Back in March, I predicted that the Yankees would miss the playoffs. This surprised many on the Rumor Forum. I didn’t expect what’s happened, though.

Is history against the Yankees? Absolutely. They’re 11-18: from 1930-1999 [excepting 1981 and 1994, the strike years], teams starting 12-18 made the playoffs 1.8% of the time; teams starting 11-19 made it 1.5% of the time.

I don’t bet on sports, but if I did …

Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus has devised a thought experiment to try and see if there’s a discernible effect from a population of baseball players taking steroids. His result: nothing that’s notable, really.

If you’ve never taken a statistics course in your life, you’ll want to know this: the standard deviation is the measure of how far away from the average, on average, the data lies. Like, we know that the average U.S. male is five-foot-nine; a standard deviation of this value [probably three inches] would tell you, on average, how far a random person is likely to vary from that value. You can think of it as the fudge factor, the same kind of stuff you see in polling [52% ± 3%], if you want. [It's not really the same thing, but it's close enough for my concerns.]

And people wonder why I really don’t get all that excited about the whole performance-enhancing-drugs-in-baseball thing; honestly, it’s not much different than scuffing a ball or corking a bat. Of course, it’s a lot more expensive and potentially a lot riskier to your health, but the net effect just isn’t that big.

According to Commissioner Bud Selig, no asterisks will be placed on records of players found to have used steroids in the time before baseball began testing for performance-enhancing drugs.

“That would be unfair to do that,” Selig said before a game between the Oakland Athletics and Los Angeles Angels. “In fairness to those players, no one has been convicted of anything. And we can’t turn history back. My job is to protect the integrity of the game. Each era, each decade has had situations where people said there were unfair advantages.”

This is the right answer, no matter how much the nattering nabobs of negativity might disagree.

Every couple of hours or so, I have an idle thought: “The Sawx really are world champs.” It makes me giggle.

The last time I enjoyed a Series like I did this one was the last time that a Tony LaRussa-managed team got swept in the Fall Classic.

Believe.

WOOHOOOOOOO!!!

XM Radio will broadcast Major League Baseball for the next eleven seasons.

Starting with 2005 preseason play, XM will broadcast every major league game live. Some games will be broadcast in Spanish.

XM also said its new Major League Baseball Channel will broadcast 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The channel will feature new content and rebroadcasts of classic baseball games.

“This is the crown jewel — the deal that we’ve been waiting for,” said Hugh Panero, CEO of Washington-based XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc.

Hell yes.

Red Sox Nation may scream when they read this, but I honestly believe that the Sawx will win Game Seven tonight.

Hmmm … why are the people who decry baseball’s ills—usually the very ones who talk about how they lost interest in the sport after the 1994 shutdown—the ones who usually bleat loudest about its ills to this very day?

I would argue that all the bleating indicates a level of interest that they’re afraid or ashamed to admit that they still have.

Because someone asked, I’ll follow up on a piece from August: On the Wild Card and Three Divisions in MLB.

AL West:
Oakland: 90-71
Anaheim: 87-74
Minnesota: 84-77
Texas: 83-79
Chicago: 79-83
Seattle: 75-87
Kansas City: 60-102

AL East:
Boston: 103-58
New York: 91-70
Baltimore: 85-76
Detroit: 80-82
Cleveland: 78-82
Tampa Bay: 73-88
Toronto: 71-89

NL West:
St. Louis: 98-63
Houston: 87-74
Los Angeles: 86-75
San Francisco: 86-75
San Diego: 83-79
Milwaukee: 77-84
Colorado: 70-91
Arizona: 62-100

NL East:
Chicago: 93-68
Atlanta: 88-73
Philadelphia: 83-78
Florida: 80-81
New York: 76-86
Pittsburgh: 72-89
Montreal: 69-93
Cincinnati: 67-94

Cubs v. Cards, Sox v. A’s would be a pretty doggone representative flavor of who has been good in each league this season. The Sox radically underplayed what you can reasonably expect from their run-scoring and -prevention rates.

Le suck!

