ALDS Aftermath

I feel funny. Not “haha nice squeeze play Scioscia” funny, but unusual sensations and notions funny. After what proved to be an exciting, exhilarating and exhausting 4 game bash up with our angelic whipping boys from Anaheim, I am left with a new understanding and view of this 2008 postseason. What should be a familiar landscape for a Red Sox fan in this decade is most decidedly not for me and it really showed in my post game reaction Monday night. I freaked out! I mean almost to “2004 Ortiz becomes the Highlander” level of freak out.

Why did I react this way? Remember the whole “act like you’ve been there before” adage? Why has this escaped me?

And suddenly I knew. My freak out wasn’t the same sheer enjoyment and joyous surprise from 2004. Nor was it the pure happiness I felt that Sox had earned the fans in 2007 by proving it wasn’t a fluke. No… this 2008 victory freak out was some joy, mixed with a feeling of relief and then covered with a ripe sense of… practiced contentment. That’s right. I am content in knowing that the Red Sox experience in these types of situations will carry a team old and banged up farther into the playoffs.

Think of it this way: The Sox are the old stallion on the farm. Sure there are young colts looking to get rowdy and stir up trouble, and hell, maybe some of these lean young horses are faster and stronger than that old stallion… but what they have in energy, they lack in sheer know-how. The stallion is still a powerful horse that can surely hold his own… and is the first to greet the old farmer for feeding time because he knows exactly were to be. He’s done it before and he knows the routine. Sure it might almost be his time to be put out to pasture… but not this year. Last time I checked this old horse still has some fight left in him.

Hmmm. I think I’ve carried that metaphor as far as it will go. To sum up: the Sox are the old dominant regime and the rest are just upstarts looking at the crown and wanting a piece. Again, a strange position to be in as a fan and I am certainly not used to this. God I hope this isn’t what Yankees fans felt like in 2000. Yeesh, just thinking about that puts chills up my spine.

Anyway, let’s go kick some Tampa Bay pony butt. AL winners 2 years in a row has a nice ring to it. GO SOX!

Beating the Rays: A Prequel

Time to get ready for what will surely be an epic battle for the ALCS, and you know what that means: both sides have to get their trash talk ready. Oh wait, we're good: the Rays fans are already good to go.

That said, I was deeply, deeply disappointed in what I heard from the Fenway faithful during the top of the 9th inning of Monday’s Game Four. With the game tied, it sure sounded like they were chanting “Beat LA.”

Maybe they did that earlier and the night before too, but I’ve been either muting Chip Caray or relegating y’all to the picture-in-picture. But for the life of me, there is no reasonable explanation for why the Sox fans would be chanting that.

I can’t imagine they’re stupid enough to be looking past the Angels and our Devil Rays to a World Series date with the Dodgers.

But that leaves the equally stupid rationale that the LA they were referring to were the Angels.

Seriously Sox fans, were you really comparing the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim to the Lakers?

Let me clear a few things up for ya, David:

1. Nope, that was the first time in the series. Glad to see you're keeping tabs on us, though.
2. You didn't mention the context for the chant: the bullpen was either about to surrender the lead or had just done so and was struggling for the last out (I don't remember exactly and I can't seem to get MLB.tv's feed to work properly. If I've got the context wrong, please feel free to let me know in the comments). Either way, fans in the stands were looking at the possibility of another late night, extra-inning loss and a trip back to LA for a tough game five. Reminding the boys in the field about that possibility (not to mention summing up that responsibility in an easily-repeatable chant) definitely falls under the responsibilities of a fan.
3. Celtics fans may have come up with "Beat LA" during the NBA playoffs, but that doesn't make the chant the province of basketball fans any more than it made "Yankees Suck" the province of baseball fans. Chanting "Beat LA" at a Sox/Angels game might have been contextually appropriate, but saying that a fan base was comparing their overhyped (if angry) foes to a basketball arch-rival completely misses the point: these are the fans that chanted "Beat LA" at a Mariners game in early June, the fans that for six or seven years pulled out a rousing chorus of "Yankees Suck" at sporting events as varied as Patriots games and UMass hockey games. It's a rallying cry. If your team had more than five fans, you might get that.
   

