The Padres are pitching to Bonds tonight. He's 0 for 2, but the Giants have scored four runs, including a solo shot by Ray Durham. The Dodgers are down 1-0 in the fourth as well. I'm off to bed, but the races stay interesting.

Congratulations to the Yankees on another AL East Division title. Aaron Fultz came into a tie game with 1 out in the ninth and issued a walk to Matsui and a homer to Berine Williams to give the Yankees the victory and make the weekend series meaningless for the AL East. The Yankees also win 100 games for the third year in a row.

The Yankees finish the season 4-2 against the Twins. Minnesota is now tied with the Angels and Athletics for 2nd best record in the AL. The Twins have losing records against both the Angels and A's, so the Twins need to sweep the Indians this weekend to have a shot at home field for the first round.

Doug Davis is 0 for 2 tonight, making him 1 for 64 on the season and giving him an .016 BA for the year. I guess that balances off Brooks Kieschnick. :-)

Hideki Matsui hit another HR tonight to tie the Twins-Yankees at 4. He's making his push for the MVP at the expense of the Twins.

The Athletics remain on the road to the playoffs as Bobby Crosby hits a solo HR to win the game in the bottom of the ninth. He hit it about 400 feet to left-center, and that will get him some rookie of the year votes. The Athletics and Angels are now tied for first in the AL West. There will be no playoff game. Whoever win two out of three this weekend takes the crown.

The Mariners and Athletics go to the bottom of the ninth tied at 2. Dye, Crosby and Swisher are due up.

Update: Dye grounds out on the first pitch.

I would be remiss in not mentioning the great game Jeremy Bonderman threw this afternoon against the Devil Rays. He struck out 9, walked 1 and allowed four hits on his way to a complete game shutout. He also pulled his ERA under 5.00, finishing the season 11-13 with a 4.89 ERA. It's a decent improvement for the 21-year-old who went 6-19 for the terrible 2003 team. His main improvement this season was his K per 9. Now he just needs to work on his walks and HR. He has plenty of time to improve.

Javier Valentin, who's done a great job blocking balls in the dirt since he came in, drives in the go-ahead run for Cincinnati in the top of the 12th with a double. The Cubs are coming to bat in the bottom of the inning trailing 2-1.

Update: Cubs get a single to start the 12th. Macias got the hit.

Update: Patterson strikes out swinging after failing to sacrifice.

Update: Nomar tried to drag a bunt, but the third baseman Lopez makes a good play. Man on 2nd, two out for Ramirez.

Update: Valentin just saved a run by blocking two wild pitches.

Update: Padilla walks Ramirez, Alou is up, men on 1st and 2nd, 2 out.

Update: Alou flies out to center to end the game. The Cubs are now 1 game out of the wild card with 3 to play. Just a great, edge of your seat game. Chicago had plenty of opportunities but just couldn't drive a runner home. Valentin should get the game ball for his defense and his offense.

The A's get out of a bases loaded situation in the top of the 6th. It remains 2-2. The Cubs have the bases loaded in the bottom of the 11th with Barrett up.

Update: Barrett strikes out swinging on a low pitch. It's the third time today the Cubs have left the bases loaded.

I don't know if it's the way the stands are miked or if the fans are just quieter, but the noise difference in switching between the Cubs and Athletics games is amazing. There's a constant roar in Chicago, and it seems you could hear a pin drop in Oakland.

Jermaine Dye hits his 23rd HR of the season, a solo shot to give the Athletics a 2-1 lead in the bottom of the 4th. Ichiro is due up in the top of the 5th. The Ichiro Watch is here.

Update: After the Ichiro K, Winn singles in Olivo (two doubles) to tie the game at 2. Oakland is batting in the bottom of the 5th.

The Rangers finish off the Angels 6-3. Good work from the bullpen, putting up three scoreless innings. If the Athletics win today, there will be no chance of a tie at the end of the regular season.

With Lopez on third and two outs, Dunn gets a bat on the ball and hits it up the middle. Walker fields it behind the bag and makes an off-balance throw that Lee scoops to his left to make the out. Cubs are up in the bottom of the ninth tied 1-1.

Update: Cubs go 1-2-3 in the ninth. Extra frames in Chicago. Prior has gone 9, striking out 16 and throwing 113 pitches, 81 for strikes, and only 1 walk.

Update: Dempster replaces Prior for the 10th.

The Athletics get an unearned run of their own in the bottom of the 3rd to tie the game.

Sammy Sosa hits his 34th HR of the year to give Prior and the Cubs the lead. The solo shot may be all Mark needs this afternoon. Sosa also ties Killebrew for 8th all time.

Update: With two out in the 7th, Kearns ties the game with a solo HR of his own.

Update: Prior gets out of the inning, raising his strikeout total to 15.

Vlad just hit his 2nd HR of the game to cut the Rangers' lead to 5-3. It's his 8th HR against Texas in 18 games this season.

Mark Prior keeps piling up the strikeouts. He K's the side 1-2-3 in the top of the 6th to run his total 13. He continues to be efficient, averaging about 13 pitches per inning.

Ichiro grounded out in his first AB today. He needs two hits to tie, three to break the record.

Update: After an Olivo double and a Crosby error, Ichiro drives in Olivo with a single, putting him just one hit behind Sisler. Mariners lead 1-0 in the third.

Update: In the fifth, Ichiro strikes out after a long AB on a pitch in the dirt.

Update: In the seventh, Ichiro lifts a soft fly ball to shallow left that Byrnes charges and catches.

Update: In the ninth, Dotel strikes out Ichiro to end the inning. Suzuki is now 0 for 6 vs. Dotel.

Kevin Mensch draws a walk with the bases loaded off John Lackey to give the Rangers a 2-1 lead. Adrian Gonzalez follows with a ball that deflects off the third baseman's glove just past the shortstop to drive in two more runs. It's 4-1 Rangers with 1 out and two on in the bottom of the fifth.

The deflection almost went into the shortstop's glove, in which case it would have made the defensive highlights for a week.

The Cubs load the bases with two out in the fourth but don't score. They have three hits and three walks, but have yet to push a man across the plate.

Meanwhile, the Reds have only managed one-hit against Prior, accounting for their only baserunner.

Adam Dunn just struck out for the 2nd time in the game and the 190th time this season, setting a new major league record. Prior now has 8 K through four innings, and the Cubs game remains scoreless.

Vlad Guerrero puts the Angels on the board with his 4th HR of the series. It's 1-1 in the middle of the 4th.

The old Mark Prior appears to be back today. He's struck out 7 through three innings, while only throwing 45 pitches. Just what the Cubs need if they make the playoffs. No score in the bottom of the third.

Jean-Pierre Allard offers this essay on the demise of the Montreal Expos.

Update: Jean-Pierre blogs about the Expos here.

The Rangers score first today as Adrian Gonzalez drives in Teixeira from second with a single as Texas takes a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the 2nd. Two on and 1 out.

Lots of important action this afternoon. It starts with the Angels at the Rangers. Texas bowed out of the playoff race last night, but can still try to spoil the Angels progress toward the division crown. John Lackey, who has been hot of late, takes on Chris Young, a rookie who's been cold.

North of Texas the Cubs finish up their series with the Reds, and now find themselves chasing the Astros. A Cubs victory today will tie them with the Astros for the Wild Card lead. They'll send Mark Prior against Aaron Harang. Prior has reacquired his great control. He had walked 21 in 33 1/3 innings in August, but has only walked 6 in 28 1/3 innings in September.

An hour later, on the West Coast, the Athletics host the Mariners for the final game of their 4 game series. Trailing Anaheim by 1 game, the A's send Mark Redman to the mound against Ryan Franklin. It looks like a game in which the offenses will dominate. Remember, Ichiro has a shot at breaking the hit record today, as he only needs three to pass Sisler.

For those of you who prefer late night action, the Dodgers host the Rockies and the Padres host the Giants at 10 Eastern. A Dodger win and a Giants loss gives the division to LA. The Padres won't be eliminated from the wild card with a loss, but they'll need a lot of help if they don't win.

Enjoy!

Bill Young attended last night's Expos game, and sends his thoughts on the evening:

For thirty years that was how Expos’ announcer Dave Van Horne would call a home run hit by a Montreal player. “Up, up and away…..” No matter where we were, at home, or in the car, or out someplace where the radio was playing, whenever we heard Dave’s velvet voice make this call, the ears would perk up and we would smile. “Up, Up and away”. It was a sound of our summers past, a sound of joy, a sign that something good was happening.

But last night, September 29, 2004, “up, up and away” took on a different connotation. This time, more than just the ball was leaving the park: this time, the whole Expos team was on its way out - and they were taking with them 35 years of memories, of life experiences, of traditions. They were taking a piece of us with them, and frankly, it hurt. (And as if the sting were not sharp enough, our beloved Dave van Horn is currently the voice of the Marlins. He was in town, doing this game!)

And so on this final night, over 30,000 of us gathered together at the Olympic Stadium one last time to wish them all ‘au revoir’. But it wasn’t a going away party; it was a wake. There was little joy in this Mudville.

Some of us were still in denial - one poster read “My head says ‘au revoir’ my heart says see you in 2005”. Others were angry, with a typical placard calling this date Black Wednesday (as opposed to that other day of infamy, Blue Monday). There was resignation, there was gratitude, there was plenty of nostalgia, and there was sorrow.

In the beginning, there was a surprising amount of bitterness in the air – and it was directed in an amorphous sort of way at those faceless, heartless men in suits who had allowed this thing to happen. It is convenient to blame the fans, but you might as well blame the passengers for the state of modern train service. The fans were the last to give up.

And so when Kim Richardson began to sing the American national anthem, she was greeting with loud an extended round of boos. It was disrespectful, to be sure, but it was not meant as an insult to our US neighbours. Rather, or so I believe, those doing the booing were seeking an outlet to express their profound displeasure at the way Bud Selig and his American partners in crime had done us in, and this seemed the best available. The booing was greeting immediately by an equally loud round of clapping and cheering, a kind-of, “Hey! This is Montreal. We don’t do things that way here”.

The Canadian national anthem was received respectfully, and when the singer reached that part where she sings the English words, you could hear many voices from the crowd joining in. This was a surprise.

The pre-game ceremonies featured a muted celebration of the 1994 Expos – the team destined to become world champions, except for the fact that the series of which they were to become champions was never played – with starter Ken Hill the only key member present. He threw out the first pitch.

We were all hoping for a victory – a rout would have been nice - and in the beginning the Big "O" was rocking once again. After all, the visitors were the hated Florida Marlins, Expos’ nemesis and now owned by the detested Jeffrey Loria. Unfortunately, by the second inning, thanks to some shoddy pitching and sloppy defence, the Marlins had scored four runs and taken our side right out of the game,

The crowd reacted badly to this turn of events, and after another round of booing, accompanied by several objects, including a golf ball or two, tossed onto the field, the umpires issued a warning that any more of this and the game would be forfeited. Forfeiting the last game - now there’s a threat!

Frank Robinson, who has fallen deeply out of favour with the fans, over reacted and pulled his players off the field – which just stirred things up all the more, and for a few moments it looked as though the situation might truly get out of hand. Fortunately, the androgynous Youppi, long-serving mascot and best-loved Expo of them all, reacted heroically by leaping up on the dug-out roof and leading us in a remarkable, and extended orgy of clapping and cheering and singing, reminding us once again why we were here. It worked; the sourness of the moment passed and the game went on.

As the Expos took the field at the top of the ninth, we all rose as one, and began cheering yet again, a standing ovation in a 1-9 ball game. And when they played Sarah McLaughlin’s “We Will Remember You” over the loud speakers, even the toughest among us lost it.

After the game, the players gathered on the field, for picturing taking and to say good-bye. While the cheering continued, now more subdued, the forever-classy Claude Raymond addressed the crowd, en français, super sub Jamie Carroll followed with more words of thanks, and the heroic Livan Hernandez, a throw-back to baseball’s golden era (he had 9 complete games this year!) spoke in Spanish.

We all just hung around, for a long time. Nobody was in a rush to leave – players and fans and staff. Nobody was ready to close the door.

When I finally made my way out sometime after 11 p.m. there were, even still, several hundred folk milling around. Every now and then one player or another would come back out and wave. And then disappear.

It was very sad. It was also very final. It is over.

For the record the Marlins won 9-1. Former Expo Carl Pavano was the winning pitcher; Sunny Kim took the loss. Juan Rivera had the last-ever hit by an Expo player at home, his third of the night. Termel Sledge (best-ever baseball name?) made the final out. Fittingly, he popped weakly to third.

Bryan Donovan has a very nice program here for sorting win shares. Check it out. I notice that the leaders for KC both have the pitiful low totals of 13. The are Mike Sweeney, Royal for life, and Carlos Beltran, who has spent half his season in Houston!

Someone in Kansas City shot at the Cleveland Indians bus last night, wounding one of the players.

A Cleveland Indians pitcher was shot in the right calf when a bullet pierced the team's bus and grazed another player late Wednesday night.

Team trainers were able to remove the bullet from the calf of Kyle Denney, who was expected to spend the night in the hospital but was not seriously hurt, club spokesman Bart Swain said.

This could have been a lot worse. Let's hope Denney has a speedy recovery.

Troy Glaus' two-run homer in the top of the 11th put the Angels in control of the AL West race with four games to play. Glaus hasn't hit much since returning from the DL in late August (20/88, .227) but he has supplied power, hitting seven HR and three doubles to give him a .500 slugging percentage. With the Athletics losing last night, the Angels are up 1 game.

Rich Harden pitched well last night, but you have to wonder about having him continue after getting Suzuki in the 8th. Harden entered the inning with 106 pitches thrown; Ichiro worked a 12 pitch AB, fouling off eight pitches and finally grounding out on a 3-2 count. The next two batters produced hits, which finally chased Harden. And although Rincon got his one batter, Mercir could not hold the lead. One could argue that Ichrio won the game with his long, tiring out.

The races got a little more interesting yesterday, and Houston and San Diego won and the other contenders lost. The Padres are out of the NL West race, so their only hope is to win today and hope that the other WC contenders lose over the weekend. The Padres have drawn the Diamondbacks as their final opponent, the worst team in the majors. San Diego will need a sweep, and they have the right opponent to make that happen. Still, their chances remain slim.

What's more interesting is the chance of a four-way tie between the Dodgers, Giants, Cubs and Astros. If the Cubs, Giants and Dodgers all win today, weekend sweeps by the Giants, Cubs and Astros set up a three day tournament to determine the NL West Champ (1-game playoff between the Dodgers and Giants) and the wild card (2-game playoff involving the loser of the NL West and Cubs and Astros). I'll admit this juicy scenario is not very likely.

However, if the Cubs and Giants both win today, a three way wild card playoff becomes more likely. You just need the three teams to have the same record over the weekend, winning or losing. However, the weekend favors the Astros who play the Rockies at home. The Cubs get Atlanta. Depending on tonight's LA game, the Braves may still be playing for home field in the first round. And the Giants, of course, face the Dodgers.

And yes, there's the chance of a four-way tie for the wild card, but that's only a two-day playoff, and doesn't involve the interesting choices of three way tie.

Ichiro Suzuki went 1 or 3 last night, picking up his 255th hit. He now needs 3 hits to break Sisler's record, set in 1920. The odds continue to indicate that he will break the record decisively. The following calculation is based on Suzuki getting 17 more AB this season.

Chance of 258 Hits	Based on 2004	Based on Career
Probability of Breaking Record	.978	.960
95% Confidence, Low End	3	2
95% Confidence, High End	10	10

Ichiro could break the record tonight. If he gets four AB he has a chance of at least three hits in the range of 11 to 15%. For five AB, that jumps to 21 to 27%.

Off Wing Opinion has a number of posts on the Expos moving to Washington. Start here and keep moving forward in time. He also links to this interesting piece by Colby Cosh which indicates this deal may not be final.

A visit to a referring thread at TheInsiders.com directs my attention to this PDF file, which purports to be a copy of the statement of claim in the RICO lawsuit by the former minority owners of the Expos against Loria, Selig, and others who connived at the asphyxiation of major league baseball in Montreal. The document appears authentic. (You can tell it's from 2002 because it looks just like those CBS memos from 1972--har har.) I haven't read the whole statement yet--I skipped around until I found the part I was looking for:

10. Plaintiffs seek redress for their injuries, including compensatory damages, which are tripled under RICO, and punitive damages in an amount no less than US$100 million. In addition, this action seeks a constructive trust over the Montreal Expos franchise, and injunctive relief prohibiting the contraction, relocation or sale of that team.

Stay tuned.

Milton Bradley was suspended for the rest of the regular season by MLB. At least he is contrite:

"From the bottom of my heart, I apologize for my outburst," the 26-year-old Bradley said shortly after learning of the suspension. "Getting upset has caused me to hurt family, hurt friends, hurt my team, hurt fans.

"I need to talk to somebody about anger, get treated, find a way to correct that situation. It's not even about baseball. This is about what I need to do for my life. I let anger get the best of me."

I'm glad he realizes he has a problem. Too bad he didn't deal with it sooner.

On a shallow fly ball to centerfield, Andy Fox tags up and scores to put the Rangers ahead 6-5 in the bottom of the 8th. The throw by DaVanon was poor and up the third base line, and allowed the runner on first to move up as well. Scioscia had his pitcher appeal, but the runner clearly was on the bag when the ball was caught. Texas has to win this game to have a shot at the division title.

Update: Curtis Pride doubles to the wall in center with Guerrero on first. Nix makes a great play, but the Angels send Guerrero. The throw was to the first base side of the plate, and the catcher, Laird, could not hang onto the ball, allowing Vlad to score. It's 6-6 in the top of the 9th as Cordero blows the save.

The Houston Astros have defeated the Cardinals 6-4 to move ahead of the Chicago Cubs and into a temporary tie with the San Francisco Giants for NL Wild Card. Bagwell had three hits and two RBI to lead the offense.

Houston was 44-44 when Jimy Williams was fired. They are now 45-26 since Phil Garner took over. This may be the 2nd season in a row where the NL manager of the year is a mid-season replacement.

An interesting pitching line by Pedro Martinez tonight. He struck out 5, walked 1 and allowed no HR in his five innings. Most nights, you would have thought those number meant a pretty good outing. But he gave up 10 hits and six runs, five earned. Where is the vaunted improved Red Sox defense? They had Mientkiewicz, Cabrera and Mueller on the infield tonight. Why weren't they gobbling up the balls put into play against Martinez.

My internal probability of the Red Sox doing well in the playoffs has gone down. Schilling seems to be the only reliable starter at the moment. With Pedro and Schilling pitching well, the team would be a favorite. But with just Schilling, I'm not sure the offense can score the six or seven runs a game needed to win.

Also with the Yankees sweeping the doubleheader today, the Red Sox are almost certain to be the wild card, greatly reducing the chance to use their home field advantage. It's not a good night for Boston fans.

