Figured we might need a thread not specifically about the Red Sox or Yankees. This is just about the American League playoff race. The Angels lead the West by 10 games. The Twins got Liriano back today and might be the logical favorite in the Central. The wild-card could come from the East, especially if Tampa hangs tough against Boston.

Until the Yankees fix their rotation, they are on the outside looking in. Ian Kennedy could replace Rasner in the rotation on Friday night after stifling the PawSox today. Phil Hughes and Carl Pavano (!) are due back by the end of August. Forget Wang. He's done for the season.

The Yanks play 16 of their next 19 games on the road. Unless they turn into a road juggernaut, the pinstripers might be eight games out by the time they get back home.

My own unbiased opinion is the Yanks will kick ass on the road as Xavier Nady jump-starts the offense and gets everyone into the act.

I don't think the Rays are missing the playoffs this year ... which means, the Sox or the Yanks, or both, are out ...

IF Liriano can pitch like he used to a few years ago, Twins take that division easily I think, although I still wouldnt count out the Tigers

Personally I think the Sox SP will be good enough to outlast the Yanks ... and the loser of the AL Central ....


Should be interesting ... some good NL races as well

Of all non-moves of the past few years, I am most thankful that the Sox did not pick up Carl Pavano. Since signing his deal with the Yanks in the '04-'05 offseason he has gone 5-6 in 19 starts. Over 4 seasons. Consider me unconcerned about the impact of a guy who has pitched 2 games in the majors since 2005.

I doubt the Yankee players would let Pavano in the locker room. He has been persona non grata with his teammates since the end of the 2006 season when it became apparent he was more interested in chasing skirts in Tampa than seriously working on his rehab.

Forget the records, look at these and tell me which team has played the best and which team you think should be in first:



These are the pyths for the three teams:



Who are the four teams?:

I don't think that is even a little bit in doubt. Did you see his numbers in AAA? In 11 starts he was 10-0 2.67. I can't find his H/K/BB but I remember hearing they were incredible.

I know, those numbers have been baffling me all season long, especially the Angels. That's why K-Rod has so many saves already. LA is always playing low-scoring games and winning them, like the 1-0 loss they hung on the Yanks on Friday night. But the Angels have been hitting well and averaged over 6 runs per game in July. With Teixeira in their lineup, I suspect their pyth will improve.

Tampa's another team that wins a lot of games late, although I don't believe in their bullpen. They need a Joba-like entrance from David Price later this month. If he is the real deal, they're going to be hard to beat. Bottom line, Percival is still their closer, and only Grant Balfour has the kind of stuff to replace him.

The Yanks' true talent level may be higher at this point than their RS/RA from this season suggests because they got Marte, Nady, and Rodriguez for a half a pack of ABC gum. While it is nice to know that the Sox have outplayed their record to this point in the season, only the Ws and Ls count in the standings, not the run differential. It'll be interesting going forward.

Jackson, you bring up a good point about the home and road splits. The Yankees have right now played 62 home games and 49 road games. It will take them playing 16 of the next 19 on the road just to break even. The Rays have played 59 games at home and 51 games on the road. The Red Sox have played 56 games at home and 56 on the road, and are headed out on the road now for 7 more.

I'm not sure how important home/road is in a pennant race, but the Rays and the Yanks both end the season with the final week on the road, and play more games in September away, while it is reversed for the Red Sox. The Rays have a much harder schedule on paper down the stretch, and play the Red Sox and Yankees 9 straight games at one point. They still have one more trip to West Coast....the Yankees have to go West twice, while the Sox are done with the West Coast.

Again, I'm not sure how much of an advantage it will actually turn into, although Home/Road has had a more significant bias this year throughout the majors than any year in recent memory. Only 5 teams in the majors have a winning road record (in the AL there are 2-Yanks and Angels).

If the Red Sox play .500 on the road, they should win the division. If they keep playing to their current losing percentage on the road, the division title will be up for grabs.

I notice the idiot Joe Morgan said last night that the Sox will miss Manny on the road because star players are supposed to step up in road games. Wonder where he got that from? It's still a team game, in my opinion, and the Sox are a better team today than they were a week ago.

