The Vine: September 18, 2007
“Will It Float?”
Sars,
Oh goddess of all things baseball, can you explain this to me at all? I see this “magic number” posted around Chicago (Cubs fans — can’t live with ’em…) but I don’t understand the process.
Thanks!
JP
Dear JP,
See, it’s the number of games…okay, if the team wins a certain number of…hmm. Towards the end of the season, with the remaining…well, shit. I don’t exactly know. I mean, I know, but I can’t really explain it. I think it’s the number of games the first-place team has to win before the end of the season in order to clinch the division, but let me check.
…Ah, yes. Almost. From The New Dickson Baseball Dictionary, a very handy tome:
The combination of wins and losses that add up to a championship for a first-place team; specif., the total number of games that the leading team in a division or league must win and/or the second-place team must lose to clinch the championship for the leader. If, for example, the Phillies [sic, on both the incorrect possessive and the example used — heh] magic number is six with the Mets in second place, any combination of Phillies wins and Mets losses [sic? …whatever] adding up to six gives the championship to the Phillies.
As of this writing, the Cubbies’ magic number is 12 — so if the Cubs win 7 and the Brewers lose 5, that makes 12, and a Cubs’ division title.
And speaking of the NL Central — I heard on ESPN Radio today (…shut up) that the Cardinals have lost, what, 10 of their last 12? And the latest loss was the 27th time this season their pitchers have given up 10 runs or more? That division is the damnedest thing this year: the Brewers start off like the ’27 Yankees and now even the ’07 Yanks have had a better second half, the Reds looked like some trouble in the spring but did nothing, and Houston’s bringing up the rear? And it’s a fairly long rear, too; I didn’t think that team was that bad.
Weird season in that regard, I feel like — a bunch of teams that looked good in May went tits up, and a bunch we thought were out crawled back in (although the Yankees are just going to get sent home in three by the Angels, so I’m not sure why we’re bothering with the games, frankly). What a game.
Anyway. I’ve left the comments open, so people can work through some grief if necessary.
I can’t talk about the Tigers anymore. I just can’t. It’s all sighing and raised hopes and nope. And I’d feel kinda mean to you, because it’s all hating on the Yankees (and the Indians, of course).
a bunch of teams that looked good in May went tits up
That would be my Dodgers. [sigh] I’m very fortunate, of course, that my Red Sox have had a great season and that the rookies have been so encouraging of late. But those Dodgers. Uggh. First to fourth in a week. Ned Colletti is a fucking idiot. If he had brains, he would have signed Greg Maddux, put Matt Kemp in center from the get-go, and pocketed the difference instead of signing JUAN freaking PIERRE and letting Maddux go to the Padres. But noooo. Of course, it’s not all Frenchy’s fault. This team can’t hit for power to save their lives, they forgot how to field, and the injury bug stole both of the big pitching signings (Schmidt and Wolf). If it weren’t for the rookies and for Vin Scully, I would have stopped watching in the middle of July. But they keep dragging me back in.
Like I said in the other post, I’m with the Dodgers ’til the end, but then I’m jumping on the Phillies bandwagon. I’ve been watching a lot of Phillies games this season as a result of a combination of adoration for Harry Kalas and a couple of strange baseball crushes, and I’ve been rooting for them all season (except for when rooting against them benefits LA).
Re: the NL Central, I think my favorite thing is that they have two sub-.500 teams (Cincinnati and St. Louis) who, as of this morning, hadn’t been eliminated from winning the division — though the Reds have been eliminated from the Wild Card, which is hilarious.
No apologies for ESPN radio. Love me some Herd.
Oh my god, k, I feel you so hard on that one. And yes, so much of it is our own stupid fault, but… but… FUCKING YANKEES!!!
Ah, well. How bout those Lions, eh?
Amanda,
wouldn’t rooting against the Phillies have benefited the Dodgers all season, since they’ve been in competition for the Wild Card? I’m a Phillies fan and I know I’ve been rooting against the Dodgers all season.
(Although I must admit that there was a time in, say, April when it looked like the Phillies might not even play .500 baseball this year… but I prefer not to think of that.)
k and Elizabeth, I knew I could count on some sympathy from you. God. As I’m writing this, we managed to blow a 3 run lead on Cleveland for, what, the second night in a row? And this is with Verlander on the mound. ::sigh::
The Cleveland comentary actually used the word “imploded” to describe Zumaya last night, which I’m absolutely taking as a shout out, because that’s *my* word for when the bullpen fucks up.
Fucking Jeter. Fucking Boston for not keeping their end of the bargain up this weekend.
By “people” working out grief, Sars should have just said “Tigers fans”. ;-)
Isabel – Yeah, it’s strange, I know. But, like, if they’re playing the Mets or the Braves, I can’t bring myself to root against them because I hate those teams so much. And if they’re playing an NL West team, I kind of have to root for them on principle (especially those damn Giants — basement or not, I hate them).
