I Bring Nothing to the Table

The Rays have finally gone and done it. In order to make the series more interesting, they let the Sox tie it up at three games a piece, but in Game 7, Matt Garza and the Rays showed the world that they were capable of going to the series and beating Boston in their 25th showdown this year.

It started out looking a bit rough for the Rays with a Dustin Pedroia homer that put the Sox up, but it started to turn around with an RBI double by Longoria, RBI single by Baldelli, and a homer by Willy Aybar, putting the Rays up 3-1. There was also that dicey moment where the relief squad kept the Rays safe in a bases loaded situation, all combining to bring the Rays their first world series berth ever.

Now it’s up to them to take down the hated Phillies in a matchup for the history books! No Florida team has ever lost in a post season they attended and no Florida team has ever lost in a World Series. Will Tampa Bay be able to keep it up?

You’ve probably heard the saying that hindsight is 20/20 on Monday morning, so just imagine how well I can call ‘em two days later on Wednesday. That’s right, it’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up.

It took 163 games, but as of today we officially have our eight teams set for the 2008 postseason. How did I do in predicting the outcome of the 2008 MLB season? Well let’s take a look, division by division, at my guesses and predictions and see:

AL East

It finally happened: the Tampa Bay Rays came and took a division win for the first time ever in the organization’s ten-year existence. They’re not the first to go from last to first in one season, but it’s still a good story to see them come so far in their brief history. It’s also great to see Florida teams do so well in the season and hopefully we’ll see more attendance in Tampa (technically St. Petersburg). It was always a bit of a pipe dream on my part, despite my knowledge that this team was the real deal, mainly because their youth would have been their greatest enemy. You can’t claim that a team inexperienced with the playoff push in one of the harder divisions in baseball can confidently take first place. Good for me that they did, though, makes me look nice and smart.

Boston performed as I predicted it would too, winning the AL wild card and taking second place in the AL East. It’s a bit of a tough break for them to not win the AL East, since now they have to play the Los Angeles Angels in the first round of the playoffs. I’ll get more into this when I make my postseason predictions, but this can be either a blessing or a curse for my favorite team in the postseason.

The Yankees did about as well as I thought they would, but how strange that they did not have their typical second half push. Instead they actually fell below the Blue Jays for a few days of the season.

Only thing I got wrong about this division, the standings of the Orioles and Blue Jays being WAY off. The O’s managed to fall 18 games behind the Jays at the end of the season. I should have been able to see that the solid pitching on the Blue Jays squad would carry them further than the Orioles mediocre lineup.

Final standings (bad predictions in bold):

Rays
Red Sox
Yankees
Blue Jays
Orioles

Postseason Guess Record: 2-0 (I’m going to count the Red Sox guess in 2nd as a correct one for me for the wild card)
Regular Season Guess Record: 3-2

AL Central

Hoo boy, here’s one that I totally mixed up, even though I got the postseason right. Why in the world did I think that the Tigers would have a chance at second place in AL Central? They were absolutely the worst disappointment in baseball this year, which is a real shame for me to say, since they’re so chock full of former Marlins. Sheffield and Willis were major disappointments for the team and the huge contracts in place may still prevent major shakeups in the off-season. Let’s hope that this doesn’t stay such a pathetic team in the foreseeable future.

The actual winners, the White Sox, managed to stay alive in the 163rd game tie-breaker against the Twins this year to clinch first place in the AL Central and a playoff spot. We’ll see what happens in the postseason, but I should have seen that these two teams were the actual best ones in the central and not clung to a pipe dream that the Tigers would put together a decent showing in the second half.

The rest of the division, the Indians and Royals, managed to put together solid seasons with the Indians keeping closer than the Yankees and the Royals actually managing to place higher than the Tigers. How pathetic for Detroit…

Final Standings:

White Sox
Twins
Indians
Royals
Tigers

Postseason Guess Record: 3-0
Regular Season Guess Record: 5-5

AL West

I’ll say it again: pathetic. The first place team, the Angels, clinched this division like a month ago. At the end of the season, we see them a ridiculous 21 games ahead of their nearest competitors, the Texas Rangers.

