35th Street Mess

I had a feeling last night. I didn’t say anything, but I had a feeling we were in for a fantastic finish. It started just after the first inning ended, when I turned to my son, who had just come in to watch the game, and sarcastically told him that Buerhle had a perfect game going. He told me not to jinx it. To which I replied, “jinxes only count after the 5^th inning.” Naturally a few seconds later Ensberg rockets Buerhle’s first offering into the seats. After a few jokes about me being the White Sox version of Steve Bartman, I was fine. Because I had that nervous feeling I get watching a big sports event when I just know everything is going to be OK. Rather than sitting down, eating, drinking, pointing out the complete wrongness of every comment made by McCarver and Buck and occasionally switching over to “Cheaters”, I was up, pacing around, clapping and nervously straightening out the house. I’ve come to recognize this behavior as a good thing from my experience watching the 80s Bears and 90s Bulls. It’s not a feeling that can be manufactured either. It just happens. Just like I know my team is in trouble when my attitude going into a game is: “There’s no way they can lose this thing.” That’s why I knew all would be well when the Astros were up 4-2 and the Cell was damp and dreary and the crowd was starting to sound sort of dead.

OK, enough with the personal shit. Let’s get to what 35SM is all about:

Bossard and his crew stepped up to a new level last night. There are very few MLB stadiums where the field would be playable, let alone in the terrific shape the turf at the Cell waslast night after a day of rain. While I want this thing to end in Houston, preferably Wed. night, in a way it will be a shame if sports fans across the country don’t get one more chance to see Bossard working his magic.

In previous 7-game World Series, teams that have jumped to a 2-0 lead hold a 38-10, or .792, advantage, with half of those 38 wins being sweeps. Not quite a lock, but we have to feel pretty good. It will be best to close it out in Houston. Once these things get to game six, it’s only a 50-50 chance.

Andy Pettitte has had a great season and from the all-star break to the end of the season he has probably been the best pitcher in the world. Even better than Jose Contreras. Since the break, Petitte has posted a 1.69 era. But there’s reason to believe he can be hit.

• His ERA in three playoff games this year is 4.66, suggesting the roll he finished the season on is over.
• While he has the experience, having started 10 World Series games, his performance hasn’t always been lights out. His record is 4-2 with a 3.90 ERA. In 6 of those games he had a quality start, giving up 3 or fewer runs in 6+ innings. On 5 of those occasions he was downright nasty, giving up 0 or 1 earned run in 7+ innings.
• He’s been better at home in 2005, posting a 2.69 ERA on the road.
• He’s also better during the day, posting a 2.54 ERA at night. So they’re still facing a pretty darn good pitcher, but not the dominator they might be facing were this game played in the afternoon in Houston.
• The Sox have been a team he struggles with over the years. He has a career 4.28 ERA against the Sox and they’ve hit .278 off of him. His career ERA in the Cell is a Navarroesque 6.33.

The Sox are going with Buerhle, who is having a terrific year in the Cell, 10-2 2.48 ERA during the season and 2-0, 2.81 so far in the playoffs. He’s going to have to be good, because I’m guessing Petitte is going to come out tough. His team is in a must win situation and I seriously doubt he’ll be offering anything but his best stuff. The hope has to be that whatever it is about the cell that has tormented Pettitte in the past gets to him again tonight.

A last quick note: We’ve been critical of Gene Honda here at 35sm, and the criticism has been justified in our view. But during last night’s player introductions, Honda really stepped up and did this outfit proud on the national stage. Ditto for Bossard and Faust. I wonder if 2005 is the first time the same stadium announcer handled both the Final Four and the World Series.

I wouldn’t worry too much about this Ervin Santana, the LA moundsman for game four. There has been some concern out there over how he shut out the Sox back in May and the way he shut down the Yankees in relief of Colon in the game 5 clincher. This guy is good, but he’s hardly unhittable.

Against the Yankees, all Santana did was keep the game close until the bullpen took over. He gave up 3 runs in 5.1 innings, hardly ace numbers. A nice job considering the circumstances, but certainly not the stuff on which legends are built. When he shut out this bunch in May, it was on a Monday following a weekend series at Wrigley field. He caught this bunch at a good time. They were coming off an emotional series and there was probably jet lag involved. Again, a nice performance by the rookie, but it doesn’t suggest that he’s a Sox nemesis.

