Baseball: 2006 MLB Playoffs: Division Series

The A's made it through??

I've missed the whole season, been so busy i fell right out of the loop. The one year in the last 15 years or more and i missed it...

Originally posted by GiantsFan
Funny how all the Teams I wanted to win won, yet all my picks, besides the Mets, were wrong. Oh well... I'm not complaining.

Yeah, I'd say that's a good plae to be, dude!

Who are you pulling for in the Championship Series?

I'm pulling for Tigers and Cardinals. Tigers, since I like seeing a new team in the WS, and they haven't been there in a while. I actually said two years ago they would make it to the playoffs... and everyone laughed at me... I was just two years too early, but oh well. And I pick the Cards, because I'm a pujols fan and I hate the Mets as they dethroned the Braves in the NL East.

Originally posted by GiantsFan
and I hate the Mets as they dethroned the Braves in the NL East.

AH, but you knew that day had to come sometime, didn't you?

Considering that the yankees are no longer in the playoffs im looking for the mets to pull something off. The weird thing is the only way to get tickets to the mets home games is through a lottery online!

Man, it's so hard for me to picture the Mets' losing the best inning-for-inning pitcher in the HISTORY of baseball (Pedro Martinez) to a season-ending injury, then going on to win the World Series.

But I heard one commentator say the other day that Pedro basically was awesome in April and hasn't done that much since. And he was right. So I suppose it could happen. It's just like imagining that the 1946 Red Sox won the World Series without Ted Williams--which they came within 2 runs of doing, since he sucked throughout that Series, and Game 7 was tied at 3-3 in the bottom of the 8th when Enos Slaughter's "Mad Dash" from 1st to home on a blooper brought him immortality and brought his team the Series.

So if the Sox came that close with no meaningful contribution from Ted Williams--who was a one-dimensional player worth exactly as much when he wasn't hitting as Pedro is worth when not pitching: zilch--then I suppose the Mets could win this thing without Pedro.

It's just so damn hard to picture....

BHN

Originally posted by BaseballHistoryNut
Man, it's so hard for me to picture the Mets' losing the best inning-for-inning pitcher in the HISTORY of baseball (Pedro Martinez) to a season-ending injury, then going on to win the World Series.

But I heard one commentator say the other day that Pedro basically was awesome in April and hasn't done that much since. And he was right. So I suppose it could happen. It's just like imagining that the 1946 Red Sox won the World Series without Ted Williams--which they came within 2 runs of doing, since he sucked throughout that Series, and Game 7 was tied at 3-3 in the bottom of the 8th when Enos Slaughter's "Mad Dash" from 1st to home on a blooper brought him immortality and brought his team the Series.

So if the Sox came that close with no meaningful contribution from Ted Williams--who was a one-dimensional player worth exactly as much when he wasn't hitting as Pedro is worth when not pitching: zilch--then I suppose the Mets could win this thing without Pedro.

It's just so damn hard to picture....

BHN

And that, my friend, is why they play the games. I've heard that before somewhere...

We have an experienced started in Glavine who will hopefully give us 6 or 7 solid innings out of the pen in game 1, we have some explosive bats. Delgado and Beltan, Wright these are the batters that we are going to have to rely on to win this series.

Just Reported by sports.yahoo.com

The New York Mets might have to face Chris Carpenter sooner than expected.

Game 1 of the NL championship series between New York and St. Louis was postponed Wednesday night because of a steady rain, giving the Cardinals a chance to pitch their ace on full rest in Game 2.

The best-of-seven series will now begin Thursday night, and Game 2 at Shea Stadium is to be played Friday -- which was supposed to be an off day in the series.

Carpenter had been slated to start Game 3 on Saturday, when the series shifts to St. Louis. But the 2005 NL Cy Young Award winner would be working on his regular four days of rest if the Cardinals decide to bump him up to Friday.

"That is his fifth day. You've got to seriously think about what that means. It's up for grabs in my opinion," St. Louis manager Tony La Russa said. "My first 30-45 minutes of looking at it, I said I'd probably stay with it. Sitting here for 15, there's more there. There's a decision to make, no doubt about it."

The Mets will stay with Tom Glavine in the opener, and the 40-year-old left-hander said he expects to come back and pitch on only three days' rest in a potential Game 5.

"I've done it before. I know what to expect, how to prepare from tomorrow's start to my next start knowing it's going to be on short rest. But you still have to go out there and do it," Glavine said. "The most important game for me is tomorrow, and trying to win that game for us -- then worry about starts I may have after that."

