I vant to suck your blood

Bill:
Losing to Tampa Bay in general is the suck. But rallying and getting so close only to still lose to Tampa is a ball bustah.

 

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Doug:
Is, isn't it?

 

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Bill:
1 of 3 against the Orioles and 2 of 3 from the Rays doesn't help me relax any … I know I should drink from the "it's gonna be fine" kool-aid, but I just can't seem to swallow it.

 

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Doug:
Yeah, well, being confident about the Red Sox is like being confident about NASA, you know.

 

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Doug:
I mean if I'm up on that heap of a shuttle with a gash in the heat panels and NASA says the damage "poses no danger to crew" I'm gonna be like "Can I get a friggin second opinion on that ovah heah?"

 

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Bill:
But at least the Yankees aren't gaining any ground.

 

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Doug:
Yeah, with luck Torre the Grim Reaper will continue his relievah death mahch.

 

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Bill:
Seriously. Despite his preseason promise to not use Rivera more than one inning a game, he's done just that 9 times this season and, well, I think we are seeing how that's working out.

 

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Doug:
Gotta love Joe. I shuddah to think how 2004 might have played out differently had Count Torrecula not sucked every bit of life out of Tom Gordon going into the ALCS.

 

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Comments

[Youk Rules]

A Skanks loss is almost as good as a Sox win.

Magic number: 38

T minus 38, 37, 36...

[louclinton]

38, cool number

[Bob]

I generally hate off-days, but I think the Sox and the fans need one right now.

BTW, Manny, never eat anything bigger than your head, or swing at anything over it.

Cripes.

[vermonter]

Yeah Bob, that last pitch he swung at was WAY too high but I'd rather have him go down swinging at one out of the strikezone than looking at strike 3, which he does far too often. Both scenarios are outs, but he sometimes looks like he was never gonna even try.

Sure did feel good to have the tying run at second with no outs. Can't believe those three guys whiffed.

[buckner was framed]

I'm with Doug re: the second opinion. I have a bad feeling about that gash on the shuttle. Godspeed to the crew, and hopefully they have enough Silly Putty on board to plug that sucker up. The space program can't afford another tragedy

[Tarrkid]

"Ball bustah", maybe, but at least they made a game effort of it. They could have called it a day at 6-0 and just cruised to the L.

[Scott]

This team needs to get some "killer instinct" down the stretch. They haven't got it yet. Is it too late?

The space program is a joke. Is this 1965 all over again? Why the heck are they planning another moon landing, unless they never landed in the 1st place...

Yes I love conspiracies.

[h.b.]

Well, at least in my interpretation, that is exactly what a ball bustah is, i.e., when you go all fucking out and still come up short.

Just mailing it in at 6-0 wouldn't have been a ball bustah but rather something else entirely.

[Genghis Ortiz]

Just to cheer everyone up a little..aren'tcha glad we lost the Carl Pavano sweepstakes? Hee hee hee...das is faaaantastische....

[Tarrkid]

Mailing it in at 6-0... Hmm...

That does need a name.

How about "Fan Screwah"

Usage: "Well, yesterday's game sure was a ball bustah, what with the tying run on second and no one able to bring him home, but at least they made it exciting, so it wasn't a total FAN SCREWAH."

[Merloni]

Hey thanks for the Up lifting Comment Genghis

[fernsco]

Genghis, just think if the Sawx had not pulled the original trade of Pavano and Armas for Pedro! We "won" twice on the Pavano sweepstakes if you ask me. But then again, we have to always remember the Bagwell fiasco and now the Freddie Sanchez fiasco. I feel much better this year about the Hanley Ramirez trade.

[Kaz]

By the way, just as a humorous sidenote to the last series, Tampa Bay is the *ONLY* team in all of MLB that has 0 chances out of 1,000,000 of making the playoffs this year.

Even the Royals, Giants, Nationals, Pirates, and Rangers have some smidgen of a percentage point of making it. Now, this doesn't mean that the D-Rays are mathematically eliminated. They *could* make it should everyone in the wild card race fold and lose something like 40+ of the remaining 50 or so games. But the likelihood of that is so small that it didn't even happen *once* out of a million simulations for the remaining schedule...and yet it did happen a few times for the 52-67 Royals. Yesterday's start was one of those "WTF" loses that makes me wonder if this team has enough to make it out of the ALCS. We should destroy 1-8, 6+ ERA pitching and yet it held us to 2 hits and only 3 baserunners always in 2-out situations.