Texas managed to play better than I suspected, getting ahead of the Athletics (which I predicted as possible), but not anywhere near the wild card (16 games back).

Seattle finished an abysmal 39 games back. That’s beyond ridiculous. Like I predicted, they didn’t even break a .400 win percentage. They’re gonna have to mix some stuff up next year or more heads will fly. We’ll see if Ichiro will get dealt away during the off-season.

Final Standings:

Angels
Rangers
Athletics
Mariners

Postseason Guess Record: 4-0
Regular Season Guess Record: 7-7

NL East

Another really wrong division, but basically because I love the Marlins and wanted them to win. I’m going to be fair with my prediction standings and not try and make myself look better.

The Phillies won the division, despite strong competition from the Mets, who lost it near the end and lost the wild card in the 162nd (read: last!) game of the season against the Marlins.

As I predicted, the Marlins pitching really helped them out, but I also predicted that a failing of the bats would mess them up. Guess what? The bats stopped working, so they fell behind, but not without setting franchise records for home runs and MLB records for having an entire infield (1B, 2B, SS, and 3B) with over 25 home runs. Nice work Fish, maybe next year.

Final Standings:

Phillies
Mets
Marlins
Braves
Nationals

Postseason Guess Record: 4-1
Regular Season Guess Record: 9-10

NL Central

Another division gone wrong. I got the first two right with the spectacular Cubs and Brewers standing atop the division, but the rest being totally mixed up.

Sabathia totally helped the Cubs out and may find himself with an NL Cy Young as a reward for his stellar pitching. I’m also gonna take credit for being right about the Brewers in the postseason since I have them in the second place spot in this division.

I really thought Pujols would keep the Cardinals above the Astros, but they had a ridiculous wild card attempt that propelled them ahead. The Pirates also hurt a lot more than I thought they would have after losing key players to the trade deadline.

Final Standings

Cubs
Brewers
Astros
Cardinals
Reds
Pirates

Postseason Guess Record: 6-1
Regular Season Guess Record: 11-14

NL West

So I was wrong about the NL West, but I will claim it’s because Manny Ramirez had yet to be traded at that point. No one in their right mind could have predicted that he would get dealt away mid-season, but he went out to L.A. and brought them a division win.

Final Standings:

Dodgers
Diamondbacks
Rockies
Giants
Padres

Postseason Guess Record: 6-2
Regular Season Guess Record: 14-16

So how did I do?

I was 75% accurate in my postseasons predictions if you count my correct “wild card” predictions
I was 66% accurate when you look only at the division champs and neglect the wild card. Still respectable.

I was 46% accurate on my mid-season regular season projections (just one short of 50%)

Postseason

Eight teams. Two league winners. One champion.

AL Matchups:

Red Sox vs. Angels

White Sox vs. Rays

The Red Sox/Angels series is actually the crux of the AL playoff. Personally, I think of the Angels as an overrated team that looks great against the weak AL West. The records look a little different though, with the Angels at 8-1 against Boston, 5-5 against the White Sox, and 3-6 against the Rays. Boston will have a tough series against a team that seems to have their number, but a win will really affect the Rays, putting them up against a pumped up squad that just beat a team most consider to be the best in baseball. With Beckett not pitching until Game 3, the series could take a quick turn for the worse, but I still predict a Red Sox win, as much as it freaks me out. I want the Angels to win so they can lose to the Rays.

After barely squeaking by the Twins to make the playoffs, the White Sox are now coming up against the wall known as the Tampa Bay Rays. I fully expect (and hope) for them to lose, because the Rays are great and another all Chicago World Series (or a Chicago World Series in general) would suck.

Red Sox - Angels
Red Sox - Rays
White Sox - Rays

I predict the ALCS to be the Rays and the Red Sox and an absolute doozy at that. The Rays get home field advantage against a team well-versed in postseason appearances, so that will help them out. Lose one in the Trop and they’re in serious trouble as they could potentially lose it all in Fenway; a park the Rays barely have a winning record in. I’m going to let my emotions continue to cloud my judgment and predict that the Rays go to the World Series.

