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June 18, 2013
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Thursday, October 11, 2012WPS Recap for Oct. 10Another day full to bursting on the post-season schedule. Let's get straight to the action (courtesy of the game stats of FanGraphs). Game 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 F Cardinals 1 3 0 0 0 1 1 2 0 8 Nationals 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 (Cardinals lead series 2-1) WPS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Cardinals 19 30 5 2 6 6 2 1 0 Nationals 21 10 5 10 17 8 1 0 0 WPS Base: 141.8 Best Plays: 30.8 Last Play: 0.0 Grand Total: 172.6 There aren't many ways to candy-coat a big shutout like this. The Cardinals jumped ahead early and never let Washington on the board. St. Louis starter Chris Carpenter did allow nine baserunners over his 5.2 innings, giving the Nationals' WPS a little tickle, but without runs to close the gap, the numbers finally gave out completely. This game had the second-worst WPS score of the 2012 postseason so far. Bryce Harper had another frustrating day, a warning-track shot in the first leading nowhere but an oh-for-five line. Reports say he's been battling a case of strep throat with some fever mixed in. This could certainly affect one's game, but how often do we hear of players fighting off various illnesses yet still playing great ball? Someone should do a study on whether reported illness actually leads to decreased production and how much, but I wouldn't envy whoever had to collect all the reports for that. St. Louis has outscored Washington 20-4 in the last two games, and the Nationals have to turn that around immediately. If they don't, there's going to be ugly talk about the Curse of Teddy Roosevelt. It's that or the Stephen Strasburg shutdown, folks. Choose your poison. Game 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 F Giants 1 2 0 0 2 0 3 0 0 8 Reds 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 3 (Series tied 2-2) WPS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Giants 22 26 4 10 20 5 16 1 0 Reds 28 12 20 26 5 11 2 3 1 WPS Base: 212.1 Best Plays: 39.2 Last Play: 0.2 Grand Total: 251.5 This one started with very good back-and-forth action, including some Reds threats even when they didn't score. As it crept out of the Reds' reach, though, the numbers lost their upward momentum and left the game with a below-average WPS. Giants manager Bruce Bochy made waves when he put Barry Zito in his playoff rotation, consigning Tim Lincecum to the bullpen. The move didn't work, and it did. Zito was out of the game in the third inning, having put half the batters he faced on base. Lincecum, called for in the fourth to escape a two-out jam, had his second strong relief outing of this series, allowing only one run in 4.1 innings pitched as the Giants put five more on the board. One has to think there could be a change of assignments come the next round—if San Francisco makes it, which is much likelier now than when they left AT&T Park. Todd Frazier, third baseman for Cincinnati this day, has experience with big games. His Toms River, New Jersey team won the Little League World Series in 1998. Has there ever been a player who won the LL World Series and the actual World Series? I feel like I should know, but I don't. Anyone? Game 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 F Orioles 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 Yankees 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 3 (Yankees lead series 2-1) WPS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Orioles 12 5 18 33 22 6 6 5 4 30 14 20 Yankees 5 10 28 6 11 22 11 14 64 14 14 36 WPS Base: 409.6 Best Plays: 102.4 Last Play: 36.0 Grand Total: 548.0 Our third WPS-certified great game of this postseason. It left some excitement on the table—runs coming in on solo homers rather than rallies, plus plenty of shutdown innings with no threat to score—but it came through late. Much like, well, you know. In a series where the patchwork Baltimore rotation was supposed to be overmatched against the likes of CC Sabathia, Andy Pettitte, and Hiroki Kuroda, the advantage in starting pitching must go to the Orioles. The Yankees' starters have had quantity, two of them pitching into the ninth, but the O's have edged them in quality. Miguel Gonzalez surrendered but one run, on a Derek Jeter triple that Adam Jones misread and should have been able to track down in the air. Showalter's starters have done all he could have expected of them, and more. Jim