2012 AL Division Series- Yankees at Orioles, Game 1

C’mon, you remember Lola.

Make up your mind to have no regrets.

The Flaws of a Short Series

Purists contend that even a 5 game series doesn’t really give you a sense of how bad or good a team is.  After all, even the worst ones win 40% of the time which means there’s a 6% chance of a bad team sweeping 3 just out of the pure random cussedness of the universe.

In truth the most telling effect is that you don’t get to re-use your pitching aces as much as you’d like to since there are only 5 days from the first to 4th starts.  I say thank goodness because I think seeing the same faces three times in a series is boring.  I also prefer games with lots of hitting and scoring.

Now this year they have a new wrinkle in the rules that gives the team without home field advantage the first 2 games at home.  This reduces the ‘advantage’ of home field advantage because it’s basically unavailable until a final deciding game.  What it does do is eliminate a travel day compared to the old 2-2-1 format with the additional benefit of making it even harder to bore me with another start by one of your 2 Aces.

As you may gather I’m not unalterably opposed to the new scheme other than that I always feel more Baseball is better and were I commissioner you’d have a 5-7-7-7 format.

Damn Yankees

Well they’re not the Senators (now the Rangers and thankfully eliminated) but the Orioles have been huge Yankee killers this season according to members of the Collective (resistance is futile).  In fact they’ve split their 18 games which is  better than the Orioles had any reason to expect and the Hive mind views as a great injustice in their pursuit of 162 game perfection.

The Orioles will have to be every bit as fierce as they’re imagined because on paper they’re over matched and today’s starting pitching is a typical example.  Jason Hammel (8 – 6, 3.43 ERA) went down mid-season with a knee injury and is fresh back from rehab.  CC Sabathia (15 – 6, 3.38 ERA) should be better, but is 0 – 2 at Camden Yard this year.  Before we see Saunders again we will have 2 rookies, Wei-Yin Chen and Miguel Gonzalez, against Pettit and Kuroda.  Saunders will face Hughes (if necessary) in Game 4.

It’s easy to mistake me for a Yankees fan because I’m exposed to so much of them, but the truth is I can take them or leave them.  I think they’re uninteresting between the lines and have no appetite for gossip, but I do admire their ambition and ruthlessness (though in a world devoid of unintentional irony that word would be associated with the Red Sox).

No, no Nanette, that’s how I’ve been able to weather all the financial crises of my life.  My money is invested in triple A gold plated secure vehicles like off, off Broadway shows.

That and sports futures.