It always comes down to pitching, especially when you consider that all 3 east teams can hit. The Yankees don't have great pitching and while Hughes may help, he didn't show much earlier in the season and I can't see him getting better under the pressure of the pennant race. The big questions for them are whether Mussina can keep it up and do they have any sort of bullpen. The Sox are pretty well set in starting pitching although I think we'd all be happier if Beckett were a little sharper. Buch is a non-factor, most teams aren't going to have a great #5 anyhow. The real questions for the Sox are whether Papelbon can get back his usual sharpness and most importantly whether the rest of the pen can keep them in games. The Sox pen is about as suspect as it's ever been right now. The Rays seem to have all the pieces in place, but I still can't believe that Shields and Garza are very good pitchers, however they keep putting up the numbers. The Rays pen is also really surprising, but again, can those guys sustain it in a big game. The Rays seem to have a lot of great comeback wins this year - yesterday being a prime example. But they could go into a tailspin if they lose a couple of close ones and their pen blows a couple of leads.

As for the Wild Card, the Sox have a good chance to take it to the White Sox in the next couple of weeks and could knock them so far back it won't matter much (they are actually in 2nd today behind the Twins). You have to think Liriano will help the Twins (and also wonder why they kept him down so long), but you have to wonder how they've managed to stay in the race (they're terrible outside of the division and they're another team with 10 more road games than home games the next 2 months.)

So it will come down to who can put together the best pitching performances in the East. I think the WC comes out of the East and hopefully it's the Rays and Yanks fighting for it down the stretch while the Sox enjoy a September with only 9 road games and 3 off days.

Well, Morgan has his absolutes, or truisms (to him). My "favorite": whenever a black player is on base, he's fast, whereas with whites, it's "he doesn't run well". I haven't heard an opinion from him on Ellsbury yet, but he probably somehow fits the mold because he's 1/2 Navajo.

Speaking of Manny, I haven't heard a single opinion of him in the SF bay Area that wasn't that he quit on the Red Sox. They love him in LA though.

Good thread, Jackson. I knew the Rays had a lot of roadwork to do going forward, and that the Sox were 50 - 50 home-road, but I didn't know the Yanks had such a big split differential home-road.

Yanks also finish the season with three on the road at Toronto and three at Fenway. That means they have to solidify their playoff standing before then. I think they have to start making their move now, on this road trip. This revamped offense is good enough to carry the team through some poor starting pitching performances, as it did yesterday. The Yanks needed a righthanded hitter to balance the lefty-leaning lineup and now they have two new ones -- Nady and Pudge to go along with A-Rod and the late Derek Jeter.

Alas, the bullpen seems to be springing leaks and Mo couldn't pitch yesterday due to back spasms. He says they're temporary. We'll see if he's available tonight. They lose him for two weeks and they're dead in the water.

By the way, the temperature right now in Dallas is 107 degrees. Joba's going to sweat off a few pounds tonight.

The late Derek Jeter . Actually, I'm not a Jeter hater like a lot of Red Sox fans. He's always carried himself well, says the right things, and seems to put team first. I looked up Dallas, and Arlington TX weather and the humidity is low, if Weather.Com is to be believed. 31% in Arlington. Vicente Padilla, going tonight for TX, has 12 wins! Lot of run support. Joba vs. Hamilton ought to be some fun ABs. This turned into a Yankee game thread post.

Tampa fans are hard to find in New England. But the purpose of this thread is to give the Rays some exposure. The big news today for the Rays is they are going to make a decision on Rocco Baldelli, who is trying to regain a roster spot and perhaps DH following his long battle against a muscular fatigue disorder. Rocco is now wearing a full beard which I imagine he will shave off if they activate him.

Jeter has always been a wonderful player to follow, assuming you like the Yankees, of course. And if he's starting on the downslide of his career, that doesn't mean I admire him any less. A lot of players start to go down at his age. His bat will be dangerous down the stretch, just doesn't seem like he hits the ball hard as frequently. He's up to 18 GIDPs this season and bunted Damon over in the first inning on Sunday rather than go for No. 19.

Great thread Jackson. I know that Rays fans in New England are hard to come by but they are not exactly coming out in overwhelming numbers in Central Florida either. That is sad because this team should be easy for the locals to get behind. The excitement they generate reminds me of that late second half surge by Rick, Pedro, Jake and the rest of the Major League Indians.