I was mistaken in this post today. It was the ultimate game for the Expos in Montreal, not the penultimate one. Given the way Montreal played in their last series, it could not have come too soon. They lost all three, being outscored by the Marlins 18-4. Former Expos pitcher Carl Pavano won the game. It would be nice if the Expos could be moving to Washington with players like Pavano and Guerrero. I hope the Exposés do a better job of keeping their good players.

Vlad didn't homer in the first inning tonight, but Glaus doubled and DaVanon tripled, and the Angels lead Texas 3-0 in the third. Looks like this weekend's series between the Angels and Athletics is shaping up to be a classic.

Michael Kay, the Yankees announcer, just talked about the results of the Yankees and Twins beating each other. Although he didn't use the word paradox, it sounded a lot like this post. I wonder if someone at YES reads this blog?

The Twins won the battle of the starters this afternoon, as Johan Santana outpitched Mike Mussina. Santana went five, giving up just one run in the first while striking out five. Mussina struggled, allowing seven hits and four walks in six innings. Despite that, the Moose only allowed three runs. That left the game to the bullpens, and the Yankees won that battle, scoring four runs in the 7th to win 5-3.

Of course, should these teams meet next week, Sanatana won't come out in the fifth. The Yankees magic number is down to three.

With a 2-1 lead and two outs in the top of the 9th, LaTroy Hawkins blows the save, allowing a triple to Jimenez and a double to Kearns. The Reds are still batting with a man on 2nd.

Update: Hawkins strikes out Jacob Cruz to end the inning. 2-2 Going to the bottom of the ninth.

Update: Kearns comes through again in the top of the 12th with a two run homer. He's only 24; he's such a promising player I'd love to see what he can do in a season without injury.

Update: Lee strikes out to end the game. The Cubs now trail in the Wild Card race by 1/2 game.

Update: Ramirez gets an infield single to the shortstop hole. Lee up to try to keep the game going.

Update: Joe Valentine is breaking the Reds hearts. He walks Patterson, then on a bunt by Garciaparra, throws the ball into centerfield. Alou up with men on 1st and 3rd, 0 outs.

Update: Alou grounds into a DP. The Cubs narrow the lead to 1, but there's no one on and 2 out now.

Omar Minaya is not moving with the Expos. Instead, he's been hired as head of baseball operations for the NY Mets. East Coast Agony comments here.

What the Mets have done is added another level of management between Wilpon and the the GM. In general, I don't like to see management pyramid getting higher. Now there's just one more person who needs to sign off on every decision. I don't know how much power Omar will have, but my first move would be to start firing the people below him who made the season's bonehead moves.

The Mets don't need a bloated bureacracy. Maybe Omar can stream-line management. I don't think he's a bad GM, but he may be in a bad position.

With the bases loaded and two out in the bottom of the third, Sammy Sosa flied to the wall in right where Kearns made a nice catch in the ivy. The Cubs and Reds remained tied at one.

James Joyner is covering the news about the Expos move to Washington.

I've been trying to come up with a good name for the new team, and I think I finally have it. It respects the history of the franchise and also fits with the new city: The Washington Exposés!

Update: The Washington Post reports that the move is official. (Hat tip to James Joyner at the above link.)

It's the penultimate game at Stade Olympique tonight as the Expos host the Marlins. Washington DC baseball fans may want to tune in to see Sun-Woo Kim, who has had a great month of September, allowing only 3 ER in 26 1/3 innings. It's also time to get to know his teammates, who soon may be chasing flies in RFK.

Texas' season is on the line tonight. The best they can do right now is a tie for the division. They need to win all their games, hope Seattle beats Oakland two more times, then hope that one of the teams in the Angels-Oakland series doesn't sweep. The Angels just need to keep winning so they stay close for the showdown with Oakland this weekend.

The Yankees and Twins play a doubleheader starting at 4 PM. Game one will feature the best pitching matchup, as Johan Santana faces Mike Mussina. Mike's been going against the aces lately as he started against Pedro Martinez in his last two starts. A big win against the Yankees will further solidify Santana's Cy Young credentials. It's also likely to be each aces last start before the playoffs.

Roger Clemens goes for his 19th post-retirement win as the Astros host the Cardinals tonight. At 42, Clemens is still averaging a K an inning. The Astros are hoping that win 19 takes them into the wild card lead.

They'll know if they have a shot as the Cubs play this afternoon against the Reds. Late season acquistion Luke Hudson has pitched very well for the Reds. He has 35 K in 42 1/3 innings, but has walked 21. Fortunately, he's only allowed 2 HR.

A good pitching matchup in San Diego as Lowry faces Wells. Lowry is 3-0 with a 1.19 ERA in his last 3 starts, and has given the Giants a 2nd solid starter. The Padres are still close enough to grab the wild card, but they need wins and a lot of help from other teams. It would be one thing if they were just chasing the Giants, but they need to overcome Houston and Chicago as well.

Finally, Ichiro has a shot at the record, and the A's need a shot in arm. Suzuki needs three hits to tie, four hits to break George Sisler's 84 year-old hit record. The A's find themselves tied with Anaheim, and need wins so they don't have to find themselves in a position where they have to sweep the Angels over the weekend. Rich Harden, who pitched a great game last time out against the Angels will shoulder the load.

Enjoy!

Correction: Changed December to September in the first paragraph.

Harvard sports had two great comebacks in 1968. The best known is the 29-29 win against Yale, a game in which the Cimson scored 16 points in the last 42 seconds to gain a tie and share the Ivy title with the bulldogs. The lesser known comeback happened to the crew team in the finals to select the 8 to represent the Olympics in 1968. The story is that Harvard was racing against a team from Philadelphia (I believe it was the Vesper Boat Club, made up of former Penn oarsmen). Harvard trailed the entire race, but caught the finish line first by a bow ball.

The Dodgers had their amazing comeback last night. The Dodgers were down 4-0. They had allowed three unearned runs. They had garnered just three hits, and although Jamey Wright had allowed six walks, the Dodgers had not scored. The Giants were winning. Things looked bleak.

Enter Shawn Chacon. After a strikeout, Chacon walked four straight batters on 3-2 counts. Shawn summed up his performance thus:

"This one hurts," Chacon said. "My mechanics are all messed up."

Tim Harikkala came in to end the Rockies misery, giving up two hits and allowing four more runs to score. The Dodgers win, maintain their three game lead over the Giants and reduce their magic number to three.

The win, however, came with a cost. Milton Bradley became the latest crazy player and went off on the fans:

In the middle of the eighth, in the pressure of a crucial game, in the tension of a tight division race, Dodger outfielder Bradley lost it.

Lost his grasp on a fly ball with the bases loaded, allowing two runs to score.

Then completely lost his composure, exploding after a fan threw a plastic bottle at him from the right-field stands, missing Bradley by at least 20 feet. One batter after the bottle was thrown, Bradley could contain himself no longer, storming to the right-field railing and slam-dunking the bottle back into the stands.

His anger still unabated, Bradley continued to gesture wildly as teammates Finley and Alex Cora raced out to try to calm their furious teammate.

Manager Jim Tracy quickly joined them, but they couldn't placate Bradley. Umpire Jim Joyce, also out in right field, threw Bradley out the game.

You know, I thought California was supposed to be laid back. But in the last two weeks you had a Rangers pitcher throw a chair at a fan in Oakland, Jose Guillen of the Anaheim Angels go ballistic on his manager and now Bradley in LA go after fans. All three involved in close division races. Is this a sign that the big earthquake is coming?

The Dodgers knew the risk of taking on Bradley. I suppose that he's gotten this far through the season without wearing out his welcome is a testament to Jim Tracy. It's also a good thing they've picked up Steve Finley who can take on the CF duties if either the Dodgers or MLB decide that Milton is threw playing for the year.

Two more hits for Ichiro Suzuki last night as the Mariners continued to make the AL West race close with a 7-2 victory over the Oakland Athletics. Ichiro now needs four more hits to break George Sisler's hit record. The following is based on Ichrio getting 22 more AB this season.

Chance of 258 Hits	Based on 2004	Based on Career
Probability of Breaking Record	.985	.969
95% Confidence, Low End	4	3
95% Confidence, High End	13	12

With just four hits needed, the record could be broken tonight. If he gets five AB tonight, Ichiro has between a 5 and 7% chance of getting four hits.

The Astros have closed to within 1/2 game of the Cubs with a 2-1 win over the Cardinals. Backe pitched well enough through five, only allowing 1 run on a homer by Larry Walker. St. Louis is not taking it easy on the Astros, having the big four all in the lineup tonight. The Astros bullpen pitched four excellent innings, allowing just two hits while striking out five.

All of the wild card teams are finishing strong, which is helping to make this race so interesting. No one has been able to make a significant move on anyone else.

Vlad Guerrero nearly beats Texas single-handedly. He goes four for five with two homers, a double and five RBI. Texas' playoff hopes hang by a thread.

The Cubs made the NL Wild Card race more interesting by losing to the Reds 8-3. Maddux gave up a third two-run homer in the game. Houston leads 2-1 in the top of the ninth, and San Diego has an early lead on San Francisco. The multiple tie scenario is still intact!

The Red Sox won again, keeping the AL East race alive. The final score was 10-8 in 11 innings. The teams scored 16 runs in the first six innings, then nothing until the 11th when Kevin Millar hit a two-run shot to give the Red Sox the lead. It looks like the Yankees will need to actually win four games to take the division! :-)

Greg Maddux continues to be plagued by the long ball. He's given up two more HR tonight to give Cincinnati a 4-0 lead in the third. He's now allowed 32 HR this season, eclipsing his previous season high of 24 last year.

Update: 12 of his 32 HR have been hit by the Reds.

What I wrote last night.

Update: Vlad adds are RBI double to drive in both runs for the Angels. Texas trails 2-0 in the third.

Whatever defensive magic Derek Lowe received from the Garciaparra trade appears to be gone. After posting a 4.19 ERA in August, along with a 3-1 record, he's gone back to his July ways in September. Tonight he allowed five earned runs in 2 1/3 innings, raising his ERA this month to 6.52. He's walked 12 in his 29 innings this month.

Both the Twins-Yankees and Pirates-Phillies have already been postponed.

I do have interests besides baseball. :-) Here are some pictures from the American Lung Association Bike Trek. They're nice shots of me in the rain. If you go through and enlarge the one labeled Roll 7, Frame DSC_0354, you can see the water dripping off my handle bars. The last ten miles of that day were in the remnants of Ivan; cold horizontal rain. But it's for a good cause, and in the five years I've ridden, we've had many more good days than bad.

Update: Sorry, forgot to include the link before.

The Twins and Yankees open a three game series in NY tonight (weather permitting) in what could be a preview of one ALDS series. At this point, the AL East winner will get home field throughout the playoffs, so the Twins can't do better than finishing with the 2nd best record among division champs. But this series can have a big impact on seedings. This leads to some interesting paradoxes.

A paradox, a paradox,
A most ingenious paradox!
Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
A paradox,
Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
A curious paradox,
Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
A most ingenious paradox!

Let's say, for example, that the Yankees decide they'd rather play the Athletics in the first round. In that case, they'd want the Twins to win, since that would help give the Twins a better record than the A's. However, this presents a problem for the Yankees, since if the Twins win, the Yankees could lose the division to the Red Sox and the Yankees would end up playing the Twins anyway. Now, the Twins might decide that they'd rather play the Yankees than the Red Sox in the first round, in which case they'd want the Yankees to win the East. But having the Yankees win means the Twins would lose, and end up playing the Red Sox anyway! This is good, because it gives neither team an incentive to lose, and both can play to win. The Yankees are sending their three best pitchers to the mound in the series, and the Twins are sending their two best. It should be a nice preview of what's to come.

The AL West, NL West and NL Wild Card races continue tonight, with San Diego and San Francisco returning to the fray after a night off. The game's in southern California tonight and features a good pitching matchup between Jason Schmidt and Brian Lawrence. Schmidt has had a tough September that has taken him out of Cy Young competition. But it appears to be all luck. Schmidt has pitched 34 2/3 innings in September, the same as in August, a month in which he had a 2.86 ERA. September's number is 5.45. He's allowed fewer hits, his strikeouts remain high and his walks are the same. He's allowed 3 more HR, and those have all been with men on, accounting for 11 of the 21 runs he's allowed.

Enjoy!

Two players that have greatly surprised me are Adrian Beltre and Melvin Mora. Mora, in 2003 at age 31 turned in a partial season that was way beyond expectations. It was easy to pass that off as a fluke, since he only played 96 games. But it's more difficult to categorize his combined 2003-2004 seasons as a fluke. At a very late age, there was a significant shift in his batting ability.

Adrian Beltre is on the edge of becoming the first Dodger ever to hit 50 HR. Like Mora, his success is out of line with his previous history. However, Beltre has one positive that makes me less surprised at his season; he was a regular at a very young age. Someone who is a regular at 19 and stays a regular usually turns out to be a very good ballplayer. (I did a study of this about then years ago; 2000 PA before seasonal age 24 made your chance of getting into the Hall of Fame very high.) Beltre, however, rather than a gradual rise to greatness made the jump all at once. Why?

The Dodgers had been waiting patiently for Adrian Beltre to develop into a big-time hitter ever since they signed him as a 15-year-old out of the Dominican Republic in 1994. That the breakout has occurred in 2004, Beltre's seventh big- league season, is primarily because he finally is waiting patiently at the plate.

"It's kind of scary watching him," said Mets reliever Ricky Bottalico, who gave up one of the five hits Beltre collected yesterday in the Dodgers' 4-2 victory. "I remember when you used to be able to slider Sammy Sosa to death. A few years later he got patient and started waiting for his pitch. That's what Beltre has done. He picks his spots to go deep."

Once again, being selective at the plate pays off big time for a hitter. His walks are higher than his last two seasons, and his hits are much higher than his last two seasons. This, again, goes against the arguments that increasing walks somehow decreases hits, and suggests that someone like Ichrio would improve if he were more selective.

Mora's improvement may also be due to greater selectivity at the plate. Mora had a big jump in walks from 2001 to 2002. His power numbers (HR especially) went up with the walks, and his batting average followed suit the next year. I don't know how many more examples of this we need until all players and managers and GMs start to realize that selective hitters are good hitters.

I just lost a very long post on the West Coast games last night. So here's the quick summary; bad starting pitching, great bullpen work, and late inning heroics. Oakland and LA followed exactly the same game plan. Oakland's magic number is down to 6, LA's to four.

I also had some comments on Adrian Beltre, which I'll try to write up later.

Ichiro Suzuki had 1 hit last night as the Mariners lost a close one to the Athletics 6-5. He now needs six hits in his last six games to break the record held by George Sisler. This calculation is based on Ichiro getting another 26 AB this season.

Chance of 258 Hits	Based on 2004	Based on Career
Probability of Breaking Record	.959	.919
95% Confidence, Low End	5	4
95% Confidence, High End	15	14

There have been a number of inquiries in the last day as to how I calculate these odds. I wrote them out for a statistics professor yesterday, so I'll repeat that letter here in the extended entry.

The Angels win a big game for them, but not without a scare. Up 5-3 in the bottom of the ninth, Texas had three consecutive singles to load the bases. Percival, who was in the for the last single, then got two popups and a strikeout to finish off the Rangers. An Athletics loss would put the Halos into a tie for first. The A's, however, are winning 2-0 in the third and have held Ichiro hitless in his first two AB.

Update: Colon pitched another great game vs. the Rangers to extend his record to 6-0 vs. the Rangers. He only allowed 4 hits and two earned runs.

The Cubs are getting a big boost tonight from their middle infield as Garciaparra and Todd Walker each have 3 hits and have combined for six RBI. It's would be a dream for MLB to have a Cubs-Red Sox World Series, but it would be a nightmare for Boston fans to have Nomar and Walker come back to haunt them.

Congratulations to the Boston Red Sox who won a playoff berth tonight with a 7-3 victory over the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. They also keep their hopes alive of winning the AL East, picking up half a game on the idle Yankees.

The Astros knocked out four doubles in the 2nd inning off Woody Williams to help themselves to a 6-0 lead over the Cardinals. Scott Rolen has the night off, but otherwise La Russa as the A-Team on the field tonight for St. Louis.

The Astros need the runs, as the Cubs have gone out to a 2-0 lead on a two-run double by Nomar Garciaparra.

The Angels get off to a 1-0 lead on the Texas Rangers on a solo HR by Vlad Guerrero. Vlad has an interesting line vs. Texas this year. In 15 games he has 21 hits and four HR, but only six RBI. I guess if you keep the rest of the players off base, Vlad can't damage you that much.

Scott Kazmir has struck out two in each of the first three innings against the Red Sox tonight. Only Kevin Youkilis has reached base, drawing a four pitch walk. That's nine scoreless innng for Kaz vs. the Red Sox this year. The DRays lead 1-0 in the bottom of the third.

Update: Tino Martinez gets hit by Arroyo in the bottom of the third and has to come out of the game. Huff had been hit earlier in the game. With one out in the top of the fourth, Kazmir hits Manny in what appears to be retaliation. Both benches are warned that the next hit batter would lead to ejection. Kaz then hits Millar! Jerry Remy thought it the throw that hit Millar was not intentional, but the umpires ran Kaz. Good news for the Red Sox, as they had not gotten a hit off the youngster, and have men on 1st and 2nd with 1 out, trailing 2-0.

Update: Sosa came in to pitch, and got out of the jam in the 4th. But he put men on first and 2nd with in the 5th, and with 1 out gave up a three-run homer to Damon. Red Sox lead 3-2.

Correction: It was Huff, not Martinez who came out of the game.

Sam Pratt looks at the ways the Red Sox can win the division. His conclusion:

We wouldn't be Sox fans if we weren't hoping against hope for a miracle, setting ourselves up for heartache again. Probably it would be smarter to concede once the wildcard is a lock, and focus on getting the team in shape for the playoffs.

But that would require management that thinks with its head, not its foolish heart.

I disagree. If the Sox win the division, they win home field for the playoffs. This chart shows you why that is important.

Red Sox 2004	Home	Road
Record	55-26	38-36
Runs Per Game	6.4	5.2
ERA	4.07	4.25

While unlucky, the Sox have not been as good on road as they've been at home. To me, the extra games at home are worth pulling out all the stops to attempt to win the division.

It seems appropriate that what could be the last MLB series played in Montreal involves the Florida Marlins. The Marlins ownership abandoned the Expos, and took everything of value from the team when they made their way south. I hope the Expos put up a good fight in these games. Josh Beckett, whose disappointing season went a long way toward the Marlins not repeating, makes the start tonight for Florida vs. John Patterson.

Scott Kazmir gets the start against the Red Sox and Bronson Arroyo tonight. Kaz shut the Sox out for six innings the last time he faced them. A Boston win and an Angels loss puts the Red Sox into the playoffs.

The Rangers will try to pin that loss on the Angels as they open a four-game series in Texas. It's a good matchup, too as Bartolo Colon faces Kenny Rogers. The gambler has pitched good but not great against the Angels this year; he gives up a lot of hits, but no HR and no walks. He keeps his team in the game. Colon, on the other hand, has mauled the Rangers. He's 5-0 with a 2.12 ERA vs. Texas this season. He's allowed a .157 BA while striking out 30 in 34 innings. It should be noted that if not for his record against Texas, Colon would be below .500.

