Aw, the wuvvable widdle Cubbies got eliminated! And they everything they could to stay alive, including throwing at the Braves’ hitters, and it didn’t do any good!
The increasingly asinine Cubs led 6-2 after Travis Smith — who else? — allowed four runs on a pair of homers in the fifth. But the Braves got back into it with three runs in the sixth, and took the lead with three more in the eighth, highlighted by Drew’s two-run triple. Gryboski picked up the win, Smoltz the save.
Carlos Zambrano, who is clearly from his behavior a cretin, hit Chipper in the hand in the fifth. Chipper left the game, and it looked bad, but the report now is that it’s a contusion and he’s day-to-day. Zambrano probably wasn’t throwing at Chipper, since it loaded the bases. But he wasn’t too upset about it. He’d already hit Marcus with a pitch in the first. Some people, I know, were upset that the Braves didn’t retaliate when Zambrano led off the next inning, but it’s easy to see why they didn’t. A beanball war would have led to suspensions heading into the playoffs. It wouldn’t matter for the Cubs, but it wouldn’t have been good for the Braves.
John Thomson left the game after three with a stiff back. I prefer to think of it as a precaution. The Braves used eight pitchers on the day; most pitched well, but Cruz allowed a solo homer to Sosa and Smith, of course, was himself.
The Braves had fourteen hits, but eleven were singles. Marrero hit a solo homer, and Furcal a double that was a terrible misplay by the centerfielder and should have been called an error. In fact, that’s what I’m going to call it.
Still no winners in the wildcard/NL West races. The Dodgers still haven’t clinched anything; if the Giants and Astros sweep there would be a three-way tie for two spots, and I don’t know what would happen then. At any event, I assume that the Braves will play lots of bench players tomorrow against Maddux, and then go home, rest, and put ice on various body parts. Hopefully, they’ll get to watch a playoff game Monday.
So according to the ESPN boxscore, Kyle Farnsworth gets a hold and the loss??? How does that make sense?
Rolling over a tough (desperate) opponent going into the post season even while trying to rest some of our better players…it’s a good sign.
Just heard on CBS. Bowa is done.
http://www.sportsline.com/mlb/story/7751223
Holds are about as useless a statistic as has been invented – at least in it’s present incarnation. The ‘rule’ is that as long as the team has not relinquished the lead when the reliever leaves the game, he gets a hold. There may be more to it, as in it has to be a ‘save’ situation (potential tying run on-deck or some such), but that’s the gist of it. So a guy could come in w/ a 3 run lead, give up a 2-run homer and then walk the bases loaded and still get a ‘hold’. It’s one of my pet peeves…I love stats as much as most anybody out there, but that one is a junk stat.
Of course, now that I think of it, most of the heavy duty stats guys say W-L is a junk stat too. Well, that’s the extreme version – usually they’ll just say how misleading it can be. And, no doubt about it, it can be very misleading when judging a pitcher’s value. See Johnson, R. – 2004.
Me, I agree that W-L records can be misleading, but it’s not as if they are totally useless. You just can’t rely on them to the extent that many in the traditional jobs rely on those records. Because they will excuse a guy w/ a poor W-L record because of poor run support – but then praise a guy (Shane Reynolds, anybody?) who gets 9 runs a game in run support who posts a 15 (or 11 or whatever number) wins and is praised because he ‘knows how to win’ or ‘pitches to the score’ or some other crap.
A pitcher’s job is to keep his team in the game. Usually that means giving up 3 or fewer runs, as, even if his team is being shut out, they are (with baserunners and a mighty swing) often potentially 1 AB away from tying things up. And sure, you want a guy who can win a championship clinching game 1-0 (BTW, thanks a million, Tommy G). But, as ’96 – ’02 showed, it’s not something a pitcher can ‘will’ himself to do. Performances like that are almost never repeated.
Umm, I know I jumped all over the place there. I started out just replying to Boyd. Obviously not everything I said was in reference to ‘holds’. But sometimes you want to feel like you’re adding something. Thanks for the forums Mac