Quick-hitters for today.

Louisa Necib

France beat England on PKs today.  Ms Necib had a splendid game, and is starting to attract a certain amount of attention.  France will face the Brazil/USA winner next week.  I am confident that regardless of the result of France's semifinal match, Ms Necib will be named to the World Cup Tournament All-Star team. 

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After the terrible tragedy a couple of days ago in Arlington; a Dad fell to his death, right in front of his six year-old son, trying to catch a ball that All-Star outfielder, Josh Hamilton, had thrown to him; yesterday, a foul ball off of Josh Hamilton's bat hit a fan in the head.  He got some stitches and he's okay, but I like what Hamilton said after the game, That people at the ballgame need to stop looking at their phones and watch the game.  I think that is excellent advice, not just for the ballpark, but for life, in general. 

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Could we get rid of earned runs, altogether? It is completely subjective and each park has a different scorer, to boot.  Plus, you have to play out how the inning would have unfolded to figure out how many runs are earned or not.  It is a silly distinction and when I score games I count all runs as "earned."  If you have a bad defense then that will reflect on your staff's Run Average, and you can still keep track of all the errors. 

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Oakland A's All-Star, Gio Gonzalez, sure loves giving up Grand Slams in Arlington.  Too bad only one of them has counted.  More on that tomorrow. 



Two big posts I am working on re The Wedding and ballpark incident a couple of days ago.

Love you all, kisses.

Ranger Ace, Cliff Lee, is starting to hang out with these guys now:

Bob Gibson

Christy Mathewson

Sandy Koufax

In fact, Koufax's post-season top line stats are eerily similar to Lee's right now.  Except Lee is better.  And Koufax (& Gibson & Mathewson) all pitched in low-scoring eras, to boot.

The Rangers 2010 post season record is 5-3.  Two of those three losses were bullpen meltdowns where they surrendered the lead in the eighth inning.  The Rangers have led at some point in every single game save one, the 5-2 loss to Tampa.  The Rangers have outscored the Rays & Yankees 41-21.  The Rangers have yet to be shut out  and have scored two or fewer runs just once (that above-mentioned Tampa loss.)  The Rangers' staff have thrown two combined shutouts and held the Rays & Yankees to two or fewer runs five times (all wins, natch.)

The Rangers 2010 post season winning percentage is .625.  The Rangers are scoring 5.13 runs per game.  The Rangers are allowing 2.63 runs per game.  That run differential should equal out to a .792 winning percentage, which means they should have a 6-2 post season record.  The Rangers are underperforming by one full game.  Variation from the pythagorean win expectation (especially with a super small sample size such as this one) is best explained by two things:  poor/great bullpens and plain-old, no kidding, dumb luck.  


It is better to be playing below your pythagorean win expectation because as your sample size gets larger, game by game, regression kicks in and evens out all these variations.  


But, all that being said, the Rangers simply cannot afford another bullpen meltdown.  They got away with it against Tampa (thank you, Cliff Lee) but game one against the Yankees could come back to haunt this ballclub big time if they can't get one more win up in the Bronx.  


The most runs allowed by a Ranger starter in the 2010 post season:  Three by Tommy Hunter (that 5-2 loss again) and three allowed by CJ Wilson in game one against the Yanks (also a loss.)  


I'm not optimistic about the Rangers winning tonight.  I think Hunter is in for a rough night.  But if the Rangers can beat up on Burnett also and make it a shootout, we might have a shot.  


Baseball is beautiful.  Baseball is pain.