The Houston Astros are still alive for the wild card. They need some help from the Reds and the Padres, but they will have their hands full with St. Louis. I don't know what La Russa's strategy will be in these games. Obviously, the Cards are more concerned with getting their rotation in order and their players healthy. It's a good week to try to sweep the Cardinals. The Astros have Oswalt and Clemens going in the series (Roy tonight). If they can sweep the Cardinals, they'll have a relatively easy series with the Rockies to finish the season.

Finally, the Athletics and Dodgers should each get a breather as they play weak sisters in the division. The Athletics take on Seattle for four games. The Mariners are finishing the season on a high note as Ichiro's hitting has helped them to spoil division bids by Anaheim and Texas. The Athletics are in first due more to the Mariners play than their own at this point. The A's need to take 3 out of four here, and hope that Texas and the Angels can knock each other out before next weekend.

The same holds true for the Dodgers. They need to win three out of four against the Rockies, and hope that San Diego can win two of three from the Giants. LA fans would like next weekend's series with the Giants to be meaningless.

Enjoy!

Update: Dave in the comments points out that due to the scheduling in the AL West, the Red Sox magic number is actually 1. A Red Sox victory or an Angels loss tonight puts Boston in the playoffs.

Update: Sorry, their is a mistake in the above item. A Sox loss and an Angels loss does not give the Red Sox the wild card, since the Rangers could still tie the Red Sox. Only a Sox victory tonight will give the Red Sox the Wild Card. So, in a way, their magic number isn't really one.

Jose Guillen has been suspended without pay by the Angels. He'll miss the rest of the regular season, and will not play in the post season if the Angels can win the AL West.

Guillen has drawn the ire of his teammates, coaches and the front office for a number of incidents this season, but Saturday's apparently was the last straw.

After being removed from the game for a pinch runner in the eighth inning, Guillen threw his hands into the air, walked slowly off the field and threw his helmet toward the end of the dugout occupied by manager Mike Scioscia. Upon reaching the dugout, Guillen threw his glove against the dugout wall.

Scioscia downplayed the incident immediately after Saturday's game, but after a meeting Sunday afternoon, Guillen was told to pack his bags.

"It was a tough decision, I didn't sleep at all last night thinking about it,' Scioscia said. "We had to do something with Jose, I think it was becoming a distraction. Anything that gets in the way of winning, you have to put to the side.

What an amazing event. You're in the last week of the season with the division title on the line and you suspend your 2nd best player. As of Sept. 23rd, Guillen had 21 win shares, 2nd most on the team behind Vlad Guerrero. I don't know whether to applaud Sciocia and Moreno for putting a poor teammate in his place, or criticize them for handicapping their team at a critical juncture.

Mostly, I'm struck at the difference in the way the Angels handled this from the way the Red Sox handled the Carl Everett situation a few years ago. In that case, the front office undermined the manager's authority. So the Angels front office gets major points for sticking up for Scioscia (as did Cleveland with Bradley and Wedge).

Guillen put himself in gold last year with a superb season. It's too bad he's let his temper eat away at his success. Unfortunately, it's a lose-lose situation for both the player and the team.

Ichiro Suzuki had 1 hit yesterday as the Mariners continue to spoil the playoff hopes of the AL West teams. Their 9-0 victory yesterday prevented Texas from gaining ground on Oakland. The following probabilities are based on Ichiro getting 31 more AB in 7 games.

Chance of 258 Hits	Based on 2004	Based on Career
Probability of Breaking Record	.974	.940
95% Confidence, Low End	6	6
95% Confidence, High End	17	16

As the number of trials go down, the confidence ranges are starting to merge. The mid point is about 11 more hits, so unless he sits after breaking the record, it appears he'll break it by a good amount.

Gagne got the first five batters he faced, but Bonds hit an infield single and Snow worked Gagne hard to draw a walk, fouling off a number of pitches. Eric finally got Cruz on strikes to end the game. Throwing 35 pitches, Gagne will probably need a day off tomorrow.

The Dodgers had a good weekend, reducing their magic number by four. They've also help tighten the wild card race, with both SD and Houston gaining a game over the weekend. The Dodgers go home to finish the season, and a four game series vs. the Rockies gives the Dodgers a big chance to have the NL West over before the Giants come into town next weekend. LA's magic number is down to five.

Jake Peavy pitched 6 terrific innings today, allowing 1 run to lower his ERA to 2.25. He currently leads the NL in ERA, but needs two more IP to cement that championship. He only threw 103 pitches, I'm surprised the Padres didn't let him get two more today.

The 7-1 victory helps the Padres gain a bit in the wild card race. It will be a game if the Giants lose, 1/2 game if the Giants win.

Correction: Readers have pointed out to me that SD has gone to a four-man rotation. That makes the six innings and 103 pitches much more reasonable.

The Phillies are hanging on by a thread. They barely got by the Expos today on a great pitching performance by Lidle. A 2-1 victory, coupled with a Cubs defeat, means that the Phillies can still win the wild card if they win all of their remaining games. Of course, the Giants, Astros and Padres would need to lose a lot of their remaning games also, but hope springs eternal!

I like this. Jim Tracy has brought in Gagne to start the 8th inning. With a 6-4 lead, he's trying to bury the Giants. Good for him. Gagne gets the side 1-2-3 in the 8th. He'll face, Tucker, Feliz and Bonds in the 9th.

That's the best you could say about Kevin Brown's performance today. He didn't get out of the first, giving up six hits and four runs. He did throw 22 of 32 pitches for strikes however. Usually that's good, but if you getting the strikes because the opposition is mashing the ball, that's trouble. Schilling allowed 1 hit (but four walks) over 7 for his league leading 21st win. Kruk can give the Cy to Curt again. :-)

The Red Sox have won the season series against the Yankees, so they only need to tie NY to win the AL East and home field for the playoffs.

I was out today celebrating my dad's 84th birthday. He's in very good shape for his age (although he doesn't think so). We had a nice dinner with my sister's family and my aunt, then back for cake and ice cream at my sister's house with various cousins.

While I was gone, I noticed that Kerry Wood had a unique outing. It took him an inning to settle down, but that one inning cost him the game. Wood gave up 3 hits, 2 walks and 2 hit batters in the first, but with the help of a double play it only led to three runs. He only allowed 1 walk over the next six innings he pitched. Al Leiter, wild in his own right (5 walks), only allowed two hits and two runs over six, while the Mets bullpen shutdown the Cubs the rest of the way.

Maybe the Cubs should give Wood a longer warmup before he takes the mound in the first.

As the year of the old pitcher winds down, a wild card game features one of the best. Kerry Wood faces Al Leiter at Shea as the Mets try again to spoil the Cubs wild card hopes. Leiter has faded lately, going 2-5 with a 5.02 ERA since August. And while Kerry is only 1-1 in September, he's struck out 32 in 28 innings without allowing a HR.

Two other oldsters will take the mound at Fenway this afternoon as Kevin Brown takes on Curt Schilling. Brown is coming off a broken left hand and has been fitted with a special glove to protect the hand from further injury. Schilling is going for his 21st win and a great game against the Yankees today will certainly boost his Cy Young chances.

And keep your eye on Arizona at San Diego as Jake Peavy tries to nail down the NL ERA title. He needs 7 2/3 innings to assure himself a place on the leader board. And 4 1/2 games out of first, the Padres need a win to keep their playoff hopes alive.

Enjoy!

There are some Expos fans who still care about their team. They rallied to try to save baseball in Montreal yesterday.

Two days into the big weekend series, and the races have not changed since Friday morning. Each team in contention has gone 1-1 so far with the Red Sox, Angels, Rangers and Giants winning yesterday after the Yankees, Athletics, Cubs, Astros and Dodgers won on Friday. This sort of back and forth only benefits the leaders.

Ichirio went 1 for 5 last night, lowering his odds for breaking the record, but they still are very high. The following is based on his getting 35 AB over his last 8 games.

Chance of 258 Hits	Based on 2004	Based on Career
Probability of Breaking Record	.978	.945
95% Confidence, Low End	8	7
95% Confidence, High End	19	17

The Angels bullpen combination of K-Rod and Percival combined for three perfect innings in the Angels win against the A's this afternoon. They struckout five while the Angels hitters were able to score 2 in the 8th to take the lead. Rodriguez has had an incredible season in relief, striking out 118 batters in 80 1/3 innings, only allowing 2 HR. While he did blow a few saves this year, it's hard to imagine he won't be somebody's closer soon.

I'm not sure what Tony La Russa is doing today. Maybe he's giving the callups a chance to pitch. Al Reyes started the game, threw three perfect innings in which he threw 25 of 34 pitches for strikes, and is now out of the game in favor of Ankiel. There very well may have been an injury, but I can imagine La Russa giving his regular starters a day off, and having a group of late season callups go three innings each.

It's a start against the Mets, so keep it in perspective, but Mark Prior looks pretty good. He went 7 2/3 innings today, allowing no runs, four hits and two walks. He struck out five, not high, but not bad. He threw 71 of his 109 pitches for strikes. A healthy, strike throwing Prior in the playoffs will be a big plus for the Cubs.

A Cubs win early this afternoon will make it a do or die evening for the Marlins and Phillies. With their magic number for elimination at 2, the 79 win teams need a lot to happen in the next week for them to make the playoffs. Mostly, they can't afford to lose. The Marlins send staff ace Carl Pavano to the mound against Mike Hampton. The Phillies send Kevin Millwood, who should be the staff ace against Scott Downs of the Expos. Downs has been horrible, giving up 9 HR in 49 2/3 innings this year. Both teams have a good chance of keeping hope alive.

A really interesting pitching matchup is in Boston as Javy Vazquez faces Tim Wakefield. Both have been hammered as of late; there's talk among Yankees fans as to whether Vazquez should be in the Yankees post-season rotation. And the Red Sox rotation, that looked so good after the trade for defense, suddenly only can trust in Schilling. Both these hurlers will be pitching for a playoff spot tonight.

Enjoy!

Last night's Twins win is a good example of what the playoff contenders have to look forward to in the post season. The four J's were out in force last night, combining to hold the Twins to 2 runs. Santana, Crain, Rincon and Nathan all pitched. All have ERAs under three. They combined for 10 K and only 4 hits allowed. These three relievers make it a six inning game for the Twinkies, and Santana usually gives them the day off.

With his 20th win, Santana appears to be a shoo-in for the Cy Young award.

Noticing the final 3-2 score (in the Dodgers favor) of the Dodgers-Giants game this morning, I decided to watch the ninth inning without reading about it first. Basically, I wanted to see if Gagne had a chance to face Bonds, and how he handled it.

I thought I wasn't going to see that matchup. Gagne was facing the top of the order, and Bonds bats fourth. My thought was that this is the exact reason you want Bonds batting third. If the Giants go 1-2-3 (likely against Gagne), it doesn't look good to have Bonds on deck. But after getting the first two batters, Gagne walks Pedro Feliz (.301 OBA) on four pitches! The SF announcers described Tracy as "throwing up in the dugout." So now what do you do? Do you have the best closer in the game (I know, because my readers have told me) pitch to the best hitter in the game? No, you intentionally walk him and put the tying run in scoring position! Snow pinch hits for Alfonzo, and Snow walks on four pitches! That's twelve balls in a row from Gagne. (I would have been so mad after the Feliz walk that I would have lifted him for a lefty at that point.) But Gagne stays in the face Torrealba. Gagne finally throws a strike to get ahead in the count, but Yorvit does get a pitch he can drive. Fortunately for the Dodgers, it was right at the left fielder.

Shawn Green hit a 2-run HR to tie the game last night making the Dodgers happy he didn't take the night off. He won't play today. The Dodgers magic number is 7 to win the division.

Congratulations to the Atlanta Braves on clinching the NL East last night. It's an amazing organization. No one does a better job of tweaking weaknesses and picking up quality players than John Schuerholz. I sure thought they were out of contention coming into the season. Couple that with injuries to Chipper Jones and Marcus Giles, it difficult to believe they could have made the playoffs, let alone finish with home field for the first round (they lead by 1 1/2 games). But Drew and Estrada proved to be the equals of Sheffield and Lopez, and Julio "Iron Man" Franco continues to amaze in his mid 40's. And major Kudos to Leo Mazzone for the season of Jaret Wright and John Thomson. I don't know how many people get into the Hall of Fame for coaching (as opposing to managing), but Leo Mazzone has earned a spot.

The question, as it always is for the Braves, can they take the next step and win the series?

The cream rose to the top in baseball last night as the leaders in the contested races all won. The Athletics put both the Angels and the Rangers three games back and reduced their magic number to seven. The big contrast in the "A" game was the efficiency of the pitching staffs. Harden and his relief help threw a total of 132 pitches, and 92 of them were for strikes. That's 70% strikes. The Angels, on the other hand, were worked by the A's hitters. Angels pitchers threw 181 pitches, 111 for strikes, or 61% strikes. It's a nice example of the Oakland process; the Oakland batters worked the Angels pitchers for 4.1 pitches per PA. The Oakland pitchers, by throwing strikes, threw just 3.6 pitches per PA.

A big win for the Cubs last night, and they opened up some space in the NL Wild Card race. The home plate umpire last night, Mr. Scott, had a very generous strike zone, and both pitching staffs took advantage of it. The Cubs pitchers struck out 13 of the 40 batters they faced last night, and the Mets staff added nine strikeouts of their own. It was a 1-1 game in the 10th when a walk, wild pitch and single did in Looper and the Mets. Looper was the only Mets pitcher who did not record a strikeout last night.

Jon Heyman sums up last night's Yankees-Red Sox game in Newsday:

Like water torture, the games can even look like encores, the re-living of a nightmare. This was one of those times.

Of all the classic Yankees-Red Sox encounters, beleaguered Boston had the misfortune to recreate Game 7 of the 2003 American League Championship Series Friday night. A few of the details were left out or slightly off, but enough of them were the same - including the main one, that Boston's great starting pitcher, Pedro Martinez, remained in the game too long.

The inning - the eighth - was the same. The final Pedro pitch count of 117 was in the same range as 2003. Two of the Yankees who delivered clutch hits off Pedro - Hideki Matsui and Bernie Williams - were the same.

One big difference is, Boston's manager will get to keep his job this time. For today, anyway.

I didn't see the game last night, but TIVO captured it for me. As I watched the NESN broadcast of the 8th, the Boston announcers didn't see to have anything to say about Pedro coming out for the 8th. Even after the Matsui HR, there was no second guessing. It was Eckersley on the post-game show that made the point:

It's a win-win situation to take him out after the 7th inning and nothing good could come out of him pitching in the 8th inning, and it didn't.

And Francona didn't help himself with this quote:

That's when Francona came out of the dugout to retrieve Martinez. At the very latest, Francona should have removed Martinez after Matsui's home run.

"If I run out there after two pitches, it would have looked like I wasn't making a very good decision before the inning," Francona explained.

Of course, if you lose a game that you should win, that even makes you look worse. At least Francona made the decision, rather than asking Pedro.

The Yankees magic number is four. They are going to win the AL East and have home field throughout the playoffs. The only good news for the Red Sox is that both Anaheim and Texas lost, so Boston's wild card magic number went down as well. Their magic number is four, and finishing against the O's and DRays, they should be able to win the WC with very little help from others.

Ichiro Suzuki picked up 2 more hits last night as the Mariners continued their spoiler role, defeating Texas 8-7. Suzuki now needs 9 hits in an estimated 39 AB to break George Sisler's hit record.

Chance of 258 Hits	Based on 2004	Based on Career
Probability of Breaking Record	.982	.950
95% Confidence, Low End	9	8
95% Confidence, High End	21	19

For the first time since I've been keeping track of this, both probabilities are at 95% or above. 95 Percent is considered significant; in other words, at this level, it would be significant if Ichiro didn't break the record.

By the way, today is game 154 for the Mariners. I don't think he'll get 9 hits today.

A reader sends this story about the Expos moving to DC. Looks like MLB is going to decide to move the team, then find a buyer. What a long strange trip it's been.

As we enter the ten day stretch drive, there are a number of interesting games tonight. First off is the Yankees-Red Sox series. A sweep by the Yankees gives them the AL East crown and home field throughout the playoffs. It also does damage to Boston's chances at making the playoffs. The way I see it the Yankees can approach this series two ways. Winning one game will pretty much assure the Yankees of home field and the AL East crown anyway. They'd at most have to win four of their last six, and that's only if Boston wins all their remaining games. But NY may not wish the possibility of facing the Red Sox in the ALCS. In which case, the Yankees should want to do the best they can to knock Boston out of the playoffs.

My guess is the Yankees don't care who they face down the road. A sweep will be nice, but they'll try to win one. Tonight rematches Mussina and Martinez. These pitcher have been going in opposite directions lately, Mussina has an 0.78 ERA over his last three starts, Pedro a 5.29. The Sox probably need to give Martinez a rest, but with the division in sight and the wild card still in play, that's a luxury Boston can't afford.

Johan Sanata goes for his 20th win tonight against the Cleveland Indians. Santana has not allowed a run in September, and has pitched 30 consecutive scoreless innings. Suprisingly, he's only faced Cleveland once this year and had a very short outing. If Santana and Schilling have the same number of wins, I would assume that even John Kruk would concede the Cy Young award goes to Santana.

The Cubs get to face the Mets, which is a positive for Chicago, except they're facing Kris Benson, who has pitched very well in two of his last three starts. He's struck out 18 and walked 1 in that time frame. The Cubs just need to win to take the wild card at this point. With SF and LA battling each other Cubs wins will put distance between them and whoever comes out the loser in that series.

The Rangers try to continue their late season surge against the Seattle Mariners. Seattle has been enjoying their role as spoiler, going 5-5 since they started playing the west, and helping the Rangers into a tie with Anaheim. And, of course, there is the Ichiro watch.

The Angels host the Athletics tonight and both will be keeping an eye on the Rangers. Rich Harden takes on Kelvim Escobar. Escobar has to be one of the unluckiest pitchers of the season. He has a 3.75 ERA and a 10-11 record. Even over his last three appearances, he's 1-2 with a 1.17 ERA! Meanwhile, Harden is having a rough September. It's not clear why. His K, BB and HR numbers are all consistent with his season, but he's giving up a lot more hits. Is it bad defense?

Finally, a battle of lefties in San Francisco as Odalis Perez faces Kirk Rueter in the starting skirmish in the battle for the NL West title. The Dodgers got a little breathing room last night as they beat San Diego and the Giants blew a late lead to the Astros. It works out well for the Giants that Green is taking tomorrow off, when the right-hander is going. The Giants are in a position where it will be difficult to lose the division and win the wild card (see Cubs comments above). There will be no backing into things in the NL this year. Whoever gets to the playoffs will have earned it down the stretch.

Enjoy!

