And the false dawn breaks. After Schilling’s schplendid performance, unfortunately, came the Derek Lowe Implosion. (Ladies and gentlemen: opening for Dashboard Confessional tonight, the Derek Lowe Implosion!) But instead of focusing on the bad, let’s look at how the Y*nk**s got swept by the Mets. Lessons to be learnt: 1) momentum doesn’t carry, or the pendulum sure as hell swings far back and 2) you really SHOULD pitch your best reliever in a tie game in the 9th, instead of Tanyon Sturtze. For the first time in ages I’ve loved that the Mets are the Y*nk**s’ interleague rivals.
And Theo Epstein said something on NESN that made me think, roughly about how the predictability of the high-OBP strategy was affecting the team, and how they need to mix it up without surrendering outs. How much does a predictable strategy affect infield/outfield positioning? If you know the Sox won’t bunt, you can safely put your infielders in certain places, which lets them take away a base hit. At least, that’s the intuition…