Jeff Weaver was to get the ball for St. Louis in Game 1, as originally planned.

Rookie right-hander John Maine is slated to pitch Game 2 for New York. Jeff Suppan had been penciled in for the Cardinals, but he could be pushed back.

Minutes before the game was called, La Russa said a rainout probably wouldn't alter his rotation, explaining that he didn't think there was any benefit in switching and he thought Carpenter was a better choice for Game 3 -- and a possible Game 7.

But after the postponement, La Russa sounded as though he might change his mind.

"There have been times an important decision was made because of coincidence, and the coincidence is we got rained out, and it's Chris' fifth day," La Russa said. "So that's why you can't dismiss it lightly."

The Mets and Cardinals will play five straight days now.

"That's really the importance of not playing today, is that you play five in a row," La Russa said. "Actually, it's a better test because that's kind of what you do throughout the season."

Tickets for Game 1 will be honored Friday for the second game at Shea Stadium. The starting time for that game was to be determined and announced on Thursday.

Terrific job of getting off the mat tonight by the Cards. Look for this to be a good, long, intense series. Unlike the one my A's are in, however ephemerally.

BHN

Detroit is going to win the A.L. Title in four games, period.
Kenny Rogers pitches another shut out in the playoffs. These performances are coming from a fourty - one year old pitcher!!! A pitcher whose last few appearances in the playoffs did not go too well. Who says he can't pitch well in the big games?

Now the Mets v. Cards series is a totally different story in itself. With the lack of pitching for a few innings last nite, with the exception of a few bright spots, the pitching on both sides was awful. If the pitching on both sides does not get better, this is going to be a high scoring series. It could possibly go the full seven games, but we'll see.

[Edited on 10/14/06 by allfootball400]

Man, who's going to win the N.L.C.S.? There are many historical examples of teams' getting down 3-2, then going to the other team's home park and winning Game 6 AND Game 7. The Yankees did it to Brooklyn in 1952. The Cards did it to the Yankees in 1926, the year of Alexander's immortal strikeout of Lazzeri with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 7th. And there have been many more examples, including more recent ones.

BUT....

It's my opinion that: (1) St. Louis is, per capita, the greatest baseball city in the U.S., with more World Series titles than any team except the Yankees; (2) they get great support at home; and (3) they really needed to win Game 5, a lot more than the Mets did. Well, they did it. And historically, when a 7-game series is tied 2-2, the team that wins Game 5 has a huge edge... something like 3-1.

HOWEVER....

I think St. Louis needs to win Game 6. For one thing, some of the benefits of being at home won't be available to the Mets. They don't get literal "home cooking." They'll fly in at a bizarre hour, get short sleep, feel just as disoriented as the Cards, and probably not spend the night/morning with their families. Yeah, they'll have all of those unruly thugs to support them at Shea Stadium, and that will help for sure. But if they win Game 6, they'll all get decent nights' sleeps at home before Game 7, which the Cards won't. That will be worth a lot.

If I'm LaRussa, I'm not going to manage Game 6 as though it were Game 7, but I'm going to come pretty close to doing so.

I think the Mets are the better team, but the best teams have routinely been losing in the post-season of late. And on simple probabilities, if you make the Mets a 6-5 favorite tomorrow and a 3-2 favorite in Game 7, that would mean the odds of their winning both games are 18/55, which is just a hair under 1/3. Not good. But IF they win Game 6, well, now they're clear favorites.

I still want to see the Cards vs. the Tigers, but either combination will, i.m.o., make for a great Series--as long as the Tigers' pitchers don't continue to dominate so damn much. If they do, get ready for oceans of hyperbole about Jim Leyland and (gag) Pudge Rodriguez all winter long.

But as an A's fan, I'll show some class and give credit where it's due: DAMN, did they look good in thrashing my boys!! Looked like men against teenagers, didn't it?

BHN

So the Cards won last night. I heard they had the 13th best record in MLB. Did they really deserve to win?

This was the worst of the 49 World Series I've watched, and whatever #2 was, it's not close. Yeah, there have been quite a few sweeps in my lifetime, and there have been several Series where the games were more one-sided, but at least those looked like MAJOR League Baseball.

St. Louis is the greatest baseball city in the U.S., on a per capita basis. It's a place where there's no doubt baseball is still the great national pastime, and to hell with football. Boys grow up listening to their fathers and grandfathers tell them about Gibson, Musial and, if the old guy goes back far enough, Dizzy Dean, Jim Bottomley and even Rogers Hornsby and Grover Cleveland Alexander.

