Running World Series thread

You mean the team that would have played the Royals in the World Series that season? Yep, I do.

But I've seen too many teams succeed despite limited payrolls (A's, Twins and Marlins mainly) to believe that the money is directly tied to wins. If that were the case, the Yankees would have won much more recently than 2000. Both the Angels and Red Sox would have made the playoffs this season, not to mention the Orioles or Astros. You just have to be smart about who you cut and who you keep.

Sometimes, the Twins might miss on a David Ortiz. (If I remember right, they didn't want to pay him $3 million per season, which would be a bargain now.) But if you scout right and invest in your farm system, then maybe add some clever trades here and there (A.J. for Nathan, Liriano and Bonser), you're fine. Same applies to the Marlins in adding players like HanRam and Anibal Sanchez and Nolasco through trades to good homegrown talent (Willis, Cabrera, etc.).

Yes, there's more margin for error with more money. But it's not impossible to build a winner with limited payrolls. Had the Expos been smart and not traded Brandon Phillips, Grady Sizemore and Cliff Lee to Cleveland for Bartolo Colon in 2002, I'm convinced the Nationals would actually be OK today. You can't make trades like that. You have to be smart and cautious. You can't win as a small-money team thinking like The Boss.

 

Omar Minaya was playing with house money that year. The team was owned by Major League Baseball. Why not roll the dice.

 

I learned long ago that trying to convince anyone that the "level playing field" argument was a canard concocted by MLB to roll back what the players have gained since 1972 is impossible. People cling to it like barnicles. The goalposts move constantly -- "last 10 years" "top half of the payrolls" -- depending on who wins the WS in a particular year.
Baseball is a self-regulating, government-sanctioned monopoly. The concept of a "market forces" doesn't exist because there is no market.

 

You believe the Yankees' 13 consecutive seasons of qualifying for the playoffs has little to do with the greatest single advantage they have on the rest of the league, their payroll level.

Stay with your political Molotovs, where you can more easily get away with your own facts.

 

Money in baseball is like money in politics. OF COURSE it's a big help, but it's absolutely not the determining factor in whether teams and candidates win or lose. I learned that from former presidents John Connally and Phil Gramm.
As long as pitching remains the crapshoot it is, which will be forever, then payroll has a glass ceiling. You can spend your way to a juggernaut batting order. The Yankees did, the Mets did, the Red Sox did. Quality hitters are rare and thus command big bucks, but they're available each and every off season.
Pitchers aren't. Not only are they are a more perishable commodity than hitters (see Wood, Kerry and Prior, Mark), but thanks to the seniority rules governing free agency, no team is daft enough to let a quality starter hit the market unless there's some serious, usually medical, question about the guy.
Spending on hitters gets you Johnny Damon and Carlos Delgado. Spending on pitchers gets you Jared Wright and Pedro Martinez. Since pitching is the reason teams win or lose championships, no salary cap is necessary to level the playing field.
The human rotator cuff is baseball's salary cap.

 

So the Cardinals flex some batting muscle and take Game 1 behind a 5 game winner. On the road. Ok, things are looking good.

Then, yesterday afternoon the Redbird chances went to hell. Yes, yesterday afternoon. And nowhere near Detroit.

Stepped out onto my back porch to enjoy a few moments of a fantastic southern autumn day that is quite typical for October, thank you, and there below my feet lay a bird. A red bird. A dead bird. A dead cardinal.

And what dastardly creature was responsible for snuffing this beatiful bird, the symbol of hope for the first world championship for this fanboy's team in almost a quarter century?

The family cat. Who brought said bird up for my wife to admire and applaud him for his catch.

A feline with tiger-like tendencies you could say. Not your prissy, leave me alone, stay in the house type. A tomcat with a hunter and gatherer make-up. Not the first bird he's nabbed (how in the hell he is able to catch them is another question).

Oh, we laughed it off as a funny piece of irony. The tiger killing the cardinal.

But, then the Gambler throws 8 more goose eggs, and all of sudden, it's 1-1, and maybe it's not so funny. Perhaps this was a Bartman moment. Or worse yet, akin to the Cubs' goat, a lifetime sentence to never being able to say "we're number 1".

So, we cautiously step toward game 3, hoping for a reversal of fortune. But, I might recommend to the rest of you to pop a few dollars down on the boys from Motown.

And that cat better damn well hope he hasn't set the Cardinals on a course of permanent ineptitude for the remainder of my days on this earth.

Because if he has, I think we can be pretty certain his days will be shorter than mine.

What--you couldn't settle for a robin?

 

Money in politics IS the determining factor in that if you don't have it you CANNOT successfully run for president.

In baseball, yes, if you have 7 future Hall of Famers playing on their first pro contract, you CAN win the World Series with a bad payroll.

But you need planets to align in that way.

You can have bad season after bad season with a lot of money much more easily than you can compete year after year for the playoffs without a lot of money.

 

Need some planning help. Any chance they get Game 4 in tonight?

 

Just from hearing the weather reports, it sounds like its going to a steady rain most of the night. It's not as bad as they thought it would be, but there are very good chances of at least a delay or two.

The problem with starting the game (with a possible delay or postponement after that) is that it screws with each team's rotation, burning a starter.

 

How much of a role will FOX play in determining if it's a rainout? Would FOX be okay with a rain delay pushing the first pitch back to 9:30 Eastern?

 

Another problem is that the forecast for Thursday is just as bad. And there's rain in the forecast for Friday too.

 

No, games.