Thereby sending the Giants and the Braves to the playoffs, and proving once again that I was right and everybody else was wrong. Goodbye, Dads!
It’s weird, though; I’m a little spoiled after three straight years, but there won’t be a 163rd game played anywhere this season. Had the Dads beaten the Larges, there’d have been a three-way tie at 91-71, and that could have been interesting. Alas.
Tune in tomorrow for a deconstruction of the playoffs, and I’ll explain to you why we won’t be seeing the Yankees and the Phillies in the World Series again this year, determinists be damned. Then I’ll do a hardware round-up. Good times.
October 3rd, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
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Jeff Passan and Kevin Millar agree: The Phillies are the best team.
Well, shit. Far be it from me to argue with Kevin Millar. Did you know that he drives a jacked-up giant pickup truck with "Cowboy Up" printed on the doors? Because he does. I tried to find a picture of it, but apparently there isn’t one; I didn’t look too hard, though, because I found out that I’m like the number six result for "kevin millar" pickup truck on Google, and then I got distracted.
What were we talking about? Oh, right, baseball. Anyhow, the Twins are the best team (105 team OPS+, 106 team ERA+ against 99/111 for Philly). But that’s okay, Kevin and Jeff.
Actually, the nerdier you get, the less good the Phillies look. The Twins are at 50 team WAR, against only 42.4 for the Phillies. (The Reds and Yankees are very close to the Twins — 48.9 and 47.8, respectively. But the Twinkies are better.)
What is it, then, that makes the Phillies so winning-y? Everybody’s favourite thing: balls-out luck. By which I mean "clutch performance."
Let’s get this out of the way up front: yes, it counts. Teams like Philly and Tampa, which maybe aren’t as good as other teams, such as Atlanta and New York, can come out ahead in the standings if they’re lucky. That’s fine if you’re talking from a "who won" perspective, but if you really want to know which team is better, you need to neutralise for that. The Phillies are the second-clutchest team in baseball, weighing in at a pretty damn impressive 2.97 clutchatrons (side note: holy shit, the Astros are at 8.12? That’s unsane), which is an indication that they’ve had their hits fall at the right times. That’s good, sure, but it’s not an indication of team quality so much as it’s an indication of team luck.
So: yeah, the Twins are the best team in baseball. Sorry guys. But thanks for the Google boost!
October 3rd, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
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The Yankees were putting on a serious rally in the ninth tonight, after Brett Gardner reached on an Eric Patterson fielding error with two out. The Captain crunchatised a gritty single to bring in one, and then Mark Teixeira walked to put runners on the corners. But do you think Chokemaster Chokeydoke could get it done? Because if you do, you clearly didn’t read the title. So go do that.
The Rays tied up with KC while I was writing this. So maybe they won’t even need the tiebreaker to win the division!
October 3rd, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
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My busy-week hiatus has concluded, and ye olde storye has a new chapter. Just thought I’d call attention to this for the benefit of everybody who figured that when I took one week off that really meant I’d never get back to it. Which is everybody.
October 3rd, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Meta-meta |
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