If LA makes the playoffs, I’ll probably suffer a coronary. Rooting for them for any reason other than loyalty is pretty pointless right now. I had a bad feeling about it when they were in first place for most of the first half.
Ugh. Been a lost season for us Jays fans, all the way around. And, even better? The management is all “yeah, uh, we’re not going to make any big changes going into next year.” WHAT?! Sigh… Maybe they’ll figure out how to hit with RISP next year…
EAMUS CATULI
Amanda,
Oh, I understand the hating the Mets and the Braves. When the Mets and the Braves play each other (which happens fairly often, them being in the same division and all) I just hope that, no matter who wins, all the games go sixteen innings and feature such comedy as position players pitching. That way they’ll both be tired and lose against whoever they play next.
Oh, Tigers fans, now don’t you be leaving us Mariner fans out of the “gnashing of teeth and rending of garments” club. Damn you, Mariners, for getting our hopes up again! Damn you!
At the beginning of my maternity leave (May 11- Aug 3) we only watched TV if the Twins were on. Now? I’d rather watch ANYTHING other than a Twins game. WTF happened!! (And the Vikes aren’t looking much better…..) When Johan can’t win consistently, we’re pretty well toast.
I don’t think you have to worry about a coronary, Amanda: the Dodgers just dropped a doubleheader to the Rockies, when Saito gave up a walkoff two-run homer in the second game.
I blame the L.A. Times, which ran a spread today on the wonders of Saito, filled with statistics which are no longer true: only three blown saves, the only regular NL closer still in single digits in runs given up, etc. The sidebar ends with “Rockies hitters are 0 for 14 against Saito with six strikeouts, so if he pitches in today’s doubleheader, it could be game over.”
It was. Just not in a good way.
Feh. When does college basketball start?
Ok, so the Cubs lost tonight and the Brewers won..so does the magic number still stay 12? Since they are tied for first?
It’s bad enough that St. Louis has knocked my beloved Padres out of the post-season two years running, but now, when I actually need them to be good and win take one freaking game from the Phillies they go completely tits up! Damn you LA RUSSA!!!
I’m feeling your pain, Amanda, the NL West has been all over the map the second half but it looks now like the Dodgers picked the wrong time to go into the tank. Really loving Maddux though, thx :).
I LOVE that the Yankees are coming for the Sox. I hate me some Red Sox like most people hate the Yankees. The Sox act like they’re all Luke Skywalker against the Yankees Vader, but $143 million in payroll says you’re the empire too, you’re just not as good at winning.
I just have to say that this is one of the most memorable Septembers in baseball for some time. Four of the six divisions, including ALL the NL divisions are totally up for grabs with two weeks left, and the NL wildcard could legitimately go to any of five different teams.
Watch out if the pads get into the post, NL pitching triple-crown winner Jake Peavy, ERA #2 man Chris Young, and Future Hall of Famer Greg Maddux make for one hell of a short-series rotation.
Love September.
The Cubs’ number remains 12; however, the Brewers’ have now acquired a magic number and it is also 12. Heh.
Meanwhile…whaaaaat’s up, Mets? Didn’t those guys have a 1986ian hammerlock on the NL East most of the season? What, Pedro comes back and everyone decides to just mail it in? Seriously, I’m asking.
PTBNL: I know. Blech. On the bright side (for me, anyway), that makes the Red Sox and their magical shrinking lead the good news of my week. I just want the Dodgers to go back home and finish the season and get all this misery and losing over with. Ugh.
Darrel: Srsly be quiet plz. :P Much as I love me some Mad Dog — and I love me some Mad Dog — I’m hoping he has a postseason performance similar to the one he had for LA last year (4 IP, 7 H, 4 ER, 2 BB, 0 K). I’ve no qualms about destroying his postseason numbers when he’s pitching for the wrong team. ;) Felt the exact same way when he was a Brave; it’s just more fun now.
I’ve moved a bit, and have baseball loving family in different parts of the country, which means I have a trail of teams I still sort of follow and love all over the divisions (although no more than one in any division, which is important). But with all these titles still up in the air (not to mention during inter-league play) I find myself doing a very complicated algebra about wins and losses — on any given night I might I need Arizona to beat the Brewers, for the sake of the Cubs, but only if San Diego also wins to keep up pace, and Boston should always win (I know, I know, they’re the evil empire too, but at least they’re allowed to have facial hair) but that gets trickier in years when the White Sox aren’t trying to out-lose the Royals. I think I need a spreadsheet.
Sars, if we could explain the Mets…
I flipped away from the game last night to watch Biggest Loser (hee), with the Mets up by 4 or something, only to flip back and now we’re losing 9-7?
