings. Jason Giambi is 4 for 4 tonight with his 37th HR and 20th double. Looks like the slump is over. And despite the slump, when I looked at win shares today, he's still in the top five.

Kip Wells is doing a good job of shutting down the Phillies tonight in Pittsburgh. In the top of the 7th, he's already struck out 7. The Pirates lead 5-1, despite going 1 for 7 with runners in scoring position! They have three doubles and a solo HR, so I guess they are scoring runners from first.

Update: Wells has loaded the bases with two out in the 7th. Reboulet is coming in to relieve Kip.

The Cardinals-Astros game is going according to script. Williams is struggling, and Miller has a no-hitter through three. With a double, a run and an RBI, Wade has more hits, and runs than the Cardinals tonight.

Brad Penny was not good tonight, giving up three runs and facing only five batters. Turns out he was injured and had to leave the game. Rick Helling has only allowed 1 hit in relief, but Mike Hampton is shutting out the Marlins through 3 2/3 innings.

Mike Maroth does not appear to want that 21st loss. He has a shutout through the 6th inning, even though he's throwing a lot of pitches for balls (only 53 strikes in 93 pitches). The Royals really need a win. If they can't beat the losingest pitcher in the game, maybe they don't deserve to go to the playoffs.

Carl Everett just hit a solo HR at Fenway to cut the Red Sox lead to 4-2. You know that has to make Carl happy. Suppan has given up three hits, all for extra bases. Suppan has now given up 44 hits as a Red Sox pitcher, 26 for extra bases.

Update: Jose Valentin goes deep in the same inning. That makes it 27 extra base hits of 45 hits allowed for Suppan.

It seems there are a lot more baseball blogs out there than football blogs. Jay Jaffe links to an article at Salon about this very subject.

I found this link through West 116th St. It inspired Irina Paley to document her emotional attachments to baseball. My favorite paragraphs:

But for me, as with most things, this all comes down to math. In my opinion, the most difficult thing that anyone can ever do physically is hit a baseball with a bat. And therefore, baseball is a game of unlikely occurrences - and I completely revel in that. Baseball-Almanac has a great page, called Fabulous Feats, where they list some of the most unlikely events to ever occur - unassisted triple plays, six runs in one game, 4 home runs in one game, perfect games, and my favorite, 2 grand slams in one game! The improbability of a home run is already great, but make it a home run with bases loaded! But for that to occur twice in one game - to me that's just mind blowing. I go into a similar mental fit when it comes to a perfect game - a perfect game is already a victory over probability, but a perfect game during a World Series is certainly something for the pages of a religious text, not Sports Illustrated.

I see events like that as rare examples of man's triumph over math. Moments like that are not only necessary to nourish human nature by providing reassurance that even the most improbable can occur, but also to nourish the imagination of every math student who's ever opened a probability text book.

Victory over probability! Triumph over math! As I commented back in June:

He's right about the action in football and basketball being enticing. On the other hand, I find the unpredictability of baseball much more interesting. How often does the 12th man on the bench in basketball make the game winning shot? Never. Not 1 in 100, not 1 in 1000. Never. Yet Luis Sojo is a World Series hero. How many action sports would give David Eckstein a chance to be a star? Where else can the suspense build for minutes while a hitter fouls off pitch after pitch?

There's one other reason that there are more baseball blogs than football blogs. People care about football because they bet on football. People care about baseball because they love the game. So unless you are going to write about a better way to bet, football fans aren't going to read your blog. But baseball fans want to argue about Pujols and Bonds, about Jeter and Garciaparra, about the Phillies and the Marlins, about Detroit and Tampa Bay! So every day there is something new to write about, something we haven't seen before, or something we haven't seen for 20 years. For baseball bloggers, it's a labor of love.

A wild one at Wrigley. Kerry Wood didn't pitch that great, but he was effective. He went six innings and only allowed one run; but he walked four and hit two batters. He threw 114 pitches so he did not come out for the 7th, but left with a 5-1 lead. Guthrie and Alfonseca then proceeded to give up five runs and blow the win for Wood. The Cubs came back with two in the bottom of the 7th to take the lead back. Borowski comes on in the ninth, allows two baserunners and strikes out two to get the save. A good win for the Cubs, although it was tougher than it had to be.

Jordan Ellel writes about this post:

I agree with the argument that win shares can be used in order to determine who has been more valuable, but I think a part of this argument must also go to the fact of the VALUE of the player. I am usually the last to make an argument like this (I’m a superior stats kind of MVP voter), but in terms of Bonds, it might be informative to look up the record of the Giants with Bonds in the line-up as opposed to without Bonds in the line-up.

The Giants are 75-41 with Bonds, 13-15 without him. I consider any game Bonds plays, even if it's only a pinch hitting assignment. The Cardinals are 74-68 with Pujols, 2-3 without him. I'm not sure it really advances the argument; I've never bought into the most valuable to the team theory of MVPs. There's no doubt that Bonds is the better hitter, but you have to play to win. And Pujols has contributed more to his teams wins than Bonds has.

There's a lot of good teams playing bad teams today. If you want to be a spoiler, this is it. Against that, three games stand out.

The Chicago White Sox visit Fenway Park to take on the Red Sox. The White Sox remain tied for the AL Central lead after splitting with the Twins. They'll send Dan Wright against Jeff Suppan. Since the All-Star break, these two offenses have been very evenly matched:

Post All-Star Break	Boston Red Sox	Chicago White Sox
Games	52	52
Runs	313	311
Batting Average	.290	.294
On Base Average	.367	.358
Slugging Percentage	.504	.517
OPS	.876	.870

The Red Sox have the most runs scored in the AL (tied with the Braves) since the break. The White Sox are next. Given the pitchers on the mound, I suspect a high scoring game.

The Atlanta Braves head south to Miami to take on the Flordia Marlins. The resurgent Mike Hampton takes on Brad Penny. Hampton is one of the many nice comeback stories this year; I thought he was threw, but he's finishing the year very strongly. The Marlins have a 1/2 game lead on the Phillies, so their job is similar to the one Philadelphia had earlier in the week; show you can play with Atlanta, and stay in the wild card race. The Phillies split. The Marlins will want to take 2 out of 3 this weekend. The Braves, with 10 games with the Phillies and Marlins down the stretch, will be playing both division champions and spoiler at the same time.

St. Louis also travels south, this time to Houston as they send their ace, Woody Williams against the Astros' Wade Miller. Miller has gotten his act together after a rough start. He was 7-10 with a 4.83 ERA through July, but has rebounded to go 5-2 with a 2.09 ERA since. Williams, on the other hand, has posted a 5.47 ERA over his last five starts. The Cubs, as they play Cincinnati, will be hoping for a St. Louis sweep so they can move into first place.

And finally, for those of you who like tragedy, Mike Maroth will try to not become the first person since 1974 to lose 21 games in a season. That year, Steve Rogers, Randy Jones and Bill Bonham all lost 22, and Mickey Lolich lost 21. Maroth faces Paul Abbott and the KC Royals, as the Royals try to hang in the AL Central race.

Enjoy!

I was just looking at the NL win share leaders, updated through Sept. 10, and see that Pujols has taken a clear lead over Bonds. It's a perfect example of how win shares can help clarify an MVP argument. Bond is clearly having a superior offensive season based on the averages. But Pujols has been there every day. Even without his father's death, Bonds missed a lot of playing time this year. Before, there was no clear way of measuring if Bonds, playing 26 fewer games, could be more valuable than Pujols playing every day. Now we know.

Pujols leads Bonds 39.14 to 37.20. Which just goes to show how amazing Bonds' season is. He's created almost as many wins in 26 fewer games. But I really believe you have to play to win. That was my argument against Pedro Martinez in 1999; he just didn't pitch enough to win the award (however, no one should have left him off the ballot, either). And it's the same this year. Bonds is the best hitter in the league, but Pujols is damn close and plays everyday. Bonds can catch up in two weeks, but right now, I'd vote for Albert.

The Dodgers got beat by the B-Team last night. Mark Gonzalez fills us in:

The Diamondbacks reached into their bag of reserves Thursday night to seize a resourceful 2-0 win over Los Angeles.

Rookie left-hander Chris Capuano, replacing injured Curt Schilling, pitched seven shutout innings.

Left fielder Danny Bautista, starting in place of slugger Luis Gonzalez, hit two doubles and robbed Adrian Beltre of a home run in the seventh.

And pinch-hitters Matt Kata and Carlos Baerga delivered RBIs in the bottom of the seventh that hurt the Dodgers' playoff chances.

The Dodger offense managed to put five runners on base all night; four by hits, one hit by pitch. They did not draw one walk against emergency starter Capuano, despite the fact that he came into the game having walked eight in 20 1/3 innings. Izturis was batting first! Why? Izturis has a sub .300 OBA against all sides of pitchers. I suspect that if you told him, "fast ball down the middle," he still couldn't get on base 30% of the time. :-) That's two nights in a row Tracy has not given his team their best chance of winning. It's looking more and more like the wild card will be a battle just between the Phillies and the Marlins.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2172	2180
Attendance	27830	28275

I think you all know this, but every once in a while someone says that the Tigers are threatening the record for worst record. That's not true. I've always taken worst record to mean lowest winning percentage. In the modern era (1900 on), that belongs to the 1916 Philadelphia A's. They were 36 and 117, a .235 winning percentage. The Tigers won't fall that low. What the Tigers are going for is the most losses in a season in the modern era. That's the 120 the 1962 Mets lost. The all-time record is 134 by the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, although there are a lot of reasons not to think that's a legitimate record, since they really weren't a legitimate team.

Update: Tigers lose. They are now 37-108.
They are losing tonight, and if that holds up, their 108 losses will be tied for 20th since 1900.

Greg Maddux was singled to death by the Phillies tonight. He allowed 12 hits in 3 2/3 innings. One was a HR by Chase Utley, but all the other were singles, leading to seven runs. It's the third time this year Maddux has given up 12 hits or more; it's the 12th time in his career. The Phillies lead 7-0 in the fourth.

Bill writes:

Today's Astro lineup raises an issue I've often wondered about. Every manager will take a night game followed by a day game as a cue to rest some regulars. This makes sense but what I don't understand is (a) resting three or four guys in the day game as opposed to one or two in the night game and one or two in the day game and (b) not taking into account who the opposing pitchers will be in the two games. Today, Jimy Williams has Kent, Ensberg and Biggio all sitting against the Brewers' ace. That doesn't strike me as a formula for winning the game. Only the Astros 3-4-5 hitters have OBP's over .310!

And in fact, the Astros lost the game, missing a chance to gain on both the Cubs and the Cardinals. Maybe Williams felt that Villone was good enough to shut down the Brewers. But probably Williams thinks, so they're tired, I'll rest them today, rather than thinking ahead and resting them last night.

The other thing is that ballplayers tend to party at night, so even if they sat out last night's game, they still might be tired for the day game. :-) But Bill raises a good point. I remember reading in an old Baseball Abstract that Earl Weaver would rest his regulars in the first game of a double header. That way, if he won the first game, he was much more likely to sweep because the opposition would rest regulars in the 2nd game. And he also gave himself a better chance at a split. But not many managers think like Earl.

Roy Halladay improved his Cy Young chances today, while Esteban Loaiza hurt his. Loaiza really only had one bad inning where the Twins were able to string some hits together. Otherwise, he pitched a good game, striking out nine through seven innings, walking only 1 and not allowing a HR. Most games, stats like that will get you a win.

