Running 2011 Baseball Thread, Vol. I: Dedicated to spnited

It's fairly obvious that the better your team is, the more important your closer and set-up guy are, as your team will have more leads in the late innings. I mean, the Astros don't really a bullpen at all except that it's become the custom.

 

A true logician would conclude he clearly failed, in the end, at what he was very handsomely paid to do.

 

I read something the other day the Phillies had the fewest BS, W's (vultured wins, in other words) in baseball. Well, that's not much of a surprise. Their relievers weren't very often in position to blow saves in the seventh and eighth. They were sitting on their asses in the bullpen.

 

But if you're a truly great team, you're winning a lot of games by more than three runs. Every year, we see a guy on a 70-to-75-win team with 40 saves. Heath Bell saved 43 of the Padres' 71 wins this year. Joel Hanrahan saved 40 of the Pirates' 72.

 

Lewis has been awful against Detroit this year.

I hope the Rangers can pull out another win tonight and that Lewis' postseason dominance continues, but I see the Tiggers winning Game 3 tonight.

One thing's for sure, being a Rangers fan in the land of Detroit spring training isn't making me very popular at the bar.

 

On a losing team, the closer is oddly enough important because if he fails, there goes maybe your only win of the week. So they pile up the saves. But they're WORTH more to a winning team, because you know where teams don't always find a lot of 3-plus run wins? The playoffs.

 

I love how the national media in general clicks into low gear once the Yankees, Philly and Boston are out of the postseason. Oh wait. Let's just say...when the YANKEES are out. I've heard more on ESPN News' 4 p.m. hour about soccer than Rangers/Tigers or Brewers/Cards.

 

That's because ESPN has 3 soccer games on its network today.

 

They are all in the bargaining stage of grief.

Some Phillies fans have taken it so well they want to expand the LDS to seven games.

 

as it should be imo. You play 162 games to get the best record and then play a crapshoot of a 5 game series? Every round of the playoffs should be the same.

 

As if 7-game series aren't crapshoots.

 

This has been the format for almost two decades. They were built to destroy any opponent in a best-of-5.