Correction: Fixed a typo. I meant Giants but wrote Dodgers.

In a comment to this post on Ichiro, a reader writes:

While it's obvious that a higher on base percentage is always a good thing it does not follow that if Ichiro walked more he would have a higher on base percentage. The assumption that it is possible to simply turn outs into walks simply through greater pitch selection is faulty. Along the way he'll also turn some hits into walks, and worse, some hits into outs. Stats are a great way of evaluating the value players produce but I don't think they act as very good prescriptions. If Vlad Guerrero was more selective at the plate he would have more walks but he also have less hits, homeruns etc.

I think there is a common misperception here of what selectivity at the plate means. First of all, Vlad highest walk total was in 2002, which was also his highest hit total. Secondly, the value of becoming more selective is best seen in Sammy Sosa, who made the unusual move of changing his approach at the plate mid-career. Look at Sosa pre-1998 and since. Increased selectivity improved every aspect of his game. And it could do the same for Ichiro.

My favorite exhibit at the Hall of Fame is Ted Williams' model of the strikezone. It different colored baseballs attached to a board. The colors form rectangular zones. On each ball is written a batting average, which Williams claimed was his batting average when the ball was in that area of the strike zone. His BA was very high on pitches in the middle of the zone, and very low the farther you got outside of the zone. While the numbers may change, I believe this model is true for all batters, including Ichiro.

Ichiro has a unique ability to adjust his swing once he's committed, so he does a very good job of putting balls outside the strikezone in play. But his BA has to be lower on those pitches. There is no downside to not swinging at those pitches, since not swinging makes the count more favorable to the batter. By not swinging at those pitches, Ichiro will increase the number of pitches over the heart of the plate, where I suspect his batting average is very high. His walks will go up, and his batting average will go up, because he's swinging at higher percentage pitches. I also suspect his power will go up, since it's easier to hit pitches in the strikezone hard.

Again, look at Sosa's career. He layed off pitches outside of the strikezone. Pitchers were forced to throw over the plate, and Sammy creamed them. Ichiro would likely do the same.

Update: Nate Silver has a related article at BP.

audio post powered by audblog

audio post powered by audblog

The Cubs defeat the Pirates 6-3 to temporarily move into a tie for first in the NL wild card race. Maddux wins his 15th, giving him 17 straight years of reaching that milestone.

I'm off to Fenway for the evening. Look for some audio posts!

Another lead-off HR as Derek Jeter pops one to give the Yankees a 1-0 in the bottom of the first. It's his 23rd of the season, leaving him one shy of his career high. Derek is having a tremendous stretch run, scoring 27 runs and driving in 18 in 22 September games, including the first inning today. He's hitting, he's walking and he's supplying power, exactly what the Yankees need from him going into the playoffs.

Mark Kotsay leads off the Oakland-Texas game with a HR. Starting Chan Ho Park against Tim Hudson doesn't give me a lot of confidence that Texas can pull this one out. I suspect the Rangers will get into the bullpen early, especially if the game is close.

Update: Two walks and a single by Nix ties the game at 1 in the 2nd.

Update: Hudson is being hurt by his control and his defense today. Eric Young led off the third with a ball over Dye's head that went for a double. However, the ball was catchable, and Dye looked confused trying to go back for it. Later, Michael Young hit a shot to second that Scutaro couldn't handle, and Eric scored from third to give Texas a 2-1 lead. Hudson walked his third batter of the game, but got out of the inning with no further damage.

At this point, Park is pitching the better game. He's thrown less pitches and a higher percentage of strikes. He's walked none and struck out two, while Tim has 0 K to go with his three walks.

Update: The A's tie it in the 5th on another solo HR off Park.

Greg Maddux just drove in two runs to extend the Cubs lead over the Pirates to 4-0 in the 2nd inning. Maddux was a decent hitter through most of his career; in the last couple of season his hitting has declined. A lifetime .176 hitter, he's hit in the .140's the last two seasons. Of course, it helps that the Pirates started Nelson Figueroa, who, to put it mildly, is not very good. The first five Cubs reached against him in the 2nd, with a walk, four hits and two doubles. Maddux finished it off.

Seth Stoths of Seth Speaks gets an excellent review from Management by Baseball. The review is of Seth's presentation style, and how he drills down from a high level to give us information that we can act upon. It's a baseball post and a business primer. And Seth does a great job both collecting the data and making his points.

There is one thing I'd like to disagree with in the original article, however.

It is interesting to me to see that Santana does seem to throw more breaking balls with two strikes. Of the 14 strikeouts, seven came with the changeup, four with a curveball and three with the fastball. So, what is his strikeout pitch? Any of the three!

Well, let's drill down a little deeper. From the table Seth presents above this quote, we can construct the following table as well:

Pitch Choice with 2 strikes	# Pitches	# Strikeouts	Percentage
Fastball	15	3	.20
Changeup	13	7	.53
Curveball	7	4	.57

So he's much more likely to get a K with an offspeed pitch than with his fastball. This reminds me of something Bill James said in an interview with this site.

This assumes that fastballs get strikeouts. This is untrue. Breaking pitches get strikeouts.

No doubt Santana has an excellent fastball. But his fastball does not result in strikeouts as much as his curve and change, at least in this dataset. It's not his strikeout pitch.

San Diego, out of the race themselves are certainly playing the spoiler well. Jake Peavy's performance last night temporarily puts him in the NL ERA lead. The Dodgers have lost seven of their last 10, five of those to the Padres, and have been outscored 62-42. The Dodgers and Giants will finish the season face to face, six games over two weekends to try to settle the NL West.

This helps the Cubs greatly. If the Cubs keep winning, either the Giants knock the Dodgers out, the Dodgers knock the Giants out, or the two split and the Cubs pass both for the wild card. There is, of course, the big monkey wrench scenario, where the Dodgers, Giants and Cubs all end up with the same record. That requires two days of playoffs; one to determine the NL West champ, with the loser then playing the Cubs for the wild card. I think it's unlikely; the Cubs have a pretty easy schedule the rest of the way with 8 of their last 11 against bad teams. If the Cubs go 7-4 the rest of the way, I don't think Houston will catch them, and the Dodgers playing the Giants will in one way or another take care of the competition.

P.S. As I'm not prepared to count Houston out, there is the extreme monkey wrench scenario, where four teams are tied for the division and wild card. That requires three days of playoffs!

The Oakland Athletics have handed the Anaheim Angels the division on a platter, and the Angels have refused the offer. Playing seven games against one of the weakest teams in the leauge, the Angels lose 4 of those games. They should have won six, and they should be in first place this morning. Meanwhile, the Rangers have won four of their six games with Oakland, and a win today ties them with Anaheim and puts both teams 2 games back of the A's. It's a must win game for the Rangers. Two games back with ten to go the schedule favors the Rangers. They get six against the Mariners, while Anaheim and Oakland battle six times. The Rangers are without Soriano and part of their bullpen, however.

Meanwhile, the Twins have moved ahead of Oakland for 2nd best record in the AL. A Yankees win today guarantees NY a playoff spot. With the AL East title still in play, it's much too early to predict what the first round of the playoffs will look like.

Postscript: There's a possibility of a Boston-Texas playoff round. Since political reports use baseball jargon to describe campaigns, will baseball commentators start using political jargon to describe this series?

• Arguing with the ump - Protesting


• Throwing out base stealers - Reducing Crime


• Avoiding the bunt - Conservative strategies


• Southpaws - Leftwingers


• Switch hitters - Flip-floppers


• Texas Bullpen - Furloughed criminals


• Balks - Dirty tricks

Feel free to suggest others! We can only hope that Trot Nixon is on the post-season roster. :-)

Correction: In the first sentence of this post I had the Mariners, not the Angels. Thanks for pointing this out. That's what I get for blogging in my pajamas!

Another big night for Ichiro Suzuki, as he picks up 4 hits as the Mariners rout the Angels. In two nights, Ichiro has gone from looking shaky to looking like a sure thing to break the record of 257 hits in one season by George Sisler. These numbers are based on Ichrio getting 44 more AB this season.

Chance of 258 Hits	Based on 2004	Based on Career
Probability of Breaking Record	.971	.923
95% Confidence, Low End	10	9
95% Confidence, High End	23	21

Just so people are clear on what these numbers mean, let's look at the probability based on Ichiro's career. Ichiro is currently a career .339 hitter. If you took a .339 hitter, gave him 44 AB, recorded the results and repeated the experiment thousands of times, you would find that he would break the record in 92.3% of those experiments. You would also find that in 95% of the experiments, he accumulated between 9 and 21 hits. (In 2.5% of the experiments he would get less than 9 hits; in another 2.5% of experiments he'd get more than 21 hits.) Notice, two that we would expect his BA to be anywhere from .205 to .473.

So in April, when Ichiro had 102 AB and 26 hits, he was at the low range of his 95% confidence interval (25 to 44). However, July and August were both outliers for Ichiro. The 95% confidence interval for July was 30 to 50, and Ichiro knocked out 51 hits. In August, the interval was 31 to 51, and Ichiro had 56 hits.

To take this back to yesterday's discussion, maybe Melvin should not have freed him from working on plate discipline. His April numbers could have happened by chance. (Not mentioned is that he hit .274 in June.) If the Mariners had forced Suzuki to try to be selective for another month, he might have hit .400 in May anyway.

Brad Penny had to leave the Dodgers game in the fourth due to his arm not holding up. He threw a pitch and waved that he had to come out of the game. SD is leading 4-0 at this point, and the Giants are ahead 2-1. The NL West is heading for a wild finish.

Oliver Perez is perfect through four with five strikeouts.

Update: With 2 out in the fifth, Nomar walked to break up the perfecto, then Grudzielanek singled to break up the no-no. It's 0-0 with the Cubs threatening.

Update: Helping his own cause, Carlos Zambrano draws the third walk of the inning to drive in Garciaparra. Cubs lead 1-0 as they try to stay with the Giants for the wild card.

Update: Carlos Zambrano puts in his bid for the Cy Young award with 7 1/3 shutout innings to lower his ERA to a league leading 2.64, pending Randy Johnson's performance (Johnson has given up two runs so far, but both are unearned). Carlos also gets his 15th win as the Cubs prevail 1-0.

There is an interesting discussion in the comments of this post on the value of Ichrio Suzuki. The discussion got started from this article on CSBSportsline. Scott Miller tries to pain Ichiro as a selfish player:

More nagging, and more to the point, is this: As his team has stayed far south, has Ichiro's pursuit of the record become self-centered enough to cheapen the record?

Twice in two days earlier this month, with a runner on second base and two out in a one-run game, when Seattle has needed the American League's leading hitter to knock a run-scoring hit, Ichiro has gone against convention and bunted.

The overwhelming conclusion among those who were watching: Ichiro is currently much more concerned with Ichiro than he is with helping his team.

After the second one, Melvin talked to Ichiro and had him stop that. So,without my knowing what is going on in Ichiro's mind, let me say that getting on base is always a good thing. If Ichiro thought that a bunt with the third baseman playing back was the best way to keep the inning going, I'm not going to criticize him. But indeed, if Suzuki was just concerned with his hits, then he needed a talking to and got one.

As to how great he is, one commentor points out his high ranking in win shares. He's done a good job this year getting on base, he's fast and a good base stealer, and he's a top defensive player. He does have weaknesses, however, the biggest of which is plate discipline.

Historically, he has never walked much -- 45 times in 694 plate appearances last season, for example -- which is part of his uniqueness. Other leadoff hitters take pitches, work counts and allow the rest of the lineup to see what kind of stuff a pitcher has on a given night. Ichiro slaps and runs.

But the Mariners asked him this spring to be a little more patient at the plate. He promptly got off to an awful start. In addition to that .255 April average, there was the .309 on-base percentage. Ichiro had become a big part of the reason why Seattle's season was finished before it ever began.

"We talked some philosophy this spring that, over time, some pitchers did not need to throw strikes to get him out," Molitor said. "We talked about getting himself into better pitch counts.

"To be honest with you, it didn't work very well. I talked to Melvin and we set him free, so to speak. He was respectful to what Bob and I tried to tell him, but I think it was more the mental freedom."

The Mariners "set him free" during late April, early May. He batted .400 in May with a .436 on-base percentage and he has been on base pretty much ever since.

In 2001, the Yankees were able to exploit this lack of discipline with pitches up and in. His other weakness is a lack of power, although I keep hearing that he hits monster shots in batting practice. With hitters like Ichiro, Gwynn, Puckett and others, I wonder what their batting average would be like if they learned to lay off pitches out of the strikezone. Ichiro might hit .400.

But those weakness are minor if he has a .400 OBA. He's a leadoff man. His job is to get on base and set up the power hitters. He does that well, but the power hasn't delivered this year. How great you think Suzuki is may depend on how much you value process over results. Ichiro's process at the plate is lousy, but he's so talented that his results are great. It's scary to think how good he'd be if he got the process right.

Three pitchers with some claim on the NL Cy Young award will be hurling this evening on the west coast. Randy Johnson is blowing the NL competition away in win shares. In a year with a good team, Randy might be on the cusp of 23-25 wins. If I had to vote today, the Big Unit would get my first place vote.

Jake Peavy tries to keep San Diego's playoff hopes alive vs. the Dodgers this evening. He needs 16 innings to qualify for the ERA title. He should be able to get in three starts, so that shouldn't be difficult. If he pitches okay in those three starts, he'll win the ERA title. A low ERA is a good reason for awarding the Cy. That has to be balanced against his playing time, and Johnson wins that battle. But some will point to Peavy being on a contender.

Houston sends one its best to the mound tonight against the Giants, trying to gain on SF and the Cubs. Roy Oswalt's ERA is a little high for the award, but he can win 20 games this year, and John Kruk will tell you how important that is. He also suffers from a comparison with Clemens on his own team and Zambrano in the division.

Enjoy!

What's wrong with Mark Mulder? The Athletics are worried.

"I just look at the velocity only, and it's a concern,'' Chavez said. "It would be one thing if Mark was making good pitches, but right now he's not getting away with it -- look at the outs he's getting (hard-hit balls). I'd just like to see that velocity go up.''

Chavez doesn't believe Mulder has any health issues, he simply thinks the pitcher is tired. After all, Mulder (17-6) missed the final six weeks of the 2003 season with a stress fracture at the top of his right femur, then spent the winter vigorously working out. Now, he has pitched 220 innings, second-most in the league and third-most in baseball. His five complete games are tied for the most in the AL.

You can see the difference pre and post all-star break. His K per 9 is down, his BB per 9 is way up, and his HR per 9 is way up. I don't see any evidence of overuse by the Athletics, either by making him pitch on short rest or by having him accumulate high pitch counts in consecutive games. Mulder did have back problems in spring training. Might those have come back, and Mulder is trying to pitch through it?

The truth is out there.

Ichiro Suzuki banged out five hits last night, putting him back in a likely position to break George Sisler's hit record. He needs 15 hits in an estimated 48 AB.

Chance of 258 Hits	Based on 2004	Based on Career
Probability of Breaking Record	.842	.701
95% Confidence, Low End	11	10
95% Confidence, High End	25	23

Last night's performance was a great example of how luck and ability work together to produce hits. Only one of Suzuki's hits was a solid single, a line drive to left center. The other were balls that could have been played if the fielder was positioned differently. On one, the fielder did get to the ball on the outfield grass, but Suzuki is so fast there was no chance of throwing him out. You might say he hit the ball almost where they ain't and let his speed make up for the difference. He makes putting the ball in play look easy.

Carlos Hernandez turned out not to be the right starter for tonight's game against the Giants. He lasted only 2 1/3 innings, allowing four runs. The Giants lead 8-2 in the fifth in a game both teams need to win.

Ichiro has three hits tonight in the first four innings. He needs a big hit night to get his odds of breaking Sisler's record up again, and so far he's doing it. His teammates are also supplying some offense for a change; that should help him get an extra AB or two.

Update: Ichiro got hit #4 in the top of the 6th.

Update: Suzuki got hit #5 in the top of the 8th. That should bring the odds of his breaking the hit record over 50% based on his career average.

Rodrigo Lopez and Curt Schilling are locked in a great pitcher's duel in Boston tonight. Schilling has 11 K through seven innings, Lopez 7. Both have pitch counts in the 90's, both with good strike/ball ratios. Schilling is out for the 8th, and I expect Lopez will appear as well.

Update: After two great starting performances, in which Schilling leaves with a 1-0 lead, both closers blow saves. Foulke gives up two in the top of the 9th but gets the win when B.J. Ryan puts a couple of men on and Julio allows Bellhorn to single them home. The Red Sox keep pace with the Yankees and knock a game off their magic number for the wild card.

One of the most important games of the evening is Houston at San Francisco. The Astros trail the Giants by 1 game in the NL Wild Card race, yet they have decided to start Carlos Hernandez against Bonds and company. Couldn't they have started Hernandez Sunday and let Clemens pitch today on long rest? It looks like they're skipping Backe to move Oswalt up for tomorrow. This has obviously been an important series on the horizon for a while. Why didn't Garner arrange his rotation better?

Joe Sheehan pens an article at BP researching how much the wild card has added (or subtracted) from interestng division races.

Having done this research, I'm left with a somewhat empty feeling. I think the wild card has killed more exciting races than it's created, and I'm comfortable that the evidence supports that. But because all those "neutral" seasons are creating more hope and faith--even if the localities don't care all that much--MLB sees the experiment as a success. MLB doesn't see the things that aren't there, the races between great teams, in much the same way that baseball people often don't see all the outs a low-OBP "RBI man" gets, or the many times caught stealing that reduce the value of Alex Sanchez or Brett Butler.

We're seeing this right now with the Yankees-Red Sox. The games they are playing against each other right now don't matter that much. Both teams are likely to make the playoffs. The wild card has simply pushed the drama into the post season, where it may or may not happen. Last year the two teams met in the ALCS. But there's only a 25% chance in a given year that bitter division rivals will meet in the LCS (given that both make the playoffs). As Sheehan concludes:

I'm fond of saying that the people who hate the DH should probably get over it; it's been 31 years, and nearly every baseball league in the world uses it.

Maybe it's time I took my own advice.

Yep. There will never be another 1978 or 1993.

It's been a good year for the Beane Count. The top 4 AL teams in the category would all make the playoffs if the season ended today. In the NL, three of the four playoff leaders are in the top four of the count.

Batgirl is very happy about the Twins clinching:

We're a great damn team. We survived a MASH units worth of injuries, slumps by our best players, erratic pitching one month, erratic hitting another. Every time a player got hurt, a new one sprang fully-formed from the head of Terry Ryan. And we got really hot when it counted, and right now I'm ready to face anyone--Boston, New York, Oakland, Anaheim; I'd like you to meet the Minnesota Twins.