The last series at Fenway could really put a damper on either New York's or Boston's post season. If either the division or the wild card is still up for grabs, the team that makes it in will go with a depleted pitching rotation. Add that to it being NY vs Boston and it makes for a very exciting last weekend.

I keep waiting of the Rays to fade. Last night was a perfect example. There were a few times where the Devil Rays would have found a way to lose tha game. The Ryas however, found a way to win.

The Angels and Yankees finale was a fun game to watch too. I'm still upset that the Yankees gave up next to nothing for 3 big contributors but I have to get over that. Nady is going to be the most important though.

The Sox just have to play better. I know that sounds simple but if several of their players just play up to their potential then they will be allright.

I actually envy Rays fans because there's nothing more fun as a fan than to watch your team become a contender. Yankees and Red Sox fans must deal with holding serve every season and making the playoffs, otherwise the season is a failure. That's why 1976 and 1996 were special years for me. They ended long droughts.

Detroit kind of handed that game to Tampa on Sunday, thanks to Farnie and Rodney. But that's what happens in pennant races. Good teams take advantage of weaknesses in their opponents.

Boston is meeting a Kansas City team that must be on a high right now after the bitter series with Chicago over the weekend. You've got to jump on them early. Gil Meche tonight. Should be interesting.

Rays have something like 32 games in September and 17 of those on the road (per Sox radio broadcast). We'll see how they deal with adversity.

Joba struggles in the 5th, is pulled with two outs, points to his right shoulder when the trainer comes to the mound along with Girardi.

In other news, Phil Hughes will throw around 65 pitches on Thursday against Pawtucket.

And Ian Kennedy, who has been buried by Cashman and Girardi, has to come back soon.

It's two weeks after the last post on this thread, and the AL playoff race is a little easier to define. The Twins and White Sox are both hot, and they are in a division with three sad sack teams that are likely to give up in September -- Detroit, Cleveland and Kansas City. While the Red Sox and Rays are battling the Yankees, Jays and Orioles, the two Central Division playoff contenders will be facing three mediocre teams lacking any incentive other than playing the "spoiler" role.

As for the longshot contenders, the Yankees have nine games left with Toronto. They start off with Rasner against Burnett on Tuesday in Toronto. Most likely, these two teams will kill each other off by playing to a standstill. And then there are the Orioles, who refuse to give up on the season. What if all five teams in the East finished above .500? It's possible.

Make that FOUR teams likely to give up in September, jackson. This last series the White Sox absolutely clobbered the Mariners.

Talk about all their problems, faults, bad decisions being exposed all in one series...the M's pitchers have struck out only TWO batters in their last six starts according to Dave Cameron over at USSMariner.

Yikes.

Good. Yanks have three left with the Ms out in Seattle. That should offset their three losses in LA on the same road trip.

By the way, Richie Sexson should be back home by now. We made him walk.

The Angels barely squeaked out the final game of that series in St. Petersburg(which was still only about 65-75% full despite the two highest records in the AL playing an important game). We don't lose any ground tonight.

I have to believe that the race for the AL Central is going to knock one of the two teams(probably Chicago) out of the Wildcard as well.

The East still probably comes down to the 6 head-to-heads. We have a more favorable September schedule by the numbers(though Toronto always plays us tough, no matter how much they suck); so if we take 4 of the 6 left, it could be enough to give us the edge(especially with Percival, Longoria, and Crawford on the shelf). We'd have to play lights out baseball though. If Tampa goes .500 the rest of the way, they still get 95 wins. We'd have to go 22-13 to match that, which is a higher win percent than they;ve had in any full month this season(August is on the right pace so far though, so it's possible).

Going only by numbers, it just might be the time to resign ourselves to the wild card, but I still don't respect Tampa as a contender. Their lineup and bullpen are both overproducing beyond rationality(and now missing three huge parts), and the only thing I think they have over most of the AL is a solid 5 man rotation without a hole like Buchholz or Rasner who will doom you every fifth day. No team with Eric Hinske starting every day should be anywhere near a division title.

I'm real glad I didn't head up to Baltimore tonight, I was kicking myself for not being able to make it at least ONCE with my **** schedule, but this eased the pain. I would've been a drunken irritated mess tonight after drinking $2 Natty Bo's.

