Fingish

Thanks for posting this topic. Booing Marte on any level is a little bit silly. His performance in Minnesota when we really needed some wins late in the year really helped us get here this year. He hasn't been the dominant relief pitcher he was a few years ago, but at that time no one gave him enough credit for being one of the top 5 relief pitchers in the game. We're still talking about a guy with a career 3.20 ERA and 1.26 WHIP who still held hitters to a .256 average in the worst season of his career. We need to stay behind these guys, win or lose, they've earned our 100% support by getting to the playoffs.

QUOTE(sti3 @ Oct 11, 2005 -> 11:27 AM) One thing with Vizc & Cotts is ERA is a deceiving stat for them as theyoften, I would even say the majority of the time, come in with other pitchers' runners on base, so even if they s__t the bed often the runs aren't charged to them. I think WHIP would be more accurate to look at. Of course, the disclaimer should be that there are differences in the number of chances each player had during the day and at night that could make the stats look funny, as well as, these are just Day/Night splits, hardly the most important stat out there, just something I though was interesting as we turned to all-nighttime baseball. It was intersting to look at the WHIP for these guys as it turns out... Day/Night WHIP N. Cotts 1.40/0.97 L. Vizcaino 1.94/1.25 D. Marte 2.18/1.45 O. Hernandez 1.67/1.39 Maybe that's the reason Ozzie went with Marte!

Well, of course, our pitching will have to hold up it's end of the bargin, but check out these numbers: Day/Night Joe Crede: .205/.278 Juan Uribe: .189/.279 So, I'm looking for big things from the bottom of our lineup, these guys both generally keep us in games with their defense, but they both have the potential to be monsters in any given series. All of our games for the rest of the year will be at night, let's hope these guys live up to those numbers, you have to feel good about us if we can get that kind of production out of the bottom of our order. As a team we also show a huge jump going from a team .247 batting average in day games up to .270 in night games. The Angels improve from .267 to .272 a much less noticeable improvement. Guerrero goes from a Super Human .352, to a merely Very Good .304, while Finley drops from an acceptable .270 to an awful .205, most other players on either team don't see as big of changes from day to night, with a few exceptions. Staying with this theme, a couple of other interesting Day/Night comparisons... Day/Night L. Vizcaino 7.89/1.86 O. Hernandez 6.30/4.76 N. Cotts 2.70/1.56 Obviously, Vizcaino jumps out at you, turning from one of the worst in the league, to one of the best after the sun sets, who knows why, but might as well take advantage of it. Maybe El Duque's Day/Night split shows why he is known as a playoff pitcher, playing for the Yankees he's probably hardly ever seen a daytime playoff game in his life. And regardless of the difference, Neal Cotts will probably become our first Left-Handed option out of the bullpen now, nice to know he gets a little extra boost at night though. On the subject of Cotts and Marte, I think I am getting in tune more with Ozzie's thinking on this. First off, I am assuming that Cotts will be the first lefty Ozzie goes to in a big situation, being Ozzie, I could be wrong and he will still tap Marte first. But Marte is almost like a decoy being the second lefty on the bench, despite his horrid numbers versus Left-handed hitters, most managers will still opt to pinch hit for a lefty if you throw Marte out there or turn around a switch hitter. In the chess game that is baseball, maybe Ozzie is thinking of a situation where he can force another manager to make the "safe" decision and bring out a different hitter to get the Lefty/Righty matchup when there is a late inning situation with a left-handed hitter he really would rather not see up there. Not really more than speculation, but trying to think of some reason for having Marte out there and what he contributes. Well, just had to get all of that out, the nerves are starting to build a little, just over 8 hours til the first pitch, probably close to 6 hours until we leave for the park. I hope we just go right back to business, no cobwebs, with back to back Crede and Urible homeruns in the 2nd inning (Crede's with 2 men on of course to extend our lead to 4-0, don't ask me how we got our run in the 1st). Last thing, As much as I would hate to push Garland back yet another day, I really think that Freddy should start the 3rd game. I know that Freddy really hasn't looked the best, but when you have a guy that has the career numbers that he has against the Angels, and it's not just in a handful of starts but 21 of them, you shouldn't ignore that. Freddy is 11-3 with a 2.66 ERA against the Angels, he has absolutely dominated them. I won't argue with Ozzie's choice, the guy hasn't made a mistake yet this postseason, no reason to doubt him now, but if it comes down to a game 7, I would hate to find out in Game 4 that Freddy really does dominate the Angels, but won't be able to pitch. Is that enough? Sorry, like I said, nerves...

