No more “Eric Gagne is the best closer in baseball” lines, okay? By the way, how could Baker not have a lefty pitch to Blalock? Sheesh.
At the least, Gagne should have to pay Andruw the bonus he would have earned as All-Star MVP.
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So much for Wagner, Gagne, Smoltz, huh? At least Smoltz wasn’t involved in the debacle.
Yeah but I don’t think you can blame Baker…It was just bad luck…who wouldn’t put Gagne in there after his numbers and 31 out of 31 save opportunities…I am just annoyed that they started this thing this year since the NL was going to get the home field advantage this year anyways if we had kept the rotating thing going.
Did anyone else notice that Andrew led the fan MVP voting with 26% at the end of the game?
I think you can definitely blame Baker, not for the pitching matchups but for the overuse of position players. Yes, Gagne has great stats. But keep in mind he is going up against the best of the best. Dusty shouldn’t have assumed once the game is 5-1 that his team will obviously win, so he can go ahead and replace every single position player (except Javy) in the 5th.
Scoscia on the other hand kept a number of heavy hitters on his bench, and when the going got close later he was able to summon the likes of Giambi (pinch homer) and Blalock (pinch GW homer).
So it comes to the ninth inning and the NLs last chance was Lo Duca, Castillo, and Furcal. Who does Dusty have that can pinch hit? One player: Geoff Jenkins, who he has to keep in case they DO tie it up. Wouldnt it have been nice to have maybe the likes of Luis Gonzalez, Preston Wilson, maybe Mike Lowell, available to stick in the mix there?
I just feel like while Scoscia truly played to win, Dusty tried to play to win… but also to use all his position players. Well, it didn’t work. And now if the Braves make it to the series they will have a tougher road.
On the other hand, all the Braves reps had good games against the AL’s best, so at least they can take that away from it.
You can blame Baker for overusing his bench. I don’t blame him for going with Gagne, though.
Dontrelle would have struck “Hittery” Hank out. Booyah!
So does anyone have any post-game thoughts on the home-field rule? Obviously the people here have reason to bitch, given that our WS-contender team won’t home field anymore, but do you think the excitement of the game was worth it?
The excitement was entirely unrelated to the gimmick, so I’d say it wasn’t worth it.
Apparently the ratings were no higher than last year, too, so “this time it …” didn’t count for much. Maybe they’ll blame Tim McCarver.
I think the team with the most wins all season should get home field advantage, like most every other sport.
who is Andrew ???? who is this Andrew that had 26% of the fan vote?
I wholeheartedly agree that the team with the most wins should get home field advantage. I have no idea why it has never been implemented that way, and the best explanation I was able to glean from a column writer (jim caple i think) this week was that it makes it harder to plan far in advance where it will be hosted. But that really doesn’t hold much water when you consider the teams aren’t decided until the LCS’ are done, and as you T points out, every other sport is able to figure it out.
Now time to go beat up on the depleted mets.