****ing POS Angels - can't win a game when WE do. I'm pretty convinced now it's a WC race - it's just not falling our way but you never know. Clay is absolutley killing me.

The Yankees could be a dangerous team to play in their new spoiler's role. They have a chance to really hurt Boston with three games in New York early next week.

It's hard not to respect the Rays, especially the way they've played the Angels this week. The Sox still have them home and away so if they can make up some ground before then, they have a chance to close the gap. The thing that amazed me about the Rays all year is how they've overcome injuries time after time. Certainly they're playing over their collective heads, especially the pitching, but you have to give them credit for not folding. What I don't get is how they get an empty house when the Angels come to town and they're playing for the best record in the league.

Maybe the Angels don't bring their own fans, the way Boston and the Yankees do. Or perhaps the weather had something to do with it.

It's the first one. Fay is on the east coast. If they can't get people to the park with they way they've played then the people of Tampa/St Pete don't deserve a winner.

Don't senior citizens deserve a franchise, too?

my son lives about 30 miles due north of Tampa and you can rest assured that all precautions were taken....i'm surprised the games were played at all...your point, however, remains valid.

The storm may have kept some people home but the place has been empty all 3 nights. When we went there there were a lot of Sox fans, but there were a lot more Rays fans. This was a great series for them, and it makes it tough to run a franchise if you're in a big series like that and nobody shows up.

Let's move them to Boston and put them in the National League.

Angels fans would be too busy drooling on themselves, or wondering when Tampa Bay got a team, or trying to figure out who the hell Mark Teixeira is and how to say "Teixeira," to actually show up at a road game on the other side of the country.

It would have been great if they were there, though. I can hardly imagine the battle of the brains that would go on between Rays fans and Angels fans.

Build a ballpark on Commonwealth Ave. and call it Braves Field. Put a seating section in RF and call it the jury box. I wonder, and I know the Red Sox would fight it tooth and nail if it ever got close, but could Boston support two teams nowadays? Probably better than some cities support their one team. But, why water down what the Red Sox have going.

It would be as good as the battle of the brains between their organizational philosophies. All the bunting and hitting and running and double stealing that series made me sick to my stomach. I do respect Mike Scioscia though, and think he's very smart despite the backwardsness of his style. If the Angels and Rays met in the ALCS, it'd be a 75 year old high school coach's wet dream.

Fixed that one for you.

One more reason that Viagra is evil: Old guys being able to have wet dreams.

Eh, what the hell. I guess if they're pissing their pants anyway, they might as well throw a little something extra in there for the laundry.

If the economy continues to suck for another year or two, I could see some of the weaker franchises contemplating a move. Boston could support two teams as long as ticket prices for the new team remained within reason. Maybe the new team would be seen as an alternative to the Red Sox. That's the way it used to be in two-city baseball teams 50 or 60 years ago. Except in New York where all three teams flourished during the 1940s and early 1950s.

Problem is the Braves came down to an average "crowd" of 3,677 folks in their last season in Boston, and that was just four years after they went to the world series against Cleveland. I think that will always be remembered by any franchise looking around even though it was so long ago. The three New York teams were doing much better, but nothing like today. There is a really good HBO documentary about the Dodgers "deserting" Brooklyn, and much less about the Giants leaving also. Maybe you've seen it. Good attendance site:

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/teams/laatte.shtml

Getting way OT here.

More people go to games now, perhaps because we've got nearly 100 million more people in this country than in the 1950s. I remember when the Yankees and Pirates considered it a good year when they drew more than 1 million fans in a season. Bad teams do that nowadays, except for Florida. Now there's a franchise that should be moved.

The Braves did pretty well despite having crappy fans for the last 20 years.

Problem was that you'd often get the overwhelming favorite and the poor cousin with two teams in the same city, like Red Sox - Braves, and Cards - Browns. The puzzler was Philadelphia, in which the A's had by far the better teams over the decades than the Phillies, but the A's ended up moving. I don't think we'll see another team in Boston, at least until after the next ice age.

