The Crap Shoot

1) Remind me never to predict a postseason baseball series again. It looks like I'm about to 1-3 on my first round picks. Every October, we re-learn that the playoffs are a complete crapshoot. Eleven and a half months later, we re-forget this lesson.

Consider how similarly these postseason opponents have performed in the regular season.

Indians won 96. Yanks won 94.
Red Sox won 96. Angels won 94.
Rockies won 90. Phillies won 89. (Rockies won there 90th in the one game playoff)
D'Backs won 90. Cubs won 85.

So in 3 out of 4 of these series, 162 games wasn't enough to seperate the postseason opponents by more than 2 games. How are we to expect a 5 game series to accurately determine which team is better?


2) Can we finally put to bed the notion that experience matters in the playoffs? The young Rockies just swept the Phillies. The Baby 'Backs swept the Cubs. The Indians, with only one player who has ever played a playoff game, are one game away from sweeping the Yankees, who are participating in their thirteenth consecutive postseason. Baseball is baseball. It's fundamental nature doesn't change, because more people are watching.


3) Today, MLB is staring down the barrel of a 4 sweeps. Making matters worse, the teams from the 4 biggest media markets in the country, New York, L.A., Chicago, and Philadelphia, are all about to get bounced. Yikes!

4) The Yankees/Indians series is the perfect illustration of the unpredictability of a short series. Chien-Ming Wang, a devastating sinkerballer, left his pitches belt-high throughout Game 1. It happens about 3 or 4 times a year. When his ball has no life in June, it's just one of those days. When Wang doesn't have it in the Division Series, the Yankees are put in a situation where they have to win 3 out of 4 to advance.

I know it sounds like sour grapes, but I truly believe the Yankees would have won Game 2, if not for a Biblical plague of gnats. Joba Chamberlain never struggled with his control, until he was covered with more bugs than a fresh carcass ine the Amazon. They were clearly bothering him.

5) Goodbye A-Rod. I will genuinely miss you. Listening to WFAN this weekend, I got the vibe the Yankees fans had already turned on him. A .314/54/156 season, doesn't buy you 6 hitless at bats, with these spoiled fucks. Unless he gets a hit in his first at bat tonight, he is going to get booed mercilessly by shithead Yankees fans.

He will then decide that Yankees fans are insatiable assholes and leave New York. Rodriguez will join the Angels or the Tigers, with the ultimate vendetta against the Yankees. Meanwhile, the Yankees will replace A-Rod with Wilson Betemit and Yankees fans will wonder where all the runs went. Somehow, they won't make the connection that they chased their best player since Babe Ruth, out of town.

Then I will completely disassociate myself with other Yankees fans. I will still cheer my team on, but on my own terms. I will not participate in any chants or slap hands with anybody in the crowd. I will be an island, unto myself, in a crowd of 55,000.