Street scene from This Isn’t Happiness.

The so-called “experts” at Sports on Earth deliver their playoff predictions.  And here’s the ESPN think tank.

Over at SI.com, Jay Jaffe tackles the question: Does momentum matter going into the playoffs?

Thanks to the new dual wild card format, 10 teams have a chance at making it to the World Series. Of course, by late Friday evening, two clubs will already be making plans for next season. In any event, listed below is a breakdown of the playoff history for each team who will be vying for the 2012 MLB championship.

Historical Post Season Records

Source: Baseball-reference.com

From a historical perspective, this postseason resembles a roundup of the usual suspects. Five of the top six franchises in terms of playoff appearances are represented this October, including the Yankees, who will be making their 51st run at a championship. Among teams who entered the season with 20 or more playoff appearances, only the Dodgers and Red Sox failed to join the party. In addition to being long time October combatants, most of these postseason regulars have also been recent participants, with all but the Athletics having made a prior playoff appearance within the last two years.

Grouped together in the middle of the October roll call are the Tigers, Reds, and Orioles, three teams that have had varying degrees of more limited playoff exposure. Although Detroit has only made the postseason in three of the past 25 years, this season marks the first consecutive playoff appearance since 1935, when Charlie Gehringer and Hank Greenberg lead the Tigers to the championship. Cincinnati’s N.L. Central crown marks the franchise’s fourth October appearance since the last days of the Big Red Machine in 1979, but the team can boast two division titles in the last four years. Finally, the Orioles are not only making their first playoff appearance in 15 years, but also coming off their first winning regular season over the same span.

At the bottom of the totem pole is the Nationals, who are making only the second playoff appearance in franchise history and first since the strike shortened 1981 season when the team played in Montreal. What’s more, Washington D.C. will be hosting playoff baseball for the first time since the 1933 World Series.

The Texas Rangers contributed to Washington’s thirst for October baseball when the team played as the Senators from 1961 to 1971. Since its inception, the franchise has now made the playoffs only six times, but this year marks the third consecutive season of October action in Arlington. Of course, after blowing a big division lead, the two-time defending A.L. champs may not feel as is they’ve made the postseason until (and if) they advance to the ALDS against the Yankees.

Longest Championship Droughts, By Team (30 Years or Longer)
 

Source: baseball-reference.com

There are several intriguing World Series match-ups that could result from the field of playoff participants. The Yankees versus Cardinals would feature a showdown between each league’s most successful franchise, while a match-up between the Yankees and Giants would provide a historical nod to the glory days of baseball in New York. If the Nationals and Rangers square off, it would ensure the first championship for one of the franchises. Between them, the two teams currently have 92 fruitless seasons (only three Fall Classics have featured two teams with a longer combined dry spell), so if they meet in the World Series, one of the longest current droughts would come to an end. The Nationals versus Orioles would constitute a very unlikely “Battle of the Beltway”, while the Athletics and Giants would reprise the “BART Series”. However it shakes out, if October turns out to be as exciting as September, baseball fans are in for quite a treat.

[Featured Image: Ed Zurga/Getty Images North America]

This speaks to me. From Isaac Chotiner’s 2008 Atlantic interview with Jhumpa Lahiri:

One critic who reviewed your first book said that your prose is extremely un-self-conscious and not showy. Without making a judgment on that, do you think he was correct?

I like it to be plain. It appeals to me more. There’s form and there’s function and I have never been a fan of just form. My husband and I always have this argument because we go shopping for furniture and he always looks at chairs that are spectacular and beautiful and unusual, and I never want to get a chair if it isn’t comfortable. I don’t want to sit around and have my language just be beautiful. If you read Nabokov, who I love, the language is beautiful but it also makes the story and is an integral part of the story. Even now in my own work, I just want to get it less—get it plainer. When I rework things I try to get it as simple as I can.

Do you have any desire to write a huge, panoramic novel?

I don’t think so. I don’t think I’m an effusive writer. My writing tends not to expand but to contract. If I do write more novels, I think they’ll be more streamlined and concentrated.

That fits into what you were saying about your prose style, right?

Maybe. Yes. I don’t like excess. When a great sweeping work is great, what makes it great is that there’s no excess.