Here are some more numbers from game four’s matchup:

Santana has had most of his success in Anaheim, going 9-3 with a 3.18 ERA at home.
Garcia has had most of his success on the road, going 10-3, 3.40.
Garcia has also been an Angels nemesis his entire career, going 11-3, 2.66.

What this says is we’re looking at another pitcher’s duel. But Garcia's history as a good road hurler and his history against the Angels should also be taken into account here.

Also, teams that are up 2-1 in a 7-game LCS have won 23 of 32 times, or a 72% success rate. But we all know this outfit’s chances look pretty good right now.

I never thought of baseball as anything more than just a game between two teams. They play a bunch of these games every spring and summer and the teams that won the most play for the championship in the fall. There was no higher meaning, no romanticism and no metaphors for life involved for me. Just baseball. But this post season has changed my mind. It’s pretty clear that the White Sox are on a mission. I already pointed out why beating the Red Sox was important.

Now for the Angels. The 2002 Angels championship was handled well, I felt. Even though it was the club’s first in 40 years of existence, there was no talk of curses or the pain of being an Angel’s fan being lifted. Nothing like the crap that came out of Boston last fall. This season is different. Look at the reasons to hate the Angels:

• The Rally Monkey. I still can’t believe the Rally Monkey cartoon, followed by The Rally Monkey movie never happened after 2002. I doubt they’ll be able to stop it should the Angels win again in 2005. It will be stupid, annoying, make a ton of money and have little resemblance to that gold standard of baseball cartoons, “Bugs Bunny vs. the Gashouse Gorillas”. The Sox don’t go for that type of nonsense. They seem to have ditched Waldo the White Sox wolf for good and the mascot, Southpaw, keeps a very low profile. I think they keep him hidden in the FUNdamentals area of the park or someplace where the only harm he can do is scare children.
• The OC. This is where the Angels play and I can’t go a day without hearing “the OC” talked about, be it the place, the television show, or whatever else is going on there. From what I can tell, the OC is a place where spoiled rich kids get expensive cars for their 16^th birthdays, hang out at the beach or in Starbucks all day and whine about their difficult lives. The more Angels we see in the playoffs, the more “OC” we’ll hear about. There will be cross promotions linking baseball with the show. The will be shots of OC actors in the stands wearing Angels gear and waving their rally monkeys. There will be a very special episode of “The OC” where the Molina brothers make an inspiring cameo and help Ryan and Seth find the courage to get back at the school bully. This country doesn’t need any of this.
• Arte Moreno. I think I saw more shots of this guy during game 2 than I’ve seen of Chairman Reinsdorf his entire time here. It’s bad enough he stole Wayne Newton’s look and gave the team that unwieldy name, now this egomaniac wants the focus on him rather than the players.

The mission is simple. Spare the country from what an Angels victory would bring. Not that this is the main goal for this outfit. Winning the championship always is the main goal. But it’s clear this is more than just a championship. It’s now a mission.

As for game 3, I’m worried. Garland doesn’t inspire much confidence. Should they pull it off, I think the series is ours. I like our chances in games 4, 5 and 6 with the pitching matchups.

I don’t know if the ball hit the ground or not. The replay is pretty inconclusive. The ball appears to hop, but I saw no dirt being kicked up. The home plate umpire clearly thought so, because he never called AJ out. Josh Paul clearly didn’t think so, because he tossed the ball away. AJ looked like he had no idea, because he started walking to the dugout before turning and dashing to first. I don’t know if he was thinking, “what the heck, let’s see what happens”, he went because the ump never called him out, or he really thought the ball hit the ground. I do know that one player, that would be AJ, made a heads up play and one player, Josh Paul, didn’t. AJ’s team won the game because of it. Whether this inattentive approach to the game was spotted long ago by the braintrust and led to Paul’s departure from 35^th is up for speculation, but the fact remains the team that played smarter won for the second straight night.

