Snobs vs. Slobs

Less than a month after the death of (with all due apologies to the Wirtz family for their loss) capital douchebag Bill Wirtz, has his son moved to put some of the Blackhawks’ home games on Comcast Sports Net. Since the Comcast schedule was made up more than a year ago, they won’t be able to fit all of the Hawks’ home games into the schedule, but this certainly bodes well for most, if not all, of the Hawks’ home games being on television next season. So Kudos to Rocky Wirtz for abandoning the most antiquated, ridiculous media-related business plan in all of sports. My boycott on the Blackhawks is hereby lifted. Maybe I’ll catch a game when I’m home over Thanksgiving or Winter break.

Well, let’s get one thing out of the way first: I think that both Lou Piniella and I learned a valuable lesson about not playing for a potential Game 4 when Game 4 is not guaranteed to happen. Zambrano probably should have stayed in longer in Game 1.

But here’s the real problem, kids. It wasn’t the starting pitching, which was mediocre other than Carlos Zambrano. It wasn’t the hitting, which failed consistently with runners in scoring position, stranding nine runners in each game. It wasn’t even the bullpen, which saw its best contributor have a meltdown in this series. It was the combination of all of those things. When you shake all those things together in this Boggle cube called baseball, if you can find the word “luck,” you win. The D-Backs found luck. The Cubs didn’t. (more…)

Everybody is getting all worked up over Lou Piniella pulling Carlos Zambrano after just 6 innings and 85 pitches last night. I have gotten multiple emails from friends and family asking “Why would you pull Zambrano after 85 pitches when he was pitching so well?”

Of course, we all know why Piniella pulled Zambrano – he will be starting Game 4 on Sunday on short rest, and wanted to keep his pitch count down. So the question isn’t why did Piniella pull Zambrano when he was pitching so well. The question is, if Zambrano had stayed in the game, would it have given the Cubs a better chance to win? I don’t the answer is necessarily a simple yes. (more…)

I’m not going to make this preview all that in-depth because, frankly, Baseball Prospectus has already written up a preview that would put anything I wrote to a sort of shame usually only associated with showing up to school naked in a dream. Indeed, I stole a lot of information in this blog post from that very article, so thanks, Nate Silver. Oh, and if you’re not a BP Premium member, don’t worry, that’s a free article. But if you still want to read what I have to say, press on, because it’s riveting and witty as usual. (more…)