213 Miles From Shea

Elimination Saturday?

It's very possible.

Both games today are in the American League and one team in each of these games is in a dire situation. Both the Rays and the Twins lost the first two games of their respective series at home. They now have the extremely difficult task of sending the series back to Tampa or the Twin Cities by taking both games on the road.

I think the Twins will have it slightly worse than the Rays, but its close. Both the Yankees and the Rangers have almost identical home records with the Yankees being 52-29 and the Rangers being 51-30. Obviously both very good home teams (and the Rangers are a mediocre road team, so its even more surprising they took the first two on the road). Anyway the Rays and Twins differ with their road records. The Rays are almost the same home and away as they have a 49-32 home record and a 47-34 road record. The Twins have the best home record of all of these teams being 53-28 but on the road they are 41-40.

I really hope that both the Rays and the Twins can pull out victories today, extending the series, but it is going to be tough for these teams.

Well yesterday went completely the opposite way that I wanted it to, but if you like come from behind baseball, then you probably had a good night. In the first game, the Phillies were down 4-2 before Baker took out Arroyo and then things just started to fall apart for the Reds. Due to an ineffective bullpen but really due to an ineffective defense with errors everywhere. The short story is that the Phillies bats were able to bail out Roy Oswalt, which is really a shame because now the chances of the Reds advancing out of this series are very slim (but hopefully they will be able to do it).

The Giants looked for a while to take game 2 with force, but it wasn't meant to be. After giving up 4-0 lead to become a 4-4 tie, the Braves were able to win it on a homer by Rick Ankiel in the top of the tenth. Surprisingly, the Braves vs Giants series is the only Division Series with both teams getting a win. They will be the only one that will have to at least play four games.

I guess more on that topic, while this postseason has been exciting, I hope the Rays/Reds/Twins get  a win or something in their next game. It would be a shame for everyone to advance immediatley with no fight from the losing team. There is plenty of Drama within each game, but we could use some overall drama.

The National League has held one thing constant over its 2 Division Series games so far and that is that 2010 is the year of the Pitcher. Literally the only thing that was better than Lincecum's performance last night, where he pitched a complete game allowing 2 hits while striking out 14, would be a no-hitter, which is exactly what Halladay did in his first game.

Anyway the only the two games in the MLB playoff's today will both be in the National League. At 4:30 Eastern Time the Braves will take on the Giants for game two. Last night the Giants got a lucky break with the Posey call, but honestly the Giants deserved it. Lincecum pitched an amazing game and the rest of the Giants rotation, equally amazing, will look to replicate that tonight. The Braves will be looking Hanson to pick up where his season left off and to continue Lowe's work, and the Braves will need to win tonight, because if the Giants go 2-0, this series is done. (Hopefully the Giants will go 2-0 and at least one part of the axis of evil will be eliminated from the 2010 playoffs).

The Phillies look at Roy Oswalt to continue the dominating performance of their other Roy tonight as they try to essentially lock this series up. The first game showed that good pitching is better than good hitting, but I seem to remember a certain Phillies team in the recent past that made the opposite true. The Reds should look for that inspiration tonight and try to take advantage of the close field in Philly and send this series tied back to Cinncy.

Bonus Daily Video! While you will still see another addition to “Jerry Week” later today, I wanted to share another video that I saw via the Huffington Post. As you may or may not know, Fox News was criticized earlier this week for reporting a false news story about the LAPD spending 1 Billion Dollars on a Jet Pack Program. That was, of course, completely false. Most normal people could have told you that was false, but the fantastic fact checkers at Fox still let it go through. Due to this, David Letterman decided to countdown the Top 10 Reasons you know there are problems at Fox News:

Did you catch it? #4: Spent 5 Hours Today Breaking Down the Mets Playoff Chances. Well it was funny…I guess. 

Math receives a lot of criticism in sports, especially when it suggests things that are normally not true due to a person's ability to hold special situations in a significant light. The battle over how to interpret sporting events comes down to the battle of the subjective vs the objective. A biased view that allows special situations to rise above others against a system that holds everything at the same level with no exceptions. There are benefits to both. The objective system helps small market teams by removing the lore that players receive in large cities while the subjective system recognizes when an event is statistically significant (in the sense of overall statistics of an event, not in the mathematical event that something is statistically significant).

This battle has emerged again after a computer program Game Score, actually ranked Lincecum's performance over Halladay's. The two hits and 14 strikeouts scored better than the one walk and 8 hits. While some may say this is the problem with Math,. that it doesn't recognize the importance of a no-hitter, I think this shows how Math is just not as objective as we think.

Look, its really hard to make Math objective, when it isn't pure Math. Pure Math such as calculus, alegebra, etc is unbiased because their are no arbritary values. When we use Math to rank players, we have to add some arbritary values. We decide how much a strikeout is worth vs a hit. Normally our assertions are correct and work, but they break down (like how classical physics breaks down) at a certain point.

By the way Game Score was designed, you cannot say that Halladay was better than Lincecum. According to the parameters used in the calculation, Lincecum was the best, and that is the end of the story.

However if we change the parameters to reflect how we really feel, then who was the best changes. But that feels grimey. It feels wrong to change the parameters to change so the results match what we feel. Thus is the ethics in the scientific method, possibly the difference between science and religion, represented in Sports.

Well that wasn't so good last night. Remember that teams that one game of a Division Series have one that Series for the last 3 seasons (12 series) (Fact from ESPN). Last night every team I personally wanted to move on, lost. Well anyway here are some notes for today's ALDS and NLDS games:

It's great having two rival teams in the playoffs.

It's also great to have your cross-town rivals in the playoffs.

However, someone apparently thought Mets fans didn't have enough joy in their lives already, so when the Phillies' probable Cy Young winning pitcher, Doc Halladay, made his Post Season debut tonight. Roy just had to pitch a no-hitter.

Ok, all disgruntled, whiny, complaining aside, it is a pretty amazing story. Roy Halladay, one of the best pitchers around right now, and on a track to the Hall of Fame (if he continues his numbers), also had one of the longest career streaks never pitching in the playoffs. Essentially, what has limited him from entering Hall conversations (besides his age) was no experience in the post-season. Well in his first start ever in (actual) October, he threw a no-hitter, the second one ever in the post season. Now Larsen isn't in the Hall, but everyone remembers him, particularily for his no hitter. Now Roy has that same claim to fame, and sadly, the Phillies fans have the same claim to fame now.

Well Hopefully the Phillies will lose the next three games.

I hope.