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Oct 10, 2005 -> 02:32 PM) They said the RJ is the first arm off the bench for the yankees, which means Wang in game one. Yeah, and he comes from that category of pitchers we really don't do well against, and that would be "Guys we've never seen before". Some teams seem to be willing to even call up minor leaguers to pitch to us knowing the trouble we've had against guys we haven't faced before. I'm starting to lean towards thinking the Angels might end up being the better matchup for us, especially if we don't have to face Colon in game 1. Freddy has just amazing career stats versus the Angels, I would hope he would pitch game 3 if we face them so he could possibly be used again if the series goes 7. It would be a tough series that we would have to play some good fundamental baseball to win, but I would rather worry about that than worry about those Yankee bats getting on a hot streak which is something we can do nothing about. The Angels starting pitching has had a very good year, but when you look at it I don't think their 1-4 even really comes that close to our 1-4 in the rotation. Colon obviously had a great year, but after him, I don't think there is a guy in their rotation that I would trade for a guy in our top 4. It's a tough call, anyone you play at this stage is going to be tough and putting out 100% effort, all you can do is hope to match that effort and have a couple of things go your way.

Orlando pitched the most important inning of White Sox baseball in my lifetime, if the world were to end today, he would be the All Time White Sox MVP, so I figure he must be the MVP of this series. My uncle and I were joking that if this were the Red Sox clinching game 3 in that manner, that ESPN would have come up with a name for that inning it was so incredible. So from now on we believe that should be referred to as "The Inning".

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Oct 7, 2005 -> 12:36 PM) Great imformative post. The wetness does mess with the grip, which could cause a tighter grip, which causes more rotation. I have said it a couple of times on this site, when i played ball, the knuckler was probably the only decent pitch I had. Being that I wasnt a pro, the weather conditions and wind always had an effect on the grip and the float of the ball. Just an FYI. yeah, with a knuckler if the grip is just a few hundreaths of an inch off, or the release point just fractions of a second different the entire effect can be lost. throwing one correctly probably requires more "feel" than any other pitch in baseball, and it would only be common sense that damp or humid conditions will make the ball feel different in the pitchers hand than normal dry conditions. i wouldn't feel bad if we lost today because Wakefield had his good knuckleball. if he does, there isn't much you can do about it, and you can't really feel down, no one can hit an effective knuckleball pitcher when that pitch is working. maybe the only concern would be the effect of having a bad day against a guy throwing that junk would be on our hitters the next day. for now i'm just hoping our luck holds out and Wakefield can't find the good stuff and we hit the hell out of him. (then i can start worrying about what a 3 day layoff is going to do to our momentum ) Go Sox! 2 hours to the most important game of my lifetime(so far).