But she doesn't have any kind words for the White Sox:

Or, in other words, Stick it, Sox. Even, dare I say, Shove it. Take all your petty, bitchy, whining comments and shove it squarely up your below .500 bums. I know, I know, it's all a great tragedy, and circumstances have conspired to keep you in second place for the past three years, I mean it can't have anything to do with your completely inferior play, and the Twins are the luckiest team in baseball, plus they're full of cheating with that whole CheatDome, and you have your best players on the DL and it's just not fair because you don't have any prospects, who said you needed prospects anyway when you have stars, I mean the Twins don't have any stars, I mean there's Radke and Santana but that's it, after that the roster can't really do much, so how can they possibly beat you so soundly year after year, and the Cubs get all the attention and Freddy Garcia didn't save your team like he was supposed to and neither did Everett or Alomar—and really, who saw that coming?—and the world is full of uncertainty and life just isn't fair. And shouldn't it be? I mean, of all things that should be fair, weather and home runs and Valley Fair and all things in love and war, shouldn't life be fair? Because you’re such a great group of guys, terrific role models for the kids, full of hustle and heart and a good attitude, full of class and shouldn't that be worth something? I mean, shouldn't it?

Alas, it's not. Not when we're just so damned much better than you are. We haven't just beaten you, we've kicked your bums back and forth and up and down a few times and diagonally and counter crosswise and a few directions you didn't even know was possible. Oh, and I know you won a few games early in the season, but we won the ones that count.

This year's Twins team is a great example of the relative unimportance of batting average. Look at a comparison of the Twins offense and their opponents:

2004 Offense	Twins	Opponents
Runs Scored	721	653
Batting Average	.265	.267
On-Base Average	.332	.320
Slugging Pct.	.432	.402

The Twins were out-hit by their opponents. But the Twins overall put more runners on base, and supplied more power to drive those runners home. And that led to their nice run differential.

How will they do in the playoffs? They have the weakest offense of any of the playoff contenders but they have the best pitching. What's interesting is that they do have two different staffs to throw at the competition; the starters don't walk many but do give up HR. The relievers walk more batters, but don't give up the long ball. (Strengths covering up weaknesses.) So the right way to approach the Twins is to swing for the fences early, and be selective late. This also dovetails with the bullpen being better than the starters; in most games, you want to be selective with the starter, run his pitch count up, and get into the weak middle relief. Frankly, I don't see it on this team. The three J's have been great all year; Joe, Juan and J.C. all have excellent strikeout rates and have allowed only 8 HR in 210 innings.

So any team facing the Twins should be prepared to take any phat pitch out of the ballpark. Work on driving the ball a long way, and hope you can win some 3-2 ball games.

Suzuki knocked out 2 hits last night, putting him 20 hits away from breaking George Sisler's record of 257 hits. These odds are based on an estimate of 52 remaining AB for Ichiro.

Chance of 258 Hits	Based on 2004	Based on Career
Probability of Breaking Record	.447	.278
95% Confidence, Low End	12	11
95% Confidence, High End	26	24

Congratulations to the Minnesota Twins as they capture the American League Central Division crown! Silva pitched very well; despite recording 0 strikeouts, he only allowed 7 hits. The Twins now have two weeks to get their team in shape for the playoffs.

The Cubs win game 1 behind Mark Prior, who has now struck out 22 in his last 20 2/3 innings, adding 9 today. He also has only 4 walks to go with those Ks.

Like Mussina with the Yankees, having Prior healthy for the playoffs will be a key for the Cubs. He'll have a couple of more starts to show he's there.

The Cubs can take the wild card lead with a win in game two, and reduce their magic number against the Marlins to 8. The Fish need a win here to stay in contention. Six games out with four teams to pass is not a good position for this time of year.

Update: The Marlins are not going quietly. Easly hits a three-run HR in the first against Matt Clement to give the Fish a 3-0 lead.

The Marlins post-season hopes are fading to black. They've started Carl Pavano in game 1 of their makeup doubleheader with the Cubs, and the Cubs are hitting him hard. It's 4-1 Chicago in the bottom of the 2nd. Pavano has allowed six hits, including three doubles so far.

Ichiro Suzuki only accumulated 3 hits in the four days I was gone, and his odds of breaking Sisler's record have dropped with his falling batting average. He'll need 22 hits in an estimated 57 AB over the Mariners last 13 games to break the record.

Chance of 258 Hits	Based on 2004	Based on Career
Probability of Breaking Record	.426	.258
95% Confidence, Low End	14	12
95% Confidence, High End	28	26

The record is still well within the 95% confidence range. So while at this point it's more likely that he won't break the record, he could still do it without his batting average being significantly different that his career average (statistically speaking).

I'm back from my bicycle tour of Cape Cod. Not only did we get to see almost every town on the Cape, we got to experience almost every type of weather the area has to offer; hot and humid, drizzle, rain, delug and wind. It was the most challenging of the five rides I've done, but I survived (at times I thought I wouldn't) and am back home safe and sound.

Congratulations to Barry Bonds who hit hits 700th and 701st HR over the weekend. The Babe Ruth watch starts next. My Tivo kept the game; it wasn't his most impressive HR, an opposite field shot that just got over the fence. But it was nice to see the fans who sit behind him every game get a chance at the valuable ball.

Congratulations also go out to the St. Louis Cardinals, who wrapped up the division over the weekend. They have plenty of time to get injuries rested and their rotation in order for the playoffs. Their four man murders row is going to pose a difficult challenge to any opposing staff.

The Twins can clinch their division tonight with a win against the White Sox. The Twins starting pitching has a strength that works against their other three likely opponents; Twins starters don't issue walks. Since the Yankees, Athletics and Red Sox are all selective teams, it will be difficult for them to use the walk as a weapon against the Twins.

Finally, the Yankees took 2 of 3 from the Red Sox. Game 3 had to especially encouraging to Yankees fans and discouraging to Red Sox fans. The two aces, Mussina and Martinez are going in completely different directions. After struggling all season, Mussina is now 3-1 with a 1.20 ERA in September. His biggest problem, allowing HR, has vanished as he's given up 1 in his last 30 innings. Meanwhile, the HR bug has bitten Pedro. He's allowed five this month in only 24 innings. He's also walked 12 in those 24 innings. That's not Pedro Martinez. It should also be noted that Martinez is now at 204 innings, the first time he's gone over 200 IP since the 2000 season. Could it be that he's been overused? The Red Sox have done their best over the years to make sure the fragile pitcher is not seriously hurt. But maybe he's just not a 200 IP pitcher.

More later!

audio post powered by audblog

audio post powered by audblog

I'm off to the American Lung Association bike ride on Cape Cod. Any blogging will be strictly audio, although Jim Storer may leave a post or two.

As I leave, the A's are leading the Rangers 5-4 in the 7th. Harden outpitched Rogers, but the score is closer than it should be due to some poor outfield play. It's a must win for the Rangers. If the A's take the game, Texas will have gained nothing this week, and there's little time left for them to make a move.

The Angels could learn something from the Giants. Facing off against a much weaker foe, the Giants took three from the offensively weak Brewers, winning today 4-0. They're neck and neck with the Cubs for the wild card, and still have a chance to catch the Dodgers. They won the easy ones. With the Dodgers, Padres and Astros left on the schedule, there won't be anymore of those.

Bonds is in the lineup today. I'll be updating this post as the game goes on.

Update: Bonds up in the first, 1st and 2nd 1 out.

Update: They're pitching to him, but carefully. First pitch high, second, low. The third pitch was very nice, above the belt over the inside corner for strike 1. Next a foul at the plate. Again, a good pitch. Santos gets the fifth pitch just below the belt over the plate, and Bonds rifles it down the rightfield line for a double and an RBI. Giants lead 1-0. You just can't make a mistake to Bonds.

Update: Bonds will bat 3rd in the 3rd.

Update: Bonds comes up after Pedro Feliz makes the score 4-0 after a solo HR. One out.

Update: Bonds walks on four pitches. Santos didn't challenge him, and that brings a visit from the pitching coach. At this rate, Santos won't be around to face Bonds a third time.

Update: Going to the top of the fifth, Bonds due up third. It looks like Santos is still in the game, the score is still 4-0.

Update: I should have waited for them to come back from commerical. Matt Wise is the new pitcher for the Brewers.

Update: Bonds up, none on, 2 out. There's a shadow between the mound and the plate, making it harder on the batter. Looks like Wise is pitching Bonds low and outside. After two balls, he comes inside and Bonds fouls it off. Pitch four is over the plate, and Bonds lines it hard into right. The 2nd baseman Hall, playing halfway out in right, leaps and just misses the liner, Bonds gets a single.

Update: Bonds is up with 1 out and none on in the 8th.

Update: Bonds starts 2-0 again, then a nice pitch on the low outside corner for a taken strike. The next pitch is taken into left-center for a single. Bonds comes out for a pinch-runner; looks like he'll reach 700 in San Francisco.

The Giants and Brewers finish up their series this afternoon. Will Bonds play today? He usually rests after a night game. Plus, giving him the day allows Barry to set the record in San Francisco. If he does play, he'll face Victor Santos. Santos is a righty who is very good against lefties. He's never faced Bonds before.

The Rangers and Athletics face off this afternoon as well, with Texas attempting to take 3 out of 4 from Oakland. Rich Harden will face Kenny Rogers. A win puts the Rangers 3 games behind the A's with 3 games left head-to-head.

Finally, the traveling saga of the Expos and Marlins concludes in Miami tonight. The teams have spilt the first four games of their two-city tour, and the Fish are on the edge of falling out of the wild card race after their doubleheader defeat yesterday. It's a great pitching matchup as Livan Hernandez faces Dontrelle Willis.

Enjoy!

Update: Bonds is in the starting lineup.

The Angels are blowing the AL West race. While the Atheltics are letting the Rangers back in the division hunt, the Angels are not taking adavantage of a .379 team to gain ground. Last night they were shutout by a pitcher with a 5+ ERA, who doesn't strikeout many batters and had allowed 31 HR! When the other two teams you need to defeat are battling each other, you have to earn the easy victories. Of course, I thought they were done a couple of weeks ago. But that included the Rangers, too.

The Ramones keep dropping like flies. Johnny Ramone died yesterday afternoon after a battle with cancer. You may not know that Johnny was a big baseball fan. Here's an interview from Chin Music where they introduced Johnny to one of his biggest fans, Billy Beane.

If you have a chance, rent their movie, "Rock and Roll High School." It's just a bit of fun, but the Ramones are great and Clint Howard is inspired.

My thoughts go out to his family and friends. Johnny will be missed.

Suzuki had 1 hit last night. He now needs 25 hits in the Mariners 17 remaining games to break George Sisler's record of 257 hits in a season. I estimate that he has 74 AB left. The odds continue to fall:

Chance of 258 Hits	Based on 2004	Based on Career
Probability of Breaking Record	.754	.545
95% Confidence, Low End	19	17
95% Confidence, High End	36	33

It was a bad day for the Florida Marlins. They returned home to Miami to be swept by the Montreal Expos, 6-2 and 10-4. With the Giants and Cubs winning and the Giants with a good lead, the Marlins will likely lose 1 1/2 games to the top Wild Card teams.

Javier Vazquez had a good outing today, shutting out the Royals for seven innings despite walking four. Over his last 12 starts, he's had a pattern of okay and bad starts (I don't want to quantify the up starts as good). So who's the real Javy? The guy who can go six or seven giving up 3 or 4 runs, or the guy who gets bombed in the early innings and leaves the bull pen to mop up? The Yankees can win with the mediocre up guy. But they need Vazquez to do that consistently.

I'll be updating this post during the Giants-Brewers game.

Update: Obermueller gets the Giants 1-2-3 in the first. Bonds will lead off the 2nd inning, making it likely the Brewers will pitch to him.

Update: Bonds just gets under the first pitch and send one to the warning track in right near the line. Brady Clark makes the catch. Ten more feet and it was gone. The Milwaukee announcer describes it as a pop up.

Update: Bonds will be leading off the fourth. Again, no reason to pitch around him.

Update: Once again, Bonds grounds out to Ginter in shallow right field. Almost the exact same play as Bonds' last AB last night. He's 0 for 2.

Update: The Milwaukee broadcast just did an interview with the representative from MLB who is there to make sure the ball hit for #700 is authentic (as opposed to accurate). When Bonds comes up, the ump gets his baseballs from the MLB rep, and returns them when the AB is over. There's an accountant from a major firm there to keep track of which balls are used. And there are high tech markings on the ball as well. I just hope Dan Ra^ther doesn't catch it. :-)

Update: Bonds up with Alfonzo on first and 1 out. The Brewers are pitching carefully to him. Obermueller runs the count to 3-0, then Bonds takes a strike. The fifth pitch is low and outside, Bonds walks. Barry just won't chase pitches out of the strike zone. Yesterday, the Giants scored both times Bonds walked. That would be good for them tonight in this 0-0 game.

Update: Earl Weaver is smiling. Single, walk and Snow hits the three run homer. Giants lead 3-0 in the top of the 6th.

Update: Bonds is leading off the 8th. I assume they'll pitch to him again.

Update: Luis Vizcaino is in, just like yesterday.

Update: Ahead 1-0, Bonds swings at a pitch low and outside. You don't see him chase a bad pitch too often.

Update: Bonds grounds out to Ginter, just a little way into right. And once again, the crowd starts to exit.

Update: They shouldn't have left early. Alfonzo walks with 2 outs in the 9th to bring Barry Bonds to the plate for the fifth time in the game. And the crowd cheers the walk!

Update: The crowd is booing pitches out of the strikezone to Bonds!

Update: Pedro Liriano finally throws a strike on a 3-0 pitch, and Bonds hits it to Overbay, who does an excellent Bill Buckner impression and muffs the ball. Bonds is removed for a pinch runner.

I think the series so far shows the benefits of pitching to Barry. So far, when they've pitched to him, he hasn't gotten a hit. When they walk him, the Giants score. Stop the IBB! Pitch to Barry, you'll be better off!

Art Howe has been fired by the Mets, but will finish out the season. I'm not an Art Howe fan, but this was unfair. It was not Howe's fault that the Mets had a ton of injuries, then traded the farm system for a doomed shot at the pennant. I don't think Davey Johnson could have won with this team.

The Cubs broadcast just annouced that the result of the playoff coin flips did not favor the Cubs. The Cubs lost home field unless they are tied with the Marlins. If they are tied with any other team for the wild card, the Cubs will be on the road. I'll look for other results.

Update: Here's the article on MLB.com. It looks like the Giants were the big winners.

Lee, Sosa and Barrett hit consecutive HR in the first to give the Cubs a 4-0 lead. Rising star Oliver Perez finds out what it's like to pitch at Wrigley on a good hitters day.

Update: Looks like it's a good hitters day for Mark Prior also. The Pirates get 4 in the top of the 2nd to tie the game. No HR, however.

William Young reworks a famous poem about the Cubs defense.

These are the saddest of possible words,
A tinker, a bobble, no chance.
Suffering Cubbies whose play's for the birds,
A tinker, a bobble, no chance.,
The heartache of watching the Cubs slowly crumble
Makes mothers and children and grown men mumble.
Bear-Cubs, whose talents grow ever more humble.
A tinker, a bobble, no chance.

I wouldn't say no chance, but he has captured the Cubs defensive play as of late.

Once again Barry Bonds goes for HR# 700. Tonight, he'll be facing Wes Obermueller. Wes has never faced Barry before. Once again, I plan to live blog his AB.

The best matchup of the day is in Oakland, as the Rangers and Athletics continue their AL West series. Ryan Drese faces Mark Mulder in game 3 of their four game series. Mulder has not pitched well against the Rangers this year, going 1-1 in two starts with a 5.54 ERA. Drese is 0-1 with a 4.15 ERA vs. the A's. Expect more runs tonight.

Enjoy!

Fire Ed Wade is a new Phillies site. It worth visiting just for the opening page!

It looks like it just got tougher to move the Expos to Washington, DC. David Gertsman mails this story about the DC elections:

The victories of Barry, Brown and Gray could have enormous implications for the direction of economic development in the city. All three called for greater emphasis on affordable housing and new development for neighborhoods. And all three say they oppose raising taxes to build a Major League Baseball stadium, a priority for Williams and for baseball officials, who are on the verge of deciding whether to move the Montreal Expos to the Washington region.

And good for them. I'm all for private money to build stadiums. Maybe the groups interested in putting the Expos in DC could raise private money from all the K-Street lawyers in exchange for calling the team the Capitol Lobbyists!

Gabe Lacques of the Pasadena Star News talked to the Angels about being in the visiting bullpen in Oakland.

Angels relievers were anything but surprised that a major incident occurred near the visitor's bullpen area at Oakland's Coliseum. They have been taking abuse there for years.
Certainly, it has been nothing on the scale of Monday's fracas, which ended in Texas Rangers reliever Frank Francisco hurling a chair into the seats, resulting in his arrest.

But going to Oakland, Brendan Donnelly says, means two things: Hearing a stream of blue commentary from overzealous fans and wondering if security will be sufficient enough to handle it.

"I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often,' Donnelly said Tuesday. "Security's not good there. Fans in Oakland are notoriously brutal.'

Have the A's ever wondered if attendance could be improved by improved security? I suspect most people don't want to sit next to a fan who is yelling profanities all night. Fenway Park has provided discreet ways to inform security of annoying fans for years. Maybe Oakland should take a cue from Boston to make their park more enjoyable for players and fans.

This SF Chronicle editorial gets it right.

Update: Philip M. in the comments links to an article where eyewitnesses claim there was no profanity. Okay, but remember this is the stadium where fans throw things at players. My guess is that this fan said something that stepped over a line.

Ichiro had a double in four AB last night, but the odds of his breaking Sisler's record of 257 hits continue to drop. These figures are based on an estimate of 79 remaining AB.

Chance of 258 Hits	Based on 2004	Based on Career
Probability of Breaking Record	.812	.608
95% Confidence, Low End	21	19
95% Confidence, High End	38	35

Baseball Info Solutions is now taking orders for The Bill James Handbook: 2005. The book will be available November 1 and is a great winter time companion. It's the first book every year to have the complete career records of the season's players, lefty-righty matchups, leader boards galore, and other interesting stats and studies. Reserve yours today, and be the first on your block to scout your fantasy team for next season!

When I see a line like Jeff Suppan's tonight, I really think that the rule for awarding earned and unearned runs should be changed. In the top of the fourth, there was an error by Pujols with two outs that loaded the bases. Suppan then gave up a walk and two doubles to lead to five runs. Somehow, it seems Suppan is a lot more responsible for the runs in that inning that Pujols' error.

Maybe only players who reach on an error, or runs that score directly because of an error should be unearned. Suppan's ERA got an undeserved break tonight. Does anyone else have an interesting idea?

Update: Seawolf comments on something I noticed watching BBTN this morning. The error charged to Pujols didn't look like an error to me. Even if Albert had fielded the ball cleanly, I don't think he would have gotten the runner at first. So Suppan ERA was doubly lucky last night.