Meanwhile, Halladay had an easy time with Tampa Bay. The Devil Rays didn't even have an AB with runners in scoring position. He was extremely efficient, using only 93 pitches to complete his 7th game of the year and pick up his 20th win. Loaiza still leads Halladay by 1/2 a run in ERA, and he's pitching against better opponents. And Tim Hudson is probably better than both of them. But Roy is making things interesting, and it will be a good argument at the end of the season.

The Twins did what they needed and split with the White Sox. It's been pointed out before that the Twins have a much easier schedule down the road than the White Sox, so staying close in their seven games head-to-head down the stretch favors the Twins winning the division.

And another thing that's working in their favor is Brad Radke pitching well. He allowed nine hits today, but spread them out so the only ones that hurt him with two solo HR. It's his 2nd complete game in his last four starts, and he's pitched well in four of his last five starts. With Milton returning to the staff, the Twins pitching is looking stronger for the stretch run.

The Brewers have gotten Ben Sheets three runs, and the Brewers lead 3-2 in the 6th. Sheets and Villone both have pitch counts in the 90's, so it looks like this game will be decided the the Houston and Milwaukee bullpens.

In San Juan, Prior and Ohka are both throwing shutouts through three innings. Each is throwing strikes. Ohka has thrown 31 of 47 for strikes, Prior 32 of 43. Prior has one of the three hits against Ohka, a double. He's now hitting .254 on the season while allowing a .226 BA.

Frank Thomas gave the White Sox a 1-0 lead in the first inning with his 40th HR of the year. It's the 5th forty HR season of his career, and his first since 2000. He's now six RBI away from his 10th 100 RBI season. Loaiza has retired the first six batters, striking out three.

Sterling Hitchcock had only allowed one HR in his first 19 innings as a Cardinal. The Rockies have taken him deep three times so far today for a 3-0 lead.

Update: Hitchcock gives up four HR in 3 1/3 innings. He's given up four HR in a game twice before, but never in such a short outing.

Craig Wilson just hit his 4th HR of the Pirates-Reds series, a solo shot to extend the Pirates lead to 2-0. It ties his career high of 16 set back in 2001. Wilson's numbers are now: .270 BA, .368 OBA and .532 slugging percentage. Those numbers aren't going to make him an all-star, but they are perfectly acceptable for a first baseman. Tino Martinez, when he was with the Yankees, only had one year when his averages were better than this, for example. Just goes to show how easy it is to find a good, cheap first baseman.

It's a good afternoon to play hooky. Lots of good games being played in the bright sunshine. Mark Prior faces Tomo Ohka in San Juan at 1:35 Eastern. I've raved about Prior's hot streak in this space before. The Cubs fell out of the division tie last night, and Prior gives them an excellent chance of at least keeping pace. The fans in Puerto Rico were very excited to have Sammy Sosa playing in their park, and this will be his last chance to homer in front of them.

While the Expos and Cubs are battling in the Caribbean, the Astros will be trying to maintain their Central division lead in the land of the Bud (Selig, that is). Ron Villone and Ben Sheets are scheduled to do battle. Sheets is coming off two decent starts against the Cubs, where he allowed three runs through seven innings in each, but was saddled with the loss, as the Brewers only scored 2 runs each time.

Action in the AL this afternoon, too, as the Twins and White Sox finish up their four game series. The Twins send Brad Radke to the mound against the White Sox' best pitcher, Esteban Loaiza. Radke has allowed 30 HR so far this year, the most since he allowed 40 in 1996, and the White Sox have hit the most off him, four. Loaiza has not allowed a HR by the Twins this year, and has only allowed 3 runs (2 earned) in 21 innings against Minnesota.

Sneak home early, or at least bring your headphones to work!

The Dodgers scored four runs last night, but lost because they gave up five runs in the 8th, all with two outs. Tom Martin got the first two outs of the inning, but then fell apart. He gave up a walk, a HR, a single and a hit batter before he was replaced by Paul Quantrill. It's the eighth inning with two out, the go-ahead run is at the plate, and whom do you go to? The set up man, of course.

Now, in this case, the set up man is Paul Quantrill, who's had a great year. But Gagne's BA allowed is 100 points lower; his OBA allowed is 90 points lower; his slugging allowed is 120 points lower. Here's where the bullpen by committee people make their case. Two outs, two on, up two runs is the time to put your best pitcher on the mound! Any way you look at it, Gagne is superior to Quantrill, and at this point, LA cannot afford to lose games. Gagne should have been on the mound.

Tracy was asked about this:

Closer Eric Gagne was sitting in the bullpen. Tracy was asked if he considered using Gagne, but he hadn't warmed up at that point.

"We had ample opportunities to put that inning down well before (Finley's home run) that and we didn't get it done,' Tracy said.

Tracy's job is to maximize his team's likelihood of winning. By saving Gagne for the ninth last night, the manager failed to do his job.

Small Sample Sizes: For what it's worth, opposition batters were 9 for 30 against Quantrill going into last night's game with runners in scoring position and two outs. Against Gagne, they were 1 for 21. Those are small sample sizes, so I don't put much stock in them. But managers base a lot of decisions on small sample sizes. They often make lineup changes based on how a batter has done against a pitcher in a few plate appearances. Well, Tracy should have anticipated Finley pinch hitting. Finley was 7 for 9 lifetime against Quantrill. He's 3 for 18 vs. Gagne.

When I started to think about this post, I was going to give Tracy a pass on this. But Gagne is so much better in every aspect of the game that he should have been in there. Often, when you look deeply at these things, you find pros and cons, but I can find no good reason for inserting Quantrill. Tracy blew it, and he blew it because he was not willing to go against accepted strategy.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2159	2168
Attendance	27864	28323

On the 2nd anniversary of 9/11, I want to extend my thanks to our soldiers and sailors in the US military. From my logs, I know there are many in the service who read this web site. You've done an outstanding job in difficult conditions. You've been professional, deadly and compassionate when and where each was needed. I'm proud of you and thankful for your service. Keep up the good work.

They are through three in Seattle, and both teams have combined for a total of three hits. The Mariners only have 1, but it was a double by Ichiro, and they were able to bring him around on two ground outs. The way the Mariners offense has been hitting lately, Pineiro may have to make that one run hold up for the win.

The Dodgers are up 3-0 on the Diamondbacks in the fourth. Ishii has only allowed 1 hit so far. If the Dodgers can just average four runs a game the rest of the way, they'll have a good shot at the wild card. With their superb pitching, they don't need to score many runs to win.

The Philadelphia Phillies lost to the Braves 4-2 to drop 1 game behind the Marlins in the wild card race. Horacio Ramirez pitched a fine game, striking out seven and walking none over seven innings. He did allow two HR, but both were solo shots.

Albert Pujols hit his 40th HR tonight, tieing him with Barry Bonds for the NL lead. It's his first 40 HR season, but hit probably won't be his last. Should be a good HR race down the stretch.

Matt Clement is outpitching Livan Hernandez so far tonight. Livan has been touched for two HR while Clement has not allowed a hit through three innings. Cubs keep rolling along with a 3-0 lead in the fourth.

It's Gary Knotts, not Don, on the mound for the Tigers tonight, and he's getting hammered by the Yankees, 5-0 after two innings. The Yankees have put six runners on base, and five of them have scored.

The Marlins defeated the Mets 7-3 this afternoon to guarantee they will remain in first place in the wild card chase. My good friend Jim Storer pointed out to me that Mark Redmond, who is a terrible hitter, was batting third today because Jack McKeon was resting I-Rod, and McKeon likes to stick subs in the same place in the lineup. I remember John McNamara used to do this with the Red Sox. If Wade Boggs sat out, he'd lead off with Ed Romero. I guess major league hitters can't change places in the batting order and still hit.

Anyway, later in the game, McKeon needed to pinch hit for Redmond after he was hit by the pitch, so he uses Ivan Rodriguez as the pinch runner! Now, rosters are expanded, so I assume Jack has plenty of bodies on the bench, some who haven't spent 13 years behind the plate. One might think that a really fast, young player would be a better pinch runner. But instead, I assume Jack wanted to conserve the roster, and Ivan made his first pinch running appearance of his major league career! He also got an AB and used it to hit a HR.

McKeon has this team playing very well, but I have to wonder about the above moves.

Ken Stagg sends these:

Ty Cobb (as in Corn on the)
Joe "Ducky" Medwick
Sugar Cain 
Jack Coffey 
Delos Drake

Jeff Conine hit his first HR since returning to the Marlins to tie the Mets at 2. Conine's been a bit of a dissapointment so far. He has 7 hits in 10 games, and now has four RBI. I think the Marlins were looking for something closer to what Lowell was hitting.

Christian Ruzich pens an article at Baseball Prospectus on the tie-breaking playoff possibilities. One thing I didn't realize is that a three-way tie between division winners and a wild card team now results in a two game playoff instead of one.

Christian does not cover the possibility of a four way tie between NY, Seattle, Oakland and Boston. In that case, there would be a division playoff on day 1, and the losers would play a wild card playoff on day 2.

Correction: I had a wrong statement in the original post about the 1995 playoff. I've removed the incorrect statement.

I have the Marlins-Mets game on TV, and the NY announcers are debating the Preston Wilson-Juan Pierre trade. Healy and Kiner think the Rockies got the better of the deal. The third announcer (I'm not sure who it is) isn't so sure. What gets me is that they are comparing Wilson's RBI to Pierre's stolen bases. Yes, SB aren't as important as RBI, but they ignore that Pierre also has 91 runs scored, and his 77% success rate at stealing helps that a little. Plus, Wilson plays in a great offensive park, and Pierre plays in a pitcher's dream. So, I looked at win shares, and through Sept. 7, Wilson has 19 and Pierre has 18. Seems like a pretty even trade to me.

Yesterday and today, I mistakenly noted that last night's appearance by Justin Duchscherer was his major league debut. He pitched for Texas in 2001. Scott Jeffries caught the error and adds some insight:

Not to be too particular but you stated that Justin Duchscherer was making his ML debut last night against the Angels. Though he was making his 2003 debut and organization debut he actually made two starts for the Rangers in 2001 going 1-1 with a 12.27 ERA. The Rangers got him from the Red Sox that same year in exchange for Doug Mirabelli. In spring training of 2002, John Hart traded Duchscherer to the A's for reliever Luis Viscaino. The Rangers traded Vizcaino less than a week later to the Brewers for Juan Pena because they couldn't guarantee Vizcaino a major league roster spot. Pena flopped and is no longer in the Rangers system, while Vizcaino recorded an excellent 2002 campaign for the Brewers. All around, this was one of Hart's worst moments as the Rangers GM.

For those of you around this afternoon, Pedro Martinez faces Jason Johnson in Baltimore. Johnson is currenty in the pitches well but doesn't win category. Over his last seven starts, he's 2-1 despite a pretty good 3.20 ERA. He's only had 14 runs scored, however, when he's been in the game. He's also pitched well against the Red Sox in his career, going 4-4 with a low 3.04 ERA.

The big afternoon game in the NL pits the Marlins against the Mets. The struggling Mark Redman faces Jae Wong Seo. The Marlins are doing fine since the loss of Mike Lowell, going 8-2 in his absence. The pitching has been great, only allowing 21 runs since Lowell hit the DL.

