You're not going to get much more extreme than this week's series in Baltimore. The Red Sox had a 99.4 percent chance of winning with no outs in the bottom of the seventh on Tuesday. They lost. The Orioles had a 98.6 percent chance of winning with two outs in the top of the ninth on Wednesday. That didn't work out so well either.
In the end, the Red Sox won the series, kept pace with the Yankees, and won their 20th game in 28 contests. As commenter rootbeerfloat succinctly summarized in yesterday's game thread:
If someone predicted on Monday: Sox win the Lester and Beckett starts, lose the Smoltz start by a run though he pitches well, I would have been happy. It was just hell to live through.
36 replies on “‘Hell to Live Through’”
i heard one of the espn talking heads give these probabilities yesterday paul…i like the graphs better, especially the one from the 6/30 game…nice visual…
Fangraphs is an amazing site. I don’t know how I lived without sites like that, and baseballreference.
Here’s a fun stat, to put things in perspective:
2006 AL East Standings after about 77 games:
Boston……48-29….–
Yankees….45-32…3.0GB
Toronto……45-34…4.0GB
Baltimore….37-44..13.0GB
Devil Rays..35-45…14.5GB
The Tigers were 30 games over .500, LAA was last, and OAK was in first.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/games/standings.cgi?date=2006-06-30
I’ll take another regular season like 2006!
“…I’ll take another regular season like 2006!…”
i know your strictly speaking about the regular season andrew, but i’d prefer to go with one that ended in a ws win, like 2000 for instance…that would be nice…
That last couple days says a lot about the Sox. They lost the night before in embarrassing fashion, were down 4 in the 9th but came up and tied the game. Then won. Very impressive effort by a great team.
hey Jason Bay is becoming a US Citizen today!
Maybe as a celebration he can start hitting again. ;-)
But will there be a photo op with him running onto the field with a tiny flag?
Devine beat me to it with his comment. Be proud, Bay!
Do you guys think the Sox will get him locked up or will he be a Yankee next year?
I think the Sox will sign him, for one reason (which actually involves several other reasons):
Scott Boras is not his agent.
The sub-reasons are: Everyone seems to want a deal done. Bay seems to like Boston and vice versa. He’s not guaranteed to test free agency (like every Boras client has to date). He has spoken in terms that make it clear he’s willing to accept an offer that he considers fair, as opposed to one that he considers “respectful.”
Separately, there’s another left fielder who is a Boras client who will be out there in the off-season for the Yankees to focus on when Matsui’s and Damon’s contracts are off the books.
Manny??? That would be insane…
I think he’s talking about Matt Holliday, Krueg. Right?
Oh yeah…I don’t want him either.
Did you guys see the story about the Cuban defector?
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4302422
Is he going to NY or Boston I wonder…
After watching the post-rain-delay debacle the other night, I was in such pain that this is the first time I’ve actually come back to this or any other blog about the Sox. Couldn’t read the Glob or anything either. So bad…
Yesterday helps me feel a bit better, but a Yankees loss today would really help, you know? Ay.
krueg- watched the chapman kid* (my guess is he’s closer to 30 than 21) during the WBC. he was touched up a bit. hope the sox steer clear of him as he seems more likely an irabu/contreras type.
Kept pace with the Yankees? Aren’t the Sox the pacemakers?
So your mood is determined by how the Yankees do SW as opposed to how your team does???
Weird.
Does seem like a project rod from what I’ve been reading…
hey krueg, the Sox aren’t playing today. The Yanks are. QED.
That makes more sense then…
What does QED mean???
krueg, I refer you to http://lmgtfy.com/?q=qed
I don’t believe the Sox “kept pace” with the Yankees, but rather dropped a game in the standings. The Yanks haven’t lost in a week,t the Sox have lost at least twice. If that’s keeping pace get me outta here, we’ll be well behind come September!
I think they ‘kept pace’ in the sense of not losing a game in the standings in the last one day, SF.
Seems ‘held off’ would be a better term to use.
krueg, I refer you to “>http://lmgtfy.com/?q=qed
Call the fire department, cause you just got burned.
I guess so???
So Jack Nicholson is a Yankee fan? What, does he just choose whichever teams will most annoy Bostonians?
He just has good taste…
IH, I think he just wants to have some old friends for dinner………
CC sucks…streak over. Let the losing streak begin. F-ck.
CC had a bad start.
So did Beckett yesterday.
I remember watching Tom Seaver losing the last game of the 1973 series and thinking that the ace sometimes just doesn’t have it….. I was a kid, then and felt pretty mature for thinking that……but maybe a Mets fan maybe just has to be philosophical sometimes.
Twenty years later I came back to baseball and moved over to the dark side………….:<)
…and just maybe I maybe should edit my posts
“but maybe a Mets fan just has to be philosophical sometimes.”
I tend to believe it’s a prerequisite for the position.
I’m so confused now…
biz and FSP are both Met/Sox fans???
Can’t speak for dabize, but in my case, I’ll be celebrating 10 years of MetSox fandom during this year’s All-Star break: MF since ’91; SF since ’99.
So you doubly hate the Yankees, huh FSP???? :)
Indeed, that antipathy in part precipitated becoming a SF. When I started school in Boston, I never envisioned rooting for the Sox. In the summer of ’99 (the first I didn’t go home) I looked around town and had my epiphany: “What makes these fans seem so familiar to me? Wait a sec, I should be fer ’em, not agin’ em!” Of course, it helps that I don’t remember the ’86 World Series and never want to see that match up happen again.