Johan Santana added seven scoreless innings to his resume tonight as the Twins were big winners over the White Sox 10-2. He was nearly unhittable, allowing just two safeties and 1 walk. His opponent, Freddy Garcia, had a no-hitter through five, but walked the first two hitters of the six on four pitches each, eventually leading to a 9-run sixth for the Twins. Garcia only retired one of the seven batters he faced that inning, and that was on a gift of a sacrifice (a team doesn't deserve to score 9 runs in an inning where they sacrifice with two men on and the pitcher hasn't thrown a strike).

Santana's ERA is down to 2.76, and his BA allowed is .193. The Twins magic number is 8.

It looks like Mike Mussina is back, and not a minute too soon for the Yankees. He pitched a stellar 8 innings tonight, allowing 3 hits and 1 BB while striking out 11. So far in September he's allowed 3 ER in 23 innings while striking out 25 and walking 1. That's the Mike we know and love. And the Yankees gain a game on the Red Sox, reducing their magic number to 15.

Scott Kazmir certainly is doing it tonight. Pedro Martinez is gone after six inning, giving up two runs and five walks, although he struck out 10. Kazmir through six has K'd 9 and allowed 3 hits, 3 walks and no runs. He's at 92 pitches, so we'll see if he comes out for the 7th.

Update: Kaz did not come out for the 7th.

Update: Kazmir gets the win as the Devil Rays score off Embree and Mendoza to take a 5-2 victory. Quite the night for the youngster. The Mets must be really happy to have Zambrano now. :-)

Watch this post for updates on Bonds' progress tonight.

Update: They are using specially marked balls for Bonds' AB.

Update: Davis is pitching to Bonds with first base open and a man on in the first.

Update: Davis gets two early strikes on Bonds, then runs the count to 3-2 as Barry won't go fishing. After a number of fouls, Barry pops out to the 2nd baseman directly behind the bag in shallow center.

Update: People started streaming out of the park after the Bonds AB. I hope the Giants send a bunch of men to the plate so Bonds bats again.

Update: Bonds up in the top of the 4th with a man on first and no outs. He's obviously swinging for the fences as he's taken two huge cuts.

Update: Bonds walked on a 3-2 count. Davis went after Barry, but didn't give him anything good to pitch. Bonds is just too disciplined to go for the close pitches.

Update: With a man on 2nd and 2 outs, Barry Bonds is given the IBB in the 5th.

Update: Bonds will lead off the top of the 8th.

Update: Luis Vizcaino on to pitch to Bonds.

Update: After missing twice with fastballs outside, Vizcaino gets Bonds to hit what appears to be a single to right, but the 2nd baseman Ginter was playing in the outfield toward first base, and threw out Bonds from shallow right field. Great defensive alignment, and a great play.

Update: Giants win 3-2. Bonds goes 0 for 2 with 2 walks, and the Giants score runs after each of Barry's base on balls. He also saves the game, pegging the tieing run at the plate with a strong throw from left (where was that throw when Sid Bream was scoring?). He'll try it again tomorrow.

I assume ESPN is going to show Bonds' plate appearances live tonight. And you should watch the game if you can. Think about it; 700 HR has only happened twice before, in 1934 and 1973. Very few people saw Ruth reach the milestone. Many more saw Aaron. But everyone has the chance to experience this momentous moment. And if you don't, you might have to wait 30 or 40 years to see it again.

My DSL was out all afternoon. I did see, however, that the Marlins won. Maybe Chicago can support a third team!

The Giants visit the Brewers tonight as Barry Bonds goes for his 700th HR. Doug Davis will be on the mound for Milwaukee. Davis has had a very good season, and deserves better than his 11-10 record. He's faced Bonds a few times, and the results are pretty much what you'd expect; Bonds is 1 for 3 with a HR and 2 walks.

Another record you should keep your eye on as Bonds shoots for Ruth and Aaron is the NL record for HR. Aaron hit 733 of hits 755 HR in the NL. So Bonds is 35 away from that milestone.

And the Giants are still involved in a pennant race. They'll counter Davis with Kirk Rueter. Kirk has the dubious distinction of having more walks than strikeouts this year. Kaz Ishii is the only other ERA qualifier who has a K/BB below 1.

Enjoy!

Peter Gammons pens a piece on how the Moneyball GM's are looking for new ways to quantify defense.

Some teams are trying to quantify defensive statistics. "It's not a pure science yet, but we're trying to get to what were the great unknowns -- defense and baserunning," says one club official. "How Theo does it and how we do it entails very different methodology," says Beane. "But we usually come out at the same conclusions."

Last winter, Oakland and Boston agreed that the two best defensive center fielders were Mike Cameron and Mark Kotsay. They agreed the best third basemen were Scott Rolen and Eric Chavez. They agreed that by any method used Jose Valentin came out a much better shortstop than the guy that most people suggest should be made into a super utilityman. The Mets utilized defensive numbers in targeting Cameron.

Since teams have studied the creation of runs and the use of outs offensively, it should be no surprise that teams are trying to quantify outs defensively. No team currently will say exactly how it does its defensive ratings. As Beane said, the A's use a different system than the Red Sox. "We've come to believe that our numbers give us a pretty accurate read," he says.

The Red Sox have their own service that charts games, including how hard balls are hit. "It goes beyond zone ratings," says Epstein. "We try to measure players by what the average defensive player at that position would get to."

UZR gets a nice mention in the piece, also. I did some work along these lines last year.

Suzuki went 0 for 4 last night, and the odds of him breaking Sisler's hit record of 257 have fallen:

Chance of 258 Hits	Based on 2004	Based on Career
Probability of Breaking Record	.835	.637
95% Confidence, Low End	22	20
95% Confidence, High End	40	37

He's still more likely than not to break the record. He'll need a couple of big games down the stretch, however.

One of the big story lines of Moneyball was process; it mattered more how a hitter approached a plate apperance than the result. If you hit a HR swinging at a pitch out of the strike zone, you were criticized for that. If you swung at a good pitch and made an out, that was fine. Process won the game for the A's last night.

The Rangers took a one-run lead in the top of the 10th after poor fielding by McLemore and Crosby failed to turn consecutive ground balls into double plays. But with Cordero on to pitch in the bottom of the 10th, Durazo and Swisher walked. Crosby was asked to bunt, and the Rangers returned his poor fielding, making an error to load the bases. The McLemore walked to tie the game. Two outs later, Chavez came through with the game winning single. Two runs, one hit, three batters getting walks to set up the winning runs.

Here's a summary of the game and the fight. I would suspect Frank Francisco is going to get a long suspension.

The Yankees have to be somewhat worried about their pitching. In their last 14 games, the Yankees have allowed 22 runs to Cleveland, 14 runs to Baltimore and Monday night they allowed the KC Royals to score 17. They are 9-5 in that stretch, but if they're being hammered by the Royals, what are the playoff contenders going to do with that staff in the post season?

There was just an altercation between the Rangers' bullpen and some fans. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but the Rangers started streaming out of the dugout, and then someone in the bullpen threw s chair into the stands. It looked like the pitching coach of the Rangers had to be restrainted. Stay tuned.

Update: I don't know the Rangers faces well enough, but one of the relievers and one of the fans at field level near the dugout were shouting and pointing fingers at each other. It appears that it was Frank Francisco who threw the chair. He was out of the game and game out of the dugout with the rest of the team.

Update: Just saw a good replay of the chair toss. It looks to me like he threw the chair over the offending fan and hit the woman behind him.

Update: It looks like the Rangers want the field box by the bullpen cleared out. Macha appears to agree

Update: The Bay Area FoxSports channel is doing a poor job of showing what happened. There's only been a couple of replays, and very little information from the announcers. A NY or Boston station would have shown it 100 times by now.

Update: This is all happening in the top of the 9th with an 0-2 count on Blalock.

Update: They've just announced that if a fan comes on the field, the game will be forfeited to the Rangers.

Update: They finally got the game back underway. Blalock singled, the A's are bringing in Bradford to pitch to M. Young.

Update: Bradford got Young to end the inning. The A's will bat in the bottom of the 9th tied at 5.

Update: Now that he's come into the game, it appears that it was Doug Brocail who was in the shouting match with the fan.

Just turned on the Rangers-A's game, with Swisher at the plate with the bases loaded and Oakland down one run. Almanzar hits Swisher. Nick did try to get out of the way, but you get on base anyway you can.

Dominguez pitched six very good innings, but the middle relief of a team proves to be the problem. Crosby just hit a sac fly to give Oakland the lead. We'll see if Mecir can hold the lead in the 9th.

*With apologies to Dr. Suess.

Update: Alfonso Soriano ties the game with two outs in the 9th with his 2nd solo HR of the game. Mercir had struck out the first two batters easily.

I just watched the bottom of the first of the Rockies at Diamondbacks. Joe Kennedy walked two, Terrero and Hillenbrand, and they were off and running. Terrero stole 2nd on a pickoff attempt, and later took third. Hillenbrand, after his walk, with Terrero at 3rd stole 2nd. All that running did no good, however, as the DBacks could not muster a hit. Great pitchers like Jim Palmer and Dwight Gooden didn't care about base stealers. As long as they got the ensuing batters out, those runners were not likely to score.

Update: The Rockies use the Earl Weaver single, walk, three-run homer to take a 3-0 lead in the top of the 2nd. The Rockies Luis Gonzalez delivers the blow off Fossum.

Lew Ford drove in the first (and only run so far) for the Minnesota Twins tonight. Lew, in my opinion, has been the offensive MVP of the Twins this year. He's gotten on base. He hits well and he draws walks. He has a little power, but working his way on is his forte.

But I also noticed what a good job Ford does stealing bases. He's swiped 18 of 19 this season to lead the AL in stolen base percentage. He was 2 for 2 last year, making him 20 of 21 for his career. That's the kind of base running even a sabermetrician can love. :-)

Sun-Woo Kim pitched seven great innings vs. the Marlins today. He only threw 90 pitches, 58 for strikes, but Robinson started the 8th with Joe Horgan on the mound. Things fell apart immediately. After the first two hitters reached on singles, the Expos defense fell apart. Four errors in the inning allowed the Marlins to score six runs on three hits. Maybe the worst one was by Batista, who with bases loaded and none out, had a grounder hit to him at third. He only had to touch the bag and throw home to get the runner (he had plenty of time), but he tried to do too much at once and never got control of the ball. All hands were safe, the Marlins had their first run, and the flood gates were about to open.

Update: Benitez pitches the 9th for the save. The Marlins stay in the hunt for the wild card, and gain 1/2 game on the idle Giants.

I was surprised to see the Marlins playing a home game in US Cellular Field today. The hurricanes basically have forced MLB to move the games to a neutral site rather than risk losing more games that have to be made up at the end of the season. For some reason, Olympic Stadium was not available, so they left the Marlins in Chicago and moved them to the home of the White Sox. Of course, the poor Expos have to take a longer plane ride, from Atlanta to Chicago instead of to Miami.

I love the fans in the seats wearing Montreal Canadians jerseys. :-) And to tell you the truth, it's a pretty good crowd for an unscheduled game on a Monday afternoon.

Bill James pens an article for the Hardball Times on how the 162-game schedule is giving Suzuki a huge boost in his effort to break Sisler's hit record.

Given the eight extra games, Ichirox tied or broke Sisler’s record 8,462 times in 200,000 seasons, or once every 24 years. Whereas the longer schedule increased Marix’ chance of breaking or tying Ruth’s record by 177%, it increased Ichirox’ chance of breaking or tying Sisler’s record by 901%.

For me to try to tell you how surprised I am by this answer would be a waste of my time and yours, but ... I certainly did not expect this. Heisman speculated that it would be “easier, but not dramatically so.” I would have agreed. In fact, the impact is (about) five times greater on Ichiro than it was on Maris.

The irony is that whereas the extra eight games on the schedule created a mega-furor when Maris broke Ruth’s record, the same factor is being almost totally ignored as Ichiro gets set to cruise past Sisler, even though this edge was a hamster for Maris, and is a gorilla for Ichiro. The reason for the muted reaction, of course, is that, when Maris had his moment broiling in the sun, the 162-game schedule was new, and thus controversial. But most of you reading this weren’t even born then, and the 162-game schedule has long since ceased to be a curiosity. On the one hand, the 162-game schedule has been around so long, and so many players have already “had” Ichiro’s advantage, that this no longer seems to be any big deal, while on the other hand, Barry Bonds in the last few years has so thoroughly trashed the record book that we’re all sort of numb to it. Nobody cares about that stuff anymore.

Well, that last statement isn't really true. The way the record book has been kept is that if the record was set in the 154 game era, it's listed alone. If the record is set in the 162 game era, both records are listed. So Sisler's record will stand, just as a 154-game record.

It's interesting that Bill did this study using a computer simulation when he could have done it using probability theory. If you have a .350 hitter, and give him 651 AB, his probability of getting at least 257 hits is .00971. If you give the same hitter 684 AB, the probability jumps to .08573, or 880% higher!

Correction: Fixed a typo, the above paragraph should have read 257 hits instead of .651 hits.

Correction: Fixed link.

With three weeks and 20 games to go, the AL West goes into full division mode. For the remainder of the season, the four teams will shoot it out to see who comes out the division winner. And it looks like whoever wants to make the playoffs from these time zones will need to win the division.

The three contenders each gets to play Seattle; the Angles and Athletics 7 times, the Rangers 6 six time. This may at first appear to be a disadvantage to the Rangers, but it means they get 14 games vs. the Angels and A's, the two teams they need to leap frog to make the post season. Of the three contenders, Anaheim has the best record against the Mariners, but is below .500 against both the Rangers and the A's.

The big matchup tonight has the Rangers in Oakland. The Rangers are starting Juan Dominguez against Tim Hudson. Dominguez is just returning from an injury. The Rangers have their best pitchers going in the last two games of the four game series, Drese and Rogers. Texas can't really afford a split. They need three out of four minimum, then a sweep in Texas next week.

Update: Two commentors think I'm showing an anti-Oakland bias in this post. Maybe you should google this site for Billy Beane. :-) All three organizations have done an excellent job this year, and since I root for good organizations, I don't really care which team wins. Texas has the toughest road right now getting to the playoffs, so I was just pointing that out.

Ichiro Suzuki picked up two more hits yesterday to bring his total for the season to 231. He needs 27 more hits in the Mariners' last 20 games to break George Sisler's record of 257 hits in a season.

Chance of 258 Hits	Based on 2004	Based on Career
Probability of Breaking Record	.923	.772
95% Confidence, Low End	24	21
95% Confidence, High End	42	39

Barry Bonds drew his 200th and 201st walk last night. He's been intentionally walked 104 times. His 97 unintentional walks is a perfectly reasonable total. This fear of Bonds is just too great. I don't want a rule change to stop this, I want teams to realize that using the IBB this much is bad strategy. All it does is save the manager from some embarassing question when Bonds hits a HR. Reporters won't bother the skipper if the #5 batter hits one after the walk. The real question should be, "Why can't your pitchers get Bonds out?"

Update: The Athletic Reporter makes a very similar arguement, only much funnier.

Another 0 for Suzuki last night has knocked down his odds of breaking the record, although it still looks like he'll pass Sisler. This latest estimate is based on an estimate of 92 more AB for Ichiro this season.

Chance of 258 Hits	Based on 2004	Based on Career
Probability of Breaking Record	.896	.720
95% Confidence, Low End	25	22
95% Confidence, High End	44	40

It's the first time Ichiro has gone consecutive games without a hit since April 28-29 at Baltimore, and only the third time this season that he's gone hitless in two straight games.

Manny Ramirez got the Red Sox on the board in the first with his 41st HR of the year. It was Manny's 9th HR off Jamie Moyer. He has 40 AB against Moyer now with 16 hits, 12 for extra bases.

They're in the 12th in NY with the Phillies and Mets tied at 9. So far, the Phillies have only substituted in the #9 slot, and have used 13 players in that position in the batting order. I don't know if it's a record, but it's not something you see very often.

Update: Felix Rodriguez makes it 14 as the Phillies win in 13 11-9.

Joe Sheehan has an excellent column on the Red Sox improvement.

I'm noticing as I look at the DirecTV Sports schedule they are providing a number of NFL game in high definition. Why aren't they doing this for baseball games? WGN, NESN, FoxSport NY and others are broadcasting in HD. Why don't Extra Innings subscribers get the same choices as Sunday Ticket subscribers?

The Mets scored three in the bottom of the 1st to take a 3-0 lead on the Phillies. It was an interesting inning, as the first three hitters singled to load the bases, then all the runs were driven in without a hit (walk, two sac flies). No one ever advance more than one base on any batting event.

Craig Biggio hit his 22nd HR of the year to give the Houston Astros a 1-0 lead in the first. That ties his career high. Biggo's offense has fallen off over the last three years, but he has for the most part retained his power. His .475 slugging percentage this year is the highest he's had since 1998.

Update: Jason Bay does Biggio one better and hits his 23rd HR of the year, a three run shot in the bottom of the first, giving the Pirates a 3-1 lead. Bay and Oliver Perez each have 15 win shares; Brian Giles has 22. Looks like both teams made out well in this trade, but long term the Pirates made a great deal.

Suzuki went 0 for 4 last night, and still needs 29 hits to break George Sisler's record of 257.

Chance of 258 Hits	Based on 2004	Based on Career
Probability of Breaking Record	.952	.826
95% Confidence, Low End	27	24
95% Confidence, High End	46	42

My thoughts go out to everyone who lost someone dear that day, and to the people from all over the world who are fighting the scourge that perpetrated that attack.

The NL Wild Card race became a lot closer over night. The two leading teams lost, and the four trailing teams (yes, the Phillies have gotten back into the race) all won. Once again, there is the chance for a massive tie at the end of the season. Here's a post from last year that points to the tie-breaker rules.

Update: For anyone who's interested, I blogged this in my pajamas. :-)

Carl Pavano pitches a seven hit, complete game shutout in game 1 against the Cubs. He used 116 pitches, a very efficient game. With the A pitcher going in game two, the Marlins bullpen will be very fresh. And with all the games the Marlins will be playing in the next 10 days, any game off for the bullpen helps their cause. A win in the night cap will put the Marlins into third place in the wild card race.

The Cubs played a sloppy game. They had charged errors, dropped balls that went for hits and base running blunders. With a day off yesterday and the playoffs on the line, the Cubs needed to be on the ball today. Was it poor preperation on the part of the management?

Outside the Beltway links to a story on Rafael Furcal being arrested for drunk driving. This isn't his first arrest, and he appears to have violated his probation. I suppose it's possible that he'll spend the World Series in jail, if the Braves get that far.

I notice that the Cubs have Alou and Ramirez on the bench for game 1. This reminds me of a strategy that Bill James wrote about back in the 1980's. Earl Weaver would go against tradition and start his best lineup in the 2nd game of a doubleheader. His thinking was that while you were lowering your chances of winning the the first game, you were greatly increasing your chance of winning the second game. And if you won the first game, you greatly increased your odds of a sweep. We'll see how it works out for the Cubs this afternoon.

Update: Maybe it wasn't such a good idea. Ramon Martinez, playing third for Ramirez, made two errors in the third leading to two unearned runs. The Fish lead 2-0 in the fourth.