Score Runs, Dammit

We better hope that when we meet the Rays in the playoffs we score a lot more runs than they do, or we are Effed to the Ayyyy.

Just for kicks, I took at a look at the results of the 17 games the Sox and Rays have played thus far, to confirm whether the results of the past few games (squeakers won by the Rays in the bottom of the ninth or in extra innings) were really as common to Boston/Tampa contests in 2008 as they suddenly felt.

Unfortunately, the results match my initial intuitions.

Going into tonight's contest, the Sox are 8 and 9 versus the Rays. In all nine losses, Boston has never lost by more than three runs; they've lost once by three, twice by two, and a really demoralizing six times by one run. Just as bad are the run differences on the win side: never less than three runs, with an average of five. Of course, these are your 2008 Sox, the team whose batting splits drop 30 points (.293/.374/.470 at home, .271/.347/.430 away) when they hit the road; some drop off will occur and we're just reaping the whirlwind when we play the Rays in Tampa. I guess I should grateful: those splits are the best in the AL for both home and away and they're more consistent than the leading teams in the NL. I just hate losing games in the last few minutes of the night.

In Retrospect, Fun WASN'T Had

This final game against the Rays made me eat a bag of pain and crap a fountain of sorrow. It was poorly managed (bad pinch hitting and running choices Tito) and lacked any type of clutch hitting that could be imagined... I want to run and hide from that damn Rays Bullpen... why did they look so good?

Ugh. I am too tired to go into detail, but Mike Timlin... you are done baby... done, done, done.

It's Time For The Rays to Fall

Doing my best to ignore the bad news streaming out of Foxboro at the speed of fingers flying across keyboards and out across the ether, I came across this bit of Red Sox glorification: after months of seeing the Sox struggle on the road, Boston's finally pulled to within three games of .500 (36 and 39) away from Fenway...the same record as our erstwhile division rivals (and I mean Tampa Bay, not New York), who seem to be undergoing the sort of timely collapse (1.5 games ahead in the AL East entering today's start of series in Boston) that's all too familiar to Red Sox teams prior to 2004.

Upon further reflection, this seachange means we really are playing the role of the Yankees: the established, dominant team coming ever closer, creeping up on the underdogs like the monster from a horror movie. I wouldn't say we deserve an AL East win, but it sure is seductive to have this kind of power.

A number of people have asked me recently when/if I think the Rays are going to break. Up until now, I had stayed pretty conservative in my answers, because I couldn't find a reason for the Rays train to fall off the tracks: they can hit, they have three excellent starting pitchers, they can field, Wheeler, Balfour, and Howell continue to pitch out of their minds, etc., etc. It's hard to deny a team that seems to have closed all of their gaps.

Then I look at their Pythagorean win/loss record. Pythagorean, for those not in the know, is a statistical luck predictor that uses runs scored and runs allowed to determine what a team's win and loss record "should" be. Any deviations from the real win/loss record mean that the team's been lucky (real win/loss record better than Pythagorean win/loss record) or unlucky (real win/loss record worse than Pythagorean win/loss record). As of today, the Red Sox have a 86 and 56 Pythagorean, two games better than their actual 84 and 58 record. They've been slightly unlucky. The Rays? Well, on the Pythagorean scale, the Rays clock in at 79 and 62, six games worse than their actual 85 and 56 record. In other words, they're due for an adjustment. Guess who's going to deliver it to them in the next three days...

Since the fashion amongst the Sox these days is to take two games and lose the third, generally under aggregious circumstances (how a team this good sustains this many blowouts is beyond me), I suspect we'll see more of the same this week...but I'm pulling for sweep anyway. Let's put this one away, boys.