Rumors of the Yankees death have been greatly exaggerated...The Bronx Bombers took two out of three from the Red Sox, trimming their lead to 9 1/2 games with only 117 left to play. I think it's a bit ridiculous to start counting games now. The debates started on Sunday: have the Sox buried the Yankees? Can a Rocket launch even help the Yankees overcome the light-years lead?
Three short years ago, such blatant tempting of fate would've been unthinkable here in New England. In fact, it still feels like an unnecessary luxury or even like a nervous giggle right before you get the crap kicked out of you, talking about a Sox lead in May. Bad Karma!
But after the ping pong balls set the Celtics back 7 or 8 years on Tuesday night, I say tempt away. There's now way one city can be asked to stomach the death of its storied basketball franchise and collapse against their arch-nemesis in one year right? These things have to even out.
Or do they?...Sean Marshall threw 104 pretty good pitches last night, but the only one that mattered was the one that got away. The Triple A call-up was cruising through 6 innings last night, holding the Padres to two hits and nursing a one-run lead, before giving up a single followed by a 2-0 home run to Kevin freakin' Kouzmanoff and that was it: 7 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 8 SO and another one-run loss.
It was the Cubs 10th such loss this year, a season that's quickly shaping up to be one of the worst in recent memory. Not one of the worst teams, the team is actually good--we think--but one of the worst seasons because of the disparity between talent and results.
Almost exactly a month ago, I mentioned this exact plight on this very site. This week, Jonah Keri touched on it for ESPN.com. If you take a look at the Baseball Prospectus Adjusted Standings--which factor in a lot of important metrics, formulas and corollaries, both real and imagined--the Cubs are actually ahead of the the Brewers in the NL Central.
None of this makes me feel any better as it still leads to a painful, depressing conclusion: the Cubs are losing because they're the Cubs and I'm not quite sure how to handle that. I've had years of practice at overvaluing the squad, thinking they had a shot when they really didn't. That's easy. Been doing it for years. I was even excited when Henry Rodriguez joined the squad back in the day. I was delusional.
But this might be much worse. On paper, the Cubs are a National League favorite. But on that same paper, in a different section, they're still a sub-.500 team trying to stay alive in baseball's weakest division.
Whoever the cosmic accountant is has notoriously shoddy bookkeeping.
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