Hello,
With less than 30 games remaining this season, MLB's pennant races continue to heat up. Sadly for the most part my teams continue to melt down. Boston has gone on the road and have been completely embarrassed. They've been swept by both the Angels and then the A's. In those 6 games they were out scored by a tally of 54-15. Of course, that includes Oakland's blasting of Boston 20-2 in one of those games. Boston is in Seattle today, starting a 3 game series against the even worse than them Mariners. In keeping with the tenor of this road trip, Boston is down 4-1 in the 6th inning.
Red Sox owner John Henry is also in Seattle, he says he's on a fact finding mission. He can't figure out what he needs to know from the standings and how the Red Sox have completely fallen apart these last few days? What else does he need to know? This current Boston team has a manager ill suited to the fans of Boston and the Red Sox organization. This team needs to be much smarter in who they sign as managers and players going forward. (I wonder how much regret Henry has that he couldn't get Billy Beane to sign with the Red Sox all those years ago. Although Theo did a pretty good job.)
In reading through the Sports Illustrated MLB preview last night, they have something called the Payoff Pitch. This is basically the best case/ worst case scenario for each MLB team for this season. SI's best case scenario for Boston, which now seems laughable, is that Boston would win the World Series. They were spot on with their worst case scenario for the Red Sox. I wonder if they are surprised with how prophetic they were. This is what SI wrote: "Last year's clubhouse problems carry over. The offense scores plenty, but the rotation struggles again. Valentine quickly wears out his welcome, and the Red Sox are out of the postseason for a third straight year."
When the season review is written for this lost season, SI's prophetic comments should be copy and pasted to it's tombstone. The silver lining in the black cloud for the Red Sox, at least they have no chance of a meaningful late season collapse.
With today being Labor Day, there are basically MLB games all day. Pittsburgh has already played today, they lost at home to the terrible Astros 5-1. Pittsburgh has lost 4 games in a row and 7 of 10. According to espn.com they just barely have over a 20% chance of making this season's playoffs. But with the way they've been playing lately, that seems overly optimistic.
Another one of my teams is the Cubs, who are clearly in rebuilding mode. That Alfonso Soriono signing that looked so good a few years ago, doesn't look so great now. My fourth team is the Dodgers, who seem to be waking up from their late season slumber. I was surprised that they were able to come from behind to beat the Diamondbacks last night. Honestly it's probably too little, too late for them though. Sarcasm alert: it was nice that the Dodgers very expensive offense was able to explode for 5 whole runs! And it was nice to see Gonzalez finally get a big hit. Gonzalez is now 7 for 37 in his Dodgers career, hitting a non sizzling .189.
Out of my 5 teams, the only team that I think has a realistic chance of making the playoffs is the Atlanta Braves, however I'm very worried about them possibly collapsing again like they did last season. It's a good sign that the Braves were able to come back from 5 runs down in the bottom of the 9th inning last night. Especially as it was against hard throwing Jonathan Papelbon. 40 year old Chipper Jones, who seems to be drinking from the fountain of youth, continues his amazing final season. He had that 3 run walk off home run last night. The Braves won earlier today, beating the terrible Rockies 6-1. Chipper Jones earned the day off. The Braves will never catch the Nationals, who lead them by 6.5 games, but it's good to see Atlanta has built a bit of a cushion in the NL Wild Card.
Atlanta now has a 92.6% chance to make the playoffs and I'm fairly confident they actually will. Of course all that gets them is a one game playoff with probably the Cardinals or the Dodgers to advance to the divisional series. What might decide who earns that second wild card spot is the Dodgers-Cardinals series in LA September 13th to September 16th. It seems possible that the September 16th game could be ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball game. It's time for all recently high paid Dodgers additions to finally earn all the money they are making.
themusicaddict
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