NL Matchups:

Brewers vs. Phillies

Dodgers vs. Cubs

The Phillies might have had some issues peppered throughout the second half, but I’m pretty confident that they can stand pretty strongly against a weak Brewers squad. The Brew Crew haven’t hit a postseason in so long they can’t be relied upon to perform any better than the Rays might. They’re also 1-5 against the Phillies. Sorry Wisconsin folk, but the Phillies win this one.

This here is an interesting playoff series. The Dodgers have been hotter than hot ever since they acquired Manny. The Cubs have been solid and consistent all season long. Chicago is looking to end a hundred-year-long curse. Los Angeles has a coach in Joe Torre and a player in Manny Ramirez who are both accustomed to winning World Series games by now. It will be close, but I think I’m going to give the Cubs the edge, even though I want the curse to continue to see the Cubs stay out of the World Series since 1945 (and no wins since 1908).

Dodgers - Cubs
Phillies - Cubs
Brewers - Phillies

Again, even though I want the Cubs to keep losing, I predict they will still beat the Phillies. The desire to end the curse at this point will trump the worries that they might botch the series.

World Series:

Cubs vs. Rays

The Rays will win to make me twice as happy for continuing the World Series losing streak for the Cubs and for winning their first World Series (and third for a Florida team). It will be a six game series with the Rays (obviously) winning at the 4-2 mark.

Let’s see how it goes, I’ll be sure to simulate this postseason in MLB PP (with rosters as updated as I can) and keep the blog posted. This will be a baseball-themed blog for a few weeks as a result, but who can complain about that?

With 162 games in a season, does anyone ever really expect it all to come down to the wire? Could anyone have guessed that not one playoff race, but two of the eight playoff spots would have been decided in the last game of the season? Did you guess that of those two, one would still not be decided until tonight?

That’s how crazy this season has been. Only the AL West’s Angels managed to secure a playoff berth earlier than the last two weeks of play. The Mets were knocked out in their last game of the season (by our favorite Florida Marlins) and the White Sox and Twins have a one-game playoff to play tonight to decide which one of them will go on to play the Tampa Bay Rays for the ALDS thanks to a grand slam by their rookie phenom Alexei Ramirez.

Be sure to tune in tomorrow when the regular season is finally over for a last look at my Wednesday Morning Quarterback predictions to see just how well I did this season. I’ll also be making predictions for the post season, which should be interesting. It’s so tough to predict for the time of year where most every player steps it up to an unprecedented degree.

You’ve probably heard the saying that hindsight is 20/20 on Monday morning, so just imagine how well I can call ‘em two days later on Wednesday. That’s right, it’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up.

It’s a real mystery. How can the Rays keep almost losing their lead only to come back in seriously clutch games. Last night the Rays left the Trop with a walk-off single by Dioner Navarro in the bottom of the ninth. Are they in the clear yet? No. They’re only one game up on the Sox with one game left tonight and a series against the Twins following. After that, it’s less pressure with games against the Orioles and Tigers, non-playoff contenders.

In other baseball news that thrills me, the Florida Marlins have been doing pretty well erasing some of their game deficit and building against the Mets and Phillies. Unfortunately, at 5.5 games back it’s gonna be a tough climb that requires cooperation from the strong Phillies and collapsing Mets.

In one of my favorite games of the week, USC blew out OSU 35-3. The Buckeyes will finally be properly ranked (13) before the end of the season. The past two years saw them dominate Big-10 teams and get a high ranking only to drastically lose in out of conference play against the other team. The Buckeye era is over, making me very happy.

You’ve probably heard the saying that hindsight is 20/20 on Monday morning, so just imagine how well I can call ‘em two days later on Wednesday. That’s right, it’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up.