Johnson has been another matter. He melted down in Game One but rebounded for a perfect save in Game Two and had a chance to put Baltimore in the driver's seat. Jeter was out of the game with a foot injury, and Joe Girardi pulled a struggling Alex Rodriguez for Raul Ibanez with one out in the ninth. The Yankees looked on the verge of collapse. It turned out Ibanez was on the verge of Bronx immortality. His ninth-inning home run to tie the game sent a Yankee Stadium crowd that had been silent with dread for much of the game into ecstasy. Who needs A-Rod? And when substitute shortstop Jayson Nix snagged a Nate McLouth liner for a double play that a hobbled Jeter likely wouldn't have made, a few fans might have breathed the sacrilegious question, "Who needs Jeter?" (Yeah, probably not.) And then Ibanez, still in at DH when the spot came around to lead off the 12th, was fresh out of creative ideas for contributing to a Yankees victory, so he just did the same thing all over again. For a franchise defined by its superstars, the Yankees have their share of supernumeraries with immortal games: Don Larsen, Bucky Dent, Aaron Boone. Raul Ibanez extended that list. As for the Orioles, not only did they lose a one-run game, something they did less than 25 percent of the time this season, not only did they lose an extra-inning game for the first time in 17 tries, but they lost a game they led after seven, and suffered a walk-off defeat, both for the first time in 2012. They would feel justified in thinking that the magic spell has been broken. If they are to overcome this moral shock and recover to win the series, it will take more than their old defiance of the statistical norms. It will take guts. And if that is no more substantial a basis for success than beating the sabermetric odds, it is probably far more satisfying to those doing it. Game 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 F Tigers 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 3 A's 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 3 4 (Series tied 2-2) WPS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Tigers 4 10 20 28 3 8 5 18 1 A's 7 5 6 6 17 25 10 20 132 WPS Base: 323.5 Best Plays: 104.0 Last Play: 40.1 Grand Total: 467.6 Okay, that's another game that knew how to end. Not particularly great through eight and a half—another of those close games with relatively few threats to score—but the bottom of the ninth made up for it in spades. Heck, in every suit, and no-trump. Early on, it looked like the biggest, or only, highlight of the night would be Prince Fielder. Having been robbed of a homer the previous day by Coco Crisp, he hit one in the third that could only have been brought back into the yard by Inspector Gadget. Josh Donaldson of the A's did try to compete in the seventh, with a diving play on a grounder that would have proven he was Brooks Robinson in a previous life if Brooks were not still alive. Still, it looked like a middling game until Jose Valverde came on in the home ninth to nail down the series win for Detroit. Do you remember 2011, when Valverde converted every save opportunity he had in the regular season? He didn't look like he remembered. The A's definitely did not. Consecutive hits by Josh Reddick, Josh "Brooks" Donaldson and Seth Smith pulled Oakland even, with the winning run on second. Valverde settled down and got two outs, but Coco Crisp, still miffed that he hadn't gotten the chance to rob Fielder again of a homer, did the next best thing and laced a single to right. When rookie Avisail Garcia overran the ball, Seth Smith's winning run went from potential to actual. The A's survive their third elimination game in a week and will play for the whole shooting match tomorrow. Late tomorrow, at the end of another day packed with four games. Meaning I have to stay up again until oh-dark-thirty to watch them and write up their game. If it ends like this one did, I can live with that. And That HappenedI turned on the Cardinals-Nats game just before 1 p.m. I had baseball on my television and did not leave the house -- heck, didn't leave my little den here -- for the next 12 hours and change. Two walkoffs. It was absolutely glorious. I'm half-tempted to petition Major League Baseball to expand the playoffs even further so we can have even more games packing our October afternoons and evenings. OK, maybe not. But as the man sang, it was a good day. Yankees 3, Orioles 2: Raul. Ibanez. What else can you say? All you can do is to grab the New York papers and see which miserable