I thought I’d see Randy Johnson pitch on Saturday night. I won’t. He’s pitching on Friday. [I checked after Sean's comment about Arizona's suckitude factor had me go and look it up one more time.] I will get to see Brandon Webb toss for the Diamondbacks, though, and that’s still pretty good. I like his style.

Oh well. At least I figured it out before we got to the park.

And yes, by the way, I am very ready to 1) get the hell out of town and away from work for a couple of days and 2) getting to see my beloved friends whom I haven’t seen in three months.

Except, of course, I think I’m going to take a little work with me. Some stuff cropped up today that is stuff I think that I can take and peruse on the plane or on Friday while I’m chilling at Sean and Kat’s house. It will keep me from spending too much time in the garage, lusting over Sean’s workbench and helping him hatch more evil plans. In 24 hours, I’ll be halfway there!

Rob Neyer just rubbed me wrong, which is something that he doesn’t do. Rob usually thinks things through, and this time, he didn’t seem to do so.

I’m not a big fan of the wild card. Everybody loves it, but then everybody loves American Idol, too. Doesn’t mean it’s good. At this particular moment, though, without the wild card there wouldn’t be much worth following in the National League. All three divisions are all but locked up.

STOP!

If there was no wild card—and there’s no way I’d ever have put one in play—baseball would not operate a postseason with an odd number of teams. As much as a team would like a bye in the playoffs, that could be two weeks without playing competitive ball. NBA players can [and do, thanks to David Stern's whoring out of the TV schedule to the networks] handle that kind of layoff, but baseball is very much an every day sport.

If you have no wild card, you’re back into playing in two divisions. That’s the way I’d like to see baseball do things, honestly; eight teams used to play for one league title, so eight can play for one division title. [The old saying, "Nice guys finish last," was actually "Nice guys finish in seventh," which was next-to-last in an eight-team league.]

It’s not worth trying to sort the present-day three-division teams into two divisions and then figure out what “races” you would have because baseball has made unbalanced scheduling a reality [again], and splicing teams out of the Central divisions into the East and West doesn’t give you an apples-to-apples race. You might be able to work up a normalized system, though, like what Baseball Prospectus has done with its Adjusted Standings, because the third-order adjusts team runs-scored and runs-allowed data for batter/pitcher performance and for opponent abilities–that is, if you play a tougher schedule, your third-order W-L total will be a little higher after the adjustment.

So, on the back of an envelope, the two divisions in each league:

AL West: Anaheim, Oakland, Seattle, Texas, Chicago, Kansas City, and Minnesota
AL East: New York, Boston, Toronto, Baltimore, Tampa Bay, Detroit, and Cleveland

NL West: Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Colorado, Arizona, Houston, Milwaukee, and St. Louis
NL East: New York, Atlanta, Florida, Philadelphia, Montreal, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Chicago

[You can niggle about the makeup of the NL divisions. I'm just making a point.]

Team [Current W-L] [Adjusted Runs Scored-Adjusted Runs Allowed] [Adjusted Won-Loss Record]

Red Sox: 74-44
Yankees: 69-49
Tigers: 62-57
Orioles: 61-57
Indians: 60-61
Devil Rays: 56-63
Blue Jays: 54-66

Five games between first and second.

Athletics: 68-52
Rangers: 63-55
Angels: 62-57
White Sox: 61-55
Twins: 60-59
Mariners: 55-63
Royals: 43-74

Again, five games between first and second.

Cubs: 68-50
Braves: 63-55
Mets: 59-58
Marlins: 59-59
Phillies: 58-61
Expos: 48-70
Pirates: 54-63
Reds: 51-67

Broken record …

Cardinals: 72-46
Dodgers: 67-51
Astros: 62-56
Giants: 62-59
Brewers: 59-59
Padres: 59-60
Rockies: 54-66
Diamondbacks: 48-73

And again.

Five games in mid-August is a pretty solid lead, but it’s not insurmountable. A couple hot weeks by any one of five teams [the Sox would only be six out in third] could make it a bit closer.

It would also remove the pesky concerns about who the wild card really should be.