The Twins have now placed themselves in a must win situation. Despite the disaprity in schedules, the Twins can't afford to fall too far behind the White Sox. They'll send one of their best to the mound, Johan Santana. The White Sox counter with Jon Garland. Magglio Ordonez and Carlos Lee are both 4 for 11 against Santana, and Ordonez has 2 HR.

Livan Hernandez goes for his 16th win tonight against the Cubs. Nice turnaround story here after 16 losses last season. Sammy Sosa has six HR against Hernandez; that's the most Livan has given up to any batter. Matt Clement will twirl for the Cubs tonight.

A nice pitching matchup out west as Kazuhisa Ishii and the Dodgers face Brandon Webb and the Diamondbacks. Webb still looks like the rookie of the year to me, and the Dodgers are hanging in the wild card race.

Enjoy!

Irina Paley has a new blog, West 116th St. She's writing about baseball and the Yankees (and anything else that's on her mind). Stop by and say hello.

My post on suggestions for an all-food team brought in a number of suggestions so far. Steve Timberlake sends the meat group with Bob Veale, Ray Lamb and Bob Moose. Dan Birnbaum sends his favorite, Mark Lemongello. And Jen Van Dijk sends a long list:

Catfish Hunter
Chili Davis
Candy Maldonaldo
Chick Hafey
Goose Gossage
Cookie Lavagetto
P.Astactio (Okay that one is just sad)
Oyster Burns
Soup Campbell
Sweetbreads Bailey

Keep them coming!

Update: Josh Getman sends quite a few:

Pepper Martin

Pie Traynor

FP Santangelo

Joe Torre (as in coffee, get it!)

and, of course,

Bab(y)e Ruth


(Bonus - For the preschool set: Boog Powell)

Mark "the Bird" Fidrych

Steve Gravy...er...Garvey

Zack Wheat

Preacher Roe

Kazuhiro Sasaki

Nate Cornejo

Tim Crabtree

Bert Hogg

Butch Wynegar

Two very different results for the these two pitchers making their ML debuts. Bootcheck got booted by the A's, giving up three HR in 3 1/3 innings, along with eight runs. The Angels bullpen pitched well in relief, however, tossing 4 2/3 innings of 1 hit, no-run ball (although Greg Jones allowed both his inherited runners to score).

Justin Duchscherer was just what the A's wanted. He pitched seven shutout innings, striking out six and walking only two. Because the A's stress such things as strikeouts and walks in their minor league system, they were able to start someone like Duchscherer, who has a decent chance of being successful. Compare this to the Twins, who had to start Pulido last night. The real question that should have been asked by Rozner in the previous post is "Why do the Twins have Pulido instead of Duchscherer?" instead of why they have Mauer instead of Prior.

Correction: Duchscherer made is ML debut in 2001 for the Texas Rangers.

Barry Rozner of the Daily Herald chides the Twins for not going for Mark Prior in the draft:

It was well known in baseball circles prior to the 2001 draft that the Twins couldn't afford Prior's $10 million asking price, so they never entered negotiations with the USC star and instead took catcher Joe Mauer with the No. 1 pick, handing the Cubs the gift of a lifetime at No. 2.

It's the kind of unpleasantness that leaves a GM tossing and turning at night, pondering the nightmare of a small-market budget.

Still, Ryan is too loyal to his owner and too practical a man to worry about things he can't change, so he insists now that he got the man he wanted in that draft.

"We got a terrific, left-handed hitting catcher, and they're extremely valuable and hard to find,'' Ryan said of the 20-year-old Mauer, who had a big year in Double-A. "Five years from now I think we'll better be able to discuss whether it was a good choice for us.''

I'm on Ryan's side here. I saw Mauer play last week, and loved his approach to hitting. He's eaten up every level of the minor leagues in which he's played. I'm surprised that given the talent the Twins have developed in the minor league system that Pulido was the best they could find, but to think that the Twins made a mistake taking Mauer over Prior is ridiculous.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2144	2152
Attendance	27897	28360

With two out in the ninth, Bagwell walks, Kent singles him to third and Berkman doubles him home. Astros lead the Brewers 7-6 in the top of the ninth.

The Phillies have now scored 18 runs against the Braves tonight. It's the 2nd time this year the Braves have allowed 18 or more runs in a game; it had only happend four times in the 1990's.

Astros come back to tie the Brewers on a three-run HR by Jose Vizcaino off Luis Vizcaino. It's the first HR ever hit by one Vizcaino off another. :-)

Joe Borowski gave the Cubs faithful a scare as he allowed a solo HR in the bottom of the ninth, but Chicago held on for a 4-3 win. With the Astros losing 6-3 in the 7th, the Cubs could be looking at sole possesion of first in the morning.

Tom Glavine allowed 1 run over seven innings and left the game with a 1-1 tie. David Weathers, however, could not keep the fish on the hook as they scored two in the top of the 9th. Urbina and Looper combined to win and save the game.

Urbina now has a 0.92 ERA since joining the Marlins, and opposition batters are hitting just .188 against him.

The Indians figured out Jimmy Gobble in the the 6th inning. A two out error led to five runs, capped by a three-run HR by Victor Martinez. The Indians lead 6-0 in the 7th.

The Houston Astros have scored three runs tonight despite being 0 for 7 with runners in scoring position. They had a two run HR with a man on first, and scored on an error with a man on third. It's good to hit well with men in scoring position, but it's not the only way to drive get runs across. The Brewers and Astros are tied at three in the 6th.

Jimmy Gobble of the KC Royals has only given up one hit through five innings. Unfortunately for him, it was a triple to Coco Crisp (both of course would be on the all food team). Crisp then came around to score on a Casey Blake sac fly. Jason Davis of the Indians has allowed five hits and two walks, but also induced two DP's to take some pressure off. Cleveland leads 1-0 in the fifth.

All food team:
Jimmy Gobble
Coco Crisp
Tim Salmon
Fred "Chicken" Stanley
Billy Bean
Bake McBride
Darryl Strawberry
Chet & Bob Lemon
Peaches Graham (2 for 1!)

If you think of any others, send them in!

I just saw Torii Hunter make a bad play. Joe Crede hit a ball to deep center, to the warning track. Hunter went back, reached out, but appear to shy away from the ball at the last minute and it dropped for a double. It scored a run, and moved a runner to third who then scored on a sac fly. It would have been a good play if Hunter had made it, but it's the kind of ball you expect a good CF to catch. White Sox lead 2-0.

See the ball, hit the ball. That appears to be Randall Simon's motto. He's three for three with an RBI tonight, making him 19 for 60 with 17 RBI in 19 games since joing the Cubs. He's only drawn 1 walk, but he's also only struck out five times.

David Ortiz has homered again. That's 10 HR and 26 RBI in his last 18 games.

Shane Reynolds did not have his good stuff tonight. He only got five outs as he gave up seven runs in two innings. Not to be outdone, Trey Hodges came in to relieve and gave up a grand slam to Tomas Perez. It's the first grand slam of his career.

Tom Glavine continues to pitch well in the 2nd half. Through five innings tonight, he's only allowed 3 hits and no runs to the Marlins. The Marlins actually do very well against lefties; with a 22-11 record when the opposition starts a lefty, they have the 5th best winning percentage in the majors. When Glavine is throwing well, however, he tend to get righties out, and the Marlins only have one left in the lineup tonight. That's Juan Pierre, and he has one of the Marlins three hits.

Doug Waechter is throwing strikes tonight, 40 of 58 pitches. Unfortunately, the Blue Jays are hitting them. He's given up seven hits and four runs. Still I like the fact that he's not afraid to pitch to the hitters, and he does have four K's as well.

I know it's the Tigers, but Jose Contreras is pitching well tonight. He has six strikeouts through four innings and has only allowed 2 hits.

Giambi isn't in the lineup tonight. That's strange when he seemed to be coming out of his slump yesterday. I wonder if he's hurt?

Leading the field again is the Twins-White Sox game. Mark Buehrle will take the mound against Carlos Pulido. I understand Buehrle getting the start since the Twins have struggled when a lefty has started against them. But Pulido went nine years between ML appearances. With Reed and Mays hurt (although Reed is off the DL) and Balfour throwing lots of ball fours, the Twins must think Pulido is their best option in the middle of a pennant race. Good luck to him.

I don't know how often this happens, but two pitcher are making their ML debuts against each other tonight in Oakland. Chris Bootcheck of the Anaheim Angels will face Justin Duchscherer (two ch's, two er's). Duchscherer looks like he's been pushed from pillar to post in his minor league career. But he strikes batters out and doesn't walk many, and that's what Billy Beane likes. I wonder if he looks like a ball player?

Correction: Duchscherer made his ML debut for Texas in 2001.

The best pitching matchup in the NL tonigt is in NY, wheere Carl Pavano of the Marlins and Tom Glavine of the Mets have been pitching well as of late. Both are 2-1 over their last five games with sub-3.00 ERAs. Glavine has only given up 1 HR since the start of August.

Enjoy!

The Cub Reporter has the Cubs pitching rotation for the remainder of the season.

Only two games today do not involve playoff contenders. Toronto visits Tampa Bay and sends Cory Lidle against Doug Waechter. Waechter has been real impressive so far, appearing in two games, winning them both, and pitching a complete game 2-hit shutout in his first start. He's allowed four hits in 11 1/3 innings while striking out 10. Toronto's offense might be a bit tougher than Seattle's, however.

The other non-contender game takes place in Pittsburgh, where the Cincinnati Reds send Josh Hall to face Salomon Torres. The Red have fallen behind the Brewers in the NL Central and are looking to finish last for the first time since 1983.

With four good offensive games in a row, the Dodgers have blown past the Detroit Tigers, and now are 29th rather than 30th in runs scored. Shawn Green has homered in three straight games. Before I get too excited about this, however, the last four games have been in Colorado and Arizona, two pretty good hitters parks. If they can sustain this after they return to the low-lands of the California coast, they have a good shot at the wild card.

The Baseball Crank has an excellent post on the 75th anniversary of a big series between the A's and Yankees during the 1928 AL season.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2129	2136
Attendance	27933	28407

Great pitching duel in NY as the Marlins have been holding on to a 1-run lead. They've scored one in the ninth so far to give themselves a 2-0 cushion. With the Phillies losing, Florida could be tied for the wild card again.

The Red Sox bullpen has blown apart in the 7th. Timlin, Embree and Williamson have combined to get 1 out and give up four runs, to bring the Orioles back to a 9-8 lead.

After a rough first, Russ Ortiz has settled down and has not allowed a run since. Meanwhile, the Braves have chipped away at Millwood (Chipper has two hits :-)) to take a 5-4 lead in the top of the 6th. Furcal, Sheffield and Fick also have two hits for the Braves. Oritz has allowed a total of three hits so far.

Jeff Bagwell has gone deep tonight, a two-run shot to give the Astros a 5-0 lead over the Brewers. It's his 5th HR in ten game against the Brewers this year, the most HR he has against any club in 2003.

The Twins come back in the top of the 2nd with two runs of their own. Hunter and Pierzynski each had an RBI.

Craig Wilson has two HR tonight to help the Pirates to a 5-1 lead over the Cincinnati Reds. It's Wilson's third multi-HR game of his career, and the 2nd in less than a month. He went deep twice against the Cardinals on 8/13.

