First, yesterday’s Pop Quiz question, from🍃 Bob Buscavage of Mor🍬iches:
In a 1996 episode of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” Raymond learns that his father faked the autograph of a Hall of Fame player on a baseball. Name the player.
Now your updated playoff seeds:
AL💛: Boston (1) vs. winner of Texas (WC1a) or Oakland (WC1b) and Tampa Bay (WC2), Detroit (2) vs. Texas (3a) or Oakland (3b)
NL: Atlanta (1) vs. winner of St. Louis (WC1)ꩲ and Cincinnati (WC2), Dodgers (2) vs. Pittsburgh (3)
Notes: The Rangers and A’s are both currently 79-58, tied atop the AL West. If they finish the regular season tied, they’ll play a seeding tiebreaker, likely on Monday, September 30, in Texas (for now) to determine which team would get the division title and which would have to play in the wild-card game. The Rangers currently own the homefield advantage for this 163rd game because they are 8-6 in head-to-head action against Oakland, although the clubs play each other five more times.
–At yesterday’s Yankees game, I wrote this column about how the Yankees must devour terrible teams like the Wh✤ite Sox if they want to pull off their miracle playoff🍷 run, as the Indians and A’s in particular have easy schedules and the Rays’ schedule is virtually the same as the Yankees’ in terms of contender/non-contender ratio.
One other tidbit, as The Pos🃏t’s Dave Blezow reminded me: The Indians are done playing the Tigers, against whom they went a brutal 4-15. Cleveland is 68-50 against the rest of Major League Baseball.
You know which “Seinfeld” characters these Yankees 🍸evoke for me? , played by the late, great Lloyd Bridges, along with his son and father. The whole Mandelbaum clan. There’s no doubting their spirit or their experience. You just don’t know when someone, in the heat of battle, will say, “Ugh! My back!” and require immediate medical attention, thwarting their ambitions.
Meanwhile if I were Joe Girardi, I’d start David Huff against the Red Sox on Saturday. May🍷be Huff has found something. We knܫow that Phil Hughes has the talent to show up Saturday and suddenly pitch well, but he hasn’t displayed nearly enough of that talent lately. In these desperate times for the Yankees, Hughes has lost the benefit of the doubt.
–I’ve been following the Mets only from afar since the All-Star break, but you can’t help but notice how they continue to hang in there despite losing players to injury at about the same rate as on “The Simpsons.”
To honor the efforts of Terry Collins and the players, the Mets should cut the cord on the Daisuke Matsuzaka experiment, as Mike Puma writes today. It’s Aaron Harang’s turn. Let Matsuzaka pitch long relief, or sho൩rt relief. Or release ൩him.
You can bet heavily on Collins returning to manage the team next year; I think it’s the right call. It seems like the Mets are s🍷uperstitious, as much as anything else, about making it official before the season concludes. You know that, if the Mets announced a Collins extension before the end of the schedule, the Mets would go out that night and lose, 30-3, as happened✅ to when they extended skipper Dave Trembley.
–The Pop Quiz answer is Mickey Mantle. If you have a tidbit that correlates baseball to popular culture, please send it to me at kdavidoff@btc365-futebol.com.
–Have a great day.