Monday, October 17, 2005
99-73
Just look at that for a second.
Including the postseason, we won 99 games, losing 73, for a winning percentage of .576.
You could do a lot worse.
And, honestly, there's not that much shame in being eliminated in series:
1. Where you played the team with the best record in the league
2. without your best pitcher,
3. with your best player playing hurt (Vlad had a bad left shoulder, and it was clear to me that he was pullling that shoulder off the ball and not staying through the ball on his swings; I decline to believe these things are not connected),
4. with the rotation completely unset, and
5. coming off a tiring and intense series against another good team.
The one frustrating thing is that we know the team could have played better than they did. But the offense went cold, as it did so often over the course of the season, and the team ran into a buzzsaw. The White Sox are now 7-1 this postseason, having wiped the Red Sox out of contention with apparent ease. This is a good team playing great ball right now, and there is no shame in falling to them.
I want to thank Juan Rivera and Adam Kennedy for being the guys that looked like they cared in Game 5. I'm not saying the others didn't, by any means, but these guys, along with Figgins and his double, were the guys that came through. Rivera hit every ball hard and put in a great effort on defense. A.K. went 2-3, with his out being a pretty well-hit ball, and played good defense, jumping for a blooper and giving his all to try and prevent Aaron Rowand from scoring on an infield hit (which was only an infield hit because Adam made a terrific play, and as for the the throw, no one would have made the out there). Kennedy was charged with a ridiculous error on a bad Bengie Molina throw, and hopefully the official scorer will revisit that and strike the silliness from the record.
One more thing, and sorry for the somewhat random organization of this post: moving Garret Anderson to center for the first time in Game 172 strikes me as the ultimate in desperation. We lucked out somewhat in that I can't recall even one ball being hit to center all game. (Wait, that's can't be right, can it? Okay, Crede's sac fly went to center, apparently ... Iguchi flew out to center. Fine. I just have a bad memory.) Hopefully, that put the nail in the Finley Playing Time Coffin, but I think we all realized last year that that experiment was, shall we say, misguided.
Anyway, I'll be getting a post up later today looking forward, hopefully. The Angels have some big decisions to make this winter, so we'll start diving into that.
2006 starts today.
Just look at that for a second.
Including the postseason, we won 99 games, losing 73, for a winning percentage of .576.
You could do a lot worse.
And, honestly, there's not that much shame in being eliminated in series:
1. Where you played the team with the best record in the league
2. without your best pitcher,
3. with your best player playing hurt (Vlad had a bad left shoulder, and it was clear to me that he was pullling that shoulder off the ball and not staying through the ball on his swings; I decline to believe these things are not connected),
4. with the rotation completely unset, and
5. coming off a tiring and intense series against another good team.
The one frustrating thing is that we know the team could have played better than they did. But the offense went cold, as it did so often over the course of the season, and the team ran into a buzzsaw. The White Sox are now 7-1 this postseason, having wiped the Red Sox out of contention with apparent ease. This is a good team playing great ball right now, and there is no shame in falling to them.
I want to thank Juan Rivera and Adam Kennedy for being the guys that looked like they cared in Game 5. I'm not saying the others didn't, by any means, but these guys, along with Figgins and his double, were the guys that came through. Rivera hit every ball hard and put in a great effort on defense. A.K. went 2-3, with his out being a pretty well-hit ball, and played good defense, jumping for a blooper and giving his all to try and prevent Aaron Rowand from scoring on an infield hit (which was only an infield hit because Adam made a terrific play, and as for the the throw, no one would have made the out there). Kennedy was charged with a ridiculous error on a bad Bengie Molina throw, and hopefully the official scorer will revisit that and strike the silliness from the record.
One more thing, and sorry for the somewhat random organization of this post: moving Garret Anderson to center for the first time in Game 172 strikes me as the ultimate in desperation. We lucked out somewhat in that I can't recall even one ball being hit to center all game. (Wait, that's can't be right, can it? Okay, Crede's sac fly went to center, apparently ... Iguchi flew out to center. Fine. I just have a bad memory.) Hopefully, that put the nail in the Finley Playing Time Coffin, but I think we all realized last year that that experiment was, shall we say, misguided.
Anyway, I'll be getting a post up later today looking forward, hopefully. The Angels have some big decisions to make this winter, so we'll start diving into that.
2006 starts today.
Comments:
Nice blog...I told my brother last night that the nickname for this team was the Narcoleptics - everything would be going just fine, then they'd inexplicably fall asleep for awhile. Oh well, still probably the second-best season in franchise history by my calculation. Division Champs, advanced in playoffs. See you in March...
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