Sigh. The last week has not been a happy one.
I feel for all of you as you watch your season slide away…but as you reflect on how your team came close and then blew assbubbles at the end think of me – a Texas Rangers fan, season tickets and all. Make ya curse Jeter a bit less. Oh and thanks for taking Pay-Rod off our hands…
Yeah, that MVP season he’s having that basically kept the Yankees afloat long enough to get their shit together and contend has been a real bummer. heh.
The Rangers historically seem like a pretty good team on paper and then it’s a mystery why they can’t get it together, but this year…whew. It’s just bad.
Oh lordy, fellow Tigers fans, I hear you. Who was in Cleveland for that awful loss last night? Oh, that was me, in the middle of a million terrifying Indians fans. Biiiiig sigh.
You can calculate magic numbers yourself by taking the number of games the trailing team has remaining, subtract the difference in the win totals, then adding one.
So the Red Sox Magic Number over the Yankees is 9 (11 Yankee Games Remaining – 3 more Red Sox Wins + 1)
The Yankees Magic Number to win the Division is 14 (10 Red Sox Games + 3 more Red Sox Wins +1)
The Yankees Magic Number for the Wild Card is 7
The Padres Magic Number for the Wild Card is 11.
Sigh. I mean, the Astros are a good team on paper, but it has been hard to watch our team stumble over themselves all year. It looks like next year will depend a lot on young talent. Again, sigh.
Wacky season indeed. I spent a glorious summer at many a Rockies game thinking that THIS could be the year. I still love them (and haven’t given up hope yet), and sorry Dodgers fans, but yesterday was kind of lovely for Rox fans. I’d hate to have us roll over and die after such a fun season. Tulowitzki for Rookie of the Year…
Ten of the last twelve games? Pfft, big whoop! You want ridiculous losing streaks, you should watch the Seattle Mariners. Ridiculous losing streaks are what we do best here! And then we finally start pulling ahead last month and it looks like, holy shit, we might actually take the wild card slot and everybody’s back to talking baseball on the bus in the morning and then. . . GAHHHHHH!!!
“Pay-Rod” — heh. Did you know he STILL gets booed at every at-bat in Seattle? Occasionally, he even gets showered with Monopoly money, though that’s tapered off the last couple of years (more’s the pity for Milton Bradley, I guess). Given how torturously emotional baseball seems to be for all of us every season, why is it we still cannot get enough?
Yeah what a wasted season for us Jays fans, Tony. And of course, I also had to start cheering for the Mariners this year. So I’m oh-for-two.
Personally, seeing both the Yanks and Red Sox play lately…I have to say NY looks much more dangerous. Your line-up is just plain deadly!
When does hockey season start?
So, I’m just going to come out and say it. Hi, I’m Bloody Munchkin and I’m a SF Giants fan (Hi Bloody!). Talk about wasted seasons. I’ve been crying bitter tears all season. This season has been nothing but pathetic hasbeens and blown saves for us. Wake me when it’s April.
“so if the Cubs win 7 and the Brewers lose 5,”
I’m a WI-to-CO transplant, so it KILLS to type this, but yeah, the Brewers will lose those 5…
My sister was visiting from WI & I got tickets for her & my daughter to see the Rockies-Brewers game – right behind the Brewers’ dugout. Sis called me & said “It’s only the third & we’re down by eight – but GREAT SEATS!!!”
Good thing they serve beer at the stadiums, huh? Poor kid.
Buggy’s Mom: I KNOW! After all the preseason excitement about what a dogfight the AL Central was going to be this year, the Twins never did really turn into much of a threat. (Neither did the White Sox, which, let me tell you, if the Twins have to stink up the place so badly this year, at least we have the joy of seeing the Sox paddling around in the bowl with us.)
Sigh. What hurts the most is when EVERYONE knows that the team is better than this. We know it, they know it, caribou farmers in Siberia know it. We have the MVP, the batting champ, the Cy Young, a Gold Glover, and the ghost of Kirby Puckett on our side! What gives??? It breaks the heart, it really does.
This offseason had better be a blockbuster, is all I have to say. Pity poor Bill Smith. And pray for a little purse-opening by the Pohlads.
As my friend Mel always says whenever my Cards lose spectacularly (as they certainly have done recently,) “Today, your team was apparently not moved to play baseball.”
This month, my team was apparently not moved to play baseball.
Ugh. I’m one of the Cardinal Nation in agony. Three weeks ago, we reached .500 for the first time since April, and now this. Injuries have killed us, and the little fixes they have tried with the rotation have not panned out at all. I finally gave up the mental ghost this weekend after giving 3 of 4 to the Cubs.
Fortunately, my pain is lessened by the memories from last October when the 83-win longshots gathered just enough crazy magic to pull it together.