Here in Charlotte the talk of MLB comes up every few years. I think the showing in Tampa Bay is indicative of small market team support, no matter how well the team does. As much as I'd love to have a team here, everytime it comes up I ask people, who will go to a game on a sweltering July night when the Royals are in town? You need the large population base to just get enough casual fans dropping in on a weeknight to make any money. A second team probably would work in Boston, since there is such pent up demand for Sox games. I would think they'd remain a second team for quite some time.

North Carolina is a mecca for big-time college sports, especially football and hoops. People who live there would rather play golf in the summer than go watch a baseball game. And then there's NASCAR. If Charlotte could support a MLB team, it would have one already. I imagine the initial surveying of people's interests would put MLB baseball about fifth on the list of things to do for an average sports fan.

The talk about bringing MLB to Charlotte is never a serious thought though. Charlotte just gets used as a pawn b/c it's one of the biggest cities w/o a team & it's a city that aggressively promotes growth & that sort of thing. There's no way the QC could support MLB.

Which is exactly why it would be a tough market. "Aggressively promotes growth" is another way of saying "is full of transplants from other parts of the country."

Oklahoma City can support an NBA team, sure. Because who the f**k grows up in Boston or Philadelphia or Chicago and says, "You know, I'd really like to move to a city that's smack dab in the middle of the flattest, brownest, dustiest, ugliest state in America, so I can sit around all day counting tornadoes and taunting all the Native Americans because we took their good land and stuck them on a reservation in the middle of this crap state"? Nobody. So it's all locals, who have been waiting their whole lives for something, anything at all, that might discourage them from jerking off a horse or putting a shotgun in their mouth.

A city with a relatively warm climate, situated relatively close to the coast? Forget it. Anyone who cares already has a team. Maybe the local economy benefits from having a big league team, but really, if anything, the local market benefits more from having a minor league team. More affordable. More accessible. I don't know anyone who wasn't born and raised in L.A. that gives a rat's ass that we don't have an NFL team here. Same thing. Who cares? I wouldn't drop 50 bucks for a ticket to see some team that I don't even like play football anyway.

That's exactly right, but not where I was going with it.

Politicians here fall all over themselves to bring things like this to the city, offering anything they can to get 'stuff' here. That's why Charlotte makes such a good pawn when teams are threatening to leave their current city.

Oklahoma City. The chamber of commerce brags that the maximum wind velocity is 50 mph. Problem is that that's also the average wind velocity. I drove through there once, and the north side of everything is covered with the red dirt the place is made of. I guy I know that worked there for some years said there's nothing but two barbed wire fences between there and the North Pole, so it's cold as a sumbitch, and also, alas, the wind. OK City will be more successful than Seattle in supporting an NBA team? This will have to be the least favorite stopping place for all the other teams. Prove me wrong. Off day meanderings.

Well, of course. City leaders aren't going to say, "You know, we have a lot of people from Buffalo here. They probably aren't going to care about the Charlotte Webs. We should probably give up on the MLB idea."

But while "Our taxpayers would love to pay for a new baseball stadium with lots of luxury boxes" is an enticing pitch when you have teams in other markets playing in crappy venues and struggling to draw fans...if the market itself isn't viable, then it's really only tempting as a short-term fix. If you're a team in the northeast, or Chicago, or another big market, it doesn't matter whether you're giving some of your profits away to a crappy low-revenue team in Miami (or Tampa) or a crappy low-revenue team in Charlotte. You're still giving money away to subsidize a team that nobody cares about.

Not that a city full of transplants can't succeed as a new market – but I'd want to be convinced with more than just a shiny new stadium.

Hell no! I would never get to see the Red Sox if they did that. I decided to keep my tickets for the three games at St. Pete, I am going with my son. The Rays have played the Sox very well the last couple of years at the Trop. It should be a fun series. I will be sitting behind the Rays dugout for all three games and I can be the heckler. I will be wearing my Sox gear. I am looking forward to that series.
These aren't the Rays of the past, they are young and excited and have come up big late in games, definately not the Rays I have been used to. They are much better since the Sox got Lugo.


Meanwhile, Beckett is now hurting, Buch is at Portland and the bullpen sucks. It is going to be tough to get over the hump. My hope is they hit a little skid and their young kids panic. Otherwise, I think they will take the division. We need to do well against Toronto to have a shot.

PS Fay is drowning us down here!