Jayson Stark had the best stat of the day yesterday: a comparison of A-Rod's postseason totals with those of Vlady Guerrero:
Guerrero -- 9-for-50, .180, one home run, 7 RBIs, .240 slugging percentage
A-Rod -- 37-for-132, .280, six home runs, 16 RBIs, .485 slugging percentage
Interesting.
Note that Guerrero is now 11-for-52 after a 2-4 night yesterday.
Another tidbit was Stark's revelation that Joe Borowski has 15 "perfect" saves to Rivera's 10 -- a save of at least 1 IP and no baserunners. But Borowski had 45 saves, Rivera 30; thus their perfect save rate is the same: 33%. More impressive are Bobby Jenks (21/40) and Jonathan Papelbon (19/37). Most misleading, Francisco Cordero of the Brewhas who had a 6.55 road ERA but 1.09 at home and 20 perfect saves even though his road travails in the middle of the season helped cost the Brewhahas their division.
Kudos to the SI.com prognosticators who were more logical than their ESPN brethren: 7 of 11 picked the Yanks over the Indians in the ALDS and one who picked the Indians admitted he despised the thought of another Redsawx-Yanks ALCS (he also picked the soon-to-be three-and-out Angels; I'll rip on those who hate Yankees-RedSawx ALCS matchups later this month, if appropriate). And SI, long dominated by the Chicago mindset of its headquarters city, is traditionally anti-Yankees (except the admirably neutral Tom Verducci whose elevation to national baseball writer in the past decade led directly to toning down the anti-Yankee tone of the coverage).
As I said yesterday, the logic of picking the Indians relies on faith in their 1-2 starters, discounting the Yanks' ability greatly, and ignoring the absolute beatings the Yanks delivered in the regular season. Of course the Indians can win and very well may, but looking at the matchup from a logical perspective could only lead to a Yankees in ___ prediction.
In this case, Yanks in 4.
Boy I hope I'm at least correct in the winner, if not necessarily the length of the series.
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