Wild Card: M's -1.5 behind Angels, -3.5 to Twins
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ASTROS 1, PESKY RODENT ANGELS 0
Brandon Phillips led off the ballgame with a sharp line-drive double off Justin Verlander's 95-MPH center cut, 1-1 fastball. From there to the closer in the 9th, Verlander deliciously NO-HIT the Angels. How sweet it is, and the Astros' rotation against us this weekend is now Charlie Morton, Dallas Keuchel, TBA.
Lance McCullers was just scratched from a start with arm "fatigue" and if that hinders him in the playoffs, what a blow to Houston.
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BALMER 2, JAYS 3
Our second-fave team in September is pretty much Toronto, from the looks of our rivals' schedule. Joe Biagaini threw a near Mega Quality Start (8 IP, 2 ER) off of two strikeouts. The O's wasted a Paxtonesque start by Dylan Bundy, 6 IP 5 H 1 R 1 BB 8 K. Don't you love it when your starter weed-wacks the enemy for two hours and your ballclub loses the game?
Kendrys Morales and Justin Smoak had big hits. Smoak's batting a round .280 (not "around" .280 a nice round .280) with an OBP of a round .360 and a SLG of a nice edgy .553. He's got 63 walks and 37 homers, the way it looked like on that Baseball Prospectus cover with his minor league jersey on.
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ERGO
Other teams of interest won, except Texas, we heard. Minnesota "wasted" fifteen runs, in the sense that they won 16-0. Leaving:
- Minny +6
- LAA +2
- Tex =
- KC =
- Sea -1
- TB -2
- Balmer -3
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WOULDA BEEN A GREAT PENNANT RACE
It used to be that there was one division, called "The American League," and pennant chases consisted of the best team in the league against the second-best team in the league. Let's say they were doin' that this year?
AUGUST 1st --- > HOU 69-37, CLE 57-48 leaving the Indians -11.5 games back in the standings.
SEPTEMBER 13th --- > CLE 89-56, HOU 87-57, leaving the Indians +1.5 up in the standings.
Even on August 23rd the Tribe would have been -7.5 games back, making up 9 games in 20 days*.
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UND TAKE ZIS MIT YOU
At BJOL there is a discussion on the "streakiest" teams of all time. On August 19th, the Dodgers were 87-34 and up +20.0 games, which reminds you of the old joke that Ralph Houk liked to be up 10 games on the 4th of July "and then slowly pull away." Anyway, an 87-34 team is on a 116.5 win pace. The strike-shortened 1994 Indians were 100 and 44 and that always hit me as the most "awe-inspiring" team I'd seen since Rose, Morgan and Bench.
Such a team, an 87-34 team, just posted the longest losing streak in Los Angeles Dodgers history at -11 games. Imagine some other one of the 108+ win teams, like the 1998 Yankees, ripping off a losing streak like that.
James was asked about it and he said, "I don't know what's going on." Which, we will point out gently, if there's no such thing as "hot and cold" in baseball (or almost no such thing) then we would of course know what was going on: absolutely nothing is going on. It's just luck. Or injury, at worst, which, are the Dodgers injured?
The takeaway for the Mariner fan: when they calculate those Playoff Odds Percentages they assume there's never anythin' goin' on. Me? I disagree.
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BABVA,
Dr D