Yikes. Here come the Angels.

[Billy Mahty]

MLB has decided that Giambi says he's going to do enough good things in the future to get him off the hook for admitting to steroid use.

I'm not one to come down on players for steroids -- cheating happens in many forms, and we haven't even begun to see the kinds of legal body enhancements that will come down the pike within the next couple of decades - but Selig's reasoning here is laughable. Roughly translated, "I'm looking for any reason not to discipline you, and apparently you're going to do some swell things in the future, so run along my friend. Case closed."

[Youk Rules]

Hey, Kaz,

I've seen them, but how do these playoff simulations work? Baseball is a fickle game, so what's with the percentages?

What does it mean to "play the season a million times"?

[fernsco]

Youk, I think "play the season a million times" is what we've done since 1986 everytime someone shows the Buckner clip......"play the clip a million times"....ahhhhhhhhh!

[Sonoma Sox]

Been lurkin' for a while - tht I might throw the key board threw my window if I posted but this is too good:

Looks like melon head bonds is gearing up to sue melon mouth schill for defamation.

Anyone know a good lawyer back in the hub?

Of course, truth is the best defense against defamation...

As for real drama...why (all year) is it so tough to get a guy in from 2d w/ less than 2 outs?

[Sonoma Sox]

that would be *through* my window - smart I am

[Bob]

That Juice-ambi story is astonishing. Simply unbelievable.

I guess if Bonds gives a few bucks to charities, he'll get off too?

What a frigging joke.

Boss George most have given the commish one of his famous BJs.

[Merloni]

Bucholz Towmorrow and Elasbury coming up too Bye Bye Wily Mo (Pedro Cerano) Pena.

[jdog71]

Matsuzaka will be charging $450 for an autographed ball. No further comment necessary, other than W..T...F??? The whole memorabilia thing is so out of control. Wonder if Luscious will be getting a cut? It wouldnt surprise me at all. Every day I feel more and more violated by the disgutsing commercialization of this team by the owners and players. Have a little pride in the history of the franchise for chrissakes.

[Bob]

Take a guess how much Clemens gets for an "official" autographed ball.

But that's "mystique and aura." I forgot.

[Sonoma Sox]

*I feel more and more violated by the disgutsing commercialization of this team by the owners and players.*

That's why for the second year in a row I'm avoiding Fenway and heading to the friendly confines of Hadlock during my 10 days back home.

The commercialization and exploitation is cheaper and the violation a little more pleasurable

[Jason O.]

Bob, consider that Giambi is the only player from the last 20 years to my knowledge to have told the truth re: his actions on 3 separate occasions:

1) Balco grand jury
2) Publicly earlier this year
3) To Mitchell, presumably

In fact, it was his public honesty that caused him to be called to the carpet in front of Mitchell.

He also had a 48 hour wait to see if a tumor near his brain was malignant.

Believe me: Even if he played for the RS, I would cut him slack.

[Bob]

//The commercialization and exploitation is cheaper and the violation a little more pleasurable.//

Do you know The Lovely Ginger from the Glass Slipper, too?

[Bob]

J.O., I appreciate your comments.

I'm just wondering how Giambi got off basically scott-free. He used steroids. He admitted it. God bless honesty, but say I ran a dog fighting ring and then admitted it, don't I still deserve some sort of punishment?

If honesty saves you from any punishment whatsoever, OJ would have written a book title , "Hell yeah, I did it."

[Jason O.]

I don't contend that Giambi should not have received a suspension or some other form of punishment.

His public honesty makes his case significantly less flagrant than others.

And it's very interesting how the knives came out for him around MLB (Frank Robinson and others) after he said what everybody knows: "We all made a mistake."

[Kaz]

Youk Rules, here's how the simulation works:

Imagine just simulating 1 game, the first game of tomorrow's doubleheader of the Sox vs Angels. The Sox are:

1) at home,
2) day game,
3) against the Angels,
4) and they have amassed a 0.600 win percent this year so far,
5) any other factors you think can predict the win or not.