Those are big names. Gibson has become overrated, but he was a great pitcher. Musial is probably one of the 10 greatest MLB players ever--I have him at #7. Dean was an early-day Sandy Koufax, with a meteoric peak period that they still rave about, but a career done far too soon. Bottomley doesn't belong in this company, but he had a brief period of greatness and is the last person to win the N.L Triple Crown. Hornsby is arguably the greatest 2Bman ever (I go for Morgan), arguably the greatest RH-hitter ever, and, with all due disrespect to Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Ted Williams and Barry Bonds, the biggest jerk of any great player ever. And Alexander is arguably the best Dead Ball pitcher and, by an attenuated stretch of reasoning, perhaps the all-time greatest pitcher, period.

So St. Louis has an extraordinary baseball tradition AND a huge base of die-hard fans who pass that tradition on through generations. They've won more World Series than any team except you-know-who, and they've played in more World Series than any team except the Yankees and my perennial losers, the Giants. And I'm happy that, after what must have seemed like an endless drought in that city (24 years), they've won it all.

But jeez Louise, wasn't that a HORRID excuse for a World Series? Jim Leyland is a class act, and it's nice to hear him talk about how St. Louis won it, but those of us who watched the Series know Detroit LOST it--and did so with a farrago of fielding and throwing blunders you would expect to see from a bad Little League team. In fact, I saw them do things I got chewed out for in Little League, when my age was measured with a single digit and I most assuredly was not paid a seven-digit sum to play the game I loved.

And here's the pity: The St. Louis players will get those rings and wear them for the rest of their lives, but it's a foregone conclusion that this World Series will forevermore be remembered as the Series that was given away. People will always talk about it as the Series in which a bunch of MLB pitchers threw the ball around the infield like blind men, and other fielders chipped in their own Keystone Kops routine, with a St. Louis right fielder apparently empathizing and contributing his own comical fielding efforts in the final game.

And no, this isn't the first time godawful fielding has played a big role in the World Series. In 1941, the Dodgers had apparently tied the Series at 2 games apiece. The Yankees had 2 outs in the 9th and their batter struck out. But Dodger catcher Mickey Owen couldn't hold onto the pitch, and it became baseball's all-time most famous passed ball. Instead of losing the game 4-3, the Yankees exploded to win 7-4, seizing a 3 games to 1 lead. The characteristically silent Joe DiMaggio came off the field and into the clubhouse gloating, "No way they come back from THIS!"

He was right. The Dodgers went quietly in Game 5.

And, of course, there was 1986, when the Red Sox had the Mets beaten in Game 6, thereby winning the World Series, only to have the following events occur:

(1) Their idiot manager removed Roger Clemens, who'd gone 24-4 that year and would win both the Cy Young and the MVP, and who had a 3-2 lead at the time, for a pinch hitter in the top of the 8th inning--all to no avail;

(2) "Relief" pitcher Calvin Schiraldi promptly coughed up the lead in the 8th; put two on with no out in the 9th, but got out of it; then, when given a 2-run lead in the 10th and after getting 2 men out and being 1 out away from the championship, proceeded to cough up 3 straight singles;

(3) "Reliever" Bob Stanley committed the biggest defensive blunder that NOBODY remembers, wild-pitching home the TYING RUN and putting the winning run in scoring position, making him every bit as guilty as:

(4) Bill Buckner, whose blunder needs no description, but who should be no bigger a goat than Stanley, who's somehow gotten off the hook historically.

However, while these and other past teams have made monumental blunders in the World Series, there has never been a World Series team like this years Tigers, giving away game after game with Little League-like gaffes. I mean, if you know anything about baseball, what was your reaction when that pitcher decided to initiate a freakin' pitcher-to-THIRD-to-first double play?!

This St. Louis team will be remembered for winning a thrilling NLCS over the Mets, with Yadier Molina (of all people) stealing that young Mets backup left fielder's spot in the history books, after his belief-defying catch of Rolen's seeming HR. In that sense, they're worthy World Champs. But sportswriters and baseball historians decide how a team is remembered, and I guarantee you this St. Louis team is destined to be remembered for all-time as the team that won a World Series by default.

And that's a lot better than the way this Detroit team will be remembered. A team of historically terrible proportions just a few years ago, and pretty bad proportions last year, they were the best team in MLB this year and blasted highly touted Yankees and A's teams from the playoffs. They were big favorites in the World Series, and well should have been. But the vulgar reality is that they will be remembered for the grotesque, humiliating spectacle of self-destruction we just witnessed. And that is a shame.

BHN