MLB Baseball

The Tampa Bay Rays are determined to send me to an early grave. A five game lead, almost evaporated, sitting now at 1.5 up on the Boston Red Sox. After dropping six (SIX!) of eight to start off the month, they finally decided to win when it counts, in the second game of three against the Bo Sox. There’s no way they can hold on to this pennant and world series push if they don’t keep beating the Red Sox. The almost have to take the game tonight and the next series against the Yankees if they’re gonna have any ability to stand up against the Sox next series and hold on for the rest of the season. There’s only one easy series for the Rays for the rest of the season, and that’s against the Orioles. They’ve still got series against the Yankees, Red Sox, Twins, and Tigers. It’s gonna be a rough stretch.

In sadder news, it’s looking increasingly less likely that the Marlins will be able to put together a playoff run. At 8.5 games back their ONLY chance is to not drop any more games against the Phillies (four left, counting tonight) or Mets (three games left, the last series of the year). Regardless, you can’t say that there’s a non-contending team with any more relevance to a playoff race than the Marlins. Philly is 2.5 games back on NY, but with games against both teams, just a few mistakes can drastically change the top of the NL East.

College Football

College Football, oh how I’ve missed you! Welcome back. I know you’re in the second week, but I was too busy to catch the games that week. Besides, the Gators played Hawaii. Who cares? This week I saw a few very interesting games that can have a lasting effect on the season:

Ohio State

When, oh when are we going to stop overrating the Buckeyes? OSU has been a consistently high rated football team for at least three years now (I’ve only been really paying attention to college football for that long), but for what reason? They play in the criminally weak Big Ten where they, of course, dominate and end up rated nice and high. Then they go to the big games out of conference, like against the Gators or Tigers (GO SEC!) and get trounced. At least this year the BCS poll seems less fooled, with the Buckeyes rated at No. 5, especially after their disappointingly poorly played win against the Ohio Bobcats.

Do the Buckeyes have a chance against the Trojans? No. Pac-10 may also be weak, but the Trojans have always been a damn good football team. They will destroy the Buckeyes. I can tell you for sure that I’ll be tuned in this Saturday on ESPN to watch them lose. I love it when the Buckeyes lose.

Gators

Hope you watched the UF vs UM game this weekend, it was a blast. It’s always a good game when you have those rivalry games played, no matter what the ranks are. Only thing that concerns me about the Gators is that Tebow doesn’t seem to be as dominant. Not such a big issue, but I kind of wanted him to take two Heismans. There’s still plenty of time in the season…

Man do I love college football. Can’t wait for Saturday!

You’ve probably heard the saying that hindsight is 20/20 on Monday morning, so just imagine how well I can call ‘em two days later on Wednesday. That’s right, it’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up.

All Arrested Development jokes aside, we are actually at the final countdown of the baseball season and a few teams have got very little time left to make it to October. Foremost amongst those teams, at least in my mind, are my Florida Marlins. At a huge 10.5 games back from the NL wild card, their only chance at this point is to catch up in the NL East where they are eight(!) games back. As great as a Marlins/Rays world series sounded back in May, it’s unfortunately looking like it’s not going to happen.

The Phillies need to play well to make up their two game deficit, the Brewers need to hold on to their wild card, and the Diamondbacks need to worry about the Dodgers catching up. The only other close crazy race comes from the White Sox and Twins, tied for first in the AL Central. Let’s see what happens there, I hope it’s the Twins.

Quick little aside: college football season has appeared! Gators won over Hawaii and I hope that we see them go all the way this year.

You’ve probably heard the saying that hindsight is 20/20 on Monday morning, so just imagine how well I can call ‘em two days later on Wednesday. That’s right, it’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up.

I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to be able to talk about the official end of the NY Yankees as the dominant force in the AL East. We’ve already seen them start losing to the Red Sox over this decade as the Sox have ended their long drought and started putting together some really impressive seasons, but should this season continue in the same vein it’s been going so far, this might be the first time in a long time that the Yankees do not make the post-season. At six (SIX!) games back in the wild card race, the Yankees realistically have no chance to catch up, even though they’ve got thirty games left. The AL wild card will most likely go to the Red Sox while the AL East pennant will go to the Rays.

