Playoff Preview 2011

 The marathon is over.  One hundred and sixty-two games later, just eight teams remain, all hunting for the right to raise the Commissioner’s Trophy into the October night.  The road to the postseason was exciting for many, with the Rays and the Cardinals sneaking in on the very last day of the regular season – both avoiding potential one-game playoffs for the Wild Card against the free-falling Red Sox (winners of the dubious “worst September collapse in history” distinction) and Braves, respectively.

            Two games into the Division Series at press time, and only the Brewers have an edge (two games to none, over the Diamondbacks).  The Yankees and Tigers, Phillies and Cards, and Rays and Rangers are all tied up, with each team laying claim to a singular LDS victory.  The biggest surprise thus far has to be Cliff Lee’s Game 2 loss, closely followed by James Shields’ disastrous start on Saturday.

            In the best-of-five Division Series, the safest money is on Milwaukee to defeat Arizona in three or four games to advance to the NLCS.  The other series are a bit more convoluted to predict while tied 1-1 each – it essentially means you're predicting the outcome of a best-of-three series; something any baseball fan will tell you is a crapshoot.  Most people are betting on Philadelphia to advance over St. Louis, but the Cards won’t be making it easy, especially since Albert Pujols’ troublesome left ankle didn’t stop him from knocking in the go-ahead run on Saturday to tie the series.

            As for New York and Detroit, the advantage will fall to the team whose ace pulls through Monday evening. Writing this Monday morning, I’m giving the edge to the Yankees and CC Sabathia, despite the apparent Cy Young winner Justin Verlander going for the Tigers at home.  Down in St. Pete, the Rangers have Colby Lewis going against the Rays’ young star David Price.  Price struggled down the stretch, so it’s possible that the 224 innings he pitched in 2011 (by far his career high) are catching up with the young lefty. Conversely, Lewis ended his season with a win, and is 3-0 lifetime against the Rays, so I’m going to give him – and the Rangers – the advantage for Game 3 and the ALDS.

            Assuming all of the above, the ALCS should be Texas vs. New York (Yankees will have home-field advantage), and the NLCS should be Milwaukee vs. Philadelphia (Phillies will have home-field advantage).  This is where the pitching staffs will really start to show; baseball is all about pitching, and one hot or strong-willed started can will his team to a World Series – just ask vintage Josh Beckett (2003, 2007).  Though Texas lacks a Sabathia-caliber ace, the rest of their staff is much more reliable than New York’s: if AJ Burnett were more dependable, the Yankees would have my confidence.  As it is, I’m giving the edge to the Rangers.

            If the Phillies manage to get eliminated before the World Series, it will be seen as a failure.  Like the disgraced BoSox, the Phillies were practically crowned champions in February, before a single game had been played. Their pitching pedigree cannot be questioned, but the Brewers are young, hot, and ambitious. For now, the advantage is with Philly.

            In a Texas-Philadelphia World Series (Philly, as the NL team, has home-field because of the NL win in the All-Star Game), the Phillies win it.  It is, as they say, all about the pitching, and no one can beat the Phillies hurlers, at least on paper.

            However, anyone who has read (or now seen) Michael Lewis’ Moneyball knows that playoffs, and especially best-of-five series, are little better than a roll of the dice. Anything can happen, and probably will: I’m predicting a Phillies-Rangers Fall Classic, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw Cardinals-Tigers, Diamondbacks-Rays, or Brewers-Yankees. That’s (playoff) baseball.

[Note: the strange timing of this entry - not at the beginning of the LDS - is due to the fact that it was originally written for the Trinity Tripod, and my deadline over there is Monday morning. This means I might already be wrong by the time it comes to press Tuesday night. Oops.]

Breaking up a family: The legendary bond of Pedey and Tito

SO. MUCH. LOVE.

 
If you read this blog even semi-regularly, you know that I am an unabashed and shameless fangirl of both Tito and Theo.  Was there more that the two of them could have done this season? How much of the blame lies in the hands of the manager who makes the on-field decisions? How much lies with the GM who built the team? And, perhaps most importantly, what portion should lie at the feet of the athletes on the field?

The tales spilling out now that the season has been brought to a violent and screeching halt are eye-opening, in a word.

A commenter on Boston.com this morning, referring to this piece.

Globe writer Dan Shaughnessy claims that the parting of Tito Francona and the Red Sox was anything but a mutual decision: " [John] Henry has had Francona in his crosshairs for a couple of years. Ultimately, Francona was not enough of a numbers guy to satisfy Boston’s Moneyball boss."  Francona tells a different story: he wasn't getting through to the players, the constant scrutiny of managing a baseball team that is so much more than that to so many people, he thought eight years was enough.

As usual with this particular corner of blogdom, I look at this travesty through the eyes of one Dustin Pedroia.  Pedey and Tito have a well-chronicled bond; they passed straight through legendary bromance to honorary father-son territory long ago.  They trade jokes about their receding hairlines, about Pedey's height, and Tito's age, they played (ah, the past tense) cribbage before every game, and by all accounts enjoyed a refreshingly honest and functional relationship.