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Oct 7, 2005 -> 11:27 AM) no, but it will mess with the grip on the knuckler, and may impede its movement. I found this on a Weather-related message board, thought it might be interesting to some out there. "Some basic baseball physics: 1) Humid air makes a ball with a given initial speedl carry FARTHER. The idea of a ball "dying on a humid night" comes from reduced elasticity of the core of a baseball under humid conditions. Because of this, the velocity of balls leaving bats on humid nights decreases, so even though the ball carries farther at that velocity than on a dry day, the decreased velocity is such that on humid nights, batted balls don't go as far. But a knuckleballer doesn't deal with this, since he's not batting the ball, he's throwing it. In fact, the time it takes for the knuckleball to go from mitt-to-mitt (or bat) is so short that humidity isn't affect its velocity. A knuckleball works by inducing turbulent motion over the seams of the baseball that, in turn, moves the ball via the Bernoulli effect. A great knuckleballer like Wakefield makes the ball rotate approx 1-1.5 times en route fom mound to plate. This rearranges the orientations of the seams perfectly on the way to the plate to make the direction of the Bernouli force "flip" in the last 15 feet, creating a 2nd break that, due to its proximity to the batter, appears sharp and unpredictable. The difference b/w a major league knuckleballer and you and I is that he can control the rate and direction of this subtle spin, and therefore, has a modicum of control over the double-break. Humidity is only a factor with the knuckleball if it cause the ball to stick to the fingers, because if the rotation of the ball is SLIGHTLY off, as in, it rotates 2-2.5 times on the way to the plate, the turblent flow never develops and all you have is a 65-70mph straightball. A strong tailwind can inhibit the development of the necessary turbulence over the surface of the ball, and a gusty crosswind can make the turbulence/Bernoulli force unpredictable and varying. A light headwind allows for the strongest Bernoulli force to operate on the ball, yet still keeps the behavior semi-predictable (essentially, you're getting an extra oomph of break, without having to throw the ball harder). This is important because one of the reasons the knuckleball is thrown slowly is to allow time for the double break to develop; if it was thrown faster, to get the requisite rotations to induce the double-break to occur, the rotation rate of the ball would be fast enough to that turbulent flow wouldn't develop and the ball wouldn't flutter. A single-break hard knuckleball can be thrown (see: Jared Fernandez) but is less effective." The only argument can make to his analysis, is that he is too quick to discount the fact that Humidity messes with the grip. I seem to remember that Wilbur Wood wasn't nearly as effective in damp or rainy weather, the grip on a knuckleball and the release are everything. I'm not worried about getting to Wakefield today, and even if he's on there's a decent chance we'll see their bullpen. So it's really on Freddy, he's got to keep them from teeing off on us, we can't assume we'll have a 5 run inning again tonight. A nice low scoring game will deffinitely favor us more tonight than a slugfest.

As a lifelong White Sox fan, after hearing so much about the Red Sox recent record in elimination games since last night from seemingly every media source out there, I was begining to get worried again. Then I really started to think about it, and found a way of looking at it that allows me to both feel better about or chances of going to the ALCS and get through the next 24 hours or so without giving myself a heart attack. The line we keep hearing repeated is that they are 8-1 in their last 9 elimination games, and when it is stated like that it seems to be undeniable evidence that our lead will somehow be overcome. I would be curious what their all time record is in elimination games, as it is probably much closer to a normal winning pct. versus the 89% clip implied by this stat, something tells me that there is a reason Red Sox boosters in the media want to leave out everything before just recently. But lets think about statistics for a second... 9 games is a very small sample size, and for any baseball team to win 89% of their games under nearly any circumstance is probably widely acknowledged to be extremely above the expected average. If a team wins just 60% of their games they are considered great, any statistic that is parsed out in such a way to result in a team winning nearly 90% of those matchups is obviously more likely to be evidence of an abberation than proof of some particular quality about the team. Now, over the next 3 games we will increase the sample size in to 12 games, a 33% increase in the sample size. It is a fact that the larger a sample gets, the more it will revert towards it's average. If we assume that even a great playoff team would only win 60% of their elimination games, the odds are much higher that if we increase the sample by 33% that the Red Sox winning pct. will go down rather than up. So knowing that it is virtually impossible for a team to win 89% of their games over the long term, and probably should expect that teams playing in elimination games in general have a less than .500 winning pct., afterall they wouldn't be facing elimination if they were the better team, then the Red Sox myth of the great 8-1 record seems like the best evidence yet that our White Sox will be playing in game 1 of the ALCS next Tuesday. I really had started to get worried, thinking that history would repeat itself, and we would go the way of the Indians and the Yankees. But now that I have rationalized out this reason to view their recent playoff performance in these terms, I found that I am once again looking forward to the games in Fenway, I really think we have a good chance of winning it out there.