Friday, September 21, 2007

Mathematically in Contention

The Tigers came from behind to edge the Royals 5-4 tonight as they fight to stay in mathematical contention for the wild card spot. Down 4-0 after 4 innings against Royals starter Bill Buckner, the Tigers made it 4-3 on Sean Casey's 4th homer of the year in the 5th. They then went ahead 5-4 on a 2 run single by Brandon Inge in the 6th. Casey, Inge, Curtis Granderson, Magglio Ordonez and Pudge Rodriguez each had 2 hits. Ordonez is now ahead of Ichiro Suzuki (who was retired in his first at bat tonight) .354-.352 in the batting race .

Jair Jurrjens had his worst game as a Tiger allowing 4 runs on 6 hits in 2 1/3 innings. However, Tim Byrdak kept the Tigers in the game with 4 scoreless no hit innings. After the Tigers went ahead, Fernando Rodney pitched 1 /2/3 scoreless innings to set it up for Todd Jones who saved it with a scoreless 9th.

For those who refuse to give up, the Yankees are 5 games ahead of the Tigers at this moment. It looked like the Yankees had lost tonight but they scored 4 runs in the bottom of the 9th to tie up the Blue Jays 4-4 and are now still tied in the 11th. As I type, the Yankees are 88-64 and the Tigers 84-70. the Yankees magic number is 5. This means that the Tigers and Yankees would have to post any of the following records to force a one game playoff:

Tigers 8-0 Yankees 4-6
Tigers 7-1 Yankees 3-7
Tigers 6-2 Yankees 2-8
Tigers 5-3 Yankees 1-9

7 comments:

  1. give.
    me.
    a.
    break.

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  2. You are still reading so you must think they are still in contention. :-)

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. the only way they were still in contention for anything, period, was to sweep the indians. well there was a sweep, all right...

    the only team hotter than the indians might be the yankees, not catching them either...i could see a glimmer of hope if these other teams were limping to the finish, but that's clearly not the case.

    i can mail you a white flag if necessary, or borrow the one bless you boys is using

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. I never suggested they were in serious contention. I had conceded in earlier posts that they had little chance of making the playoffs. I was stating the undisputed fact that they are still in mathematical contention. I saw a lot of people on message boards talking about the mathematical possibilities that remained so I decided to write about it. There is certainly nothing wrong with fans never giving up until they are officially done.

    I do appreciate Ian sending his readers over here though. :-)

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  7. no, nothing wrong with it. i just notice that a lot of fans on the internet often obsess over such remote possibilities..."all we need to do is sweep this team, hope that team loses 4 out of 5, and magglio hits .800 for the last two weeks and hope the groundhog doesn't see his shadow this year and that it will be 80 degrees on christmas" - not saying you were quite that extreme, but message board posts do become that obsessive :)

    let's focus on magglio. ichiro needs almost as much luck to catch him as the tigers do to catch the yankees.

    ReplyDelete

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