It's a sad night. I was rooting for Rich Harden to help the Chicago Cubs stay alive, but alas he did not help make that happen, not even getting through five innings. I wanted the Cubs to stay alive because I truly wanted to see the North Siders end a century of frustration with a championship. 100 years is long enough for fans to wait for a championship and from all of my experiences, Cubs fans are often classy and modest. Yeah not winning in forever will do that to a fanbase and who knows, maybe if they had won it this year they would've gone all Red Sox Nation and become a bunch of unbearable a-holes. Yet I was willing to risk that. Heck Al Yellon, who runs the SB Nation site Bleed Cubbie Blue, was left completely speechless for maybe the first time in his lifetime. I poured a cold one out for my homie tonight for that one.
Instead my rooting interest now turns to the Rays and hoping that the Rays wind up winning the World Series. How can you not love a team that goes from laughingstock to remarkable in one season? Although it would be pretty cool to see the Red Sox wind up against the Dodgers in the World Series because nothing would drive a Sox fan more crazy than losing a World Series to Manny being Manny now, would it? Still I don't want to see the Red Sox that close to another title. Although I am very happy that the Boston team is laying the smack down on the Angels.
Finally, I just want to put something out there. I completely agree with Nico that Rafael Furcal should be someone the A's take a serious look at this offseason. He fills a definite need for them and I think he's someone who fills a gaping hole in the A's lineup at the top of the order. I'm just saying. And the public pressure on Frank McCourt to keep the Manny show in LA will be huge, meaning he's going to have to open up the wallet for him. McCourt doesn't know how to do anything without a PR aspect to it, so it should leave the Dodgers strapped in terms of salary availability for anything else. Pounce, Billy, pounce.
0 recs | 67 comments
Do the A's keep Ellis?
really?
FoolshGame22 - October 4, 2008
Curtains for the Cubs
again
SwisherThresher - October 4, 2008
Harden looks totally deflated.
Elvez - October 5, 2008
Rich :(
whiteshoes40 - October 5, 2008
What a total meltdown for the Cubbies
again! Man, I’m really bummed for some of my Cub fan friends and I’m really disappointed that Harden did not get any support tonite. Why did they pull him in the 5th? How did that really make any sense? I did not get to watch the game because I was working but tried to follow the action on my breaks. I saw that Rich’s fastball was in the low 90’s this evening……any other observations from those who were able to watch?
mrod - October 4, 2008
The pressure of playoffs
no matter who is out there, you give up three runs, the mgr. cannot let it go on. This was their elimination game. It was how any manager would have played it, considering how lousy the Cubs were hitting.
Ya get the feelin…two rounds of “playoffs” to determine who goes to the World Series, in its present format and schedule, does not satisfy. An ignominous way for a good team to end a season. And really, it was Derek Lee’s muff…one play!! ….that IMO changed everything.
I am neutral here, not pulling for any NL team in particular, at all. I would simply like it if teams looked “like themselves” in the playoffs, but they seldom do. Houston v Mets, that went to seven games, that was the last great playoff set. That’s not enough.
The Cubs have scored 12 runs in six playoff games , 2007-2008. Psychology???
One won lost won - October 4, 2008
no furcal please
he’ll be 31 so it’s all downhill from here. how much longer will he be able to stay at SS?
back problems: kotsay, chavez. i prefer to remember history rather than repeat it.
a 96 career OPS+ does not impress me.
he’ll be expensive, i’m sure plenty of other teams are looking for a decent SS.
xbhaskarx - October 4, 2008
+1
I’d rather play Crosby. Let Zook hit leadoff.
FoolshGame22 - October 4, 2008
You'd rather play Crosby than Furcal?
I weep for your child.
grover - October 5, 2008
I'd rather pay Crosby's salary than Furcal's
and, get marginally less production. Of course, Croz might outperform Furcal next year… then, it’s all good.
FoolshGame22 - October 5, 2008
furcal, crosby..
is there an option C?
surely the a’s can try out petit and pennington types and maybe trade for a middle level SS prospect or two…
xbhaskarx - October 5, 2008
You're not making this sound all that exciting.
WaddellCanseco - October 5, 2008
.271 EqA is a better measure than OPS+
Remember that Furcal generates a lot of runs on the basepaths.
PaulThomas - October 5, 2008
Sure but that isn't that great either. Neither is the career .834 ZR.
WaddellCanseco - October 5, 2008
It's pretty damn good for a shortstop
PaulThomas - October 5, 2008
Yes it's around 25 RARP, like Yunel Escobar.
So yes, it’s pretty good. The defense isn’t bad either, a bit better than Crosby this year, although a lot worse than Crosby in previous years. So yeah, he’s an above average SS, and the price and how well his back holds up during his contract will determine whether he’s an asset or not.
