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MentalDisabldLst
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Jeff Frye said:A good friend of mine who is a Yankee fan gave my direct connect out to this guy, thinking he's funny.
With friends like these, who needs enemies?
Jeff Frye said:A good friend of mine who is a Yankee fan gave my direct connect out to this guy, thinking he's funny.
It's funny....I know the outcome. I know everything that is going to happen next yet it still just gets me every time. Still can't believe the way it all went downAverage Reds said:"Four Days I'm October" is on now. It is glorious.
They always say that a sinker ball pitcher is most effective when he's tired. It looked so effortless and he didn't look like he was even trying to throw hard. He looked a bit like a dart thrower. He did a couple of spinarounds after strikeouts and I was thinking don't rub it in too much. Lowe was always one of my favorite all time Red Sox, hands over ears, lalalalalala when some bad stuff about him came out. He's only human.Oil Can Dan said:Rewatched Four Days again tonight. I had somehow forgotten that DLowe pitched Game 7 on TWO DAYS rest. That is insane.
Who sacked up the most? Curt? DLowe? Tek catching Wake in extras with everything on the line? Roberts having to successfully steal 2nd? Foulke throwing a thousand high intensity pitches over four days?
It's all just so amazing.
Al Zarilla said:They always say that a sinker ball pitcher is most effective when he's tired.
joyofsox said:FWIW, Lowe himself has said that is not true. He said he was whipped after his 6 innings.
There's great stuff in Don't Let Us Win Tonight -- which should be required reading for anyone hanging around this thread. It's like Four Days but with 10x the information. Anyway, Varitek and/or Lowe talked about how Yankee hitters had been tightening up and getting more and more aggressive as the series went on. So Lowe threw 80% offspeed stuff, and the Yankees just screwed themselves into the ground swinging at it. Right guy in the right place. Of course, he commanded it all pretty well too, exhausted or no.HriniakPosterChild said:
Don't distort the narrative with your inconvenient facts.
chrisfont9 said:There's great stuff in Don't Let Us Win Tonight -- which should be required reading for anyone hanging around this thread. It's like Four Days but with 10x the information. Anyway, Varitek and/or Lowe talked about how Yankee hitters had been tightening up and getting more and more aggressive as the series went on. So Lowe threw 80% offspeed stuff, and the Yankees just screwed themselves into the ground swinging at it. Right guy in the right place. Of course, he commanded it all pretty well too, exhausted or no.
DennyDoyle'sBoil said:One of the things that strikes me in all the retrospectives and documentaries is that if I made a list of the top, whatever, 20 memorable moments of the 8 game stretch that started with game 4 of the ALCS, Manny doesn't really factor into it. That's really bizarre. He had a very good playoffs --17 for 46 in the ALCS and WS with 4 walks. Giving him the MVP was, I know, hotly debated, but even if you don't agree with it, he did have a very good World Series, yet in the hard drive of my brain, I just don't have much recollection of Manny in the 2004 playoffs. His biggest game was game 3 of the WS, which may well be the most forgotten of those 8 games, and when it's remembered is remembered mostly for Pedro's brilliance. He was probably the Red Sox' best or second best player during that year, but all the dramatic moments seemed to miss him just a little in that magic 8 game run.
Edit -- actually, 8 walks for Manny.
ItOnceWasMyLife said:Cabrera was excellent at keeping the line moving. He was on base for Bellhorn's game 6 homer, which was a huge insurance run, not to mention if he made an out there, the inning's over with just the one run scored.
He was also on base for both of Damon's game 7 homers.
MLB teams are 0-25 when down 0-3.
Let's say the average team that has a 3-0 lead, had won 100 games, and the other team won 90. (assuming the team with 3-0 leads were usually the better team)
The probability that the better team wins any given game is about 56%. Therefore the probability that the other wins a given game is 44%. Probability that the worse team wins 4 games in a row is 44% ^ 4 = 4%.
So, you'd expect that about 4% of the time a team that is down 0-3 will win the Series. 1 out of 26 is just about 4%, so it wouldn't be that far out of the realm of possibility that we still win this thing.
I remember reading the SoSH thread started immediately after Game 6 ended, discussing who the eff is going to pitch Game 7 and can Lowe possibly give us enough innings, etc. And I remember reading that and feeling exhilarated, but also exhausted. Just spent. After all the long, late, high stress games, and we had just barely survived game 6 by the skin of our teeth, and jesus HOW are we getting through that last game?? All I'm doing is sitting on my couch and I could barely get through it. And we still had to win game 7.Oil Can Dan said:Rewatched Four Days again tonight. I had somehow forgotten that DLowe pitched Game 7 on TWO DAYS rest. That is insane.
