Now that the Yanks are pretty much guaranteed a post-season berth, I thought it would be funny to look at what some of the talking heads at ESPN have had to say about this team throughout the season.
Check out ESPN's MLB power rankings,
first from right after the "Ha!" game, and now from
today. I'd probably have the Yanks at number 1 or 2 on this list, but we're splitting hairs at this point. The class of the majors is obviously the Yanks, Angels and Indians, in whatever order you want to put them in. (They Yanks are 6-0 against the Tribe this year, 3-6 vs. LAAofA)
Of course, on the air, the idiocy is at an all-time high. Steve Phillips' anti-Yankee rhetoric is laughable, as is anything else that joker says, but it's still fun to bring up his prediction that the Yanks wouldn't make the playoffs. His Wild Card winner was Seattle (currently 7 games out of the Wild Card).
The most recent Boston-apologist line has been that Francona isn't really trying to win the division at this point, but resting his guys. OK, that might be viable if he hadn't called on Papelbon in the eighth inning two times in the past week. He's also still pushing his starters deeper in the games than he needs to. (Schilling's 3-run bomb to Jeter in the 8th inning comes to mind as evidence). Starting Clay Buchholz could also be seen as pressing the panic button, considering the organization said he was moved to the pen to limit his innings. Okajima was only shut down after he failed miserably, and the six-man rotation was only implemented after skipping Dice-K's spot in the rotation altogether.
It's fun to listen to the non-Sox fans at ESPN try to talk their Bostonian colleagues off the ledge after each disappointing loss. Notice, however, that very little credit is ever given to the Yanks.
ESPN's most vocal Sox fan, Bill Simmons, hasn't had much to say about the whole situation. He hasn't written a column about his folding team, but did put up a quick piece on the
sidebar of his site basically saying, "Yeah, well the Sox came back in 2004, and that trumps everything." If we're talking about the past, I'd say 26-1 trumps everything, but that's just me. In related news, check out his podcast. He talks to a supposed Yankee fan friend of his, who says he wants Joba to close. His friend also compares Mo to Todd Jones. Erin Andrews is a certified tramp. (OK, I don't have proof that she's a tramp, but she admits she's a Sox fan, which is much worse in my book). Simmons does wave the white flag in his podcast, which I'm sure only the Sports Gal and I actually listened to. Here's the money quote:
"I don't see how any rational Sox fan can think we're better than the Yankees."
That pretty much sums it up.
The Wanger vs. Halladay tonight. Marquee matchup in late September, with post-season implications. You can't ask for much more than that.
Regarding Steve Phillips' idiotic pick of the Mariners to win the Wild Card, I wrote this in response to a post on the Stop Mike Lupica blog a little more than 1 month ago (8/16). It was kinda lengthy, so I trimmed it down a little, including only the important parts:
"Yesterday, Steve Philips went on SportsCenter and put together a flimsy argument to explain why the Yankees won't make the playoffs. He tried to argue that the offense can't stay as hot as they've been (which is true), and that they "Don't have the pitching to compete with the other teams".
First off, let's address the hitting. The Yankees are the top scoring team in the major leagues. Even if they stop averaging 7 runs a game and instead average say...5.5 runs a game, that still makes them one of the best offenses in baseball, if not the absolute best. Phillips seems to be assuming that just because the Yankees won't continue scoring 7-8 runs a game, they'll end up scoring 2-3 runs a gamne, which is not likely to be the case over a 40-game sample (25% of the entire fucking season).
As for the pitching...I dont know about you, but I think a rotation of Wang, Mussina, Clemens, Pettitte, and Hughes is pretty damn good.
The top 4 guys have a combined ERA of 4.12, and it's 4.14 if you include Hughes. For reference sake, that's lower than the team ERAs of all AL teams except the Red Sox, A's (not a contender), Blue Jays (not a contender), and the Angels
Plus, there are three legitimately good arms in the bullpen in Rivera, Chamberlain, and Vizcaino. Plus, whichever starter gets left out of the postseason rotation (probably Hughes) will be in there too.
Phillips then said that the Mariners will win the Wild Card. 5 seconds after saying the Yankees won't make the playoffs because of their lack of pitching, he picked a team with a starting pitching ERA of 5.02!!! That's even higher than the Yankees if you include the Yankees shitty pitchers (Karstens, Igawa, etc.)! Seattle's team ERA is 10th in the AL. TENTH!!!!
So, in summation, Steve Phillips thinks the team with the best offense in baseball will lose out to a team with much worse hitting and worse pitching. Makes perfect sense...
The Mariners have outscored their opponents by a grand total of 6 runs this year. Six. The Yankees have outscored their opponents by a grand total of 149 runs. The Mariners are the very definition of a team that has gotten lucky and has a much better record than they should have. I can almost guarantee that the Mariners go .500 or worse the rest of the way."
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The last paragraph is based on the simple bit of logic that a team that scores a lot more runs than it allows will win more games than a team who's run differential is close to zero. There are occasional exceptions (this year's D-Backs, for instance), but the logic usually wins out over the course of 162 games. And, the Mariners are a perfect example of that. They got extremely lucky in the first 120 games, and then reverted back to their true talent level for the last 30
I'm not trying to toot my own horn or anything, but the type of analysis I conducted above is really what the so-called "experts" should provide. Instead, we get morons like Steve Phillips and John Kruk who make predictions that are based on absolutely nothing whatsoever. One of the great things about baseball is that there is so much data we can use to figure out which players are good, which teams are good, etc, but lazy ESPN talking heads revert back to "gut feelings" to spew to the masses.
Anyway, enough about the shitty ESPN staff...I'm headed to the Stadium for the game tonight. Halladay's tough, but Wang is just as tough, and I just found out that Vernon Wells is out for the year, which should make things a little easier for the Yanks this series. And hopefully I'll see Joba in person for the first time...
Normally, I can't stand the enormous amount of Yankees/Sox coverage ESPN crams down my throat. But, with the enormous amount of New England Patriots and Notre Dame coverage now, I'd gladly welcome a 15 game Yanks/Sox series to be televised 24 hours a day until football season, or the dismantling of NEP and ND football.
Thank You
Tom,
Sound logic there. It amazes me that ESPN even hired Phillips. He was a horrible GM, and it cracks me up that he's the authoritative voice of baseball management on their shows.
A lot of times sports writes/pundits make outrageous predictions because if they come true, they can say "See I told ya so," and if they don't come true, no one remembers the predictions anyway. I think it's always worthwhile to take a look back at these predictions when all is said and done.
Have fun at the game tonight. I'm jealous, and I think you'll probably get a chance to see Joba. They're stretching the "Joba Rules," he came into the middle of an inning last game, which was against the original Joba rules. I think they're getting him ready for any situation he might face in the post season.
GM,
I hear ya. I always felt the same way about NHL highlights. I swear, the year the NHL was on strike was the best SportsCenter year ever.
A Yanks fan complaining about the lack of ESPN attention is the dumbest thing i've ever heard, no offense. Remember, not all of us live on the east coast, and Yanks clearly get more coverage then any team besides the BoSox.
I'm not complaining about the amount of Yankee coverage, I'm just pointing out the anti-Yankee, pro-sox bias and the complete lack of objectivity at espn. I could care less how much time they slot to the yanks, I actually only watch to see what's happening elsewhere.