So if I'm heartbroken over the skipper's departure, it stands to reason that Pedroia would feel even stronger, and he didn't disappoint: "I love him. He’s given me every opportunity in the world and given me the respect to play the game with a freedom, and that’s what he allows us players to do. Geez, man, he’s done everything for me and everything for my family ... he’s done everything for me in the five years I’ve been in the big leagues. My heart’s broken for him and I wish he was back and I wish I could have played my whole career for him. It’s going to be hard. I’m sure he’ll come back a better manager and a better person for it. Us, as an organization, we’re going to move forward together."

 

If that didn't make you tear up a bit, you have no heart (or you're not blinded by a a deep-seated love and admiration for everything that our second baseman does and says).  Pedey also threw in a couple of jabs about player responsibility, but if you want to read those you can go to the source.  This post exists for the sole purpose of mourning the now defunct dream team of Dustin Pedroia and Terry Francona.  I'll be drinking for them tonight.

Life, school, and baseball

Anyone uninterested in a post that's more about me than the Red Sox (I suspect that's most of you) can come back later for a reaction to the sacking of Tito.  Right now I need an outlet, and since this is my blog, I feel entitled to use the space for that - at least once.

This morning, I got up at seven to take the LSAT.  Through a series of unfortunate events (and several dimwitted and sleep-clouded actions on my part), I missed the test.  I was upset, obviously, but as I drove back to school, I realized that I was much more distressed about the fact that I wasted $140 (a sum I don't really have to throw away) than the fact that I wouldn't be sitting the exam.

Lately I've been thinking about the future (an inescapable pastime for a senior in college - especially in the current economic climate), and I'm suddenly not as sure as I used to be that I even want to be a lawyer.  It's always been my dream to work in baseball; I've always said I don't care what I have to do, as long as I can be around the game.

My first choice would be to earn a living in sportswriting, but you don't generally get offered a job at The Globe straight out of college, particularly if you don't have a journalism degree (TrinColl doesn't offer that major).  It used to be that you would pay your dues at a small local and/or regional newspaper, and then hopefully your if your work was good it would get recognized by a national publication and you would move up the ranks. Now, as many of you know, those smaller newspapers are in trouble, much more likely to be shedding payroll than taking chances on unknowns.

The next best thing would be to work for a team, in any capacity.  Baseball is a well known boys' club, steeped in tradition and notoriously difficult to break into. Given the game's established proclivity for hiring men, and especially former players, I assumed that (as a woman who last played even softball in high school) my best bet was to get a law degree and try to work with contracts, either with a team or for an agency.


In the last few weeks, I should have been studying for this test. I bought the review book, I had free time, but I couldn't bring myself to sit down and focus on it.  I just wasn't passionate about any of the material, and even less excited about the prospect of mortgaging my entire life away for three more years of education that I have no way of paying for.

I've always been so sure about my direction in life; I was a third grader with a twenty-year plan for my future, and now I'm floundering.  I'm sure this is nothing new, or even unusual, but it's particularly jarring for me because I have always known what my next step should be.

I don't flatter myself that I could make a living as a writer at this point in my life - I need a LOT more practice - and so I'm lost. I don't know where I should be looking, or what I should be doing, and I'm going to be dumped (ceremoniously, in a cap and gown, but still dumped) into the cold, cruel world in seven months.  The only thing I'm still sure of is my love for baseball, and the Red Sox (yes, even after this disgrace of a season).  I know I've been absolutely terrible at keeping up this blog in 2011, and I'm sorry. I hope to be better while I figure out what to do with the rest of my life.

[Also, for anyone who managed to slog through all that existential crap, I thank you. To show my appreciation, here's a video of Florida Atlantic and Western Kentucky baseball players putting on a show - during a rain delay.]

Being a Red Sox fan is WORTH the heartache

We didn't deserve to make it.  As angry, depressed, disappointed, and bitter as I am right now (and it's toned down a lot since last night), I can see that.  The Red Sox mailed it in this September, and last night's debacle was nothing more than a microcosm of the last month.

They say you don't win pennants in April.  That might be true, but if nothing else, this season has taught us that you sure as hell can LOSE them in April.  If we didn't get swept by Cleveland (Cleveland!) the second series of 2011, we squeak into the playoffs last night - whether we could have done a damn thing one we were in? That's another story.

However, some of the reactionary stuff I was seeing on Twitter and Facebook last night was appalling, and - in many cases - downright foolish:

Let's start off with a tweet where the poster misspelled the closer's name, exposed his own misogyny, and blamed a player with a serious injury. I'm sorry, bro, but I know you personally, and there is no goddamned way you were playing through injuries like Salty's and Youk's. Despite the fact that Lackey has thus far been a HUGE disappointment for the money, he DID manage to win 12 games, and the suggestion to sign Prince Fielder is hardly going to help out our pitching.