[Photo Credit: Camille Van Horne]

Over at Grantland here’s Jonah Keri on why Mike Trout is the AL MVP and not Miguel Cabrera. That said, Bobby Valentine has a better chance of keeping his job than Trout does of winning the MVP.

[Photo Credit: Jeff Gross/Getty Images]

Drawing by Adrian Tomine via This Isn’t Happiness.

It’s always fun when you see a dance crew on the train–so long as a flying foot doesn’t clip you by accident.

[Photo Credit: Humans of New York]

Next time you’re in Iceland…

Food 52 reminds us how to keep all our fingers intact for root vegetable season.

[Photo Credit: Tasteinspired’s blog]

Yanks make the playoffs, win the division and secure the best record in the American League? Fug it, Dude, let’s dance.

[Photo Credit: Annett Turki via Kitty en classe]

10/2 11:48 PM
Alex Belth:

Holy shit that was great.

Hey, I don’t mean to be greedy but in name of superstition and not fucking with a good thing if you are available to recap tomorrow’s game that’d be awesome. If not, totally understand and no problemo.

10/3 8:35 AM
Jon DeRosa:

I can do it.

That was probably the most calm extra inning Red Sox game I’ve ever experienced. I just never felt like they were a threat to score.

10/3 8:55 AM
Alex:

I wish I could have felt the same.

Dude, such a HUGE game for our man Hiroki tonight. I want so badly for him to do well.

10/3 9:02 AM
Jon:

Not to jinx him, and he might be a little gassed right now, but he’s going to rip through these guys pretty easily. They really have few decent hitters in that lineup. And the Yankees are going to destroy whatever comes their way.

This is going to be an 8-1, 9-2 type game like Monday.

10/3 9:28 AM
Alex:

That would make me very happy.

***

I had one of those nights tonight. Laundry and the Yankee game is a full slate at this time of year. A visit from the sore throat fairy, weird and time consuming things happening with credit cards, and then to top it all off, at 9:30 PM my wife gets an email that her very important 8:30 AM flight (she’s presenting at a conference) has been cancelled and she’s been rebooked to Friday. All the turmoil and panic floating around here, and not one ounce caused by the Yankees.

After a season on the brink, the Yankees gave us one night off. And it was glorious. Take a couple of days now and watch the Orioles and the Rangers in Stress Fest 2012, ie the Wild Card game. There sure was a lot of stress involved trying to avoid the stress of that game.

Another 95 win team. Another American League East Division crown. We’ve criticized this team more than most other Division champions, and often deservedly so, but there were times when they deserved more praise than we gave them I think. Like we were holding it back because we weren’t really sure how good they were. Turns out they were pretty damn good.

Top Photo via AP/ Frank Franklin II, Bottom Photo via Getty Images / Al Bello 

From Chad Jennings comes this from Hiroki Kuroda today:

“To be honest with you, I never enjoyed playing baseball,” Hiroki Kuroda said. “I never enjoyed pitching, to be honest with you. Whether it’s a spring training game or a regular-season game, I like to put a certain amount of pressure on myself to be as normal as I can, even in that kind of atmosphere.”

…“I’m not saying this because I’m with the Yankees,” Kuroda said. “This has been all throughout my professional career. There’s a lot of responsibility as a starting pitcher, so rather than enjoy myself out there, I feel that I must fulfill my responsibility and that’s my priority.”

Kuroda pitched in the playoffs for the Dodgers so it’s probably an exaggeration to call this the biggest game of his career but it is his most crucial start in pinstripes.

Derek Jeter SS
Ichiro Suzuki LF
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Curtis Granderson CF
Raul Ibanez DH
Russell Martin C

Never mind the raindrops or the bollocks: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: The Absolute Best Photography]

Over at SB Nation’s Longform, here’s Pat Jordan on his days pitching in the minor leagues:

The closest I ever came to pitching a “Big Game” in the minors was in my last minor league season, and it was a “Big Game” only because it was my last game. The year was 1961, and I was pitching for the Palatka in the Class D Florida State League, against the Tampa Tarpons, a farm club for the Cincinnati Reds. I was wild as usual, walking batter after batter, sweating in the merciless August heat, kicking the dirt, cursing myself, my teammates, the umpires, the fans, the opposing batters just standing at the plate, relaxed, grinning even, their bat resting on their shoulder, not even expecting to swing, just waiting out their four balls before they trotted to first base. Their fans cheered my ineptitude at first, but even they got bored with so many walks and runs for their team, the game, for all intents and purposes, already over in the first inning. They began moaning and jeering, pleading with my manager to free everyone from this painful public disgrace, “Take him out, he’s done on both sides.”

