Sunday, October 25, 2009

Ha...and hockey!

Any team with a competent lineup and a smidgen of defense will bring down the Yankees in 5 games. I didn't think so before this series, but the Angels tried, with all their might, to hand this series to New York in three games, and the series still went 6.

It's going to be an easy title for Philadelphia. New York has one reliable starting pitcher, one reliable reliever, and one reliable bat. Ryan Howard sez hi.


Lucic Crew 5, Flying V 6


We were winning 5-3 with 5 minutes to go. I hadn't given up a goal since halfway through the first period. I then allowed the same guy to score three consecutive times on the same shot from the same place to lose the game.

Positives? Well, I only gave up 6, which is a new personal best. I had a clean second period. I had a nice glove save and I'm pretty sure I stuffed a breakaway, but it might've just gone wide. I successfully skated from the crease to the bench with 50 seconds left without falling on my face. I played the puck up to a forward from above the circles. I had a nice butterfly slide.

Negatives: I gave up a goal on the first shot, again. I gave up three consecutive goals on the same shot from the same place to lose the game. I didn't see anywhere near as many shots as I usually do, so the 6.00 GAA is misleading. I left out a rebound but didn't get a whistle when I covered up and got run over by 4 skaters in the crease.

8 comments:

Andrew said...

One reliable bat. In an offense that posted an .839 OPS during the season.

And the Phillies have more than one reliable starting pitcher? They don't even have one reliable reliever.

Sorry, Yankees in 6.

Unknown said...

No need to be spiteful. Phillies defense is fairly mediocre. And Cliff Lee is 100% an NL pitcher.

Yankees in 6. And I dont get where you get the 1 reliable pitcher when Pettite was awesome...they have 1 top 5 pitcher, 1 reliable pitcher and 1 pitcher who could be a top 10 pitcher or a scrub depending ont eh night. Plus BY FAR the best bullpen int he playoffs

Marcus said...

Pettite got through the Angels. Congratulations, our bats fell asleep in July. His first start was crappy, and he got lucky that he was facing the Angels and not a team that can hit. Two homers, 7 hits, and only a pair of K's against a walk in 6.1 innings is not good.

Cliff Lee won the Cy Young in the AL last effing season. Don't give me that crap.

Phillies defense? Chase Utley. Shane Victorino. Carlos Ruiz. Hell, Jayson Werth is a superb right fielder. Phillies defense >> Angels defense.

The Yankees have no distinct advantage in the bullpen aside from closer, so yeah, they have the best bullpen if Girardi keeps throwing Rivera out there for 6 outs every game. The games the Angels won were games where anybody but a starter or Rivera pitched.

I'm not being spiteful. I gave the Yankees plenty of credit, and they should've run away with this series. The fact that they didn't has led to my recent statements, not ill will.

Unknown said...

Lets play a game with OPS+, here are the top 9 hitters for all 3 teams in question. For the phillies I included Fransisco as #9 since in reality he'll probably start in left with Ibanez at DH when they play at YS.

Phillies:
139
135
130
127
115
109
103
85
80
Avg: 113.7

Angels
135
124
116
115
108
107
104
101
100
Avg: 112.2

Yankees
146
143
130
129
128
126
126
123
97
Avg: 127.6

Mind you the NL is easier, the Phillies offense isnt close to the Yankees, they are a lot closer to the Angels. They have 3 sick hitters and a bunch of solid guys, the Yankees have the deepest lineup in the history of baseball. Add in the fact that the phillies best hitter sucks nuts facing lefties, and the yanks may start lefties in 66% of the games. The Yankees offense is better.

Cliff Lee is a solid pitcher, but he is way better in the NL then the AL, and after Lee you have Pedro and an inconsistent Hamels. So the pitching is probably a push or maybe a slight edge Yankees (I dont see Pedro making it out of the 5th inning.

So so far Offense, big advantage yanks, pitching push. Lastly bullpen. The Phillies bullpen is crap, and any bullpen that relies on Brad Lidge and Mark Madsen as their high leverage relievers is highly suspect. If Lidge doesnt blow one save in this series I would be shocked.

As long as the Yankees offense doesnt fall asleep, and Girardi doesnt fuck the Yanks they should win this series in 6. The Phillies are good, but all this talk of them being an AL caliber team is retarded, they dont make the playoffs in the AL East

Marcus said...

I don't care about season-long results. This is the playoffs, and small sample sizes win championships.

Show me playoff OPS or wOBA.

The Yankees bullpen, outside Mariano Rivera, has done shit this postseason.

Unknown said...

Are you fucking kidding me? You are smarter then that, playoff numbers mean jack shit. If playoff numbers mattered Jayson Werth is as good of a hitter as A-Rod and considerably better then Teixeira which just isn't true. Think of it this way, its been a week since the Phillies played. Why would the numbers from a week ago against a shitty pitching team matter more then what the players did over the entire season against an even spread of pitchers, fielders, and ballparks?

Hitting streaks mean jack shit when there is a week between games

Marcus said...

That's the thing...I do believe playoff stats matter more than regular season stats IN THE PLAYOFFS.

The hitting stats are all said to normalize at about 500 PA's. The playoffs max out at around 75 PA's. There's a reason Billy Beane calls the playoffs a crapshoot, and that's because players like Jayson Werth and A-Rod can OPS 1.200 despite their massive differences in the 162-game season.

Chone Figgins is not a .300 OPS player the same way A-Rod isn't a 1.200. Vlad hit .378 in the playoffs while hitting under .300 for the first time in his career during the regular season.

Playoff stats matter because the whole thing is an unholy small sample size. It's how the Cardinals won the World Series.

Also, Ryan Madson != Mark Madsen.

Unknown said...

Playoff stats mean 0 in my book, there isnt enough of them to have any predictive value. So in my book Jayson Werth is just as likely to hit .400 this series as he is to hit .100. The easiest way to put some odds to that is to look at what the guy is over his career.

That being said Cliff Lee is pitching an absolutely ridiculous game