It’s hard to really correlate why or when these things started happening to the Yankees, but it seems to me that there are a few things that I would point to:

1. Joe Torre

Swapping Joe Torre for Joe Girardi was supposed to be the magic bullet that would right the wrongs of a team on the decline. What did it do instead? Make a team set in its ways have to learn a new management style and either modify their game to be more like Girardi’s or end up forcing Girardi to manage in a way that’s unnatural for him.

2. Lagging offense

A-Rod, Jeter, Giambi, Nady, Cano. Most, if not all of them are all-stars. They all should be performing much better than they are. Why aren’t they? It’s hard to really pinpoint or decisively say anything about where the holes are, but here are a few thoughts that could point to what’s going wrong.

A. Complacency

Win enough seasons as the Yankees (and boy were they dominant in the past ten to twenty years) and you stop thinking that you can be beat. Could it be that the Yankees, despite only making the playoffs due to the wild card last season just aren’t in the proper state of mind to win? Who would have suspected that the Rays would get so awesome and ruin the easy wild card for the Yankees?

B. Age

The Yankees aren’t exactly old hens. They’re definitely not the spring chickens that the Rays are though. Is it possible that the squad whose “experience” is so lauded is starting to hit that inflection point where experience cannot overcome the deterioration of their bodies?

None of these is really quantifiable nor do they necessarily apply over a long season where you could conceivably be able to adjust your mental state. Regardless, there is something wrong with the Yankees organization that cannot be explained by the tremendous amount of money and talent that is invested in the team.

Farewell Yankees, may you continue to be obnoxiously overrated and have disappointing seasons. Welcome to a new era for the AL East, one where there are at least three competitive teams and where you will actually have to play well to be dominant.

Extra News

Team USA wins the gold in men’s basketball!

The Phillies pull ahead of the Mets in the NL East. Marlins fail to capitalize with a loss to the Braves.

Evan Longoria on the cusp of reentering the Rays lineup.

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen.

Maybe not the most interesting edition of GO for you readers, but I’ve finally completed my MLB PP team and played quite a few games as them. As of right now, I’m not doing so hot, with a 6-9 win/loss record to make the Alaska Yetis look bad sitting five games back in the NL East (behind the Braves, Phillies, Mets, and Marlins (in that order), but ahead of the Nationals). Why NL East when Alaska is clearly a western state? I love the NL East and that’s where I recognize the most players, so that’s where I wanted to play. I shuffled the Pittsburgh Pirates out to AL Central and added another expansion team, the Hawaii Samurai, to balance out my expansion team.

As for why I’m not doing so well, I’m still sort of ironing out the difficulty level. With the hitting too hard, I can’t score any runs, but I also don’t want my players to be able to hit home runs every at bat. Getting pretty close to finding that proper balance.

My roster looks something like this (last names left off for privacy reasons, but repeated first names do not imply that they are the same person):

Pitchiing
Starters:

David
Colin
Min
Josh
Varun

Relievers:

Will
Mike
Simon
Eric
Dean
James

Closer:

Gordon

Fielders

C - Dan (me)
1B - Eric
2B - Dan
SS - Ian
3B - James
LF - Cu
CF - Lee
RF - Phil

Bench

Arjun
Dan
Ben
Robin
Darek

So, after 15 games, let’s check out who’s doing best on the team compared to the best in the league:

Batting

Batting Average

Cu: .526

BEST: .526 Cu (Yetis)

Home Runs

Dan: 9

BEST: 9 Dan (me) (Yetis)

RBIs

Dan: 19

BEST: 21 Alou (Mets) / Jacobs (Marlins)

Stolen Bases

Phil: 9

BEST: 9 Phil (Yetis)

Pitching

ERA

Dave: 5.68 with 19 innings pitched (Starter)
Will: 3.18 with 5.2 innings pitched (Reliever)
Gordon: 3.18 with 5.2 innings pitched (Closer)

BEST: 0.75 Lohse (Cardinals)

Wins

Dean/James: 2 (Relievers)
Josh/Varun: 1 (Starters)

BEST: 3 Nolasco (Marlins) / A. Miller (Marlins)

Saves

Gordon: 4

BEST: 5 Fuentes (Rockies)

