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You're booooooring these paypul
Aug. 10th, 2009 03:08 pm
Currently at Toronto Pearson: 29. I think this might have us above normal on consecutive days for the first time since June.
Dewpoint got up to 25 yesterday, which is one degree off the highest I've seen in Toronto. So we got a "humidex" into the 40s with a temperature below 30, which is hard to do. The crazy blocked pattern that has held since late June has broken down, and maybe not just coincidentally the NWS has a 30-50% chance of the first named storm of the season developing, unusually late, in the Atlantic in the next couple of days.
I don't know what got me thinking about this the other night, but the question struck me: if you win one more game than your opponent in a seven-game series, does that make you more or less likely better than your opponent than if you beat your opponent in a single game? In three games? In a thousand games? Clearly, the results of a single game, between opponents "in the same league", are too prone to chance to be decisive. So in any sport where you can play more than a single game to decide a champion, you do. But in this year's Stanley Cup finals, I really felt, as the third period of game 7 was running down, that it was too bad that this series had to be decided by this single game--even though this single game was the seventh game. I thought the Red Wings were the better team and it seemed to me like an accident that the Penguins were winning. (Of course, I don't think the point of sporting contests is to decide who's "best" anyway. The point is to determine a winner in a fair contest according to some set of rules and procedures. That the best team doesn't always win is of the tragic essence of sport. But that point is beside the present point.) Clearly, there's pretty close to a 50% chance that the Red Wings would have won an eighth game, and the series could have see-sawed back and forth until ... the two teams weren't even the same teams anymore. (Until Marian Hossa's injury forced him out of the lineup?) So I was thinking last night that, maybe, if you want to have a decisive winner, you should do it like a tennis tie-breaker: you have to win by two. Imagine this: to win the World Series, you have to win three more games than your opponent (because having a World Series end at 2-0 would suck). How long would the average World Series be then? How awesome would that be?
Roy Halladay has now started 22 games this year. He has thrown at least seven innings in all but two--the one where he hurt his groin, and his first game back--and he has thrown nine innings six times. He's leading the AL in innings pitched, despite missing two weeks. That's pretty impressive, but what's even more impressive is that he has only thrown more than 120 pitches in a game once. And something that tells you what kind of respect the guy commands: he has not come out in the middle of an inning in any game this year. I wonder who was the last starting pitcher to go a whole season without being lifted in the middle of an inning.
I actually wrote most of this yesterday, and then thought, who the hell cares. (Maybe if I were a better person, I would make a sports blog, which would be read by no one, rather than being read with interest by no one.) But today I have noticed two more baseball-related things that no one will care about, but which I have to record because they're so striking. First, the Jays' top 5 starters are 38-23 so far this year; the rest of the team is 15-34, which includes Jason Frasor at 6-2, so the Jays' 2009 pitching staff minus Halladay, Romero, Cecil, Richmond, Tallett, and Frasor is currently 9-32. Second, all of the Rays' top four starters from last year--Shields, Kazmir, Garza, and Sonnanstine--are currently under .500, J.P. Howell has blown five of seventeen save opportunities, B.J. Upton is hitting .239, Pat Burrell is hitting .227, Dioner Navarro is hitting .221, Carlos Pena is hitting .213, and the Rays are a game and a half out of the wild card.
Dewpoint got up to 25 yesterday, which is one degree off the highest I've seen in Toronto. So we got a "humidex" into the 40s with a temperature below 30, which is hard to do. The crazy blocked pattern that has held since late June has broken down, and maybe not just coincidentally the NWS has a 30-50% chance of the first named storm of the season developing, unusually late, in the Atlantic in the next couple of days.
I don't know what got me thinking about this the other night, but the question struck me: if you win one more game than your opponent in a seven-game series, does that make you more or less likely better than your opponent than if you beat your opponent in a single game? In three games? In a thousand games? Clearly, the results of a single game, between opponents "in the same league", are too prone to chance to be decisive. So in any sport where you can play more than a single game to decide a champion, you do. But in this year's Stanley Cup finals, I really felt, as the third period of game 7 was running down, that it was too bad that this series had to be decided by this single game--even though this single game was the seventh game. I thought the Red Wings were the better team and it seemed to me like an accident that the Penguins were winning. (Of course, I don't think the point of sporting contests is to decide who's "best" anyway. The point is to determine a winner in a fair contest according to some set of rules and procedures. That the best team doesn't always win is of the tragic essence of sport. But that point is beside the present point.) Clearly, there's pretty close to a 50% chance that the Red Wings would have won an eighth game, and the series could have see-sawed back and forth until ... the two teams weren't even the same teams anymore. (Until Marian Hossa's injury forced him out of the lineup?) So I was thinking last night that, maybe, if you want to have a decisive winner, you should do it like a tennis tie-breaker: you have to win by two. Imagine this: to win the World Series, you have to win three more games than your opponent (because having a World Series end at 2-0 would suck). How long would the average World Series be then? How awesome would that be?
Roy Halladay has now started 22 games this year. He has thrown at least seven innings in all but two--the one where he hurt his groin, and his first game back--and he has thrown nine innings six times. He's leading the AL in innings pitched, despite missing two weeks. That's pretty impressive, but what's even more impressive is that he has only thrown more than 120 pitches in a game once. And something that tells you what kind of respect the guy commands: he has not come out in the middle of an inning in any game this year. I wonder who was the last starting pitcher to go a whole season without being lifted in the middle of an inning.
I actually wrote most of this yesterday, and then thought, who the hell cares. (Maybe if I were a better person, I would make a sports blog, which would be read by no one, rather than being read with interest by no one.) But today I have noticed two more baseball-related things that no one will care about, but which I have to record because they're so striking. First, the Jays' top 5 starters are 38-23 so far this year; the rest of the team is 15-34, which includes Jason Frasor at 6-2, so the Jays' 2009 pitching staff minus Halladay, Romero, Cecil, Richmond, Tallett, and Frasor is currently 9-32. Second, all of the Rays' top four starters from last year--Shields, Kazmir, Garza, and Sonnanstine--are currently under .500, J.P. Howell has blown five of seventeen save opportunities, B.J. Upton is hitting .239, Pat Burrell is hitting .227, Dioner Navarro is hitting .221, Carlos Pena is hitting .213, and the Rays are a game and a half out of the wild card.
