– Lee Panas, who runs a great Tigers blog and comments here from time to time, ran some numbers on the low offensive output in the AL thus far this year, and reasons for it.
– Lincecum had some real gems on baseball playoff expansion. His contention that adding a team or two means that Selig doesn’t “worry about [players] as human beings or players” has a CSR that is off the charts. Teixeira isn’t much better, introducing the idea of doing it “American Idol” style. I’m not sure what this means. Personally, I think it would be great for the game. An article from Friday on FanGraphs proposed an alternative solution, but ultimately concluded that baseball will add a 1 game playoff for the two wild-card teams (long post, but a good read).
– JV’s WHIP this year is .97, and his K/9 is 8.75.
– An Indians fan and pretty sharp freshman wrote a blog the other day charting payroll correlation to wins. To conclude, there is a definite correlation, but it is far from 1.
– The week ahead – King Felix v. Coke on Tues, Bedard v. JV on Wed, Pineda v. Penny on Thurs, Scherzer at TBD on Friday.
– Finally, the good folks at www.anydate.com have agreed to give out a Tigers History Newspaper as a way to get their name out. So what we’ll do is have some sort of contest tomorrow centered on the game. Check back around 3 hours before opening pitch for the deets.
thanks for the tidbits..it was good stuff to read on the day of no game….
My preference for the wild card round: 3 games in two days at a neutral site.
I like that format as well. Bring a little biz to KC or Cle in October.