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- 01/09/09
| Member since: | November 05, 2007 |
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| Last visit: | November 05, 2007 |
srdshelly has posted no links and 2 comments to SportsFilter and hasn’t posted any threads or comments
Football ref crew mistake may cost $4.5 million Did the Big Ten make a $4.5 million mistake by allowing an officiating crew that was facing a suspension this weekend to work last Saturday's Illinois-Ohio State game?
posted by lil'red at 03:31 PM on November 15
Myth Of The Closer In the 20 seasons since LaRussa's brainstorm, teams holding late leads have won at about the same rate they did in the 20 seasons before. Since 1988, teams leading after eight innings have won at a .951 clip, according to Baseball-Reference.com and STATS Inc., compared to .948 from 1968 to 1987. That adds up to less than one win per season per team.
posted by justgary at 03:31 PM on November 05
You can't base anything in baseball on one short series. The article's point is that overall the idea of designating one person to pitch just the ninth inning and paying him tons of money isn't usually going to be the best way to go. I have questioned this strategy for some time, for most teams. Ideally your best relief pitcher should be the one on the mound at the most critical point in the game, which is not always the ninth inning. Of course that's not easy to do either, since pitchers need to warm up, and potential threats can either dissipate or turn ugly before he's ready. You don't want to warm him up often without using him. But to never use your best in, say, the seventh inning in a tie game with the bases loaded, because you always have to hold him back to pitch with the bases empty to start the ninth, is, I think, a bad strategy.
posted at 06:44 PM on November 05
I think the premise of the article is silly. First, there is no evidence this crew did anything at all that was harmful to Ohio State. Ohio State's poorly played game hurt Ohio State. If the top rated team in the country can only play defense well enough to get the ball to run three plays in the fourth quarter, they don't exactly show they deserve to be in a title game. Further, since when is it the officials' job to see to it that a conference gets the maximum revenue out of bowl appearances? That wasn't stated, but was a sinister implication here - a better crew would have made sure Ohio State won?? As for two teams in the BCS, Michigan is obviously no BCS team (and shouldn't have been even with a win over Wisconsin), unless it beats Ohio State, in which it gets a bid automatically. We wouldn't have this annual silliness if they would put in a playoff system. Yes there will always be complaints about how certain "bubble" teams get in or not (see basketball), but nobody will be able to claim they were the BEST team over the whole season, but never even got a chance to TRY for the championship, such as the current football mess almost ensures.