The smart thing is going to decide the series too. In game one it was the Sox throwing the ball away and running themselves out of innings. An aggressive strategy works fine against pathetic teams like Detroit, Kansas City and the Cubs, but is doomed to fail against a smart, fundamentally sound crew like the Angels. These are two similar teams, featuring strong pitching carrying unspectacular hitting. Because of the, the next five games will also likely be tight, nerve-fraying affairs. Ozzie best reign in his grinders and tell them to go easy on the aggressive baserunning, work the count, take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves and let the pitching carry it.

Last night’s win does up this outfit’s chances, at least historically. Since the ALCS was expanded in 1985:

• Teams that split at home in games 1 and 2 are 12-8.
• Teams that win game 2 after losing game 1 at home are 6-3.

Is not a good thing. Not fatal, but not good either. Since the ALCS was expanded to 7 games in 1985, the team that won game 1 has won the series 24 of 38 times, or a little more than 63% of the time. Since the addition of the ALDS, the game 1 winner is 14-6 in the series, or a 70% success rate. Teams that win game 1 on the road are 11-6, 65%.

So looking at history, our heroes have about a 35% chance of pulling this off after last night’s fiasco. There are other factors, of course. The Angel pitching staff is still a mess. Colon is out, Washburn is ailing and I can’t wait to see what happens when Paul Byrd tosses his garbage up there again in game 5. Hopefully this bunch will be a little more patient. But the fact is the Angels stole a game that should have been ours and now they’re in the driver’s seat.

More stats

I wanted to post these yesterday, but time didn’t permit:

• Teams with a better record during the season are 39-27, .591 in the ALDS.
• Teams that scored more runs during the season are 40-30, .643.
• Teams that allowed fewer runs are also 40-30, .643.
• Teams with a better overall run differential are 45-25, .642.

I don’t know if I’m the one to be listening to on this subject. I was one of those who thought it was a mistake to go with El Duque ahead of McCarthy on the postseason roster, only to watch El Duque come through with possibly the finest pitching performance I’ve ever seen by a White Sox moundsman. Also Ozzie has already announced that Jon Garland would start game one so all this could be moot. But here we go any way:

A big win isn’t historically the best way to start a series. In researching past post-season series, I found 5 other teams that opened a series with a double-digit blowout: ’59 Sox, ’82 Brewers, ’84 Cubs, ’96 Braves and ’02 Cardinals. Four of those teams ended up eventually losing the series. Only the ’02 Cards held on to advance. Of course this is a small sample, and includes the Cubs who always lose no matter what(not to mention the fact that I didn’t double check the data), so it’s not like game one’s blowout is cause to step out on the ledge. But this does show that this outfit hasn’t won anything more than game one and there’s a ton of work left to do.

Over the course of the 2005 season the Boston Red Sox became my most hated team. The way their fans acted after winning one championship makes me hope it’s another 80+ years before they win another. Between the media gushing, the cute little romantic comedy, the lame SNL appearances, the bloody sock, the curse, etc. it was enough to make any non-Boston fan puke. It’s bad enough that the national media has pretty much ignored baseball happening anywhere outside of Boston and New York, we’re also led to believe that the suffering of Red Sox (and Cub) fans is more acute than those in places like Cleveland, Milwaukee and San Francisco, teams that have gone 40+ years with no championship. Not to mention Texas, Seattle and San Diego who have never won a title in their 30+ seasons of existence.

The problem is the Boston sports media has infilterated the national media to the point that sports fans are under a constant barrage of pro-Boston crap. Because of this, in addition to dealing with all the Red Sox nonsense I mentioned, sports fans everywhere must digest moronic statements that suggest Larry Bird was a greater basketball player than Michael Jordan and Bobby Orr was superior to Wayne Gretzky. With most national columnists and talkers, it’s hard to tell where they’re from, because they focus on the national scene. When it’s a Bob Ryan or Peter Gammons, you know right away they’re from Boston, because that’s pretty much where they take every conversation. ESPN.com’s Bill Simmons can’t do a column without mentioning the Patriots, Celtics or Red Sox. I could understand if this were New York, where most of the national media is stationed, but Boston is just another city.

This is why winning this ALDS is double-extra important for this outfit. Not that this is our main mission here, but we’d be doing the rest of the country a huge favor by drumming the Red Sox, their whiny fans and annoying media admirers out of the playoffs in swift fashion.