Last night, the Mariner bullpen continued to pitch like something out of a W.P. Kinsella novel, getting the last seven outs of a 2-0 win in Game One of the ALCS. For the third straight game, they backed up a great start, this time by Seattle’s Freddy Garcia. Garcia had a great fastball all night;…
Previous articles in this series: Introduction Second Base Third Base Shortstop Left Field This is the fifth in a series of rankings of major-league defenders, highlighting the top ten and bottom five at each position. The ratings are a combination of Zone Rating, Range Factor and my best (and admittedly mammothly flawed) assessment of the…
The Mets weren’t supposed to get past the Giants, and everyone sort of had the Braves set as the default option to always keep the western world safe from a subway series. Praise be to the power of the unexpected, as two teams built to win this year managed to upset the favorites and tackle…
PLAYOFF SWEEPS "I can’t tell you exactly what he said. It’s a secret we have to keep under the sheets. I guess it was a moment of truth. He wanted to shore things up and make sure I was comfortable." — Mike Cameron, Mariners outfielder "I told him the Nasdaq was down 113 points and…
Last week’s assertion that Armando Rios getting thrown out at third base in the tenth inning of NLCS Game Two wasn’t such a big deal generated a flood of e-mail, even more than Gary Huckabay’s famous "I Love You, Britney" piece from late 1998. (Sadly, she never responded; Gary still can’t listen to "Sometimes" without…
A rematch of what remains the only good thing to come out of the new playoff format, 1995’s Yankee/Mariner series. No Joey Cora this time, so we’re unlikely to see anyone go from home to first by way of Redmond. Lineups (AVG/OBP/SLG/Equivalent Average) (Ed. Note: For players who played for multiple teams, their EqA only…
OK, as an A’s fan I now have to swallow the same advice I’ve been offering to grieving White Sox fans for the last couple of days: this year is just the first of many steps in what ought to be a great decade for both teams, and whatever gets accomplished, it will be valuable…
Now that Davey Johnson’s pink slip has surfaced from a long lurk in the Dodgers’ interoffice mail, there are five managers out of work. Within the next couple of weeks, we’ll probably see Jimy Williams and Jim Fregosi join the list. While it makes for nifty trivia that no manager was fired in-season, the firings…
Just what is it about the Mets that they play these amazing postseason games? They played two of these against the Diamondbacks in the Division Series last year, then three more against the Braves in the NLCS. They were also in the middle of The Greatest Postseason Ever, 1986, which included maybe the best LCS…
Below is my ballot for this year’s Internet Baseball Awards. I’m not going to get too deeply into explaining the choices, but I will provide a general description of my rationale in putting together each ballot. If you’d like to vote in the IBAs, go to the page here at Baseball Prospectus and cast your…
Before we jump into the first two days of the Division Series, a plea to Fox, which now has the rights to the entire baseball postseason through 2006: while it’s probable that they will push some of the games off to their cable network, I hope they give some serious thought to having the whole…
WILD CARD CONTENTION "It doesn’t matter if you win the division. It’s getting in and winning the whole thing that’s important. We’re not worrying about the division, we’re worrying about getting in." — Jim Thome, Indians infielder "We’re trying to a win a division here. We’re not trying to be the wild card." — Lou…
My initial predisposition is to pick the Mariners. They’ve got baseball’s best player and Edgar Martinez, and both of them outhit Frank Thomas to the point that the Big Hurt’s MVP campaign should be DOA. On top of the two great ones, the Mariners have got a starting rotation that is, if nothing else, physically…
The Yankees spent the last three weeks of the regular season trying to give the AL East to anyone who would take it from them. Fortunately for them, they were not being pursued by the A’s or Indians, but by a pair of teams who were just as generous, the Red Sox and Blue Jays….
This series shapes up as an interesting experiment. How important is positive momentum going into October? The Yankees set a new standard for backing into a division title, losing their last seven games and 13 of their last 15. The A’s, however, drove from out of a playoff spot to a division title in the…
Over the weekend, I read some news that really made me wonder what kind of a world we live in. I am speaking, of course, of Pierce Marshall announcing he will appeal the $450 million dollar decision in the Anna Nicole Smith inheritance case last week. Scratch that. I am speaking, of course, of the…