Strikeouts

Dave: 14

BEST: 24 Smoltz (Braves) / Sheets (Brewers) / Paulino (renamed player not in MLBPA) (Reds)

Here are the team stats as a whole, with which place in the league in parens:

Pitching

ERA: 6.68 (6/6)
Runs (scored on): 104 (6/6)
Hits: 251 (6/6 by like 100)
Home Runs: 20 (2/6)
Strikeouts: 55 (6/6)
Walks: 3 (1/6)

Batting

Batting Average: .343 (1/6)
Runs: 80 (4/6)
Hits: 188 (2/6)
Home Runs: 30 (1/6)
Sacrifice Hits + Sacrifice Flies: 0 (6/6)
Stolen Bases: 12 (3/6

I’m definitely enjoying the game so far though! Hopefully the Yetis can slowly move up the standings in the east to keep from looking like they were a mistake to establish.

100th post! YAY!

You’ve probably heard the saying that hindsight is 20/20 on Monday morning, so just imagine how well I can call ‘em two days later on Wednesday. That’s right, it’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up.

Hey sports fans, it’s been a while for the blog, but we’re officially back in business! The sports world has had quite a few great and exciting stories since then between the Olympics, Favre, injuries on the Rays, and surprising stability in the standings on the AL and NL East.

Olympic Fever

I love the Olympics. As I often tell people, I feel like it’s the last real way for modern, civilized countries to wage war against each other in the modern world. Thanks to economics, you’d never see China and the US fighting each other in the foreseeable future (God I hope so!), but the Olympics allow the full competitive expression of Team USA and Team China without involving the seven million strong People’s Liberation Army.

Anyway, the overall main competition between the US and China involves medal count, which I can happily say the USA is currently winning with 29 medals to China’s 27, but China is also gunning for most golds, which is is leading with 17 golds to the ten that Team USA hold.

Team USA has been doing pretty well overall, but I’d say my favorite moment is that Men’s 4×100 (which I cannot find a good Youtube video for) was that monstrous win over the braggadocios French (.08 seconds!). Other than that, the Micheal Phelps gold medal count is the next biggest story as he becomes the greatest Olympian in history. The one problem I have with him winning is that I know some of his times are suit-dependent, but sports technology is so ubiquitous that you can’t really discount athleticism because of it.

Brett Favre

Brett Favre has FINALLY found himself a home: the New York Jets. Man am I glad that at least some of this nonsense has been resolved so I don’t have to watch him all over SportsCenter, although now I’m stuck hearing about Aaron Rodgers all day.

What does this mean for Green Bay now? Well, aside from Rodgers’ decent performance in that pre-season game, they can’t possibly have as good of a starting quarterback with Aaron at the helm, but their season still needs to be pretty solid. If they don’t make the playoffs, you can bet there will be hell to pay in Green Bay.

Brett Favre and the Jets have it slightly easier. Favre still has to do well, but I think there’s a lot less pressure on a man whose career has already been proven. All he’s really gotta do is not get hurt and keep the Jets competitive and he’ll be fine. If he outperforms Rodgers (this will be endlessly compared), then he’ll be a super success out in NY.

MLB Baseball

As the post season approaches, the MLB standing races continue to really heat up, particularly in the AL Central and NL West as the Twins/White Sox and Dodgers/Diamondbacks, but you all know that I’m a junkie for the Eastern divisions and none of them disappoint with their respective drama.

The Tampa Bay Rays still sit in first place in the AL East three games up on the Red Sox and eight up on the Yankees. The Yankees, in particular, are in a stunningly low position for a traditionally powerful second half team, but that’s the way the new East has been going. Tampa’s mind blowing arrival as a competitive team has baffled everyone and changed the nature of the East. What’s keeping the East dramatic is how Boston won’t fall back from three games back and the recent injuries of Carl Crawford and Evan Longoria on the Rays. Both are clutch players, but the long loss of Evan Longoria (speculated to be until 1 Sept) can only hurt the team since he is their prime offensive performance. Hopefully the Rays can hold on to their first place spot until then.