The Marlins and Cubs make up one game of their Hurrican Frances postponed series as they play a double header at Wrigley Field this afternoon. In the matchup of the day, Carl Pavano faces Mark Prior in game 1. Pavano has won four in a row, posting a 2.96 ERA. Prior hasn't pitched since the last day of August, a game in which he gave up 5 ER in 5 IP.

Game two sees the Cubs sending their other oft-injured ace, Kerry Wood to the mound against Logan Kensing, who's making his major league debut. It seems an unlikely debut; Kensing hasn't pitched above A BAll. His K number are good not great. It's strange that in a must win series, the Marlins would start someone like this.

Enjoy!

Update: Pavano is facing Wood in game 1.

Ichiro Suzuki went 2 for 4 last night, giving him 229 hits on the season. He needs 29 hits in the Mariners last 23 games to break Sisler's record of 257. Here are the current probabilities:

Chance of 258 Hits	Based on 2004	Based on Career
Probability of Breaking Record	.978	.891
95% Confidence, Low End	29	25
95% Confidence, High End	48	44

Ichiro is on a 14 game hitting streak in which he's collected 30 hits.

It turned out to be worth the wait for the Yankees, as they pounded the Devil Rays 19-6 today, taking both ends of the doubleheader. The Yankees started their regulars in both ends of the twin bill, showing how seriously they're taking the games. Since their 22-0 drubbing, NY has outscored their opponents 56-29.

The Royals, unstoppable in game 1, where punchless in game 2. The Tigers take the nightcap 8-0 behind Bonderman and Yan. Still, the Royals did score twice as many runs as the Tigers did on the day.

Mike Mussina has just completed his 8th inning against he Devil Rays, and he looks quite good today. It's actually been a while since I watch Mussina pitch, but what struck me was that his knuckle curve had good movement today. It's looked flat in the past to me. His problem this year has been giving up a lot of hits; he's only allowed four today. That's two good games in a row after a horrible August. It's a hopeful sign for Mike and the Yankees.

Update: Heredia is in to pitch the 9th.

Kris Benson and the Mets bullpen shut down the Marlins today, winning the game 4-0, and ending the Fish's nine-game winning streak. With both the Cubs and Giants off, Houston has the opportunity to open some space in the wild card race. A sweep of Pittsburgh would put them one game up in the WC standings and allow them to lengthen their lead on all the teams chasing them.

I just turned on the Game 1 of the Yankees-Devil Rays, and I've never seen the stadium so empty.

Update: Listening to the small crowd that is there, I'm convinced that an empty Yankee Stadium is louder than a full Turner Field. :-)

Joe Randa might have the line of the day:

4   4   4   2

And the Royals have only played four innings so far. They lead the Tigers 19-3. That would be their season high in runs scored. Maybe they can set a record for runs in a game?

Update: KC has now scored 21 runs, and Randa is 5 for 5 with five runs scored. Update: They finally got Randa out. He's 5 for 6 now, and the Royals lead 24-4 in the 7th. Lino Urdaneta, making his major league debut for the Tigers, gives up six earned runs without making an out to have a very infinite ERA. Update: 26-5 is the final. Update: As pointed out in the comments, Randa finished 6 for 7 with 6 runs scored.

Ichiro Suzuki had 1 hit last night, lowering his odds of breaking George Sisler's hit record a bit. Here's the latest, estimating that Ichiro has 105 AB left this season in 24 games.

Chance of 258 Hits	Based on 2004	Based on Career
Probability of Breaking Record	.968	.853
95% Confidence, Low End	30	26
95% Confidence, High End	49	45

The midpoint of the two 95% confidence intervals are 39 and 35. The average of those two are 37. So I'm guessing he gets 37 more hits this season, giving him 264 for the new record.

Johan Santana continues to make a very good case for winning the Cy Young award. Another 7 remarkable innings today, allowing just five singles. No runs, no walks and nine strikeouts. With Tim Hudson having given up seven runs to the Red Sox already, Johan will be all by himself atop the AL ERA lead tomorrow.

At the moment I think the award comes down to Santana, Hudson and Schilling, but Santana would get my vote.

Tim Hudson doesn't have his control tonight. He walked the first three batters, and two hits and a strikeout later he's walked his fourth to match his season high. He's already given up three runs, and the bases are loaded with 1 out.

My wife Marilyn just asked if the Red Sox were in kill mode. I'd say that's an accurate description of this offense right now.

The Cubs have fallen out of first place in the race for the NL Wild Card. They were shut out by Scott Downs, a former Cub who has had a totally unremarkable career. Before tonight he had never had a compelete game. He only averaged 5.0 innings in his 27 previous starts, earning a 5.99 ERA. But tonight, he took advantage of a cold wind blowing in to limit the Cubs to five hits (all singles) and one walk. Two errors in the 8th led to three unearned runs, but the damage had been done. At the moment, Houston sits atop the NL wild card race.

I saw something unusual during the Cardinals-Padres game. With the bases loaded, Wells hit a slow grounder to 2nd. The runner on first slowed down so the 2nd baseman Luna couldn't tag him. So Luna threw to first to get Wells, and Pujols threw to the shortstop at 2nd to complete the double play. The only problem was that Pujols came off first early, so Wells was safe. In the ensuring rundown, the runner from 2nd scored the 2nd run of the play. Wells was award two RBI for this, tripleing his RBI total for the season and his career.

I'm not sure David deserved two RBI on the play. I won't argue with the runner scoring from third on the fielder's choice, but the runner scoring from 2nd came in as a result of the actions of the runner on first. I would have scored it as an advance on a throw, with no 2nd RBI for Wells.

Jayson Stark of ESPN.com and Derek Zumsteg of Baseball Prospectus each offer their views on the Yankees forfeit request. Neither is kind to the good folks at the commissioner's office.

Update: The weather report doesn't look good for NY today. I wonder if they are going to get either game in today.

Update: Both games have been postponed due to rain. I have not heard about a make up date yet. With the weather looking bad for tomorrow, the Yankees will probably be forced by Bud to play a triple header at the end of the season. :-)

The Astros continue to roll, hitting four HR in the first inning today to take a 5-1 lead. They've now out homered the Reds 29-20 this season.

Adam Villani raises this question in regards to the previous post:

OK, so maybe the knock against the Braves and A's is that they're built for a season, not a series. That's certainly been how things have played out over the last few years, but what exactly does it mean? This isn't a rhetorical question, it's a real question.
The vast majority of the baseball analysis anybody does looks at seasons, because of the larger sample size. It's legitimate to compare what sorts of things teams could do to win playoff series instead of seasons. Here's a few just off the top of my head:
1. The manager needs to be able to think differently in the postseason. In the regular season, you need to play more conservatively to preserve your guys for the long haul. In the postseason there's more to be gained from winning one game now than winning several games a few months down the road.
2. More days off => fewer guys in the pitching rotation. This is kinda obvious, I suppose.
3. Lots of games (potentially) in a row against the same opponents. I don't really know what the effect of this is, but by the 7th game in a series, it must be harder to surprise the other team.
4. Part of success in the regular season is beating the crap out of the bad teams, but obviously, those teams don't make it to the playoffs. This is kinda the core of my questioning... is there a specific type of team that holds up well against other good teams, as opposed to just being good against every type of team?

I don't believe there is a single answer to this question, however, I do believe all answers have to do with depth and diversity of talent. For example, the Braves of the last 14 seasons have had very good starting lineups, but usually have lacked a bench or a solid bullpen. So if they go up against a team that matches up well against their starting lineup, there's not a lot of tinkering they can do. And if you can knock a starter out early, you can get to the weaker pitchers in the bullpen. The Braves have lacked depth of talent.

The Oakland Athletics of the 1988-1990 run were the best team in baseball over those three years, but only won 1 World Series. The A's were a high OBA, low BA team; they walked a lot and hit home runs (much like the Orioles of 1969-1971). When Oakland faced good pitching staffs in 1988 and 1990, they didn't draw walks. Reduced to their low batting averages, they were handily beaten. Oakland lacked a diversity of talent. They had great strengths that hid a weakness, but if a team could exploit that weakness, the A's were finished.

Compare this to the Yankees of the 1996-2000 era, who got on base, hit for average, hit for power, had a great bench and a great bullpen. The Yankees were so deep that they could afford to sit Jorge Posada and let Girardi guide the pitching staff. There was very little you could try against the Yankees that they couldn't counter.

Still I wouldn't complain about a team built for long term winning. The more you reach the playoffs, the more likely you are to win the series by chance if nothing else, or find a series of teams that your strengths work well against.

Two pitching matchups stand out in two important pennant games. This afternoon, the Cardinals finish up their series in San Diego, sending Matt Morris to the mound vs. David Wells. As the Cardinals coast into the playoffs, Morris is starting to pitch like the ace he's supposed to be. In four of his last six starts he's gone at least 7 innings, allowing two runs or less. Wells has not pitched his best at PETCO this year. For some reason, he gives up more hits and doubles at home. He's 2-6 with a 3.97 ERA in SD, 7-1 with a 3.15 ERA on the road. Maybe it's just luck with runners in scoring position.

Northern California host the other top matchup, and Pedro Martinez and the Red Sox face Tim Hudson and the Athletics. There was a comment on this blog early last week that the Red Sox winning streak had come against poor teams. The Sox have now gone 7-1 against the leading teams of the west, so that theory can be thrown out the window. Boston is an example, I believe, of regression to the mean. The offense wasn't scoring enough in the middle of the season based on their excellent OBA. (I remember one radio host asking what good is getting all those people on base if they don't score.) Now, the runs are coming fast and furious. It's been a good offense all year; luck is breaking with them now instead of against them.

Elephants in Oakland is concerned about the A's poor performance against playoff teams. Like Atlanta, the team appears to be built for the long run of a season, not the short run of a series.

Enjoy!

Greg Cote of the Miami Herald looks at the tough schedule ahead for the Marlins:

How many ball games can possibly be squeezed onto a short calendar?

The Marlins are your laboratory rat, being made to wear mascara, smoke unfiltered nicotine and run nonstop on a treadmill wheel to provide the answer.

Is this any way to treat a defending World Series champion?

Marlins manager Jack McKeon joked before Tuesday night's game about tripleheaders and 3 a.m. starts.

At least I think he was joking.

The Marlins have won 8 in a row and have outscored their opponents 47-24, and have not allowed an unearned run in that time frame. The next few weeks will be an upstream swim for the Fish. With six games against the Cubs, however, they have the opportunity deal directly with the wild card leader (a chance the Astros don't have). Winning under these conditions would be all the more satisfying.

Barry Bonds hit his 40th HR tonight, bringing him within two of 700. It's his 8th 40 HR season, and his 5th in a row. Like Ruth and Aaron, Bonds is having a great finish to his career. The three 700 hitters will have incredible runs from age 35 to 39 to their credit, with Bonds having the best of them all.

Phil Garner was hired during the all-star break, making that split a convient way to analyse the Astros. The Houston offense has greatly improved, while the pitching and defense remained about the same. The team's ERA is up to 4.44 vs. 4.38 in the first half. However, they are scoring 5.4 runs a game since Phil took over, vs. 5.0 under Jimy Williams. One big reason was simply replacing Hidalgo with Beltran. Coming into today, Beltran had a .991 OPS for Houston, vs. .721 for Hidalgo. Bagwell and Ensberg are also greatly improved in the 2nd half. Does Garner get credit for this improvement? Has Bagwell just healed some? Did Ensberg just have a bad first half? Does anyone know if Garner has specificially done anything to motivate Bagwell and Ensberg, or was Phil just lucky to get Beltran for a full 1/2 season and Bagwell Ensberg's improvement?

I think it's safe to lay the blame for the demise of the Texas Rangers at the feet of Michael Young and Hank Blalock. The two looked like superstars in the first half, and have faded greatly since the All-Star break.

2004 OPS	Pre-Break	Post-Break
M. Young	.882	.730
H. Blalock	.941	.668
Rangers Offense	.818	.737
Rangers Opponents	.766	.768

Who would have thought that coming into the season the Texas pitching would be consistent and good? A fading offense appears to have cost the team a playoff spot. Blalock is still young, so I suspect his stamina will get better. But Young is 27, and should be at the peak of his athletic skills.

The Devil Rays-Yankees game will be made up tomorrow as a twi-night doubleheader.

"We appreciate the continuing accommodation of the New York Yankees and their fans and apologize to them for any inconvenience that the delays may have caused," said Bob DuPuy, MLB President and COO. "As the commissioner made clear, it is critical that the outcome of the pennant races be determined on the field. The issues with respect to the Devil Rays' travel are a matter of review between the Office of the Commissioner and that club only."

I remember 35 years ago they used to schedule these evening doubleheaders. There would be a few Sunday and holiday twin bills, and a few Thursday night twi-nighters. I guess it was a way to get folks to come to the park on days they otherwise might not. One of the sad things about the increase in attendance since the early 70's is that it made doubleheaders a money loser.

The San Diego Padres try to stay in the playoff race and take another game from the front-running St. Louis Cardinals tonight. In a game that featured 18 hits last night, the Padres had the only extra-base hit, a double by Giles. Maybe PETCO park is the cure to the Cardinals power?

Jake Peavy hosts Jeff Suppan in a rematch of their game five days ago. Suppan won as Jake was hurt by his defense and his own poor pitching after errors. Peavy still needs another 36 innings to qualify for the ERA title. He may need a couple of complete games to get there.

Enjoy!

A few weeks ago, my friends at Fenway had an important question about chocolate-vanilla twist ice cream cones. Today, Lynne Cassimeris sends some photos that shed some light on the process.

(Thanks to Lynne's mom. The photos are from her store, The Peanut Principle on RT 9 in Latham, NY. Click on the picture for a larger image.)

As you can see in the pictures, the tube of ice cream is much thinner than the cone, so the operator has to employ a twisting motion to get the chocolate and vanilla on the outside on opposite sides of the cone. But also notice that there is a jagged border between the two flavors; at Fenway, it's a straight line.

Last Friday I bought another Fenway cone and observed how it was poured. The ice cream tube is much wider, as wide as the cone. So more ice cream comes out at once, and no twisting is needed. The mixed ice cream just falls straight into the cone. The operator moves the cone back and forth perpendicularly to the machine, so the ice cream looks like it's been twirled. The main advantage of this method is that you can pour a cone very quickly, which is a great when you have a long line.

Here's the latest on the Cubs-Marlins postponed series. The Marlins have changed the start time for their Thursday game against the Mets so they can play a possible double header against the Cubs on Friday. The Marlins would bat last in one of those games.

Ichiro Suzuki had 2 hits last night against the Indians (the Mariners had five total). Needless to say the odds are up again. Ichiro now needs 32 hits to break the record.

Chance of 258 Hits	Based on 2004	Based on Career
Probability of Breaking Record	.979	.884
95% Confidence, Low End	32	28
95% Confidence, High End	52	47

Unlike Bonds, the opposition has no problem pitching to Ichiro, since most of his hits are singles (15.5% of Suzuki's hits are for extra bases) and there's no one to drive Ichiro in once he's on base (he's only scored 89 runs despite great on-base numbers). They'll keep pitching to him.

The A's got robbed in the bottom of the 8th, once by the umpire, once by the Red Sox defense. Kotsay led off the 8th with a line drive that faded away from Ramirez. Manny appeared to backhand the ball and the umpire call Kotsay out. The Athletics argued the call to no avail. The replays pretty clearly showed that Ramirez trapped the ball. Byrnes was up next, and hit a long fly ball to the wall in right center. Roberts and Kapler both jumped for it, and Kapler came down with the catch. If those two plays go a little differently, it's a tie game.

In the ninth, with the Red Sox having scored three more runs, Mientkiewicz hit a liner that faded away from Kotsay. Mark trapped it, but claimed to make the catch. The replays showed that Kotsay trapped the ball, but it was a lot closer than Manny's trap to a catch. Kotsay told the ump that he was robbed twice. I'm surprised Mark wasn't tossed at that point. The fans were upset as well, and littered left field with empty paper cups.

It was my impression that the A's hit the ball a lot harder than the Red Sox in this game, it's just that the Sox soft hits got them on base, while a lot of the hard hit balls against Arroyo were caught. The Red Sox keep pace with the Yankees, who won again behind Orlando Hernandez.

This has to be one of my favorite plays of all time:

Athletics seventh. D.Miller grounded out, third baseman Mueller to first baseman Millar.

The Yankees broadcast just announced that the commissioner's office will not allow a foreit of game 1 today. The game will be rescheduled.

Despite losing Sammy Sosa to a hip injury, the Cubs have hit four HR today to lead the Expos 7-1 in the fourth. Lee hit his 29th, and Ramirez hit two to bring his total to 29. With Alou at 33, if Sosa's able to return to duty (which is likely), the Cubs will probably have four 30 HR hitters this season. Houston also hit four HR in their victory over the Reds, so the Cubs need this win to keep ahead of the streaking Astros.

Of all the poor moves the Mariners made (or didn't make) in tearing down this team, trading Carlos Guillen to the Tigers. The Hardball Times takes a look at the tight AL MVP race, and Carlos is right in the middle of it.

As of 1:30, the Devil Rays were still in Florida. The TBS broadcast just reported that the team has left the stadium by bus for an airport. Still not clear what is happening with today's doubleheader. They can possibly play one game and forfeit one, or I suppose they could play a doubleheader tomorrow. I bet the Red Sox hope the Yankees don't get a free win.

Update: I hear the DRays have arrived in NY, via the Texas Rangers broadcast. Still no word on when the game will start, or if they will play two.

Update: They are shooting for playing one tonight. They may or may not make up the other game during the four day series. There will be no forfeits.

Ichiro went 1 for 4 yesterday. This has dropped his probability of breaking the record a small amount, but he still has a high probability of getting 258 hits. This table sums up the numbers.

Chance of 258 Hits	Based on 2004	Based on Career
Probability of Breaking Record	.970	.846
95% Confidence, Low End	33	29
95% Confidence, High End	53	49

There are two issues with these numbers I'd like to discuss. The first is the chance of an injury. This could easily be included in the calculation as a conditionaly probability. However, given Suzuki's history of non-injury, I think that factor would be very low (he's missed 13 games in four years). Basically if he gets injured the probability goes to 0.

The other issue is the "he can't stay this hot issue." Since the start of July, Ichiro has hit .458. But I'm not arguing that he's going to stay hot. With about 114 AB left this season, he has to go 34/114, or hit .298 the rest of the way to break the record. This is why the odds of him breaking the record are so good. As one reader writes:

What I’m saying is that despite his current pace, I think it is unlikely for him to keep it up aginast the better pitching teams that are playing more intense defense due to playoff quests.

Okay, but if better pitching drops his average to .298, he still breaks the record! It's similar to 1998, when McGwire was going for Maris' record. He hit so many HR early in the season, that even if he just fell back to his career pace, he'd hit more than 61 HR. Ichiro has been hot for so long, even just a good finish to the season is going to take him to 258. And I think Ichiro is more than capable of hitting .298 the rest of the way.