Who sacked up the most? Curt? DLowe? Tek catching Wake in extras with everything on the line? Roberts having to successfully steal 2nd? Foulke throwing a thousand high intensity pitches over four days?
It's all just so amazing.
Not potentially. It was indeed an actual big factor. Olerud was a much better player than Clark and his homer against Pedro was key to the MFYs win in game 2. Plus, Clark had that special skill of hitting a ground rule double that should have stayed fair into the right field corner at Fenway and coming up small against Foulke....Rudy Pemberton said:I was at game 6, and re watching it the other day, the 9th was far more intense than I remember. Foulke was laboring- walked two in the inning and had a 3-1 count on Clark. Really running on fumes but Clark looked pretty lacking in confidence too. Honestly, Olerud getting hurt was a potentially big factor in that series.
I live in the burbs of Washington, D.C. On a cold morning in December of 2003, I walked into the old Orioles store on Farragut Square to purchase tickets to every Orioles-Red Sox game in Baltimore for the 2004 season. As usual, I was wearing my Sox hat and when it became clear I was only buying Red Sox tickets, the guy selling me the tickets made some remark about the Red Sox "choking" in the playoffs that fall. I was annoyed and I made some crack about the Orioles. The guy told me that he had been a life long Red Sox fan until they lost in the Bronx. He said something about how he couldn't take it anymore and he was now an Oriole fan. I told him that I was clearly older than him, I had been through more with the Sox than he had and there was no way I could switch teams. When I was done getting my tickets, the guy said something like "Good luck, but go O's!" I turned and looked at him and said "Maybe you were part of the problem? Go Sox!" and walked out the door.sfip said:Anyone who is superstitious can thank SoSHer Buck Showalter for his role.
cannonball 1729 said:
Cabrera drew the walk that chased Kevin Brown from Game 7 and loaded up the bases for Damon. (It was actually a HBP, but it was an 8-pitch AB and the HBP came on a 3-2 count.)
Contrast this with Loaiza, whom they scraped out of the depths of their pen, and his terrific appearance before he finally succumbed to Papi's godliness--including the fact that Papi's game-winner was off yet another tough pitch and barely cleared the infield. As Buck pointed out prior to that: "at no time during the regular season did Loaiza look like this." Knowing this at the time and watching him handle the Sox relatively easily during the innings he pitched was maddening. Had the Yankees won, he could have has his Leskanic moment for the Yankees....and then how many of us would remember Leskanic?wyatt55 said:Looking at the stats - it's surprising to me that with Leskanic's shoulder hanging by a thread and Foulke on fumes and "all hands on deck", we didn't see Ramiro Mendoza after his weak inning plus in Game 3:
Bernie's Single to CF Scoring Sheffield.
Balk, Scoring Matsui.
Posada Pop out.
Sierra K
Olerud 6-3
Then he hits Cairo to start the 4th aaaaand you're out. Never saw him take the mound again.
(He did have 1 inning with no runs, one hit and one HBP in game 1). I mean, I know he was pretty much toast, but he was rested toast . . .
What is that?canyoubelieveit said:
And it was Cabrera that hit the sac fly to bring in the 10th run in game 7. That run was a big relief. It was the first time the Sox were in the "comfort zone", based on the very scientific equation of "16 - the current inning" definition of a comfortable lead for that game. He had several huge game-saving defensive plays in games 4 and 5 too.
Al Zarilla said:What is that?
OK, kind of a rule of thumb I have in basketball is a lead is safe in the fourth quarter if it's double the number of minutes left. I've seen formulas requiring bigger leads than that though. I was nervous in game 7 into the ninth inning. At that point, all other huge comebacks I could remember had been dispelled in my mind but this one:canyoubelieveit said:
I mentioned it earlier in the thread...a friend of mine and I were trying to decide what a comfortable lead would be during game 7, and we decided it was "16 - the current inning". So, we would have been comfortable with a 15 run lead in the first, a 14 run lead in the second, etc. When OCab's sac fly made it 10-3 in the 9th, we should have felt comfortable that the lead was safe.
