The Endy Chavez catch had to feel better than a lot of wins I've seen. Having that moment in your stock of memories is pretty sweet. Doubling up the runner at first after making the circus catch to steal the home run? It's too crazy to imagine but it's real.

... sigh ...

I think Mets fans can find joy in the memory of the catch, but would trade it for the win any day.

6 Yes, and McCarver corrected himself moments later (likely after a producer told him what he'd done).

No baseball tonight. Friday night without baseball. It just ain't right.

I would gladly give up the dramatics of games 4 and 5 for Mariano being on target to 2nd base.

The only memory I'm not sure I would trade for a title lost in the same year is Game 7 2003 ALCS. I was lucky enough to be there, so maybe that has something to do with it. Would I rather beat the Marlins but win a pedestrian ALCS....? Maybe that's close.

Ah frak it. I want the titles.

That is a plan.

I'm not trying to claim Beltran had no plan, just to give further perspective into what I look for in a good hitter, and that's a man with a plan.

Fox has the insane Saturday blackout rule and insists on giving people a game from their region. Then when the playoffs arrive they worry that no one will watch games outside of their region. Not to mention they continue to employ terrible announcers.

Remember the good ol' days of Bob Costas on NBC?

I believe he said in those comments that he went to the plate looking for a fastball. Well he got one, and BANG over the fence. But why is that a plan, and not a guess? He guessed right, BH Kim served it up for him, no?

I'm still a little fuzzy on your idea of hitters having plans, and this example just confused me a little more. Does having a plan mean watching a lot of video and studying pitchers tendencies? Is a guess hitter a hitter who can't adjust quickly enough?

As for Mariano throwing the ball into center field, that for me was the defining, horrible, indelible moment of the 2001 9th inning. As soon as that happened, I knew we were toast. My heart sank, I just knew we'd lose. Still the for me nearly the worst loss in my Yankee fan-dom, exceeded only by the 1995 loss to Seattle in Game 5.

Here is to trimming some fat and cooking up some fresh young veal next season. Viva la Yankees!

Sure, studying video can help in the formulation of a plan, but it's more a question of deciding ahead of time whether you're going to zone in by location, or by pitch, etc. Making decisions ahead of time about whether you're going to try to hit the breaking pitch or not.

For instance, if Beltran had decided he wasn't even going to bother with the breaking pitch, he should have been swinging at that first pitch fastball.

If he'd decided he was going to try to hit the breaking pitch, he damn well should have been ready for that strike three.

All major league hitters should be able to react to one degree or other, so I guess having a plan is about knowing when to react and when to be aggressive.

So it sounds like Beltran had a bad plan.

Beltran, on the other hand, could have tied the game with a bloop and yet somehow managed not just to strike out, but to leave the bat on his shoulders. Since he's a major league hitter, I presume he's dextrous enough that if he had to make contact, he'd have been able to, most of the time, anyway.

So in that situation, I have to think he just wasn't prepared to execute because his approach to the at-bat was wrong.

That's what it looks like to me, anyway.

Maybe I'm wrong.

Perhaps some enterprising person could look at the stats and compile a team of all the .300 hitters with the lowest strikeout ratios.

Could we construct a winning team by looking for batting average and strikeout ratio guys rather than OPS guys?

Mattingly, in 1985, iirc, struck out 35 times all year, in 652 at-bats! I remember at the time, I was 12, this just seemed miraculous to me.

You are right on the button.

It looked pretty simple to me. Beltran had to know, if he had actually watched the preceding 4 at bats, that he wasn't going to get another fastball to hit. No fucking way was he getting another fastball strike down 0-2.

Now, it doesn't mean that anything would have changed, but Beltran made 2 mistakes.

1. Power hitter pig headedness: These guys just fight fundamentals at every turn. He, Bonds, Arod, Pujols et al. absolutely refuse to choke a bit and shorten their swing with 2 strikes, especially with two outs. Little League be damned. If Luis Gonzalez had had Beltran's aproach in 2001, the Yankees would have 27 World Series Championships.

2. Expect the curveball. Waynewright wasn't going to throw a hittable fastball up 0-2 to a power hitter. It just wasn't going to happen. The best approach would have been to shorten up and sit on the curve. With the short swing, he could at least foul off an outside fastball if he had to swing at it. By expecting a pitch the 4 previous at-bats clearly showed he wasn't going to get, he was doomed to failure. Waynewright wasn't going to get beat on his second best pitch. You can't win if you don't put the ball in play.

This may be harsh, and Beltran's post-season pedigree is fine. It was just a poor appraoch.

I, for one, bear Beltran no ill-will, nor Rodriguez, for that matter. But I think criticizing their approach at the plate is fair.

