Just FYI

I spend a lot of time at BaseballThinkFactory.com - an obscene amount of time actually. I love their newsblog and the insightful and hilarious comments left there (though to warn you, the posters often lean leftist/atheist/libertarian politically and enjoy having it spill over into their baseball comments).

I enjoyed commenting for awhile this summer, but then someone on the site decided to launch a nasty, over-the-top response to a critique I posted of one of his opinion. I said the he** with it and stopped commenting. I've got better things to do than argue with a kook online.

So I lurk, the same as the mysteriously high # of folks who visit here and leave without commenting ;)

The point: BTF pointed me to www.baseballevolution.com. I haven't had a chance to do more than scan the site, but I came across this great stat:

A playoff team has a 12.5% chance of winning the World Series in the current Wild Card format. The Yankees have made the playoffs every year under these rules, and won the World Series 4 times... a 33.3% rate. So they would need to make the playoffs and not take the World Series trophy 20 more times to even hit the break even mark of probability. It seems that reports of the Yankees floundering in the playoffs are quite unfounded.

Not quite, of course. Move the stats forward, to 2001 to now, and it doesn't sound nearly as rosy.

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As I write this the Tigers are getting slaughtered in game 1 of the Series. I don't feel strongly one way or the other about this series, but still yawn when I think of the Cards. So I stand by my prediction - Tigers in 5.

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I notice a deep dislike among 'serious' baseball fans for Fox Sports, and Joe Buck and Tim McCarver in particular.

The complaints about Fox itself revolve around their music, graphics, in-game sound, etc. Most of these are hoeey, although Scooter the talking baseball was ghastly stupid.

Tim McCarver I can see. The man talks gibberish many times, but he is entertaining. Joe Buck I just plain like; I don't have a problem with him.

Is it so disliked because it's Fox, flowing from the perception that Fox (being 'conservative') is the enemy?

Or is it because most baseball fans are so obsessed with the game that they develop their own beliefs (in what stats are valuable, in what players are valuable, in what plays are worth the risk and which ones aren't) that they are more comfortable with the announcers muted and their own thoughts playing as a soundtrack?

I vote for the latter.

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Today was YaYa's birthday party, and yesterday was both my wife's and my father's birthday. I'll post more on both subjects later.