Astros
« 07/27/2005 | Main | Four Months In -- Who's Hot & Who's Not? »With yesterday's big win over the Mets and the evil Carlos Beltran, the Astros caught the Nationals for the wild card lead last night. The Astros have gone 18-2 in their last twenty non-Cardinal games. How big does that sweep of Pettitte, Oswalt and Clemens look now? If the broom had gone the other way, then we're looking at a lead that's smaller than the number of Cardinal regulars on the disabled list.
Their recipe for success is no secret. Clemens's back is bothering him and Oswalt's always an injury concern, but unless Larry Walker's caused a nationwide shortage of painkillers, they'll probably manage. Their comeback and the A's similar rally -- ESPN.com has gone "pay" for almost everything, but evidently even Joe Morgan's calling the A's the best team in baseball right now -- are the stories of the middle third of the season.
Posted by Rob at July 29, 2005 05:53 AMAgain, the Astros have a much better shot of winning the wild card, winning a short first-round series and beating the Cardinals in the NLCS than they do of actually finishing ahead of them for the division title.
Something's not right here ...
Posted by: Pip at July 29, 2005 01:23 PMRight on, Pip -- but MLB will never remove the wild card because it gives hope to all the second place teams out there, which means more fannies in the seats in September. You have to be a real baseball fan to go to a game in September between two teams that have nothing to play for.
TSF
Posted by: TedSimmonsFan at July 29, 2005 01:58 PMYeah, I've been converted from a critic of the wildcard to a fan. It does make it that much harder for a great regular season team to win the WS, but it also gives almost great teams something to fight for during the season.
The fact is, modern teams need to be built for the regular season AND for short series. And there's still a good deal of luck involved no matter what!
I'm too lazy now to look it up, but I think of all those years Atlanta got to the finals and couldn't win it, all their great teams, and I don't believe those coincided with the wild card era.
Posted by: Ryan at July 29, 2005 02:50 PMSeveral of them did. The wild card came into being in '94 with the three-division format, and the Braves' first of their run of division titles was '91. And only three of their nine lost series in postseason during the three-division/wild card era were to wild card teams.
Posted by: MO Boiler at July 30, 2005 12:19 AMOne of my coworkers had a great idea (whether home field advantage means anything or not is to be determined), but the disadvantage of 1 game in each series for a wild card team isn't enough: if you win the wild card, you are NOT exempt from playing the best team first round if they are from your division, AND, the first three games of a five game series are home field for the non wild-card, 4th to the WC, and 5th to the non WC.
7 game series goes 3 to the non WC, 1 to the WC, 1 to the non WC, 1 to the WC, 1 to the non WC.
Posted by: Vincent at July 30, 2005 12:38 AMI've been an Astros fan my whole life and don't think I'll ever see a bigger game than when Jeff Kent hit his walk-off home run to win Game 5 of last year's NLCS. Although I don't really like the Cards very much, I have to admit, that much like my Astros, your team plays hard and is solid all around (it's not like the Cubs who whine and blame their team's incompetance on a 80-year old billy goat). That being said, I hope you have seen enough of the series in Houston this weekend to know that we in Houston now realize that Betran is evil and always will be. I'd never take back those homeruns he hit for us last year, but, from now on, we agree with you: Beltran $uck$. See you in October.
Posted by: Astrosfan at July 31, 2005 02:01 PM