SWEETNESS! I just ran the probable starters for the Diamondbacks for the next couple of weeks, and if everything stays on schedule, I’ll get to see Randy Johnson pitch on the night I’m taking Sean and Kat to see the Reds.

Awesome. The best starting pitcher I’ve ever seen live was Tom “Bulldog” Browning, before he broke his arm.

Baseball is so goofy.

One can reasonably project a team’s record based upon the team’s runs scored and runs allowed. Bill James ran the numbers decades ago and called it the Pythogorean Theorem: RS^2 / (RS^2 + RA^2) ~= Winning Percentage. The chaps over at Baseball Prospectus have taken it a bit further, using their Equivalent Runs statistics to figure out what you would expect a team to score and give up, given their performance to date, and figured out which teams are outperforming or underachieving: BP Adjusted Standings.

My beloved Reds are, by expectation, the worst team in the NL Central. They reside in 2nd place in the real world standings. That is, to use a term of Heather’s, a flaming metric asston of luck.

I started looking at this earlier when I realized that Rick’s Dodgers—yes, I found out long after becoming good friends with him that he’s a fan of the Damn Bums, and yes, I wept—are in first place. FIRST PLACE DODGERS?! WTF?!

They deserve to be there, too.

Screwy.

[All standings data current as of the time of posting. If you look at this in the future and feel led to comment that the data is incorrect, well, look in the mirror to find the moron.]

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
– Langston Hughes, “Dream Deferred”

I had this dream when I was a kid growing up, watching my beloved Cincinnati Reds: Ken Griffey, Jr., would come home from Seattle to play for the hometown team. He’d raked at Moeller High, and I could see him patrolling center in Riverfront. It was a common dream—all of Southwest Ohio’s baseball fans had that same dream.

One day, it came true.

Or fester like a sore–and then run?

Except that it didn’t. 2000 was ugly for Junior and for us fans—death threats, poor performances. 1999 had been a high point—one we should have recognized as one of a mediocre team with a lot of luck, but did not. I remember driving to class, hearing about the trade: if the Reds could come to the brink of the playoffs without Junior, maybe they could win a league pennant with him. Maybe we could best the Yankees.

The 2000 Reds came back to Earth when Junior proved too fragile to hold them up. It was too much of a burden for one man—baseball being an team sport based around individual trials, one batter taking on one pitcher, with the defense only reactionary if the ball is in play—too much to reasonably expect that Just Junior would make it all right. The death threats, the poor performance that resulted, the pressure, and the fact that, well, luck was not with those Reds.

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Then came the injuries. The Juniories—one or two a year. You’d look up at the end of the season and see he’d played … just 60 games? Could it have been so few?

The outcry came. The home town turned: fans, prompted by local media, started examining the team’s record with and without Griffey. [A preposterous notion---one can statistically prove any one player's value over that of your average AAA stiff you could replace him with, and few get above a hand full of wins. Barry Bonds? You might have to take a shoe off.]

Or crust and sugar over–like a syrupy sweet?

Each spring, you’d read of the season before’s sadness and woe, and read of Junior’s work in the offseason to make himself stronger, and you looked at his steely eye and determination and think, “Maybe this is the year he’ll be healthy.”

And then no.

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load

This was my final fear for Junior—a scowl on his face, determined to prove everything wrong. The Kid turned into The Monster that everyone sees Barry Bonds being. All work, no play. [Bonds likely plays, but why show us?]

Or does it just explode?

Finally, it exploded.

Congratulations, Ken, on getting #500, getting healthy, and getting back to having fun. That post-game press conference yesterday was delightful: you were funny and it was all spontaneous. You emoted, and we knew it was true. You … sparkled.

The Kid is back. He never left.

I consider the past Cin@Oak series to be payback for the drubbing the Reds gave the A’s back in 1990: 40 runs in three games.

I was TiVo’ing last night’s game—it was on ESPN2—but then I checked the score, saw “4-0 Oak” in the fourth, and figured it was up for another rout. I was right: Oakland 17, Cincinnati 8.

:wince:

Paaaainful.