misanthrope columnist decides to turn this into a story about A-Rod sucking instead of a story about a two improbable bombs from an improbable hero. That'll tell you everything you need to know. Athletics, Tigers 3: The Tigers took the 3-1 lead into the ninth and had Jose Valverde on the mound. Who had absolutely nothing, and Coco Crisp hit the walkoff single. Mercy, mercy me. Detroit may be bumming at the moment, but the Tigers do have Justin Verlander, so it's not time to jump out of a window yet, Tigers fans. Cardinals 8, Nationals 0: Like I said yesterday, don't blame the Strasburg shutdown. The Nats being down 2-1 has been a total team effort. Giants 8, Reds 3: If I would have told you beforehand that Barry Zito was going to walk three dudes in the first inning and be pulled before the end of three, you would not have predicted a Giants victory. But as everything else that happened yesterday shows us, baseball is freakin' ridiculous. A deciding Game Five today. 40th anniversary: two great postseason games40 years ago today may very well have been the greatest day in the history of postseason baseball. No one really talks about it or remembers it very much, but its’ true. While other days have flashier and greater games, Oct. 11, 1972 has one neat calling card—it’s one of the few days to feature not just one but two excellent games. And one of them decided a pennant. On Oct. 11, 1972, the A’s faced the Tigers in Game Four of the ALCS while the Reds hosted the Pirates for the fifth and final game of the NLCS. In the ALCS, the Tigers needed a win, entering the day trailing two games to one. The Tigers took an early 1-0 lead, but Oakland tied it 1-1 in the top of the seventh. And that’s where it stood after nine innings. Extra frames loomed. In the top of the 10th, it looked like the A’s put the game away to clinch the pennant as two singles and a double turned into a pair of runs for a 3-1 lead. Now Detroit needed an offensive explosion of their own. And that’s just what they did. Back-to-back singles by Dick McAuliffe and Al Kaline led off the inning. After a wild pitch advanced them (and put the potential tying run in scoring position with still nobody out), Oakland issued a walk to load the bases. Tigers catcher Bill Freehan hit into a grounder that should’ve resulted in at least one out, but the A’s bungled it. Everyone was safe and now it’s 3-2 with the bags still loaded. Next up was Norm Cash—and he drew an RBI walk to tie the game, 3-3. And there were still no outs. Jim Northrup was the inning’s sixth batter and he became the sixth to reach base as his RBI single gave Detroit an unlikely win, 4-3. They would live to fight another day. Pittsburgh wasn’t so lucky in their NLCS game. Early on, it looked like the defending world champs would return to the World Series. They took an early 2-0 lead, and though the Reds chipped away at it, still led 3-2 heading into the bottom of the ninth. However, Johnny Bench led off the ninth for the Big Red Machine with a solo home run to tie the game, 3-3. Back-to-back singles put the winning run in scoring position. Pinch-runner George Foster advanced to third on a sacrifice fly, and after a pop up he stayed there. The pennant-winning run was 90 feet from home plate with two outs and a young Hal McRae at the plate. Unlike Detroit’s Jim Northrup, McRae never got the chance to be the hero. Then again, he didn’t need to be the hero. Instead, Pirates pitcher Bob Moose became the goat, uncorking a wild pitch that sent Foster scampering home before the Pirates could throw him out. That was it—Cincinnati had their second run of the inning for the rare pennant-deciding walk-off wild pitch. They won, 4-3 Oh, one last sad bit of news for the Pirates about that game—it turned out to be Roberto Clemente’s final contest. He died in an airplane flight that winter trying to provide relief to Central American earthquake victims. Also, on the Pittsburgh bench that day was another Hall of Famer who would retire in that offseason: Bill Mazeroski. So not only was it a great game, but it was the last moment for two longtime Pirate mainstays. Yet that great game was just a one of two great games on Oct. 11, 1972. Few days can match what happened 40 years ago today. Aside from that, many other baseball events today celebrate their anniversary or “day-versary” (which is something occurring X-thousand days ago). Here they are, with the better ones in bold if you’d rather just skim through things. Click for more... | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||