Baseball Crank has the link (pdf) and adds his own comments.

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I agree with Rob Neyer. Tim Wakefield doesn’t have the stats, but the All Star game is bigger than that:

I want to see Tim Wakefield pitch in the All-Star Game. He’s a good guy, and historically unique, and I’ve been avidly following the ups and downs of his career since he arrived in the majors 17 years ago. I think an All-Star Game that has room for Tim Wakefield is a better All-Star Game.

The Red Sox used to line up their starters so that Tim Wakefield would follow Curt Schilling. The idea was to keep opposing hitters off balance through a three-game series.

Now Joe Maddon gets to do the same thing in miniature. Sometime in the later innings, after the NL sluggers have faced Roy Halladay, Zack Greinke, Justin Verlander and few other flamethrowers, after their bats are catching up, Maddon will send out Wakefield for an inning of 60 mph knucklers — and the most effective 72 mph fastball in the majors.

Then he’ll send out Jonathan Papelbon and his 97 mph fastball.

Update: Well, Maddon didn’t use Wakefield. Maybe in a 3-3 ballgame, Maddon figured he’d save Wakefield for the 12th – 15th innings. And maybe he didn’t want to give Victor Martinez a heart attack.

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Whenever a team suffers a disastrous loss, the team’s fans reel. They expect the team to reel. They take the loss as evidence of some tragic weakness in the makeup of their hero. Oedipus was up 10-1 over Fate in the freakin’ seventh. How was a loss even possible?

All this anguish went for nought as the Red Sox proceeded to rally the next night, scoring 4 in the ninth to tie the Orioles, then beating them in extra innings.

Carl Bialik has the numbers. Of the two comebacks, the Orioles’ was the more improbable. Oddly, the odds against the Red Sox were slightly more extreme with the score 5-3 and two outs in the ninth then they were at the beginning of the ninth with the score 5-1.

As for fate, Jonathan Papelbon gets redemption. He doesn’t blow the save. None of the other pitchers involved in the debacle on June 30 were involved. Ramon Ramirez gets the win. The key hit is delivered by Rocco Baldelli off the bench.

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Inspired by the best blogger of the Intertunnel, SippicanCottage.

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Occasionally I, or some other manager, will compare the Mynci head-to-head standings with what they would be if we were playing rotisserie rules. Because the strategies are different in the two systems, the comparison has to be treated with some skepticism. In head-to-head, for example, a manager may blow out WHIP and ERA on a situational basis, if the Wins or K point is more attainable in a given week.

Head-to-head also involves a lot more luck than rotisserie, which the Maryland Maniacs standing below makes unfortunately clear. Given that the Buckets would play the Maniacs in the first playoff round if the standings remain the same, my hope is that the Maniacs get luckier.

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