Philosophical question: If a Don falls in the forest, does it make any noise that compels Cappy to respond?
I'm talking about all of the teams that didn't make it to the series or even get out of the first round. Despite having more talent than any other team in baseball. You can call them whatever you want. You sort of make my argument for me by quoting what they won the division by in those years. In fairness I blame most of it on Torre..He of the philosophy of sitting everybody the last two weeks just to make sure they forget how to hit..or run out your 4th starter in the first series even though you know he sucks and you are already down 2-1. I'm sure there is more.
So was the 2006 team that swept 5 games at Fenway at the end of August a sissy team without a killer instinct? As I recall the new Boston Massacre propelled the Yanks to a division title and buried Boston in 3rd place...
let's hope this sox O can carry over from the sweep of the jays, and not puss out like it did last time against the yanks.
Torre did plenty of things wrong, for sure. I'm not sure why those were "sissy" teams, though. Shit happens in the playoffs. All the teams are good, and anything can happen in a short series. It has nothing to do with killer instinct, wanting it more, or anything like that. Those are all labels that get applied after the fact.
All I'm saying..basically..is that this team, this year, reminds me more of the O'Neill, Martinez, Strawberry, Nelson, etc...type teams then any I have seen in the last 6 or 7 years. This series will be a chance to prove it.
This I actually agree with. Cappy discounts anything not provable via math, which is fine, it's just that I believe there is more to the game than OPS, ERA, etc. and he doesn't. You really can't have a legitimate argument about it either way. It's impossible to "prove" whether "clutch" exists or not. If you believe it does (as I do) then you'll "see" the justification. If you don't believe it exists, you'll explain it away with statistical "evidence." In the end, who gives a damn? The one thing we can all agree on right now is that we'd love to walk out of Fenway this weekend another 3 games up.
Despite the pitching match-ups I dont have a good feeling about this series. The Sox have their back against the wall for this division and they're gonna come out scratching and clawing. I'd be thrilled w/ a series split..
That's pretty much a bastardization of my point. It's not that I don't believe those other things exist. It's that you cannot... absolutely cannot... definitively say that they do exist, and you can't quantify it, so there's no sense in making bold claims about it. You might as well say that the Yankees won all those games because the spirit of Babe Ruth willed it to be so, and that they lost the other series because the spirit of Babe Ruth popped out for a vacation in the Cayman Islands starting in 2001. Can you prove I'm wrong? No. But isn't silly to make such a claim? Look at it this way... there are always two teams pitted against each other in a game or series. One team has to lose. Always. So there is always a team that doesn't want it enough, or can't close it out, or chokes. Did the Yankees choke against Curt Schilling in Game 6 in 2004? Or did Schilling step up or want it more? Pretty much depends on if you ask a Sox fan or a Yankee fan. For every batter who is trying to "want it more" and get a hit, there is a pitcher trying just as hard to execute his pitch. But if Tony Clark hits his double a little LESS hard in Game 5 and it stays in the park, are we talking about how the Sox choked and didn't want it enough? Are we talking about how Esteban Loaiza stepped up and Orlando Cabrera choked by hitting into that double play? Or what if Tony Clark came through in Game 6 in the bottom of the ninth? Would that mean all the Yankees suddenly found a killer instinct? Or would the entire perception of the entire series be changed because of the actions of a part time first baseman? Did Tony Clark just need to want it more? Baseball is a collection of individual events. These events involve human beings, so of course there are feelings and psychological factors involved. But people give them far more weight than they should. Far more. You want to blame the Yanks for anything in their lack of titles since 2000, blame it on shitty pitching.
Since loosing 4 straight in 2004 they've were one and done in '05,'06' and '07. They have an obnoxious team salary but haven't won a playoff series in 5 years. Their huge spending spree this off-season makes it seem like the franchise knows it has been underachieving.
I agree with that..they have been invisible..as far from the teams of the late 90s as you can get..until now.
Not necessarily "wanting it more". I think it's just another thing where this is high pressure being put on people, and some people thrive while others don't. It's not fair to look at it like simply as a data point and not think that human factors played a role.
...than our pitchers wanted it? I hope you're at least starting to see why it's ridiculous to base concrete, team-wide judgments on these kinds of perceptions.
Kevin Brown, Jaret Wright, Bad Rogah Clemens, The Ghost of Randy Johnson, Carl Pavano, Shawn Chacon, Kei Igawa, Darrell Rasner, Jeff Karstens, Sydney Ponson Those were just some of the pitchers we went through from 05- now. Not to mention an up and down Pettitte, Wang and Moose... So yea, if anything it's pitching that's been our achilles heel
