Baseball Musings 10/24/2005

After a quality morning slicing rocks into tiny pieces ...

World Series Musing
When was the last time that a player with ZERO home runs during the regular season went on to hit TWO in the postseason, let alone a walk-off HR. Well, I guess the answer to that is 1 day ago, as Scott Podsednik made the Chisox look like the team that God doesn't want to have lose this postseason. Combine Pod's HR with the mysterious Jermaine Dye HBP that lead to Konerko's no-question-about-it Grand Slam off Chad Qualls, the Chisox may pull of a 2004 Red Sox and just wipe out the Astros in 4 afterall. Go figure. The Chisox have been getting timely hitting out of odd sources (Juan Uribe? Yes, he of .500BA, 2 RBI and a SB so far in the Series) and good pitching from almost everyone, especially Cliff Politte, off of 2 weeks rest, just made the 'Stros look silly - 11P, 8 for strikes, 1K before the Bobby Jenks Express hit a bit of a speedbump last night.

You have to feel bad for Brad Lidge. After all the press annointed him the best closer since sliced bread, he's given up 2 game-losing HR in his last two appearances. Maybe its the workload catching up with him, or maybe the sports media is just too giddy trying to find their Mariano-in-wating for the postseason (am I the only one who just doesn't care if the Yankers are in the postseason?). Lidge will bounce back next year, but he's lost a little bit of that infallibility that allowed the Astros to trade Billy Wagner and Octavio Dotel to let Lidge close.

And it could be a short series for the Astros consider their main offensive threat so far in the Series has been Berkman, Wee Willy Taveras and Bashing Brad Ausmus. Everybody else seems to have taken a vacation, even in a hitters park like US Cellular Field. With the series returning to Houston tomorrow, all the sports pundits are saying Houston will get back into it, but part of me thinks that the Astros may just roll over like the Cardinals last year (remember how much home field helped them against Petey and D-Lowe). The last few World Series have really shown that great pitching will dominate anyone, anywhere.

And so far, we seem to have few symptoms of Iguchi Fever (.125 BA). Ah well.
(Oh yes, and I wish Yahoo! wouldn't reset the player's stats for each series. Grrr).

Of course, to contradict everything I just said, my Game 3 Prediction (Garland vs. Oswalt): 3-1 Astros. Why? Oswalt is just that cool. Of course, if Pod gets up with RISP in the ninth, watch out!