Let's move on:

Gold. "Sell the team." To whom, I wonder? Are you going to buy it?  And it's not really like the owners can carry much of the blame here. Sure, if they had denied the money to sign a really important and obvious missing piece, but we all know that John Henry and Co. essentially have an open-wallet policy with Theo.  Perhaps that's where the blame should go?  But, don't forget we were all lauding Theo just eight months ago, and Sports Illustrated literally JUST ran a story extolling the virtues of his managerial technique (you might have to subscribe to SI to see it - sorry).

So this brings me to the most popular sentiment of the night:

You have got to be joking. Luckily, there sees to be just as many people on the interwebz who are violently disagreeing, and defending Tito.  I'm sure this conversation is of no surprise to Francona, after all, the double-edged sword of being a manager is that if the team wins, they were really talented, but if they lose, it's the manager's fault.  Could Tito have done more to light a fire underneath his team? Maybe. We will never know what he was doing in the clubhouse.  It is worth remembering that every single Red Sox is a grown-ass man, and therefore responsible for his own performance - Tito can only enhance.

And, to wrap up the evening, here's a status update that literally made me feel sick to my stomach:

Yes, that happened on my newsfeed last night. And FIVE PEOPLE "Liked" it.  Listen, I get the frustration, the thoughts that the team just doesn't work, that maybe starting over would be better - that it couldn't be worse. But these men are people. Just like you and me. They have families and lives outside of baseball. I don't care how much of a superfan you are, wishing for a plane crash just makes you a spectacularly shitty human being.

If anything, I hope this ending, this season, leaves us wiser as fans.  You don't win seasons in the offseason.  The playoffs are a special event, not a perennial birthright.  Sometimes you're on the losing end of epic chokefests.  All of these things kind of suck, and for fans like me, who didn't live through much of the storied franchise heartache (1999 and 2003, but before that was before my time), this is a stark reminder that we as Red Sox fans have lived a charmed existence.

But for me, it's worth it. I have seen two World Series Championships come to my team in my lifetime, and I believe I'll live to see many more.  Last night was crushing, painful, tear-inducing, because baseball and the Red Sox are my life.  But the feeling I got when I saw them win it in Colorado in 2007 and St. Louis in 2004 outweighs that heartache by an indescribable amount.  Being a dedicated (some might say obsessive) fan can fucking HURT sometimes - but when it feels good, it feels SO GOOD, SO GOOD, SO GOOD!

Cinco-Ocho Speaks Out

 “Cinco Ocho loves haters, he loves to drink the Haterade, man. That’s what Cinco Ocho fuels his engine with — Haterade.  Some people in this clubhouse need to be told how great they are to go out there and succeed.  I like to be told I can’t do something. Cinco Ocho needs to be told he stinks, and then he just takes the Haterade and fuels his engine. That’s how he works, man. That’s the God’s honest truth.”

Ladies and gentlemen, your closer.

Tim Wakefield: 200 Game WINNER.

Knuckleballer Tim Wakefield finally got to the 200-win mark this evening during the Red Sox romp against the Blue Jays.  On his eighth try for history, Wake was less than spectacular, allowing five runs in six innings, and departing when the Sox had a narrow one-run lead.

The blew it open after that, absolutely going to town on the Jays' pen, and looking for all the world like they were unleashing the pent-up aggression from their frustrating losing streak.

I'm going to keep this post short: you all know how I feel about Wakey, and I won't bore you with an account of how every win counts at this point.  You know as well as I do, as well as the Sox do, that the Rays are coming for us, that objects in mirror are closer than they appear, and that the division is ours for the taking - and missing the playoffs isn't yet out of the question, either.

Hopefully this victory can galvanize the troops for the home stretch - every inning counts.

Tough luck, Timmy

 [Cartoon from Boston Dirt Dogs - I'm unsure of the date.]

Tim Wakefield was yet again denied his 200th win - despite leaving the game with a comfortable 8-5 lead.  Once again, the bullpen just couldn't do it for the iron man knuckler.

Unsurprisingly, in public Wakefield downplayed the personal importance of a 200th career win with the Red Sox, instead emphasizing the team angle, that the important thing now is for the RED SOX to win games, and get to the postseason: “If it happens, it happens.  If it doesn’t, it doesn’t change what I’ve done. I’d like it to happen. But more importantly, I think, is for us to get into the postseason. … That’s our ultimate goal.”

He's correct, of course, that not reaching 200 wins wouldn't change what he's done for the Sox in his nineteen-year career (seventeen years in Boston).  The fans (including yours truly) will still love and respect him, and I think we can all agree that we'd rather see a Pennant and a World Series win than Wakey's 200th W.

That said, I would REALLY like to see Tim Wakefield reach this milestone.  Over the course of his career he's been a team player (with a few notable, passive-aggressive exceptions in the last couple of years), and a perennial contributor to charity endeavors of all kinds. The cool thing about a team like the Red Sox is that not only are the fans all pulling for Wake, the players are, too. Judging by Daniel Bard's reaction to blowing the lead last night, I think we can safely say that he might have been more upset that Wakey was.

Personally, I'm not giving up hope, yet. The season has a few more weeks to go - and even if Tim Wakefield gets moved to the bullpen for the duration of the postseason (not unlikely), he has a good sporting chance of reaching his milestone.