NL East continues to be as close as ever with the Phillies still leading, the Mets one game back, and the Marlins 1.5 games back. The Phillies have a tough series they’re in the middle of against the Dodgers, the Mets are coasting against the Nats, and the Marlins are playing a tough one against the Cards.

Shea Stadium Review

Got to see a game at Shea on Sunday and I’ll have to say I really enjoyed it. Even though the stadium is about to be torn down, it’s still got a heck of a lot more of a baseball feel than Dolphin Stadium. The concourses have an open feel, but very narrow. In fact, the park itself just feels very cramped, but this may be because of its location (NYC) forcing the stadium to take up a limited amount of space and also because the new Shea is being constructed literally right next to the old stadium.

Fans are pretty into the game and they show it with loud cheering. The park is huge, but not so big that it looks empty like Dolphin Stadium. Also cool is the big apple that comes up after a home team home run. I didn’t get a chance to see it, but it was pretty cool.

Shea is a decent ballpark, but I would say it’s a great thing that they are making a new stadium. There’s a bit of that old school design to it with spartan corridors and bland aesthetics, but it’s still a solid place for baseball with great fans.

You’ve probably heard the saying that hindsight is 20/20 on Monday morning, so just imagine how well I can call ‘em two days later on Wednesday. That’s right, it’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up.

Florida Marlins

It’s been a while since you’ve last heard from me about the Marlins, but it’s funny how things haven’t changed much since then. The Fish remain 1.5 games back from the Phillies as of today and are, once again, in a series that will challenge the very fabric of their team.

The next few games pit the Marlins against the Phillies and Mets, the teams directly above and below them in the standings. I’ll be fortunate to definitely attend a game against the Mets at Shea and I might even go to Citizens Bank Park for the Phils game this Thursday. My goal of attending a ball game at every major league ballpark isn’t going to achieve itself, is it?

I’ll be crossing my fingers to move the Marlins into first over the Phils. They’ve already achieved quite a feat by beating Jamie Moyer last night. The Marlins were 0-10 against Moyer up until last night when they broke the Moyer hex. Hopefully the win streak begins and remains against him for the future.

Tampa Bay Rays

In Rays news, Tampa remains in first place a full three games ahead of Boston (QUICK ASIDE: Manny Ramirez to the Dodgers! WTF is Boston thinking??) and are holding strong in a series against the bane of their existence, the Cleveland Indians. At this point all that remains for the Rays to do is continue their strong performances and stay in first in the AL East.

Tropicana Field Review

This Sunday I got a chance to see another baseball game at Tropicana Field and boy was I surprised to see a new, reinvigorated ballpark. My tickets were pretty sweet, thanks to my younger brother getting them from the company he’s interning at, located in right field just past first base about 30 rows up from the field, so I feel like I got a good chance to evaluate the stadium.

When I was last in the Trop, back in 2004, the stadium was pretty different with different screens and, more importantly, a different color scheme due to the uniform and name change this year. Formerly a green and purple colored team, the renamed Rays are now a dark blue and light blue team and the new stadium looks very nice in the new color scheme.

Also great in Tropicana Field are some of the new fan traditions. Taking inspiration from the SNL skit, fans are encouraged to bring cowbells to the stadium and use them in cheers, specifically when opposing batters have two strikes on the count.

Unfortunately, the Trop is plagued by a few problems as a consequence of its dome. Sure, being indoors in the Tampa Bay sun is a good idea, however, their climate control system is not as effective as it should be, creating a kind of stale, stuffy environment that doesn’t make for a comfortable sit during the game. The dome itself is a bit of an issue too, with the low rafters in the outfield affecting high fly balls and, in general, the non-retractable nature of the dome being an issue. Sure, in the super-hot summer complete with ridiculous rains, why would you want to have the dome open unless you’re me and love the hot weather, but on cooler days or nice days, not having the option really does affect your ability to enjoy the game.

Tropicana Field is an average stadium to see a game in. You could do worse for a baseball field :cough: Dolphin Stadium :cough:, but it still doesn’t even come close to my favorite (so far), Oriole Park at Camden Yards.