WaddellCanseco - October 5, 2008
The back problems and the age 31-34 seasons remind me of Kotsay as well
Also he was merely good in his prime, not great. So he’s not declining from a stratospheric perch.
WaddellCanseco - October 5, 2008
Thanks, Blez.
This is probably my favorite SBN site. I was rooting hard for Harden too, but who knows, maybe next year < / cliche >.
Just wanted you to know, I voted for Ziggy for the “Delivery Man” award thinger today.
northsider - October 5, 2008
Blez... you completely agree with Nico?
Isn’t that statement enough to make you re-evaluate who you thought you were?
grover - October 5, 2008
Does that mean Blez now favors marriages or civil unions between man and goat/sheep/whatever?
Flashfire - October 5, 2008
Why would anyone prefer goats to sheep?
WaddellCanseco - October 5, 2008
I don't know that Nico prefers whatevers
OaklandSi - October 5, 2008
To goats or sheep? No way
After all, I’m not kinky.
Nico - October 5, 2008
Which immediately brings to mind
seeing a small shop in SF one block away from Chinatown, uphill from the TransAmerica Pyramid, back around 1988. They had a miniture movie “marque” out front advertising their goods. That day’s special?
Inflatable Sheep $17.99
One won lost won - October 5, 2008
With three you get free eggroll
I know from experience.
Nico - October 5, 2008
I am really happy the Dodgers won the series, but I was sad to see Rich have a bad game :(
drmmerchk - October 5, 2008
Holy hell
The ENTIRE fanpost docket at BCB is filled with threads that have been opened in the last 2 hours.
That’s at least 15 FPs after midnight, their time. And we thought the avalanche of threads on OUR end of the Harden trade was bad.
On an analytic (but subjective) level, I have to say that I’ve never seen a team look so collectively tight at the plate as the Cubs did in this series (even the A’s in the 2006 ALCS, and they were pretty damned neurotic). By the second half of this game it looked like every hitter wanted to kick a hole in the dugout wall whenever he made an out. Maybe that caused the offensive struggles, or maybe it was just an effect of them.
Over a full season, a series like this gets swallowed in the statistical noise… in the playoffs, there’s no time.
PaulThomas - October 5, 2008
I think that's why BB says the playoffs are a crapshoot...
either you’re hot, or you’re not.
FoolshGame22 - October 5, 2008
mlb should just replace postseason games with fan voting on amihotornot.com
xbhaskarx - October 5, 2008
The A's would win that, easily
Blicks - October 5, 2008
that closed thread posted by Heck Al Yellon
is sad and frightening. I hope we are never driven to anything like that over here.
oakinboston - October 5, 2008
I know.
Blicks - October 5, 2008
like your phrasing of how such a short series gets swallowed by the noise.
at times like this (in sympathy for the cubs) it’s a sad reality.
but, then, I have to remind myself that it is also part of the excitement of playoff baseball, and it can be used for good.
oakinboston - October 5, 2008
collectively tight?
collectively? Or, contagiously????
heheheh…anecdotal, certainly, but….so was the apple falling to Newton’s lap.
One won lost won - October 5, 2008
I believe the word you're looking for there is "apocryphal"
I doubt that ever actually happened.
Although to be fair, 95% of what I know about Newton comes from a Neal Stephenson novel.
PaulThomas - October 5, 2008
Newton
Isn’t the internet great???
A contemporary writer, William Stukeley, recorded in his Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’s Life a conversation with Newton in Kensington on 15 April 1726, in which Newton recalled “when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasioned by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself. Why should it not go sideways or upwards, but constantly to the earth’s centre.” In similar terms, Voltaire wrote in his Essay on Epic Poetry (1727), “Sir Isaac Newton walking in his gardens, had the first thought of his system of gravitation, upon seeing an apple falling from a tree.” These accounts are probably exaggerations of Newton’s own tale about sitting by a window in his home (Woolsthorpe Manor) and watching an apple fall from a tree.
Various trees are claimed to be “the” apple tree which Newton describes. The King’s School, Grantham, claims that the tree was purchased by the school, uprooted and transported to the headmaster’s garden some years later, the staff of the [now] National Trust-owned Woolsthorpe Manor dispute this, and claim that a tree present in their gardens is the one described by Newton. A descendant of the original tree can be seen growing outside the main gate of Trinity College, Cambridge, below the room Newton lived in when he studied there. The National Fruit Collection at Brogdale39 can supply grafts from their tree (ref 1948-729), which appears identical to Flower of Kent, a coarse-fleshed cooking variety.
One won lost won - October 5, 2008
Cubs: I am L'ing MAO
Man, you guys shoulda’ been out here in Cubbie territory to see those faces at the pub. Classic. I feel sorry for my Cubbie bros, though. They deserve it more than anyone, yet they face yet another year of frustration. As one dude (in a Ryne Sandberg jersey) that I talked to put it, “I just don’t know if next year is going to be as much fun.” I feel that, man. I feel that.
