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Originally Posted by ifspuds
Hold on a second. The Pale Hose are up 2-0 in the series?
Pardon me while I look outside for the apocalyptic meteor about to plow into the Earth...
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Nah, everything is not so topsy-turvy. The
Empire has a pair of 4-3 wins over our division rivals
Cleveland to stake the same lead in their series. Cleanup hitting 3 b-man
Alex Rodriguez hit a four-bagger in the first game and a three-run round-tripper in the first inning of the next one. Somewhat ironically, his counterpart on the other side has four hits (two doubles) in eight at-bats. Maybe all
Joe Crede ever needed was a winning team; we laugh because it becomes a cliche to us dorky OOTP players, but just maybe.
The
Mets are also up two-oh, despite a regular-season record one game inferior to their opponents,
San Francisco. I guess it is a lesson that the playoffs favor a top-heavy talent base rather than twenty-five guys who win about 90 games even when they all simultaneously play their best. Surely the losing side could have used
Yorvit!, their one-time reserve catcher, as
AJ Pierzynski has gone one-for-eight at the plate, allowed four of five opposing basestealers to come away unrepentent, and presumably did a fiery but half-assed job calling the last game, a seven-to-four defeat.
Possibly the biggest surprise of two games is that the other
Chicago side is losing their series, and badly as it is 2-0
Colorado in the best-of-five. The Western wild-card winners got seven-plus shutout innings from 25-year old ace right-hander
Dustin McGowan in the first game; center fielder
Cory Sullivan doubled home professional first baseman
Todd Helton for a quick second-inning run and 5'8" .247 hitting second baseman
Aaron Miles accounted for the other two. The latter-day mountainous
Brian Doyle singled to right with two outs in the sixth; that would be Northsider ace
Barry Zito's last batter.
Miles would steal second off of unsuspecting reliever
Travis Driskill, who then surrendered a base hit to .226 hitting 3 b-man
Pedro Feliz. The lilliputian second sacker would "get miles" on
Joe Borowski's first fastball of the ninth, increasing his ballclub's lead to an insurmountable three.
Like most of his teammates,
Miles would go oh-fer against fireballer
Kerry Wood the next day, but they did ever make those few knocks count. Three of
Colorado's four hits came in a furious charge with two out in the third inning; right fielder
Jayson Werth's mammoth two-run triple into his corner was the biggest blow.
Wood fanned eleven in his Herculean 7.2 inning, 113-pitch performance, "
just" the tenth time he'd racked up double-digit K's in what's been a brilliant season marred by injuries, but
Russ Ortiz's ten was quite likely more important - that was his number of ground ball outs, one less than
McGowan recorded a day earlier. After his unconscionable six-inning, eighty-four pitch performance, the baton was passed off perfectly, as it had so often this season.
Ortiz to Proven Closer (TM)
Wagner (4.96 ERA this season at age 36 and, um, 33 saves) to
Lopez (erm, 4.78 ERA) to, uh,
Luther Hackman for his second save of the series, the same number he had all season.
Ed.'s note: I would love to say that is the AI being unorthodox and quirky, but in the right way: Hackman was brilliant in eleven regular-season innings against the Cubs, save for one outing in a nothing game in May, and Proven Closer (TM) Wagner had a 5.79 ERA in five outings (4.2 IP) against the Northsiders. However, he did not blow any saves or get charged with the loss, so I can't reconcile that. Especially since I know that the real reason is the infamous OOTP "oh ****, this guy is age 36 - TOO OLD!!!" internal panic button. But we can pretend.
The playoffs are only magnified because there are less games, you know, but up close there is something so wonderfully surreal about it all that you forget all its flaws.