I’ve been a baseball fan for only three seasons. I feel secure and safe that September will feature my Phillies making an unexpectedly successful run for it, lots of gut-wrenching ups and downs, changing who I root for daily depending on the matchups, all wrapped up with us missing the wild card by one game. I will be confused and bewildered if we make the post season, because that’s not how it goes!
And hee — when Meg mentioned Milton Bradley, I thought she meant the Padre with the (undeservedly) world-class attitude, not the board game company! Mr. Bradley made no friends in Philadelphia during San Diego’s visit a month ago. Obviously I’m still quite worked up about it, given I jumped right to fuming and missed the “Monopoly money” connection.
“Mr. Bradley made no friends in Philadelphia during San Diego’s visit a month ago.”
1) He never does — guy’s a nuthatch, and 2) he’s probably not going to win any awards from Dbacks fans, either, given how hard he dissed Eric Byrnes in last week’s SI:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/
baseball/mlb/09/11/byrnes0917/index.html
Aw, y’all, don’t hate on the Braves too bad. We only won the ONE time, after all. Management now seems pretty determined to keep us in 2nd or 3rd for, oh, forEVER. Plus, I mean, hometown boy Jeff Francoeur. How can you NOT love him.
Hate on the Mets, though, because Tom Glavine is an ass. :)
Sars, I hear you on the Mets. I’ve been a fan since I was a kid, so I’m certainly used to some disappointment, but this collective meltdown they’ve been having lately is killing me. I mean, okay, maybe there was some weird psych-out thing happening when they were playing the Phillies, but two games down to the Nationalists? Really?? Come on, guys, pull yourselves together. I don’t know if I can stand to watch tonight.
I’m amused by how many of us are Tigers fans.
Amusingly, I’m a Tigers fan living in Portland, OR, so my slow depression and sense of loss came a week or two after my boss’s experience of the same – he’s a Mariners fan.
(Team loyalties are funny things, esp here in the city where we have *one* team. Plus, lots of people who live here didn’t grow up here. So I’m a Tigers fan for reasons too complicated for here, but my football team is always and forever the Redskins.)
Am I the only one with a secondary rooting team in nearly every sport? Like, Redskins trump all in football, but my second team is the Steelers because my family is from Pittsburgh and they’re my mom’s favorite and I know whenever they win, it makes my beloved uncles and aunts and cousins happy.
Emm- Oooooh, honey. I feel for you. ::shudders::
k- Nah, I have secondary teams, too. Tigers trumps all, but I’ve kinda adopted the Cubbies, because they were still close to home and I’m a sucker for an underdog. Also, they’re NL, so I’m allowed. Ditto to the Astros (family ties, in that case). Also, I’m a Tiger’s fan living in Florida. I live closest to the DRays, but NO one is a fan of them in Orlando. Everyone here is still rooting for their “home” (read: northern) team. heh
In other news, I’ll be seeing the Red Sox play in Tampa on Saturday with some friends. I assumed that would be a lock for the Sox, but after they completely blew their end of the deal this last weekend, I’m not so sure I even want to root for them.
Darrel – Celebrate, my beloved Cards have finally managed to win one against the Phillies!! It took ’em 10 innnings, but at least they managed win 1 of the 2 games I’ve been to this season!
This has just been a heart-breaking year, they just keep coming “this close” to pulling out of whatever slump or funk they find themselves in (or keep putting themselves in). The real blow was last weekend’s 3-1 series against the Cubs.
Heh, “work through some grief,” indeed. Dear Red Sox: Please remember how to play good baseball. Soon. love, Boston. FloridaErin, I feel you. Sometimes it does not feel so good to be a Sox fan. And a lot of those times are called “September” and “October.” Sigh.
Amanda — I wasn’t completely on board with your assessment of the Dodgers’ season until last night. After JB served up yet another game-losing effort, I am ready to throw in the towel.
Don’t get me wrong. I still love our boys, and I’m still attending the two games for which I have tickets next week. But we’re done.
On the plus side, I’ll be going to a Nationals-Phillies game this weekend, and I will be pulling for the Nats out of spite. Out of everyone left in the NL race at this point, I think I’d like to see Colorado and the Cubs face off in the NLCS.
Meanwhile, I’ll be slowly packing up my Dodger gear for the winter. But ’08 is gonna be our year!
Ah, another sap! Hello, Chris. Yeah, I basically gave up after today’s loss. I know they’re still “in it,” not having been mathematically eliminated, but c’mon. They got swept by Colorado. They have a less than 1% chance of making the playoffs. It ain’t happening. But I’ll hang around to the end. It’d be great if MLB.TV gives me the Dodgers broadcasts next week. Sometimes they give me the visiting team’s broadcast when the Dodgers are at home. Not cool.
I’d like to see the Cubs win the pennant, especially if it involves beating the crap out of the Padres in the process.