IowaA'sFan - October 5, 2008
You have to be kidding me...
3 and out???? and what the Heck was Soriano swinging at?
IM4Oakgal - October 5, 2008
in terms of plate discipline soriano is the rich man’s bobby crosby. really rich, like $100+m…
xbhaskarx - October 5, 2008
That's a good way to put it, although I hadn't thought of it that way.
Blicks - October 5, 2008
I think Soriano swung at your question, IM4Oakgal.
By the time Blicks weighed in he had already k’d.
Nico - October 5, 2008
I'm at a loss
Not for words, mind you. Like that would ever happen.
I was pulling for the Cubs. 100 years? I mean, guys it’s been 19 for the A’s, and that feels like forever. I’m not saying that no team should have a drought that long (the Giants’ can go on forever for all I care), but the Cubs just aren’t that hateable.
If their fans have become Red Sox Nation 2.0, I truly haven’t seen it. 100 years. Of course their fans are going to rally around each other. Of course, they are going to pick up more fans along the way, just for sentimental reasons (which, I believe still exists in sports). And of course anyone connected to baseball is going to talk and write about it until our ears and eyes bleed from it all.
The Cubs were at an unfair advantage. Too much weight on their shoulders. Maybe it’s a poor excuse, but there was a century’s worth of fans depending on them. Unlike in Boston where they always expected the worst, Chicago really believed that this was their year. And they didn’t even show up for the party. It’s wasn’t heartbreaking a la the A’s in 2000-03; they simply did not compete. Still not sure which is worse. And poor Bartman will continue to have his name thrown out there: nine straight playoff losses since that fateful day.
The playoffs themselves are becoming a bore; almost no series goes the distance anymore, and it seems that more of them end up in sweeps than anything else. And if you need proof I have it somewhere, but that’s for another day. The same applies for teams with the best record; there’s no true advantage to it. Teams with 100 regular season wins fall by the wayside, while wild-card teams often excel. If Boston completes the sweep today, that will be a big, fat 0-for-6 that the league’s “best” teams put up.
I am all for parity, but sadly, the playoffs are more like a parody of late.
Time to go to work.
67MARQUEZ - October 5, 2008
It struck me that the last time the Cubs one it all....
was the year before my grandfather was born. He died many years ago, but if he were still alive he would be enjoying the company of great great grand kids. And the Cubs still haven’t won. So you can’t even really say it’s a once in a lifetime event, because it isn’t. Hally’s comet comes by more frequently.
alox - October 5, 2008
"one it all"
Somehow, that phrase resonates with me!
One won lost won - October 5, 2008
I do that crap all the time....
It drives me insane. You would think I would learn to proof read.
alox - October 5, 2008
"It drives me insane"
I beg to differ. Otherwise, you’d be invariably commenting that such-and-such was “insanely great!”.
One won lost won - October 5, 2008
First round should be a best-of-7
But lose three straight, and it’s statistically still curtains – but hey, at least the fans get to enjoy one more game
SwisherThresher - October 5, 2008
statistically still curtains
right you are. When there is a lot, a LOT of pressure, where ONE miscue (like Derek Lee and the ground ball) can begin a snowball that grows from the size of a cantaloupe into a house-flattening behemoth, playing the same team again and again points up the particular nature of baseball that makes it unsuited to a “playoff”-style format: mistakes have enduring impact.
Basketball players can survive a ball bounced off a foot, or a completely-blown breakaway layup. It’s only two points, not 200% of your own team’s run total as a result or missing ONE ground ball.
Having a tournament in a neutral location in the sunshine, where each league’s four playoff teams play each other at least once and teams jump to a different opponent the next day would make miscues and poor approaches to batting less glaring. Also, pitchers and catchers could not “load up” mentally, really focus as they do, in a short post-season series against a single opponent. The multiple scouting reports on ONE opponent for the next 4-5 days, those really sinks in with the pitchers/catchers IMO. Invariably, one team (the most vulnerable to scouting) stinks with their hitting.
One won lost won - October 5, 2008
I quibble with the details, but I think this is basically correct
I like the CWS format where teams play a bunch of different opponents in their “pod.”
I’d also like to see the title of league champion given to the team with the most wins in the regular season. The Angels were not the best team in the AL this season, but in my mind they were the rightful winners of the title “AL Champion.”
PaulThomas - October 5, 2008
Wait
I wasn’t saying that their fans had become Red Sox Nation 2.0. I was saying that there was a chance that could happen if they win it all, but I highlight doubt it. Not enough meatheads in Chicago like there are in Boston.
Tyler Bleszinski - October 5, 2008
I don't understand not supporting a team
on the basis of their fans perhaps turning into Sux Nation 2.0. I mean, first the team has to actually advanced through the playoffs and then actually win the World Series. Even then, the fact that Cubs fans remain Cubs fans even if they move from Chicago isn’t a problem.