You know what I wish? I wish more hitters would readily analyze their own at-bats in public so we wouldn't have to do it for them.

The media never get them to do this. They ask about approch in general, sometimes, but they never slow it down and ask someone to go through their own at-bat pitch-by-pitch.

I'd like to see more of that.

And in fact, it's this sort of analysis that to me makes the game most interesting and why I love Herndandez in the Mets' booth and Leiter in the Yankees; they both do an excellent job of really breaking down an at-bat, just as you did there Stormer.

Fuck! Six months with no at-bats to carve up!

I hate the winter.

Two were hittable.

He swung once, at an eminently unhittable pitch--a nasty, nasty breaking ball while letting the next breaking ball, nasty, but hittable, fall safely in for strike three.

As he said, afterwards, he couldn't pull the trigger, which is fair enough--I'd just like to know why he couldn't, what he was thinking about.

Bonds always chokes up; that's his natural position on the bat. Not sure where he'd go from there. (He also has a very short, compact swing.)

While I enjoy trashing McCarver as much as the next guy, pointing out every error like "Eric" Chavez sort of ignores the challenges of doing live TV. It's harder not to make errors, particularly when someone's name is a near-phonetic match to a much more common and popular player.

This is also what separates the run-of-the-mill broadcasters from the hall-of-famers, like Vin Scully. (I feel lucky getting to grow up listening to him in L.A.; he's what baseball sounds like to me. And Chick Hearn is how basketball sounds.)

Maybe Joe Toree shouldn't have been fired, but if UCLA doesn't see fit to terminate Head Coach Dorrell for the absolutely gutless play calling in the 4th Quarter today, then no one should ever be fired. It has been a long time since I have seen such clear fear on the part of a coach with a lead. You don't even try to make a first down your last two posessions, and then you "Thank" Notre Dame for the opportunity. That was abysmal. Now a team that should have 3 losses, has only 1, because they simply intimidated 2 Division 1-A Head Football Coaches. What a joke.

World Series' without the Bronx Bombers are kinda like NFL Pro Bowl games to me. You get to see some great players, but it really doesn't matter...

Think about that in NY.
Think about watching your kid play CenterField in YANKEE STADIUM! Where Joe. D and the Mick roamed.

I imagine the condos might be bought by families with kids who are being groomed for pro-ball. How cool would it be to live in the upper deck of Yankee Stadium?

Just a really cool idea.

It says that LaRussa and Torre are pretty good. Torre's teams (even before the Yankees) consistently overperformed the Pythagorean.

Interesting.

My feeling is that handling personalities, conflicts and media is a managers most improtant job, as these are things that could potentially effect a players performance.

Thats why I love Torre. He has taken the Bronx Zoo and the most explosive owner in MLB, and turned the Yankees into a classy and respected organization.

I don't think Torre had much to do with the PS wins in 1996-2000, nor do I think he had much to do with the PS loses post 2000.

He has taken a team from Class Clowns to Class Presidents.

Or maybe the Tigers are just a little rusty, having sat around so long...

So, I guess the Tigers don't have to work too hard?
That the series is already theirs?

I think it's always best to be the underdog. Expectations of winning (think Yankees) always seem to have a negative impact.

Well, anyway, it won't be the Tigers in 4.

I thought befor the series, that given the age and inexperience of the starters, the best thing Leyland could have done was start Rogers in game 1, take a little pressure off the guys by sending out a veteran to set the tone. But what do I know, I would have started Wang in game 4.

One thing sports should teach the rest of us is that we are every bit as qualified as many that are running these clubs. If Joe Torre's pitching management and the fact that Steve Phillips once held the purse strings of the New York Mets tells me anything, it is that we are more than qualified to offer alternantives here and should never assume that just because someone works for one of these teams, or manages a team, that they are any good at it.

soapbox/ — If MLB continues to reward teams that failed to win their division with a spot in the 'final four', at least they should change the title of the 'ALDS' — which is not accurate — to 'The Three Division Champions and The Team That Didn't Win Their Division Playoff Series'. TTDCTTTDWTDPS. Nice and snappy. Sponsors will eat it up. And if MLB insists on a 5-game series, the TTDWTD gets no home games in the first round. And only games 3 and 6 at home in the LCS.

Oh, yeah. And death penalty for parking tickets, too.

/soapbox

I file this with "Bubba Crosby is our centerfielder" last winter, and "We're content with what we have" before the trading deadline this year.

and

"Yankee rejects face off in Game 2"

hahahahahaha! Way to keep the Yankees in the headlines!

http://tinyurl.com/yejlmj