Mike and Mike this morning. Waiting for the Herd clip to post.
Division Series previews:
- Angels-Red Sox ALDS preview
- Yankees-Twins ALDS preview
- Cardinals-Dodgers NLDS preview
- Phillies-Rockies NLDS preview
Plus the eighth advance report, on theMinnesota Fundamentalists Twins. The Conversation is pretty hilarious – angry Twins fans wielding batting average and fielding percentage.
And two more mental_floss quizzes:
Preview FAIL. You clearly neglected to take into account key playoff ingredients such as: 1) “never say die attitude;” 2) small market pluck; and 3) “clutch power.” For shame.
/my $5 goes where?
Don’t worry Keith, not all of us are that backwards in MN. Just remember that there are STILL a lot of people here that think Punto is a good player – that’s how much you have to overcome.
Got 19 POTUS-fails.
Those Twinkie comments are adorable.
Obviously fielding percentage is worthless, but those Cuddyer comments look even better now.
From the comments
“1) Some of Law’s statement and opinions are just flat out statistically and factually wrong.”
How can an opinion be factually wrong?
How can an opinion be factually wrong?
“It is my opinion that the world is flat.
Or, from Rob Neyer’s blog comments yesterday:
“Pudge Rodriguez has been a much better hitter over the course of his career than Jorge Posada.”
It’s a little off subject, but it does strike me as unfair that the Twins had to play #163 Tuesday and travel and begin the playoffs the next day. Is it too much for MLB to ask the NFL to not schedule MNF in one of the four cities where the baseball and football teams share the stadium – next year it will only be three – on the day after the baseball season ends?
Alright, KLaw, stop teasing us with the DC food post. It’s been too long. I’m starving!
H makes a great point. It probably IS too much to ask that of the NFL, given the way Goodel thinks he runs the world. But it seems a simple and reasonable solution to the problem that wouldn’t really have any effect on MNF or the NFL. As for whether it is “fair”, I suppose the counter-argument is that the Twins should have won the division outright if they wanted to avoid the extra game and short rest. That doesn’t fly with me, because I think the playoffs should come down to the best team winning, not the most rested team winning, even if being better affords the opportunity for rest. There is much that gets in the way of the best team winning (the short series, for instance), but I would prefer to see the players decide the outcome on the field, rather than flight plans and tv scheduling play such a huge role.
BSK,
Thanks. Actually, there are only three cities in which the NFL and MLB teams share the stadium, not four as I originally mentioned. For some reason, I forgot San Diego has Petco. It will be down to two next year with the Twins’ moving into a new stadium, one when Florida’s stadium is ready and zero if the A’s ever find a stadium. Therefore, I doubt that they’ll ever address the issue, but after the Twins played in #163 last year, it is amazing that no one in Selig’s office thought about the possibility and approached the NFL about it.
H-
It’s a perfectly logical solution, what you’ve proposed, even if it’s only needed for a few years. But your original point is even more spot on than I realized, now that I’ve thought about it more. You can argue that having to play a 163rd is somewhat of a built-in disadvantage. But the game still should have been played on Monday night, giving whoever one a full day to travel. They can blame themselves for having to play an extra game, but they got screwed out of the day off because of football, and thats a bit ridiculous, and no one could argue is an advantage the Yankees “earned”.