In the showcase of good trades, Shannon Stewart and Roberto Alomar each made outs leading off the first, but Carl Everett delivered a two-out single to drive in the first run for the White Sox. Sox now have the bases loaded with 2 out in the first and lead 1-0.

Update: Jose Valentin bloops a single into center to drive in two more. 3-0 White Sox in the bottom of the first. Valentin now has 25 RBI, equalling his total from last year.

Update: Bases loaded again in the bottom of the first, #9 hitter Miguel Olivo doubles in two more to make it 5-0. He's 3 for 6 with the bases loaded this year, with nine RBI.

In looking at the Twins lineup for tonight's game, I'm surprised to see Corey Koskie and his .390 OBA batting 7th, while Denny Hocking and his .316 OBA bat 2nd. A similar thing is going on in the Red Sox game, where Bill Mueller and his .396 OBA bat 8th, and Todd Walker and his .323 OBA bat 2nd. Are we still in the Ralph Houk mode, where second basemen have to bat at the top of the lineup?

Steve Trachsel is in one of his hot streaks. He's only allowed 1 hit through four innings tonight, but that one hit was a HR by Alex Gonzalez. Trachsel has also struck out five. Josh Beckett has also allowed 1 hit through three innings.

Mike Lieberthal hit a three-run HR in the first inning off Russ Ortiz to give the Phillies a 4-0 lead. With a .324 BA and a .388 OBA, Lieberthal is heading for career highs in both those categories. He seems to have lost the HR power than he showed in 1999, but he's made up for it by getting on base more.

The Braves continue to handle Millwood. They've scored 2 in the first so far to cut the lead in half.

The Yankees are leading the Toronto Blue Jays 8-3 in the top of the sixth. The Yankees have 10 hits and four walks; all but one of the hits are singles (Matsui hit his 40th double). The 1-4 hitters have been on base 11 times in 16 plate appearances, leading to five RBI for the 5-7 hitters. The question now, is the collective slump over, or is it just Kelvim Escobar?

Update: Yankees win 9-3. Giambi was 2 for 3 with 2 walks. It's his first multi-hit game since 8/16. Felix Heredia went 1 1/3 innings in relief. He's allowed 1 earned run in six innings since joining the Yankees, and the opposition is hitting only .190 against him. A small sample, but an encouraging one for what's been a shaky bullpen.

Michele lost her bet, but it seems her nice comment about the Sox was not that nice. :-)

As you can see from the previous post, Minnesota at Chicago is the most important game on the list. Kyle Lohse will face Bartolo Colon. I think the showcase will be on the mid-season additions. These teams did the best trading before the deadline, and it will be fun to watch what Alomar, Everett and Stewart do in this series.

In the NL, the Phillies phly to Atlanta. Kevin Millwood, the former Brave, takes on his replacement, Russ Ortiz. Both have good record and ERAs, but Millwood has been pitching better as of late (2.83 ERA vs. 5.28 over their last five starts). Millwood has not pitched well against his former team, however, going 0-2 with a 6.75 ERA. It's an important game for the Phillies for two reasons.

1. The Marlins are playing the Mets.


2. The Phillies would like to know they can beat the best team in the NL.

The Phillies are 7-5 vs. the Braves this year. A strong showing at end of the season against the Braves should give the Phillies a boost if they make the playoffs.

Enjoy!

Aaron's Baseball Blog has moved to http://www.aarongleeman.com/. Update your bookmarks.

I was going to write a post about the upcoming White Sox-Twins series, but Aaron has done it already. Just note that the two teams have seven games against each other over the next week and a half. Otherwise, the Twins are playing the bottom of the AL Central, while the White Sox play the Yankees, Red Sox and Royals. This, as Aaron points out, gives the Twins the advantage, so the Twins only have to split with the White Sox and the schedule will take care of the rest. So it's incumbent upon the White Sox to win five of the seven games against the Twins.

The other thing Aaron notes is that the White Sox and Twins have the best record in the AL (actually, it's the majors) since the break. Given the relative weakness of the four other playoff contenders lately, I'm not sure that whoever emerges victorious from this Central collision won't be the favorite going into October. After all, what if Chicago wins the Central by beating the Yankees and Red Sox? If that happens look for the White Sox bandwagon to start filling up.

Peter Gammons has an excellent column over at ESPN.com on the pennant races and how they are more interesting because all teams have flaws this year. I agree. Usually at this point the the American league we pretty much know who is going to the playoffs. But you have two distinct races involving seven teams, and at this point, I would not dare to pick the four that will be in at the end. Although the NL is a little more clear, the Central and Wild Card are up for grabs, although the wild card this morning is looking more like a battle between the Phillies and Marlins than the eight way scrum of a week ago.

The part of the article I like the most, however, is Beane and Baird talking about hitting and pitching today:

Watching the Angels outhit the Yankees, Twins and Giants last season, and watching what magnificent offensive teams like the Braves, Cardinals, Red Sox and Yankees do to opposing pitchers, has raised another criticism -- that pitching is simply dreadful. Two American League general managers think that's not the case. "I actually think there's a lot of really good young pitching coming along today in both leagues, a new cycle," Oakland's Billy Beane said. "The problem is that hitters have improved so much the pitching numbers don't show it."

"I would agree that there's not enough pitching," Kansas City's Allard Baird said, "but there isn't enough good pitching to contain all the improvements in offense throughout the game. Twenty years ago, the theory on hitting was to be aggressive, swing the bat and that it couldn't be taught. That's completely changed.

"Hitting is being taught today, better than ever before," Baird said. "Watch the approaches many hitters take today. They're taught to go deep in the count, to get the pitch they can handle, and more and more hitters have learned to not be afraid to hit with two out. The game is so much more aware of on-base percentage than years ago, it isn't funny. Look how well so many hitters can take the ball out over the plate and put it in play hard. Hitters now have video, they are schooled in pitch recognition and visual training, they are bigger and stronger and able to manipulate the bat better than ever. The bats are better, lighter, better-balanced, specifically made for individual hitters."

While the league on-base percentages don't show any real difference from 1989 to 1995 to 2003, it is clear to anyone who watches games that, as Beane says, "baseball has realized that one of the reasons Ted Williams was regarded as the greatest hitter of his time is that he realized all this. What we see today is the Williams-ization of baseball, and that's going to make a lot of good pitchers look mediocre.

"The game is all about control of the 17-inch triangle," Beane said. "Hitters and pitchers. A couple of years ago we broke down every pitch in our games, and we found that Jason Giambi and Edgar Martinez really only hit in half the strike area, never outside it. The great pitchers like Pedro Martinez and Tim Hudson dominate in the strike zone because they throw in it consistently early in counts, but they get hitters out out of the strike zone. Hitters who force pitchers to stay in the strike zone are productive, and pitchers who take hitters out of the strike zone dominate." So when Beane sees a Joe Blanton with a 178-26 strikeout-walk ratio in 168 2/3 innings in his first full professional season, he sees someone likely to be in the big leagues sometime next season.

This makes a lot more sense than juiced ball theories. Great information. Read the whole thing.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2120	2123
Attendance	27970	28450

Seattle loses 2-1 to Baltimore. The Mariners have scored 3 runs or less in 9 of their last 14 games. Luckily for them, the A's have lost 4 out of six to Baltimore and Tampa Bay, including an 11-2 loss today.

Colby Lewis won't win his 8th game. He was lifted after 4 1/3 innings, losing 3-2. Luckily, he won't lose either, as Texas came back with 2 in the 6th to retake the lead 4-3 over Minnesota.

Mariano Rivera gets a five-out save as the Yankees got the job done today with a 3-1 victory. This gives them a 2 1/2 lead over the Red Sox, and gives them the tie-breaker if both teams finish with the same record, and one would be the wild card. Yankees magic number down to 18.

The Tigers were shutout for the 2nd day in a row. That's 22 straight innings for Detroit without a run. Meanwhile, the Blue Jays offense had a field day; four different batters had three hits as they scored 8 runs off seven different Tiger pitchers.

Javy Lopez is 3 for 3 with a single, double and HR today against the Pirates. He's driven in both the Braves run, and Hampton has made them hold up, allowing only 1 run (unearned) through 8. Lopez has three triples this year, so a cycle is not out of the question.

Javier Vazquez pitched six less than stellar innings in his native land, but Dontrelle Willis is putting on a great show. Seven innings, two hits and one walk as he's shutting out the Expos 3-0.

Alex Rodriguez is giving Colby Lewis some support today with his 42nd HR of the year. It's also his 340th of his career, tying him with Jack Clark for 72 on the all-time list. He's one behind Manny Ramirez.

The Detroit offense, which was looking pretty good a week ago, has gone back to its old ways. The are being shutout through six innings today, making it 19 straight innings without a run. Josh Towers is doing the damage for the Blue Jays today.

Suppan and Wells have hooked up in a classic pitcher's duel. In the bottom of the 7th, Suppan has allowed only 1 hit and 1 walk. Wells has allowed four hits, but has held the Red Sox 0 for 6 with runners in scoring position. The Yankee offense, despite the return of Jeter (who has the only hit) remains anemic.

Update Suppan walks Posada, and then Bernie Williams gets the 2nd hit off Suppan, a two-run HR. Yankees lead 2-0. It's the 7th HR Suppan has allowed in 40 innings with the Red Sox.

The pitching matchup of the day is in Puerto Rico, as island native Javier Vazquez of the Expos host Dontrelle Willis of the Marlins. Overall, they have similar ERAs, but lately they're headed in different directions. Dontrelle has not won a game in a month and has a 6.93 ERA since that win. Vazquez has posted a 1.80 ERA over his last seven starts.

On the 25th anniversay of the start of the Boston Massacare, the Red Sox hope to complete their own demolition of the Yankees as they go for a sweep in their three game series. Jeff Suppan faces the imploding David Wells (an exploding David Wells would be too gross). The Sox have outscored the Yankees 20-3 in the first two games.

Colby Lewis of the Rangers goes for his 8th win against the first place Twins, despite a 7.85 ERA. The highest ERA for a player with at least eight wins belongs to Jim Walkup, who went 9-12 for the 1937 St. Louis Browns. The aptly named pitcher walked 83 batters in 150 1/3 innings that year. In 1938, despite lowering his ERA by 1/2 a run, he was only 1-12.

Wade Miller tries tp continues his renaissance today against the Padre's Jake Peavy. Miller's been outstanding in his last nine starts, going 7-2 with a 2.75 ERA. He's only allowed four HR in his last 59 innings, after giving up 10 in his first 110.

Enjoy!

Things went as bad as they could for the Royals yesterday. The Twins and the White Sox won, while Kansas City was being swept by the Angels. Both games were close, and the Royals had leads in each. They've just made their bid to win the Central much tougher.

Ben Jacobs writes:

I was just wondering if you know if Tim Kurkjian is a regular reader of your blog? I'm watching Baseball Tonight right now and Kurkjian just said of Tony Batista, "Two out of every three balls he puts in play are pulled."

Obviously, it's entirely possible that Kurkjian has that info on his own, but it seems odd that he said it on the same day that you ran your "pull table." Just thought I'd let you know.

Yes, there are people on the Baseball Tonight staff that read this blog. However, if what Tim said came from this post, it was mis-interpreted. By pull percentage, I'm not describing the percentage of balls pulled, I'm describing a direction, which I explained in the post. I'll use Batista as an example.