The issue with Sux Nation isn’t that Boston and New England natives remain fans even when they move. It’s really the “Sux come lately” fans who have made an obnoxious cult of it.
OaklandSi - October 5, 2008
Wow
People aren’t getting this at all. I was rooting for the Cubs 100 percent. They were my team in this playoffs. I just was saying that most of the country (not really me) used to feel sorry for Red Sox fans in the way that they do for Cubbies fans and we saw what happened to a lot of Red Sox fans who went from being normal fans to obnoxious, we’re the best franchise around fans.
It was just an observation. I WAS ROOTING FOR THE CUBS.
Tyler Bleszinski - October 5, 2008
Blez, I wasn't writing about you
others had said before the NLDS started that they didn’t want to root for the Cubs because their fans might turn into Sux Nation 2.0 if the Cubs won the World Series.
I was actually agreeing with you…
OaklandSi - October 5, 2008
Yeah, what he said ;)
67MARQUEZ - October 5, 2008
oooh so that's what this useless thing is on top of my neck.
oakinboston - October 5, 2008
That was not meant towards you Blez
But to many comments I have read since the playoffs started. Something along the lines of Red Sux Nation Redux.
67MARQUEZ - October 5, 2008
I was most shocked at
watching the speed gun when Harden was pitching. He was Zitoesque. He managed a couple of 90 mph pitches, most in the 84-87 range. He has to be hurting. I didn’t see Gaudin make an appearance either but I didn’t watch every inning of the series. That trade doesn’t look so bad right now. Today we get to see Blanton, relegated to pitching behind a 45 year old guy.
Laoren - October 5, 2008
Gaudin wasn't on the playoff roster
I have a strong feeling he’s hurt.
It was discussed in the open game thread, if I’m right.
Blicks - October 5, 2008
umm, no
you know harden throws more than just one pitch, right?
his fastball was mostly 90-92 with a few in the 93-94 range.
xbhaskarx - October 5, 2008
To be fair
We’re used to seeing Harden throw 90 mph curves as well as 100 mph fastballs.
vignette17 - October 5, 2008
I was surprised that the Cubs
having clinched their division early, didn’t set up their rotation so as to start Zambrano and either Lilly or Harden in Games 1 and 2. Yeah, I know Dempster was unbeaten at home during the season, but this is the postseason.
Having a good pitcher with postseason experience start Game 1 would certainly have helped. Perhaps they could have held their early lead, and have loosened up a bit to hit better and play better defense in the other games had Game 1 not been so deflating.
OaklandSi - October 5, 2008
And Lilly's playoff track record is great
Nico - October 5, 2008
Cubs fans
were the most obnoxious, egotistical fans in baseball this year. They deserved to have this mark of shame burned prominently into their foreheads.
VORP is too nerdy - October 5, 2008
Yes!
I agree 100% with the above statement. Classy and polite is hardly how I describe Cubs fans, if I had to pick words. Sure some are but most I’ve encountered, remember I’m in Milwaukee, are douchebags. Words also can’t describe how happy I am that they got swept, let alone lost. Poor Cubbies. :)
WiscoFan - October 5, 2008
Phew. I'm so glad you're from the Midwest and saying this.
Finally someone who understands! ESPN likes to talk about obnoxious Bosox fans, but trust me, the Cubs are worse. I’m from St. Louis, so I was here when the Red Sox won in ’04. They were far, far less obnoxious than the Cubs were this year, and they were winning in the World Series!
That said, I truly did believe the Cubs had the best team by far in the National League. In reality, I thought they were the only team that could realistically compete with Boston or Tampa Bay. I definitely think they could have beaten the Angels or White Sox.
VORP is too nerdy - October 5, 2008
Bingo
I think quite often people on the coast’s don’t realize how bad Cubs fans can be and often are. If I wasn’t aware I’d feel sorry for them too perhaps, but I know better. They are on the same level as Red Sox fans for sure. Both fan bases are a cult like following (more like sheep following the herd or lemmings) where they believe everything is owed to them. Of the other fans or cities I’ve been to (Cincy, KC, St Louis, Pittsburgh) fans were generally courteous and pleasant.
Heck even when I was at a White Sox game in A’s gear fans didn’t say much but one random Cubs fan yapping at me and a friend who was wearing a Brewers shirt. This was Harden’s last start for the A’s and the Cubs fan was correct about the Cubs going after him, but his trash talk wasn’t clever or funny, he clearly fit the Cubs fan stereotype.
At the Brewers game this Saturday we saw random Phillies fans walking in through our tailgate area, they got a good booing from everyone but nothing out of line or innappropriate.
WiscoFan - October 6, 2008
Meant to reply to VORP is too nerdy
WiscoFan - October 6, 2008
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