SemperFidelisSox said:Watched Game 5 today and this sequence in the Top of the 6th stuck out.
Pedro hits the infamous 100 pitch mark as Jeter clears the bases with a triple, 4-2 NY. Pedro was starting to lose it before this point, giving up two straight hits and then plunking Cairo to load the bases. For some reason I remembered it differently and assumed Tito lifted Pedro right after the Jeter triple, but he didn't. Pedro then hits A-Rod and walks Sheffield before finally getting Matsui to fly out. Looking back at it, Tito narrowly avoided disaster sticking with Pedro that long. Three hits, two HBP, a walk, and he still left him in to face Matsui with the bases loaded.
canyoubelieveit said:
...and "getting Mastui to fly out" is a very gentle way of describing the rifling laser shot he hit to right that could easily have cleared the bases and put the nail in the coffin. Leaving Pedro in there was perhaps the worst decision Tito made that series, but it worked out.
There were just so many near-miss events which would have almost certainly lead to a Sox defeat in that series. I bet there are at least 40. What if...
1. ...Rivera doesn't walk Millar?
2. ...Roberts is a split second slower on the SB?
3. ...West doesn't call Roberts safe?
4. ...in the 5th inning of Game 4, if Cairo isn't a split second late trying to turn a double play which Damon barely beat out? 3 runs scored with 2 outs that inning.
5. ...in the 6th inning of Game 4, if Mueller doesn't do an amazing job of blocking Williams trying to take 3rd on a wild pitch, causing his foot to slide over the bag and getting the out? At least one extra run would have scored.
6. ...if the umpire called Williams safe on the play above? (easily, easily could have happened)
7. ...top of the 11th, Game 4, Cairo on second, if Cabrera doesn't make an outstanding diving catch on a line drive by ARod that would have scored the go ahead run
8. ...1st inning of Game 5, if Varitek doesn't surprise everyone by batting righty against Mussina, works a bases-loaded RBI walk
9. ...if Matsui's laser off a gassed Pedro in the 6th isn't an at'-em ball.
10. ...if Nixon's hit and run single with Roberts running is hit right at an infielder for an easy double play?
11. ...if Varitek couldn't get that sac fly off Rivera to tie the game? (no outs I know, but it was easy to imagine Rivera working out of that with strikeouts and weak infield grounders).
12. ...if Tony Clark's ground rule double doesn't magically clear the RF wall?
13. ...if Wakefield threw one more passed ball in the 13th? (I feel like this half-inning should count as 5! Whew)
14. ...if Ortiz' game winning hit doesn't dunk into no-man's land. (top of the 14th would have been the heart of the Yank's lineup against Leskanic)
15. ...if there wasn't a rainout of game 3, causing the last 5 games to be played over 5 consecutive days
16; ;;;if Schilling couldn't make his Game 6 start. (this also should count for many, given the impossible sequence of miracles that allowed him to pitch)
17. ...if Schilling could start but not be dominant, or if he could only pitch a few innings.
18. ...if Varitek couldn't foul off a 2-strike pitch in the 4th after asking for time but not getting it (eventually singling in a run and setting up Bellhorn's HR)
19. ...if Bellhorn's HR call wasn't correctly overturned?
20. ...if Arod's slap wasn't correctly overturned?
21. ...if Clark decided to swing at a 2-0 meatball in the 9th?
22. ...if Clark didn't swing right through the 3-2 88mph fastball?
23. ...if Ortiz didn't change the Game 7 momentum on the first pitch after Damon was thrown out at home?
24. ...if Lowe didn't pitch a one-hitter through 6 inning on 2 days rest?
25. ...if Mientkiewicz doesn't make an amazing scoop to retire Jeter for the first out of the 8th? (maybe this is a stretch, but this was the very moment when I truly believed we would win. If Jeter gets on, the Yanks find a way to score 3-4 off our exhausted bullpen, anything could have happened).
I'll stop there. There are more...I can picture a bunch of "just foul" home runs by the Yankees in these games. And I didn't include things like "what if Ortiz doesn't hit the GW HR in game 4?" because that's just a great player coming through rather than good fortune that went our way. What if Mueller doesn't show bunt and get a more hittable pitch to drive in Roberts? Oh, and Cabrera threw out Mastui at home in the second inning of game 4...
How in the world did we win this series?!?!?!!??!
LahoudOrBillyC said:Had Schilling come to the park unable to pitch Game Six, who would have pitched?