Billy Paultz Reconsidered

I’m not ready yet to really break down the World Series (especially since we don’t know who’s going to be in it), but I do want to say it’s nice to see the national media - even the stat-geek media to which I pledge allegiance - start to acknowledge what the Phils have already done.
In […]

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The truest sentence in yesterday’s NLCS preview was this one:
The problem, as always, is that everything we know about these teams could completely fail to manifest itself over a 4-7-game stretch.
It’s not a problem, really. It’s fun.
Consider:
Ryan Howard, who hits lefties like Mario Mendoza, hit a two-run double off a lefty.
Andre Ethier, who if anything […]

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I was all set to pick the Phillies over the Dodgers until I read the following:
“Actually, about the last three times he’s been out there, I think he’s been good. Also, sometime when you have a decent outing and then you take a break, I think that can be good for you and it has […]

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Forget who’s starting game three. Should Cole Hamels have started game two? I recall too well my mental and emotional state the day my first kid was born, and let’s just say anything I would have tried to write that day would have read like Sylvia Plath on an ether binge. Plus there’s this issue […]

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Back from an eventful (in sports, not for me, especially) week off…
Whether they get Roy Halladay or not, right now, at this moment, the Phillies are the best team in baseball. Yes, the Yankees are also 10-1 since the all-star break in a better league, but the Yankees haven’t faced better competition during that stretch […]

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I know he thinks he’s being funny, but still: Terry Bradshaw just picked the Giants because Eli Manning has the same TD/INT ratio as Rex Grossman did a year ago.
And we’re, uh, off…
This morning it was 18 degrees and windy as I walked from a building to my car. Actually ran. It took maybe 20 […]

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The Sixers just got their first win of 2008, and yeah it was against dysfunctional, T-Mac-less Houston, but still. And now - what are the odds? - I’m watching the transcendent, “I’m into Nuggets y’all, I’m into Nuggets y’all..”
Now if they’d won at Denver, that would have been perfect. Think about it.
In other news…
*The question […]

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Observations in the wake of a wild football Sunday…
Chargers-Colts: OK, I was spectacularly wrong about the Chargers, who have both the hot team thing going on and the gritty underdog thing and are, remember, the same bunch that went 14-2 last year.
But would anyone on earth have given them a shot without Philip Rivers and LT […]

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