Tony's a right-handed batter. If 2/3 of his balls in play were hit down the left line (right on the line) and 1/3 were hit down the right field line, he'd have a pull percentage of 67%. But if you divide the field into thirds, and Batista hit all his balls on the dividing line between left and center, then again, he'd have a pull percentage of 67%. In the first case, 2/3 of all his balls in play would be pulled. But in the 2nd case, 100% of the balls in play would be pulled.

Of course, how do you define pulled? If you divide the field into thirds, Batista has the following profile:

2003	Left Field	Center Field	Right Field
Balls In Play	230	146	54
Percentage	53%	34%	13%

If you divide the field in half, then 76% of Batistia's balls in play go to left of center. I suppose you can draw a line where Batista's would have 67% of his balls pulled, but not based on my work. If Tim was using my data, what he should have said is that Tony is the most extreme pull hitter in the game this year.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2105	2108
Attendance	27961	28462

Ricky Ledee is having a good night, 2 for 3 with 3 RBI and a double. At age 29, Ledee has finally having a good year. He's put up a .345 OBA (okay) and a .515 slugging percentage (very good). The Phillies lead 7-3 in the top of the 6th over the Mets.

Mark Prior is pitching okay tonight. He's given up seven hits so far in 4 2/3 innings, but only 1 run. The Cubs scored five early, so Prior has a lot of room for error at this point.

That's the Greg Maddux we all know and love. He's gone five innings so far tonight, allowed 4 hits, 0 BB struck out four and has only thrown 51 pitches.

Three Expos errors tonight led to the early exit of Tomo Ohka. He gave up nine runs in two innings, but only four of them earned. The Marlins have a 9-0 lead in the third.

What a pitching duel in Toronto today. Nate Cornejo did not want that 15th loss and shutout the Blue Jays for nine innings. Unfortunately for him, Roy Halladay wants the Cy Young award, and shut out the Tigers for 10 innings! The Blue Jays scored in the bottom of the 10th to give Halladay his 19th victory. Halladay threw only 99 pitches in allowing three hits and one walk. If was the first complete game extra-inning shutout since 8/1/1990, when Dave Stewart of the Oakland A's pitched an 11 inning shutout against the Seattle Mariners. Ken Griffey, Jr. had 3 of the five hits Stewart allowed, and ESPN analyst Harold Reynolds led off and went 0 for 5.

Update: The above was the last time it happened in the regular season. Of course, Jack Morris pitched a 10 inning shutout in the 1991 World Series.

That's two great starts in a row by Halladay. A strong September showing will certainly help his Cy Young cause.

Nicely pitched game by Brad Radke this afternoon. He went seven innings allowing two earned runs. He threw 110 pitches, 77 for strikes. Combined with the bullpen, Twins pitchers 138 pitches, 98 for strikes. The Indians and White Sox are tied at 5 in the 7th.

Twenty-five years ago I arrived in the Boston area for college. My matriculation coincided with the famous four game series between the Yankees and Red Sox known as the Boston Massacare. It was 1978, and the Red Sox had a 13 1/2 game lead in the middle of July on the Yankees, but by Sept. 7, the Yankees had cut that lead to four games and were starting a four game series with Boston. The Yankees swept the series and pounded the Red Sox by a combined score of 42-9.

Twenty-five years later, the Red Sox come into Yankee Stadium 3 1/2 games back, and are pounding the Yankees. They won 9-3 last night, and just hammered Roger Clemens for six runs in the fourth, all but two earned. It's 7-0, and Wakefield has retired the first 11 batters. Will this go down in history as the Breaking of the Bronx?

Steve Bonner wrote the other day:

Ok is there by any chance a stat that quantifies a hitters propensity to pull the ball?

There's not one stat per se, but STATS, Inc. does record where each batted ball lands. They break the field into 22 wedges of pie, labeled C to X, third base line to first base line. Using this data, I've come up with a pull percentage. For a left-handed batter, C = 0 and X =1, and each letter in between is the appropriate fraction. For righties, C = 1 and X = 0, and each letter in between is the appropriate fraction. For each player, I add up the value of each batted ball, multiply by 100 and divide by the number of balls into put into play. I call this pull percentage.

If every ball a batter hit were pulled down the line, pull percentage would be 100.0. If every ball were hit down the opposite line, then pull percentage would be 0. So the higher the pull percentage, the more likely the batter is to pull the ball. The pull percentage can be thought of as a direction; 50% means the average ball is hit up the middle.

Here's the table for everyone this year with at least 200 balls in play:

Carl Everett, another traded player that's paying off, hit his 26th HR in the first. The three run shot gives the White Sox a 4-0 lead over the Indians.

Kevin Millar get Clemens for a HR into the bullpen for the first hit of the game. Sox break on top 1-0 in the 2nd.

A.J. Pierzynski homered to give the Twins a 5-0 lead. Since 2001, only I-Rod has a better BA batting as a catcher in the majors.

Maybe the best trade of the deadline season was the deal that brought Shannon Stewart to the Twins. He's two for two with an RBI today, and is hitting .345 since joining the Twins. He's just what they needed from the leadoff spot.

Nate Cornejo faces Roy Halladay today as Detroit continues its trip to Toronto. Halladay is going for his 19th win, but his 2-3 record and 4.59 ERA over his last five games may have taken him out of the Cy Young race. Meanwhile, a loss for Cornejo would give the Tigers three 15 game losers. The last team to have that many was the 1993 Mets, where Anthony Young lost 16, and Gooden and Tanana each lost 15.

Boston continues its series at NY, trying to sweep the Yankees and take the season series to give them the advantage in a tie-breaker. Wakefield faces Clemens in what is likely to be Rogers last regular season start against the Red Sox.

A good pitching matchup in game 1 in Anaheim as Darrell May of the Royals faces Scot Shields of the Angels. Shields has been impressive despite a 4-4 record; he's struck out 91 in 116 1/3 innings while walking 33. He's been less impressive as a starter, however, posting a 4.44 ERA. If the Royals can sweep, losses by Chicago and Minnesota would create a three-way tie for the AL Central lead.

A real great pitching matchup in San Francisco this afternoon as Curt Schilling of the Diamondbacks faces league ERA leader Jason Schmidt. Schilling has struck out 53 in his last 38 innings; Schmidt has posted a 1.27 ERA over his last five starts.

An even hotter pitcher than Schmidt is Mark Prior, who will take the mound for the Cubs today against the Milwaukee Brewers. In his last six starts, Prior has allowed 0 or 1 run in each of them for an 0.57 ERA. In his last 47 innings, he's allowed 26 hits while striking out 43. Brewer batters are 2nd in the majors in strikeouts; look for a lot of K's today.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2090	2093
Attendance	27927	28458

Working with a 1-0 lead, Mark Redman gives up a three-run HR to Todd Zeile. With that shot, Todd Zeile became the first player to homer for 11 teams. Vitiello immediately follows with a HR of his own to give the Expos a 4-1 lead.

I think it's too little too late for the Expos. They were in a great position after sweeping the Phillies to contend for the wild card, but the six game losing streak since then have really put them out of the race. They can be spoilers, but that's about it.

The first run of the game comes in the 9th as Marlon Byrd drives in Nick Punto (no relation). Seo has only allowed 3 hits, but he walked four. Padillia has 10 K through eight innings. He's thrown 129 pitches. Will Bowa trust the 9th to the bullpen?

Update: They're going to the top of the ninth with the Phillies up 1-0. Rheal Cormier is in to save the game.

Update: Cormier gets the Mets in order in the 9th. Phillies win 1-0.

It's official. Mike Maroth is the first pitcher since 1980 to lose 20. And he really earned it, blowing a lead twice and allowing 8 runs in three innings. His ERA is now 5.75. Congratulations, Mike! I wonder how long it will take Bonderman to join him?

Seattle did score in the 5th inning of tonight's game, and two more in the 6th to give the Mariners a 4-2 lead over Baltimore. Ichiro hit a two-run HR in the 6th.

The Red Sox have a 9-1 lead over the Yankees in the 7th. With the big lead, Grady Little took Pedro out after six, figuring the pen can handle this. Sauerbeck comes in, gives up a walk and a single, and you can just feel the Red Sox fans squirming. The Sox announcers are all over this strategy. And now a third hit to give the Yankees the bases loaded with no out. If the Red Sox can't hold this lead for three innings, they don't deserve to make the post season.

The Twins have chased Mickey Callaway with eight runs through the first three innings. Christian Guzman has a triple and four RBI. Johan Santana has thrown 37 of his 52 pitches for strikes.

Mike Maroth gave up four in the fourth and didn't finish the inning. He gave up eight runs in total, and the Tigers are losing 8-6 in the 8th. Looks like loss 20 is almost in the bag.

Jae Weong Seo is out-pitching Vicente Padilla so far tonight, giving up only 1 hit through five. Padillia has not given up a run either, but he has thrown 109 pitches through 5 2/3, so the Mets should be able to get into the Phillie bullpen early. Seo has thrown 72 pitches through five.

Albert Pujols hit his 38th HR of the year in the first to give the Cardinals a 2-0 lead over the Reds. That's a new career high, breaking the mark of 37 he set his rookie year.

Sammy Sosa hit his 33rd HR of the year in the first inning to give the Cubs a 2-0 lead over the Milwaukee Brewers. It looks like it will Sammy's 2nd year in a row of declining HR production. He's still over 200 HR away from Aaron. If he averages 40 HR a year, he'll need five years to get there. But if he drops to 35, it will take six. It will be interesting to see how his HR numbers progress from this point.

The Mariners have batted in four innings tonight, and are being shutout again. The Orioles also have not scored through three. That's 22 straight innings for the Mariners without scoring.

The Detroit offense is doing it's best to keep Mike Maroth from losing his 20th, but Maroth is doing his best to earn the loss. Tigers took a 2-0 lead in the first; Maroth gave up 2 in the 2nd. The Tigers came back with three in the third, Maroth gave back two of those in the bottom of the inning. Now in the bottom of the 4th, he has men on 2nd and 3rd with no out. Way to go, Mike!

Andy Pettitte only lasts 2 1/2 innings. He gives up 9 hits, 8 singles and a triple, plus three walks, leading to 8 Red Sox runs.

Joe West is umpiring at home plate, and it looked to me like he was squeezing Pettitte. Andy threw one to Ramirez that he thought was a strike, and then the next pitch looked right down the middle of the plate, and it was called a ball, also. I don't know if West and Pettitte have had run-ins before, but Andy did not get a break on the calls tonight. I just saw Jeff Weaver have the same pitch called for a strike. Very strange week for umpires.

Yesterday, it was JD Drew. Today, it's Marcus Giles. Has Gene Mauch been going around performing Vulcan Mind Melds^TM on people? These are good hitters, and they were batting against poor pitchers. Please, please please, let them hit!

I was surprised by this article. Especially after this post, a few days ago. My guess is that the Yankees are going to get some of their money's worth out of Drew before he goes off to play football. He's had a chance to develop in the minors and just hasn't. Too bad.

Idiots don't think so.

I don't think Gagne is anywhere near an MVP this year. He is tied with Schmidt and Livan Hernandez for most win shares among pitchers, so there actually is good Cy Young argument for him. But Pujols and Bonds blow him away in the MVP race.

It's not that great a night for games. Two stand out.