In a sense, the "hot" argument is about the independence of at bats. I'm assuming that each AB is an independent sample of the ballplayer's ability to get a hit. For example, if you were watching a roulette wheel, and saw 20 straight turns that came up black, you would not expect the probability of the next spin coming up black to change from 18/38. The history of the wheel doesn't matter. What matters is how many spaces are on the table, and how many of those are black.

Now, it could be that AB are not independent of each other. Okay, but I've yet to see real convincing evidence of the validity of that concept. (See the book Curveball for a discussion of streakiness.) The simple model I've presented is a good one. After all, using Ichiro's career numbers, it predicts he'll hit somewhere between .254 and .430 over his last 114 AB. That's seems a very reasonable range, and once again enforces the idea that anything can happen over 100 AB.

And as a final note to the above comment, has hit Boston, Oakland, Texas and Anaheim very well this year. He's a combined .353 against those clubs.

The Cardinals are doing a number on the NL West. After sweeping the Padres, the Dodgers came into town and got the same treatment. The Dodgers now lead the Giants by only 3 1/2 games. LA and SF play six of the last 10 games of the season against each other.

Derek Balling writes:

It might be worth mentioning something about the impending potential forfeit of at least one, maybe two, games by Tampa against the Yankees tomorrow.

The Rays postponed Sat/Sun home games a couple days ago, due to the hurricane, and MLB told the Rays to get out of Tampa while they could -- except they didn't.

Now it looks basically impossible for them to meet their 1:05 start time tomorrow in the Bronx, with everything in Florida shut down.

Right now the Yankees will take a win anyway they can get it to ward off the Red Sox. My guess is that if it looks like Tampa can get there sometime tomorrow afternoon, the game will be played.

Kevin Brown needs surgery on his left hand.

An examination by hand specialist Melvin Rosenwasser performed at Yankee Stadium revealed that Brown has a displaced fracture of the fifth metatcarpal of his left hand and a non-displaced fracture of third metacarpal. Surgery to repair the displaced fracture, a procedure in which a pin will be inserted, is scheduled for today. The non-displaced fracture extends into the wrist.

So much for spitting on it, taping it up and going out and pitching as Brown said he planned to do Friday night after he slugged a clubhouse wall with his non-pitching hand in a fit of pique that may have irreversibly damaged the Yankees season.

At least Brown didn't do the totally stupid thing and hit the wall with his right hand. Crash Davis must have worked with him in the minors. :-)

This has to be more good news for the Red Sox. The Yankees pitching, to say the least, is in disarray. Vazquez, coming off the 22-0 drubbing, has given up three more runs in the first today. Mussina stinks this year. Vazquez is getting whiplash watching balls fly out of the park. At this point, they have Orlando Hernandez and that's it for the rotation.

There have been teams that have won entirely on offense (the Big Red Machine of the 1970's and the Blue Jays of the early 90's come to mind). The Yankees have an offense capable of winning with pitchers with 5.00, but that will be tough when you have to face the good pitching staffs of Oakland, Boston and Minnesota in the playoffs.

Ichiro's five hits last night brought his chance of breaking the hit record very close to 100%. Based on his performance this year, he's nearly a shoe in. Based on his career, it's still close to 90%. This table sums up the numbers.

Chance of 258 Hits	Based on 2004	Based on Career
Probability of Breaking Record	.979	.872
95% Confidence, Low End	35	30
95% Confidence, High End	56	51

The question now, I believe, is not if he's going to break it, but by how much.

Rami Genauer visited all 30 major league parks and rates them here. He has a different take than most other reviews of this type I've seen.

Sidney Ponson, Yankees punching bag, threw a two-hitter to completely shut down the Bronx Bombers. The Orioles have now allowed 2 ER in 36 innings in September. Luckily for the Yankees, the Rangers ended the Red Sox winning streak, so the lead remains 2 1/2 games.

The Athletics and Blue Jays are both wearing dark shirts today; the A's are dark green and the Blue Jays look black. I find this very confusing. When I turned on the TV the A's were in the field and the Blue Jays were running the bases. At first, I couldn't tell which team was which. Rule 1.11(b) states:
A league may provide that (1) each team shall wear a distinctive uniform at all times, or (2) that each team shall have two sets of uniforms, white for home games and a different color for road games.

It's my opinion that the league provide for (2), or at least prohibit both team from wearing dark jerseys.

Michael Taylor is writing a new blog, The Baseball Addict. He raises a good question about the Cubs-Marlins series:

Why didn't MLB just move the whole series to Wrigley and let the Marlins be the home team? I don't know, although there may be difficulties doing so that are not shared with the public. The biggest problem is that the Marlins are 2.5 games behind the Cubs in the NL Wild Card race. This series may have to move the post season back a week for the two teams to settle the Wild Card out. We'll have to wait and see.

All three game have now been postponed. Monday is an off day for the Marlins, but not the Cubs. However, next weekend they are scheduled to play three games in Chicago. I suppose it's possible that they could schedule three double headers there to make up the games. However:

Marlins spokesman Steve Copses said there is no chance the games will be played at Wrigley Field next weekend when Florida travels to Chicago for a three-game series.

The latest on the makeup possibilities are this:

The series was not rescheduled, but Marlins officials assured fans the games will be played at Pro Player Stadium in Miami. Likely makeup dates are Sept. 20, the only common off day between the clubs, and Oct. 4, the day before the playoffs begin.

I assume they would play two on the makeup day, then only play on the final day if needed.

As if things aren't going well enough for the Cardinals, Matt Morris is starting to pitch like the ace of the staff again. He won in June and July despite horrible ERAs, and now he's winning in August and September with very good ERAs.

My guess is that they didn't have highlights, but in the 9th inning of the Red Sox game last night, two idiots ran onto the field. As I found sight of them, a Red Sox security man reached one. The idiot didn't see Sox employee coming. These security people are college football players, and the runner was picked up and body slammed to the ground. I don't mean just knocked over. The security guy grabbed him, jumped in the air, and brought his full weight down on the intruder. The other "fan" saw this, then saw three more security men running for him. He did the smart thing and lay face down on the ground.

The body slammer got the biggest cheer of the night. A great game, and the Sox close the gap with the Yankees to 2 1/2 games.

audio post powered by audblog

audio post powered by audblog

I'll be the guest of Jim Storer tonight at Fenway park, sitting down the left field line in the grand stand. I hope to do some audio reports from the park tonight. The Marlins were set to open a series with the Cubs this weekend, but that's been put on hold by Frances. The big game of the night looks to be St. Louis hosting the Cardinals. It's a game that more important to the Dodgers, since St. Louis has pretty much wrapped up the division and home field for the NL playoffs. The Dodgers, however, trail Atlanta by 1/2 game for first round home field. Coming in 2nd in the home field race means there's no way you are playing the Cardinals in the first round.

Then again, maybe that's not a bad thing. I figure that the Dodgers have a probability of .338 of beating the Cards in a five-game series, but only a .313 probability of beating them in a seven-game series. So if you're going to need to play the Cardinals at some point, better play them in a short series.

(Calculation of winning percentage. The formula is A*(1-B)/(A*(1-B)+B*(1-A)) where A is the Dodgers current winning percentage and B is the Cardinals current winning percentage. Once you have that, just use the binomial to calculate the chance of the Dodgers winning at least 3 games in a 5 chances, and 4 games in 7 chances.)

I guess I won't be asking John Kerry to guest blog on Baseball Musings. :-)

audio post powered by audblog

Last time I tried to use Audblog, it didn't work.

We just witnessed three teams fail to put themselves into serious playoff contention, getting swept by teams they need to be able to defeat.

Let's start with the Angels. A few days ago, a comment noted that the Red Sox had not beaten anyone good during their streak. They have now. The Angels were in a position to take the wild card from the Red Sox. Instead, they have put themselves in a hole regarding both the division and the second place reward. Now they have to depend on Boston losing the rest of the way, and the Red Sox have 18 games left against the Mariners, Devil Rays and Orioles. Arte Moreno, you played a good game, and I hope you'll come back to the show. Here's a case of Turtle Wax.

Next is the Texas Rangers. Let's give them a big standing ovation. Showalter and Hart did a tremendous job of improving the defense without losing much offense. But you need to be able to play with the Twins if you are going to go anywhere in the playoffs. I love the Twins organization as much as I love the Athletics front office. They've done an incredible job with no money and no fans. But this isn't an very strong team. (They remind me of last year's A's; okay offense, and a pitching staff that doesn't walk anybody.) But the minimum for making the playoffs is being able to beat the Twins. If you can't defeat this team, you don't have a chance against the Yankees, A's or Red Sox. Wait 'til next year, and here's some Rice-A-Roni to tide you through the winter.

And the Padres. They had the bad luck to run into the St. Louis buzz saw. The road to the World Series is going through the Arch this year, and the Padres simply cannot bop with the Birds. Walker, Pujols, Rolen and Edmonds are the four horsemen of the apocalypse to the rest of the NL, and especially to the Padres this week. It's too early to take the Padres out of the playoff picture, but one suspects the Cardinals would make quick work of them in the NLDS. Don Pardo, give them the home version of our game.

These three teams will be back. The ownership is good, the front office is good, and the field management is good. 2004 wasn't their year, but it looks like many good ones are ahead for these teams.

Talk about a costly error! With two outs in the first, Jake Peavy got Pujols to pop up in foul territory. However, Ramon Hernandez drops the ball! E2, and Pujols hits a HR. A walk later, Edmonds hits one out of the park. The bad pitching after the error does not hurt Peavy's ERA, however. It's 4-1 Cardinals in the 4th.

The Yankees are leading the Indians 8-0 tonight in the fifth. New York has scored in each of the first four innings.

Given the baserunning blunders that have cost the A's a shot at the ALCS in 2001 and 2003, it was nice to see Marco Scutaro scoring from 2nd on a wild pitch.

The Marlins just scored three runs on a bases loaded single. It was a medium seeing eye hit that trickled through the infield. Hidalgo tried to throw out the runner trying to score from 2nd (2 outs), but the throw got by the catcher, and Seo wasn't backing up, allowing the third run to score. The Mets announcers are ripping Seo for not being in position.

When the ball was hit, Seo started for first base, because the ball was not hit hard and he thought he would have to cover. But when the ball went through for a hit, Seo stopped in his tracks and threw his head down as if he were cursing. Only too late did he start for the plate.

From the talk of the announcers, it doesn't sound like the first time a Mets pitcher has been out of position on a play like this. To me, that's bad coaching. My feeling is that managers have two main functions in regards to the game; making sure the players are prepared (well coached), and putting individuals into situations where their is a high probability of success. It looks like the Mets coaching staff is failing in the preparedness arena.

Call it the "I'm getting better," game. Bartolo Colon faced Derek Lowe at Fenway. Both are sporting ERAs over five. But Colon has gone 7-2 with a 3.62 ERA since the All-Star break, while Lowe is 5-2 with a 4.66 ERA over the same time. And both teams fans are singing, "I feel happy!" over the turnaround.

Jake Peavy still needs 42 innings to qualify for the ERA title, and he'll face a tough test tonight as he opposes Jeff Suppan and the Cardinals. Peavy has not lost since the Astros beat him July 7th.

Finally, Joe "The Patriarch" Kennedy visits the Giants and takes on SF ace Jason Schmidt. If Joe had another 50 innings and the same 3.60 ERA, I'd be pushing him for Cy Young. Schmidt, on the other had has all the qualifications for the award. Should be a great late night duel.

Enjoy!

Ichiro Suzuski is making a very good run at Geogre Sisler's 1920 record of 257 hits in a season. Ichiro needs 44 hits in his last 30 games to break the record. Based on what he's done this year, if he plays every game, he'll get another 132 AB. Given his .372 BA this season, the probability of Suzuki breaking the record in that number of AB is 0.84. Those are really good odds. There is a 95% chance that Suzuki will get between 38 and 60 hits the rest of the year.

Even if you use his career average of .338, Ichiro still has a 58% chance of breaking the record, and the 95% confidence interval is 34 to 55 hits. That should keep fans in the stands in Seattle.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed a comment by a reader wondering why Manny Ramirez wasn't doing better in win shares. To attempt to explain this, I'll use a comparison with Vlad Guerrero.

The latest win share data published at the Hardball Times is from August 26. As of that date, Guerrero was tied for third in win shares with 23, Manny was tied for 6th with 22. Yet Manny clearly had better batting statistics; both his OBA and slugging percentages are ahead of Vlad, and he's created 105 runs to Vald's 198. Yet offensively, Manny only leads Vlad 19.6 to 19.1 in offensive win shares (Vlad, the superior defensive player pulls ahead of Ramirez based on his outfield play).

One thing that win shares does is correct for offensive context. Think of it as supply and demand for runs. If situations where there is a high amount of scoring, runs are easy to come by and therefore cheaper. Preventing runs becomes more valuable that scoring runs. In low run situations, the opposite is true. Runs are scarce and expensive, so offense is valued over defense. On 8/26, Boston's run context was 10.6 runs per game (runs allowed + runs scored). Anaheim's was 9.6, a run lower. What we are looking at in a roundabout way is ballpark effects. Runs are easier to score in Fenway than away from Fenway; they are harder to score in Anaheim than away from Anaheim. When you factor in the run context, the difference between Vlad's offense and Manny's is negligible. Another reason the Angels got the bargain of the year signing Guerrero.

The Yankees have scored against the Indians, but the Cubs haven't touched the Expos yet. They were shutout yesterday and are scoreless so far this evening. Luckily, Kerry Wood is keeping them in the game with a shutout through six himself. He now has 8 K. Armas is out of the game for Montreal, after giving up four hits and a walk through six innings.

It's only the third inning, but 8 of the 9 batters for the Braves has reached base at least once. Estrada is the only hitter shut out so far, but he does have an RBI.

The Expos are not making contact against Kerry Wood tonight. He has six strikeouts through 3 innings in Montreal. We'll see how high his total can go.

Jim Hawkins needs your help:

Together with a small group of veteran writers from around the country, I have been selected to serve on a screening committee to choose the top 25 players who spent at least 10 years in the big leagues prior to 1983 - but who have not, as yet, been judged worthy of plaques at Cooperstown.

Those 25 former players - rejected or unappreciated for whatever reason by the country's baseball writers in earlier elections - will constitute the Hall of Fame Veterans Committee's ballot in 2005.

He's looking for suggestions and comments. Here's your chance to influence the hall voting.

Alex Belth has another in his great series of interviews, this time with talking to Buster Olney about his new Yankees book.

Jeff Kent just hit a grand slam in the Astros-Reds game to give Houston a 9-3 lead. It's Kent's third HR in the last two games. The Astros are just killing the Reds, having outscored them 28-6 in the three game series so far, hitting 10 HR while allowing just three. If Houston can hold on to this lead they will temporarily be 2 1/2 games back in the NL Wild Card race.

Update: Kent is up again with the bases loaded.

Update: Kent strikes out this time. He looked like he was swinging for a second slam.

Update: The Astros win 9-3. They have 28 games left, but only 9 of those are against good teams. They have six with the Cardinals and three with the Giants. The rest are against some of the worst teams in the NL; Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Milwaukee and Colorado. Unfortunately for the Astros, the Cubs have just as easy a schedule, with only 9 tough games, six vs. the Marlins and three vs. the Braves.

Twenty-six years ago, I was a die-hard Yankees fan, and the Yankees weren't doing well. They weren't doing badly, they were over .500, but in fourth place in a very strong division. Through games of July 19, they were 14 back and in fourth place. I had a friend who kept asking me if I had given up on the Yankees. When they were 14 back, my only concession to possible defeat was to say, "Yeah, it looks bad."

On that day, if the Red Sox played .500 ball for the rest of the season, the Yankees would need to play .700 ball to catch them. That's exactly what happened. Scroll down on the Baseball Reference page linked above and you'll see the standings for the rest of the year. I'm glad I didn't give up on the Yankees that year. The Red Sox are having a very similar season; they were performing beneath their ability for three months. They're now on fire, more than capable of playing .700 ball the rest of the way. In 1978, the overuse of the starting lineup (Hobson especially) cost the Red Sox down the stretch. The overuse of the Yankees setup men, and injuries to the oldersters may be costing the Yankees now. Red Sox fans can only hope that this stretch runs proves to be as profitable for them as it was the the Yankees of a quarter century ago.

P.S. One of the downsides to the wild card, in my opinion, is that it makes a repeat of the 1978 playoff game almost impossible. Both the Red Sox and Yankees would have to be passed by a wild card team to get a shot at that, and if that happens, it means neither team was playing that well down the stretch. And both teams making the playoffs does not guarantee that they will meet in the playoffs.

I wish I had recorded last night's Dodgers-Diamondbacks game. Jeff Weaver and Randy Johnson locked up in a classic pitcher's duel for eight innings, each allowing only 1 run. The two combined to allow eight hits, one walk while striking out 24. The Dodgers finally got Bruney in the 13th for three runs, winning the game 4-1. The Dodgers are tied with Atlanta for 2nd best record in the NL and home field in the first round at 77-54. However, since Atlanta won the season series 4-3, the Braves have the edge for home field. The Dodgers need to beat them by a game to host the first round.

I'm watching the start of the Indians blowout on Tivo this morning, just to see how bad thing were. Vazquez was clearly getting his pitches up in the strike zone, and in general was having trouble finding the plate. But early in the first, there was a play that seemed insignificant at the time, but may have opened the flood gates. In the first, with Vizquel on first and 1 out, Lawton hit a ball into the hole between 1st and 2nd. Cairo made a great play to get to the ball, and I'm thinking easy play at first. But instead, Cairo spun, made a jump throw to 2nd, where Jeter dropped the ball, all hands safe. Vazquez really lost his control after that. He walked Martinez, then fell behind 2-0 to Hafner. At that point he threw a phat pitch that Hafner ripped for a triple. The game was over right there. If Cairo goes to first, maybe that walk doesn't happen, and so on and so on.

For the record, here's the NY Times story, complete with a great picture of the Yankees scoreboard. And Torre's take on the game:

"There's a certain element of embarrassment, no question," Yankees Manager Joe Torre said. "If you have a lot of pride in what you do and somebody has their way with you, you have to take your lumps. There's no question. You can't just turn the lights off and go home. You have to stay there and endure what you have to endure. If you accept winning, you have to endure losing. Something like this is hard to handle. It's something you have to bounce back from. It counts as one loss."

Joe certainly has things in perspective.

Meanwhile, Wedge still thinks the Indians are in the race:

The Indians have 29 games left in the season.

"We feel like we have one more run in us," said Wedge. "We have enough games left and we're playing the right teams. That's what we're trying to do."

The Indian's failure to pick up more pitching makes that a remote possibility.

Update: Here's an extremely funny report by a blogger who attended the game:

Some fun. And we had great seats, too, right down by the action along the first base line. In the first inning, I was worried that I would be struck by a foul ball and knocked unconscious. By 9-0, I was worried that I wouldn't be.