The next batter stepped into the batter’s box. I already knew he would be the last batter I would ever face in my aborted career. I glared at him, my final chance to salvage some pride, to go out on my shield on a boat filled with burning straw into that vast sea of an ordinary life that awaited me in Bridgeport, where I expected to work one shit job after another to support my wife and squalling kids; Mason laborer. Soda jerk at a drugstore. Ditch digger on a construction crew. And then, after work, dirty, depressed, and disgusted, I would drink too many beers before I went home to my poor beleaguered wife.

So I decided to plant my fastball in this final batter’s ear; Pete Rose.

Ken was at the game two nights ago. This afternoon, a win gives the A’s the AL West title.

[Photo Credit: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images]

Over at Grantland, check out this great piece on the Red Sox by Charlie Pierce:

The franchise needed a year like this. It needed a year like this not just because it was forced to clear out the lumpy deadwood in the clubhouse, though it certainly needed that. It needed a year like this not just because it was a humbling experience that let the air out of the inflated hubris that had been keeping the franchise’s collective ego aloft since the wonderful autumn of 2004, though the franchise certainly needed one of those, too. The franchise needed a year like this because people like me are getting older and we missed the days when being a Red Sox fan wasn’t so much work. The franchise needed a year like this because we kept telling young folks that it wasn’t always like this, that, in fact, things can be much worse than simply piddling away a playoff spot to the Rays in September, that baseball — Red Sox baseball — can be so thoroughly, unremittingly awful that you can stop worrying every game to death long before it’s time to get back to school.

And, yes, it is sometimes possible that good seats indeed will still be available, phony shutout streak or no.

From a strictly baseball sense, this looks like a middling- to long-range rebuilding process. The manager has to go. The farm system is nearly desiccated, and there isn’t enough talent on the roster to contend anytime soon. Neither Jon Lester nor Clay Buchholz looks remotely like a consistent no. 1 starter anymore. Also, it doesn’t look as though life in the American League East is going to get any easier. (Sooner or later, even the Blue Jays will forget to underachieve.) And I don’t want to hear anything about rebuilding that most noxious of all marketing department curses — “The Brand.” Sooner or later, you realize that no matter how many things you can find to commemorate, The Brand is simply whether you win or not. Stop losing, and your Brand is all bright and shiny again.

So, I rather enjoyed the second half of this Red Sox season. I was reminded of all the afternoons I spent with my grandfather, watching lousy baseball while, bit by bit, he drank and smoked himself into the Beyond. Those were good days, and isn’t that what the baseball people tell us the game is all about? Generations, sitting together, watching players bumble and stumble while the old folks teach the young’uns new and exciting curse words? Let Ken Burns set that to banjo music. I’ll be in the Parakeet Bar, waiting for the show to begin.

[Photo Credit: ]

Serious Eats gives us the best carrot cakes in town.

[Photo Credit: A Spoon Full of Sugar]

Broolyn Botanic Garden by Joseph O. Holmes

Don’t You Worry (worry)…

[Photo Via: VersusAll]

Handball is maybe the best city game of them all.

[Photo Via: Retro New York]

It’s the last day of the regular season–perhaps–and the only thing we know for sure in the American League is that the Tigers have won the Central. If the Yankees win tonight they’ll be the champs of the AL East and own the best record in the league. If they lose and the Orioles lose, they’ll still win the East. If they lose and the Orioles win the regular season will be extended one day and the two teams will play for the East title tomorrow in Baltimore. If the A’s beat the Rangers tonight the A’s will win the AL West and the Rangers will be the wildcard.

Got that?

It’s foggy in New York this morning and we’ve got all day to wait, wonder…

…and hope.

[Picture Credit: Andrew Moore, from The World’s Best Ever via This Isn’t Happiness]