The Red Sox visit Yankee Stadium and send Pedro Martinez to the mound vs. Andy Pettitte. It's a great matchup; Pettitte has pretty much owned the Red Sox during his career (13-4, 2.54 ERA), and Pedro always seems to have his best for the Yankees (207 K in 156 2/3 innings vs. the Bombers). What the Yankees really need to do is win one game in this series; that will give them ten wins against the Red Sox this year, which, if the teams tie for 1st, would give the Yankees the division. So, where a win against the Red Sox would usually reduce the Yankees magic number by two, the first win against the Sox would reduce it by three. Likewise, a Sox sweep would reduce their magic number vs. the Yankees by seven. (Yankees magic number 21; Sox 28 going into tonight).

By the way, Michele is taking bets on the series. :-)

The other good matchup pits a pair of good, young pitchers against each other. Bradon Webb and the Diamondbacks face Jerome Williams and the Giants in San Francisco. In his last 9 starts, Webb has a 2.85 ERA but a 1-5 record (1-8 for the team). His run support per 9 innings in that time is 2.18. He should be rookie of the year, but I'm afraid his undeserved 8-7 record will work against him. Williams is 2-0 against the DBacks in three starts this year, having beaten both Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson. Not bad for a rookie.

Finally, if you are into watching pain and suffering, Mike Maroth takes 19 losses to the mound tonight as Detroit drives across the border to Toronto. If Maroth takes the loss, he'll be the Tigers first 20-game loser of the year, and the first in the majors since Brian Kingman in 1980. In his favor, he does have a 1.88 ERA against the Jays for his career.

Although the Seattle Mariners appeared to be breaking out of their team slump in the previous three games, they have been shut out two days in a row by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. (It's the third time in TB history that they posted back to back shutouts, but the first time they did it against the same team.) Over their last 15 games, the Mariners are 5-10, scoring just 4.1 runs a game. That includes three games in which they scored 32 runs. So in the 12 other games they've score 29 runs, less than three a game. There appears to be a big disconnect between three big guns and the rest of the team during this time (8/20 on):

Name	Batting Average	OBA	Slug
Ichiro Suzuki	.117	.159	.167
Edgar Martinez	.186	.314	.233
Bret Boone	.254	.323	.356

Olerud and Sanchez are Guillen are getting on base, but no one is hitting for power, and with the above three in a slump, there's no one on to set up the bottom of the order. Suzuki and Boone have played a lot of games over the last three years (they rank 14th and 15th in baseball, respectively). I wonder if it's finally worn them down?

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2075	2078
Attendance	27922	28463

I'm driving down to New Haven to see the Ravens play the Rockcats in the Eastern League playoffs. I may not get there if the rain looks bad. Enjoy this evenings games!

The Marlins scored four in the 7th to beat the Pirates 5-1. Phillies play the Mets later, if the rain has stopped in NY.

Gary Knotts picked up the victory as the Tiger staff did not give up an extra base hit today. The Indians were 1 for 11 with runners in scoring position. In case you hadn't realized, no matter what the Tigers do the rest of the year, the only team they can possibly catch in the standings is the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and Tampa's magic number to put down the Tigers for good is 7.

Sammy Sosa just got tossed out of the game by the first base umpire. The Cardinal announcers seem to think that Bill Hohn, who is at first base today, likes to get himself attention. They were all over him on Monday when he tossed a Cardinal, and they are all over him again today.

Correction: Sorry, Hohn is at home plate. The first base ump threw Sosa out. Hohn seems to have caused the trouble that led to the ejection, however.

Juan Pierre hit his first HR of the year today. He had the most AB this year without a HR. And it's an important one, as Salomon Torres has only given up three hits today, and the Marlins are tied with the Pirates 1-1 in the 7th.

Shawn Estes hits a sacrifice fly in the 2nd to give the Cubs a 3-2 lead over the Cardinals. Five runs in two innings? I guess were closer to my view of a high scoring game than a low scoring game caused by the wind blowing in.

Bo Hart doubled to lead off the game for the Cardinals, after which, La Russa had J.D. Drew sacrifice him to third. The announcers are saying that the wind is blowing in, so they think it will be a low scoring game. I disagree with this for a number of reasons.

1. Drew is a lefty, so if he pulls he ball, he's likely to move the runner to third.


2. Drew is a good hitter, so there's a good chance he'll get on base and give Pujols more baserunners to drive in.


3. It just doesn't seem right to waste an out that early in the game.

Luckily, it worked for La Russa as Pujols hit a deep fly ball that was knocked down by the wind, but dropped by Alou as he lost it in the sun. Cards lead 1-0 and are still threatening in the first.

Jake Westbrook has a no-hitter through four. It's against the Tigers, however, so I don't know if it should count. :-)

The Tigers got to Westbrook in the fifth with three hits and an error for two runs.

Salomon Torres and Carl Pavano were throwing strikes in the first inning of the game today. They combined to throw 19 pitches, only two for balls.

Bambino's Curse has a typically good column today that ends with this bit of exciting news:

Raley Field, home of the Sacramento River Cats, the national leading Triple-A baseball team, is quickly becoming one of professional sports’ most technologically advanced venues… The stadium recently implemented wireless Internet access to customers in suites and the exclusive “Solon Club”— a valued service for business and corporate clientele. And by next season, all fans will be able to operate laptop computers, PDAs and other wireless devices from their seats for access to up-to-the-minute stats and replays. Attendees will also be able to order a hot dog and Coke—delivered right to their seats – or order tickets for future games… (from Unstrung via BuzzMachine).

I can't wait for this to spread. It will be great to be able to sit at a game and blog from stands!

Jayson Stark on ESPN.com has a good column that tries to look at the Larry Bowa situation from all angles. The summation:

If this season ends with the Phillies making their first postseason appearance since Joe Carter's home run in Game 6 of the 1993 World Series, it's a good bet this whole debate will be moot. As consistently as Wade has defended the manager, it may be just a big blowtorch of hot air, anyway.

But regardless, it's suddenly an issue on a whole lot of minds. And it's going to hover there for the next three weeks -- if not beyond.

"We can talk about all this stuff," Wade said. "But the bottom line still comes down to his effectiveness as a manager, and his ability to get us to the finish line."

For any manager, that's the way it ought to be. And for this manager, that's the way it ought to be. If he wins, how he does it is just part of the show. But if he doesn't, it's everyone's right to ask: Why not?

The problem here isn't the Phillies making the playoffs or not. The problem is that the Phillies have underperformed all year. They are playing .540 ball, when the pythagorean method has them at .565. Usually, this happens because teams don't win the close games, but the Phillies are 31-29 in one and two runs games. But compare this to Felipe Alou (who, by the way, is not a manager I consider to be that great). The Giants are playing .616 ball, but the prediction for them is .564! The Phillies and the Giants should be tied. But the Giants are 44-18 in close games. And if a manager is going to make a difference, it's how he handles these close games; does he put in the right pitcher, the right pinch hitter, the right defense. Yes, there's a lot of luck involved, but Alou is getting the luck to come down on his side more often that Bowa.

This Phillies team was designed to beat the Braves. They're not even close. Fiery is great. You shouldn't like to lose when you're a professional athlete. But Lou Piniella does fiery and his players love him. It's because there's a difference between positive and negative criticism. As far as I can tell, Bowa can only do the negative; no one wants to be around that very long.

I have to admit, I didn't realize the Cardinals and Cubs were playing a five game series. The Cubs will try to make it four out of five this afternoon when they face St. Louis for the last time this season. With Brett Tomko facing Shawn "The Wilting Man" Estes, a high scoring game is likely. I doubt St. Louis is going to have much of a bullpen left after this series.

This is the last game of the year for the Cubs against a division contender. Apart from a series against Montreal, the Cubs don't play a good team the rest of the season. This is both good and bad. They have an easy schedule, but they can't take out the Astros directly. The Astros and Cardinals do play six games against each other down the stretch; the Cubs have to hope those games are split so they can pass both teams with their eaiser schedule.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2067	2069
Attendance	27962	28492

The Royal defeat Texas. With the Twins winning and the White Sox losing, all three contenders have 66 losses. The Royals have two fewer wins to put them 1 game back. They also only need 10 more victories to reach the magic .500 mark, vesting Sweeney's contract. And Bill James said they'd only win 66.

David Ortiz takes Tom Gordon deep for his 2nd HR of the game. Once again, he gives the Red Sox a 1 run lead. It's five-four Red Sox in the 10th.

Update: The Red Sox win. Mariners,A's and Yankees all lose. Still a great four way race in the AL.

Tim Hudson did not last long tonight against the Orioles. He gave up eight hits in three innings along with five runs, and the bullpne hasn't been much better. Meanwhile Rodrigo Lopez has shut them out through eight. I guess this is the day the worst of the east beats the best of the west!

Doug Waechter, making his second major league appearance and first start, shuts down the Mariners for a complete game shutout. He allowed only 2 hits and walked 2. He was very efficient, using only 100 pitches. That will make fans take notice, and it'a boost the DRays can use.

David Ortiz hit a two-run HR tonight to give the Red Sox a 4-3 lead. He's now hit 8 HR in his last 13 games.

Update: Valentin goes deep to tie the game at 4.

Josh Beckett is doing it all tonight. Locked in a 0-0 duel with Josh Fogg in the fifth, Beckett singled in Alex Gonzalez to give himself a 1-0 in the battle of the Josh's.

I just turned on the Yankees-Blue Jays game, and saw Jason Giambi coming to the plate. He made an out in his first AB to extend his hitless slump to 25 AB. There was a severe shift on, with the third baseman playing near 2nd. Play-by-play man Michael Kay asked Bobby Murcer and Ken Singleton if they would drop a bunt down the third base line to break the slump. Both agreed they would. On the next pitch, Giambi hit a wicked line drive into the 2nd deck in right field. A much more impressive way to break out of a slump!

Brian Giles was three for four today, making him 8 for 24 with the Padres. He was part of a 15 hit attack that routed the Diamondbacks 12-0. It's the worst shutout defeat in Diamondbacks history.

The Expos Jamey Carroll committed an error in the third inning that led to five unearned runs. Montreal lost to the Phillies 8-3. That's six losses in a row since sweeping the same Phillies last week.

The Cardinals bullpen imploded today to allow the Cubs to take 3 out of 4 in the series. They allowed six runs in three innings, and La Russa had to go to Woody Williams as a closer in the 8th. Woody blew the save and picked up the loss.

Manny Ramirez is back in the lineup tonight, and singled his first time up to set up the Sox first run. I suspect he'll need to do a lot of that on this road trip if he doesn't want to be booed by the Fenway fans when he returns.

It seems like every game he plays lately, Bonds is helping the Giants win in their last AB. He didn't score or drive in a run today, but he moved a runner from first to third with a single that set up the winning sacrifice fly. The Giants are now 48-19 at home, a .716 winning percentage. That would tie them with the 1977 Pittsburgh Pirates for 7th best home record since 1973.

Down 5-4 with two outs in the ninth, the Twins draw a walk and Shannon Stewart hits a double. Bengie Molina must have botched a throw home on the play, because both runners scored on his error, giving the Twins the victory. A White Sox loss tonight puts the Twins into a tie for first place in the AL Central.

Down 4-1 in the 6th, the Twins chased Ramon Ortiz, and Francisco Rodriguez was not able to hold the lead. The Twins have six hits in the game, none for extra bases. It's 4-4 in the 6th with the Twins still threatening.

Update: Angels get out of the jam, game is tied at 4 going to the 7th.