(I honestly am not sure which exact factors or weight to those factors the BP guys use, but they've been pretty good in the past at predicting the final standings)

You figure that out for both teams coming into the game and that gives you a probability of each team winning the game. Let's say for this game that the Red Sox are 60% likely to win, leaving 40% likelihood to the Angels (because this is baseball and there are no ties).

Now, you let the computer pick a random number between say 1 and 100. If it's less than 60, the Red Sox win the game. If it's 61 or more, the Angels win the game. Do that a million independent times and then count the number of times the Red sox win vs the number of times the Angels win (since it's a random selection between 1 and 100 that gets compared to your likelihoods of winning, repeating that a million times should give you about 600,000 Red Sox wins and 400,000 Angels wins...for about 60% vs 40% for the game.

Now, do that for every game every day for every team from now until the end of the season. You start to see that the D-Rays don't have a chance even though they are not mathematically eliminated because all the other teams above them in the wild-card are just that much more likely to win enough games to finally do eliminate them from the playoffs mathematically. In fact, you can start doing things like seeing who wins the wild-card in each of the million simulations and how many wins did they have to reach to pull that off. Then you know about how many average wins a team will need to make the wild-card this year based on how the season's gone so far and how it's likely to go from here on out. I think the AL wild card is around 91 wins this year.

Hope that was clear.

[Bob]

Oh, Doctor Kaz! My head hurts.

There's obviously a reason I wasn't meant for grad school.

[Tarrkid]

Kaz... Sounds like coolstandings.com.

[Youk Rules]

Kaz,

Thanks for the tutorial. It was very clear.

I wonder how often the BP predictions turn out actually to be correct.

That is, how often in the past have they predicted Team XYZ to win the division (or wild card) and Team XYZ has, in fact, won the division?

[Bob]

Fairly amusing Dodgers commercial.

As a local note, look at the jersey the kid's wearing at the end.

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/tv/the_los_angeles_dodgers_foamfinger

[Bob]

As I (keep) waiting for a meeting that was scheduled for 2:30, I present you this very funny bit.

Dedicated to SoxDownUnder:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcU4t6zRAKg&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fadweek%2Eblogs%2Ecom%2Fadfreak%2F

[soxdownunder]

Thanks Bob, that's one of the funniest in a long history of hilarious interviews:
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/clarkedawe.htm

John Clarke is a genius - been doing this stuff for years. He also did an amazing spoof of the Olympic organising committee.

I think lc called me a post whore yesterday, which I love.

[Bob]

//I think lc called me a post whore yesterday, which I love.//

That's like a surly pot calling a lovable kettle black.

[Steven in MD]

/Every day I feel more and more violated by the disgutsing commercialization of this team by the owners and players. Have a little pride in the history of the franchise for chrissakes/

That "history" includes 86 years of frustration, and only one trip to the world series between the dawn of free agency and the arrival of Henry et al. The Sox are trying to compete with the evil empire - who can put about 12,000 more fannies in thier stadium, and have YES, which is much more profitable than NESN. The MFY made two huge financial mistakes this year (Igawa and Clemmons) and survived. Sox need cash to compete with that. It's not like LL is putting the money in his pocket, they're spending it on the team, and putting the best team in baseball this year out there - without resorting to an incredible array of bobblehead nights at the park!

[soxdownunder]

Go Tigers!

[Kaz]

Very similar, tarrkid, but I think BP puts more into it than the Pythagorean Expected Wins/Losses. Interesting that the percentages are so close.

[SoCal BosSox Fan]

Bob,

Here where I see Dodger propaganda daily the kid wearing a Derek Lowe jersey is not unusual. McCort, the guy that bought the Dodgers is from Boston.

Lowe & Nomar get their faces put on more stuff than the rest of the team combined. The pocket schedule has Lowe the front. The Dodger's "A to Z Fan Guide" brochure has Nomar on the front. Outside the stadium they have these huge posters of most of the players. Lowe & Nomar have the two best locations.

I'm selling a couple of pieces of equipment to the architects McCort brought with him from Boston. They are still Red Sox fans and tell me McCort, even though he owns the Dodgers still keeps an eye on the Red Sox. They also say they want nothing more than meeting the Sox in the World Series.