After sacrificing yesterday, Tino Martinez was batting cleanup today. He was allowed to hit with runners on 2nd and 3rd, and singled both in. I guess La Russa didn't think the squeeze play was appropriate.

An excellent post by Larry Mahnken on the sucess of the Yankees in building their great teams and how that can fall apart. He believes the A's have much more upside right now, and I have to agree with him.

The Mets are leading the Braves 4-1 in the third inning. If the boys from Queens hold on, they'll have swept the best team in the majors, having shutdown of the best offenses in the majors in the first two games. The Braves are putting their heavy hitters in the lineup, while the Mets appear even more rag-tag than usual with the September callups dotting the lineup. Maybe the Braves are just taking it easy, but if I'm a playoff foe, I'm going to watch the tapes of these games to see just what the Mets did.

And no, I wouldn't trade for Timo Perez and bat him third. :-)

While Grant Balfour has struggled with five walks, 1 run and 53 pitches through two innings, the Twins are swinging at anything Ramon Ortiz throws them. In two innings, he's thrown 12 pitches, 9 for strikes, and has retired all six batter to face him. That's two pitches per batter!

The aptly named Grant Balfour has walked the first two batters he faced today. It's his first major league start. He has struck out 19 in 16 1/3 innings this year, but he's walked 8.

Update: He ended up walking three, but struck out Molina with the bases loaded to end the inning. Balfour doesn't give up many hits, but his stats look a lot like Bobby Witt.

A reader pointed out this blog to me, Shallow Center. It's written by a Phillies fan, and he has a linked filled post about the Monday game here. We appear to share the same opinion of Larry Bowa.

Tim Hudson looks poised for a win tonight. He's 5-0 over his last five starts, and 7-0 with a 1.71 career ERA against the Orioles. It should also be noted that instead of being a devestating loss, the Athletics are 11-2 since Mark Mulder's injury.

The battle of the Sox continues in Chicago, with Derek Lowe facing Mark Buehrle. Buehrle is 2-0 against the Red Sox with a 1.62 ERA in 16 2/3 innings.

Atlanta's Rus Ortiz goes for his 19th win of the season against the Mets' Steve Trachsel this afternoon. I never know what to make of Trachsel; he'll have stretches of brilliance, must mostly stretches of mediocrity. He's on one of the brilliant stretches right now, going 4-1 with a 2.31 ERA over his last five starts. When he's good, he's very very good,...

Kevin Brown will try to regain the NL ERA lead from Jason Schmidt tonight. Schmidt leads Brown by .05 runs. Brown faces the Astros' Jeriome Robertson, who struggled in August with a 6.83 ERA. Brown needs to pitch 5 1/3 without an earned run or better to pass Schmidt. If he gives up an earned run, he'll have to go 10.

Enjoy!

The Dodgers have slowly but surely moved back into contention in the NL Wild Card race. They are now 3rd, 1 1/2 game back of the Marlins and Phillies. Fred McGriff had a big night last night with 2 HR; I'm sure the Dodgers would love to see him go on a tear that netted him the nine he needs for 500. The Dodger pitching was typically fine top to bottom; they used five pitchers, and Gagne finished the game with a four out save, setting a new record with 55 consecutive saves (the All-Star game doesn't count). If McGriff and Shawn Green (who got on base like Shawn Green in August) can put on a offensive push in September, LA could easily sprint to the front. It's not going to take much of an offensive improvement to make this a much better team.

Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe pens an excellent piece on the Manny Ramirez situation:

Oooh, this is getting interesting. Let's go over this one more time so there is no confusion on anyone's part. The $160 million man, who leads the Red Sox in home runs (31) and is second in runs batted in (90), a guy that people who don't have to live with him think is one of the most valuable players in the league, declares his physical readiness for a game in the heat of a pennant race, and the manager says, "No, thank you"? Is that what's going on here?"

Ab-so-lutely.

"I like the way our club has responded the past few days," explained Little. "I'm putting the team out there I feel gives us the best chance to win tonight."

Oooh, this is really getting interesting.

Still don't get it? The manager pulled a Popeye. He's reached the that's-all-I-can-stand-I-can't-stands-no-more phase with his juvenile slugger. Manny Ramirez has been benched.

The implication was that this might not be a one-day thing, either.

"I've got to see a game that day when he figures into the lineup that gives us a good chance to win," cooed Little, who has just taken the most important step of his managerial career.

And I've just gotten to like this team a whole lot better. First of all, the players were really upset at Manny. The other 24 (or is it 39 now?) players have really pulled together during this. Grady Little, rather than making excuses for his star, firmly came down on the side of the players who want to win. And, as I learned from the broadcast last night, the front office fully supports the decision to bench Ramirez. This is in stark contrast to the situation a few years ago with Carl Everett.

You always wonder with the Red Sox if they reall want to win, if they really are a team. Right now, I'd have to say yes.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2052	2054
Attendance	28032	28504

The Red Sox get only two hits off Colon, but both were solo HR. Burkett and the bullpen allow only 1 run to pull the Red Sox within four of the Yankees. Two big wins two days in a row for the Beantown boys, and without Manny Ramirez.

It's now in the 12th, and neither the A's nor the Orioles have scored. Oakland has gotten the first two batters on against Jorge Julio.

Update: Bases are now loaded with 1 out.

Update: Mark Ellis delivers a sac fly to give Oakland a 1-0 lead.

Scott Williamson does a good job for the Red Sox tonight. Coming into the game with a 2-1 lead and men on 1st and 2nd, he gets the double play grounder to get out of the inning.

Chase Utley hit a bases loaded triple in the bottom of the eighth to give the Phillies a 5-3 lead. But as we know from yesterday, no lead is safe in the hands of the Phillies bullpen.

Update: Plesac gets the job done, Phillies win 5-3.

The Pirates defeat the Marlins 3-2. The Expos lead the Phillies by the same score in the 8th. We could see the wild card getting tighter again.

Matt Morris and Kerry Wood are both trying to go deep into the game tonight, and so far both have pitched into the 6th. Wood has finally got the walks under control, only issuing one base on balls. But the Cardinals have a 1-0 lead in the top of 7th.

A big night for Jason Kendall. He's four for four with a double and has driven in two of the Pirates' runs. Dontrelle Willis is in line for the loss due to an unearned run. The Pirates lead it 3-2 in the eighth, but the Marlins are threatening.

Update: Pirates get Conine to end the eighth and preserve their lead.

The Twins 8-9 hitters are 2 for 3 with a walk and six RBI as the Twins have a 10-1 lead on the Anaheim Angels in the 4th. Ryan has a HR and Guzman has a triple. Not a good night for Aaron Sele, allowing 9 earned runs in 2 2/3 innings.

Oakland is visiting the Orioles tonight, and there are nothing but 0's in the linescore. Pat Hentgen and Barry Zito are throwing low hit games. Both have combined for 5 hits+BB. Both have pitch counts in the 90's so this game may be decided by the bullpens.

ChiSox Daily is a new blog by Mike Labuda. Stop by and check out his south side musings.

Jeremy Bonderman will not pick up his 19th loss tonight. He did blow a 6-2 lead, but the Tigers have come back to take the lead 7-6, and with Bonderman out of the game he is off the hook. Still plenty of time to get to 20.

Sammy Sosa wins the game for the Cubs with a 2-run walk-off home run in the 15th inning. It was Sosa's first walk-off HR of the year. Both bullpens were stretched, so the night cap should be fun.

The bullpens continue to do the job. The Cardinals and Cubs have combined for 9 relief innings without allowing a run. This is putting pressure on the starters (Morris and Wood) to pitch deep in the nightcap.

With the bases loaded and 2 out in the bottom of the ninth, Ramon Martinez launches a shot to the outfield wall. The Cardinals announcer thought it was going to go, but he held his tounge, and Orlando Palmeiro made a fantasic play jumping into the ivy to catch the ball and send the game into extra innings. Can't wait to see this one on the highlights.

Tied at two, the relief pitching in the Cardinals-Cubs afternoon game has been superb. Eldred has gone two perfect innings striking out 5, while Farnsworth has 1 inning with 2 K.

I thought of categorizing this as Baseball Jerks, but I just don't know. Here's the latest on the Manny Ramirez saga. There seems to be a lot of speculation on this story, but little fact. He appears to have the same aliment as Pedro Martinez did, and Pedro was really sick. I heard yesterday that he met with Willie Randolph, and now I read it was Enrique Wilson, which is a lot less sinister, since they are old teammates. I don't know what to make of this story, so I'm reserving judgement.

Simontacchi loses the perfect game on an error by Albert Pujols. The Cardinals announcer seems to think Pujols made the catch and just dropped the ball transfering it to his throwing hand, and it should have been an out.

Update: Alex Gonzalez breaks up the no-hitter with an RBI double.

Jim Edmonds hit his 35th HR of the year today to give the Cardinals a 2-0 lead. Edmonds, with a .398 OBA and .634 slugging percentage would be in the running for MVP in most years, but he's not even the best hitter on his team! Combined with Pujols and Rolen, he helps give the Cardinals one of the most fearsome 3-4-5 slots in baseball.

Jason Simontacchi started game 1 for the Cardinals instead of Garret Stephenson. He's been perfect so far, retiring all nine batters faced, throwing 2/3 of his 39 pitches for strikes, and striking out six batters so far. His career high in K is 9, and that came on 5/7/2003 against Cincinnati.

Okay, I don't understand this at all. With a man on first and 1 out, Tino Martinez sacrificed a man to 2nd. Tino had 1 sacrifice with the Yankees, and that was in 1996. He had one last year, and this was his 2nd this year. But he's your number six hitter, a first baseman. He's supposed to be able to advance runners with long hits. Luckily for LaRussa, it worked out, as the Cubs walked Renteria to pitch to the light hitting Chris Widger, who singled in a run. I can't wait to see the explanation for this one.

In looking at the Cubs lineup today, I wonder why Tony Womack is batting 2nd. His On Base + Slugging is .574, less than pitcher Carlos Zambrano, who has a combined OBA+Slug of .593! Baker has dotted his lineup with poor hitters in the 2, 5 and seven slots, perfect for breaking up rallies.

The best game in the AL today is the battle of the hose as the White Sox host the Red Sox. John Burkett will face Bartolo Colon. Colon has been effective against lefties this year, allowing .297 OBA vs. LHB, while righties get on at a rate of .329. This is a departure from his career totals. The Red Sox use a number of lefties in their lineup; the starting lineup tonight is likely to have six lefty/switch hitters batting. That could be an advantage for Colon.

A split admission double header on the north side of Chicago makes this a great day for Windy City fans to revel in the national pastime. Both games look to be good ones, as Garret Stephenson of the Cardinals takes on red hot Carlos Zambrano of the Cubs in the afternoon, and struggling aces Matt Morris and Kerry Wood face each other in the night cap. A sweep by the Cubs and a loss by the Astros would put the Cubs into a tie for first place in the NL Central.

Montreal tries to get back into the wild card race against the Phillies tonight. They'll send their hot pitcher, Javier Vazquez against Amaury Telemaco. After yesterday's putrid game, Bill Lyon of the Philadelphia Inquirer thinks Bowa will go at the end of the season.

Cleveland continues its series with Detroit tonight. The only reason to tune in is to see if Jeremy Bonderman is saddled with his 19th loss. You have to feel a little sorry for the kid. He gets traded from one of the best organizations in baseball to one of the worst, the is thrown into the majors at the age of 20. He may take some solice in knowing that Greg Maddux was 6-14 in his first full season with the Cubs with an ERA of 5.61.

Mike Hampton is proving that he was a gamble worth taking. He'll face Al Leiter in NY tonight. Hampton is 4-1 with a 1.86 ERA in his last five starts. The Braves have turned out to be the perfect team for him; the rejuvenated offense offers plenty of support, and the excellent defense turns the balls put into play against him into outs.

Enjoy!

I just noticed that Jesse Orosco was back in the majors, knocking Rickey Henderson out of the oldest active player spot. The Twins actually traded a prospect for him, Juan Padilla, who looks like he has decent minor league numbers. I find it hard to believe that the Twins don't have one young lefty in their organization that can do as well as Orosco. Yes, he can get the lefties out okay, but he can't get righties out at all. So when he comes into the game, all you have to do is pinch hit with a righty, and you'll have Barry Bonds at the plate. Jesse should retire. He's a nice story, but it's worn thin.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2037	2041
Attendance	28084	28540

Every starter in the Astros lineup, including Wade Miller, has a hit tonight against the Dodgers. All-in-all, 15 hits for Houston, with six players with two hits. They have been swinging, as they have not drawn a walk tonight. The Astros lead 6-1 going to the bottom of the eighth. A win puts the 'Stros back in a tie for the NL Central lead.

The Marlins came back against the Expos today to sweep the series and take sole possesion of first place in the NL wild card race. It's been quite a week for the Expos, sweeping the Phillies to tie for the wild card, then being swept by the Marlins to fall four back again.

Jeff Conine had a nice return, going 1 for 3 with an RBI and turning a DP on a fantastic catch in left field.

Mark Prior continues to be the hottest pitcher since the start of August.

Pitcher	Record	ERA
Mark Prior	6-0	0.57
Johan Santana	5-0	1.07
Javier Vazquez	4-1	1.15
Carlos Zambrano	3-1	1.18
Jason Schmidt	3-1	1.27

While people seem to like Eric Gagne for the Cy Young award, the way Prior and Schmidt are pitching, I think it's going to be a close race, especially if the Cubs and Giants make the playoffs and the Dodgers don't.

It's 0-0 in the top of the ninth between the Giants and DBacks. There are no outs and the bases loaded, and Barry Bonds is coming up. Yikes!

Update: Bonds singles in 2. That's why he's the best. Myers put a pitch in the strike zone, and Bonds gets two RBI.

Vlad Guerrero has a solo HR today to help the Expos to a 2-1 lead in the 7th. It's his 15th HR in 39 games since the All-Star break. Previous to the break, he had 8 HR in 50 games.

Colby Lewis pitched seven good innings today to defeat the KC Royals and drop them another 1/2 game back of the White Sox. Lewis lowered his ERA to 7.85; it's still the highest ERA for someone who has won seven games.

Looks like Drew Henson is through with baseball. The Yankees are likely to playing Aaron Boone for a while. It's the right decision for Henson. He was no where near making the majors, and if you're not a star by the time you're 23, it's unlikely that you'll ever be one.

Barry Bonds is out of the hospital and back in the lineup today. Schilling and Ponson are matching shutout innings through four in Arizona.

In a game only Leonard Pinth-Garnell could love, the Sox and Phillies are playing some of the poorest baseball I've seen all year. Poor hittting, poor pitching, poor fielding and very poor managing on both sides. It's a good thing the 60,000 at the game today got a Mike Schmidt bobble head doll, because they are not getting much value from this game.

Update: Red Sox lead 13-9 going to the bottom of the ninth after a grand slam by Trot Nixon. There have been five lead changes in this game, and the way things have gone, I won't be surprised to see a sixth.

Roy Halladay sure threw like a Cy Young candidate today, beating the Yankees 8-1. He pitched his 10th complete game of the year, using only 103 pitches while walking one and striking out 10. Halladay is now 18-6.

David Wells gave up five earned runs in 7 innings to raise his ERA to 4.45. It was a fast game, 2 hours and 11 minutes, matching the fastest Yankee game of the year.

Scott Spiezio has a grand slam today as the Angels lead the Twin 5-1 in the fourth. The slam give Spiezio 84 career RBI in 84 AB with the bases loaded.

Not sure what they did for Brandon Inge in the minors, but since he's returned he been hitting very well. Coming into today, he was 27 for 83 with 10 extra-base hits. He's 1 for 3 today with a two-run HR and Detroit and Cleveland are tied at 4 in the 7th.

David Wells is not having the impressive outing he needs. He's allowed 7 hits and 4 runs through five innings. Four of those seven hits have been doubles. Blue Jays lead the Yankees by three.

Brett Myers throws 8 of his first 9 pitches for balls to walk Damon and Walker. Then Nomar swings at the first pitch in the dirt, then swings at the 2nd pitch and grounds into a double play. Why doesn't he take a pitch and let the starter get himself into trouble? He may have killed a big inning here.

Update: Myers walks Ortiz, but gets Millar to ground out. A miserable AB by Nomar.

They are expecting 60,000 at the Vet for the Red Sox-Phillies game. That's pretty cool. Nice to see the fans coming out on a holiday to cheer on their team.

Being away over the weekend I missed the whole Philly phiasco involving Larry Bowa and Tyler Houston. It seems that the Phillies released Houston on Saturday because he was a "divisive force" in the clubhouse. Never mind that the Phillies are in a pennant race and Houston is batting .448 as a pinch hitter this year (13 for 29). Houston shot back yesterday.

"I wasn't going to talk about it until I read the papers and saw what Bo had to say, and the way it all went down," Houston said. "It's all crap. I'm sick of seeing these lies."

Here's the way things played out, according to Houston: After Bowa threw his temper tantrum in Montreal on Thursday, a group of players talked on the team bus to the airport. They decided that they should band together in spite of Bowa, and that they should make a public show of their disdain for the manager.

"Everybody feels the same way about Bo," Houston said. "He doesn't give a crap about anybody in there. He doesn't give a crap about his players. Bo only cares about himself. You see it in the negativity and disrespect that he has for his players, the way he speaks to his players. He's the first one to slam you, embarrass you, throw stuff in the dugout, throw his hands up in the air.

"I've read that the team is winning because of Bo's meeting. It's not winning because of Bo's meeting, it's winning because of the players' meeting. Bo's meeting was just the last straw with Bo. We had to have a players' meeting, because of him. In our meeting, everybody on that bus felt the same way about Bowa."

The next night, Pat Burrell crushed a two-run homer to left field, the first big hit since the Montreal meetings. Bowa went to the end of the dugout, clapping his hands and waiting to congratulate Burrell. But Burrell sprinted toward the opening near the middle of the dugout, avoiding Bowa.

"That was kind of a staged thing," Houston said. "But Tyler Houston is the last person who had anything to do with that. That was more veteran players than myself that were endorsing players' doing stuff like that. I had nothing to do with it."

Now, faced with this, Bowa could take the high road, say he stands behind his previous comments and let it go. But not Larry.

After yesterday's game, Burrell again denied that he intentionally snubbed Bowa. The manager, when apprised of Houston's comments, became enraged.

"He's a loser," Bowa said. "That was not the reason. He was an extra guy who causes problems. I had 15 guys [players] doing backflips when we let him go."

And then Bowa makes a big mistake, similar to Gary Hart daring the press to find him fooling around.

Bowa suggested that reporters ask first baseman Jim Thome whether there was any truth to Houston's assertion that the players dislike their manager. Thome kept the bat on his shoulder, metaphorically speaking.

"Let's talk about the game," Thome said.

Asked another question, and given another chance to support Bowa, Thome wasn't swinging.

"We won the game," he said. "We're in the wild-card race. That's what it's all about."

Thome, at least, knows when to make a no comment, but this particular no-comment I find very damning to Bowa. And it's damning on a number of levels. First, it's not Bowa's job to get the players to like him. It's his job to get the players to win. When asked if players like him, Bowa should say something like, I don't care how they feel about me. I want to win, and I'll push them anyway I can to make them win. If they don't like that, tough. People, and the players, would respect that. But Bowa seems to need the players to like him. But why would they like someone who drove away Scott Rolen? Why would they like someone who's "the first one to slam you, embarrass you, throw stuff in the dugout, throw his hands up in the air?" Why would they like someone who can't manage a good team to their potential?

Bowa has a Billy Martin personality without Martin's managerial know-how. And Billy could only get away with it so long. My guess is that if the Phillies fired Bowa tomorrow (and Dallas Green with him), you'd see a blossoming of the team similar to what happened in NY in 1978. The Phillies may win despite Bowa this year, but long term they will underachieve with the loathsome person at the helm.

An important game in Toronto for David Wells as the Yankees visit the Blue Jays. He's had three poor starts in a row. While I think the Yankees can make the post-season without his pitching well, I don't know if they can afford to have him off in the post-season. He'll face Roy Halladay, who now appears to have been supplanted by Esteban Loaiza as the leading Cy Young candidate.

Kansas City visits Texas tonight, sending Darrell May against Colby Lewis. Lewis is 6-9 with an 8.14 ERA; that's the highest ERA ever for someone with at least six wins. Of course, he has some time to bring it down, but the current record is held by Leo Sweetland of the 1930 Phillies, who won seven games despite a 7.71 ERA. His teammate, Hal Elliott, was 6-11 that year with a 7.67 ERA. Not a great pitching year in Philadelphia. May has been pitching great ball for the Royals, on the other hand. He's 7-2 since July 1st with a 3.01 ERA. The rest of the staff is 21-24 over that time.

The Cardinals send their ace, Woody Williams into Wrigley to take on maybe the hottest pitcher in baseball, Mark Prior. Prior is 5-0 with a 0.69 ERA over his last five starts. A win today will give Prior 20 for his career. The Cardinals lead the Cubs by 2 1/2 games in the standings.

Wade Miller and the Houston Astros travel to LA to face Hideo Nomo and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Miller appears to have returned to the form that made him 31-12 the previous two years. He's 4-1 with a 1.69 ERA over his last five starts. He's struck out a batter an inning over that time. The Dodgers are now in third place in the wild card race, 1 1/2 games behind the Marlins and Phillies. The Astros as 1/2 game back of that.

The Expos were not able to extend their sweep of the Phillies into their series with the Marlins. They'll try to salvage one game of the series today as Tomo Ohka takes the mound to battle Brad Penny.

Finally, an interleague Wild Card battle as the Red Sox travel to Philadelphia in the penultimate interleague game of the year. (Arizona faced KC on Thursday.) Jeff Suppan faces Brett Myers. The Red Sox were 15-14 in August; not exactly a swoon, but they didn't keep up with the A's (20-9) or the Yankees (17-12). Only the Mariners 14-15 record in the month has kept them in the playoff race. The Phillies had even a worse August, going 13-16, making the NL wild card race as tight as it is.

Enjoy, and happy labor day!

The Marlins added veteran and former Marlin Jeff Conine to the roster yesterday in hopes of replacing Mike Lowell's bat. What can they expect from Conine? He's been very consistent throughout his career, although he hasn't been very good. His OBA is a bit off his career, and his slugging is a bit higher than his career. He's no Mike Lowell, but he does give the Marlins more flexibility, and he's a consistent performer.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2026	2029
Attendance	28082	28530