No more WAR!

The final day of the regular season in Major League Baseball is today. There isn’t as much potential drama as last year as all of the playoff spots have been clinched. However there are still two division titles up for grabs as the Orioles are a game behind the Yankees in the AL East and the Rangers and the Athletics are tied in the AL West. Those games are important because of the new playoff structure with two wild card teams that play a one-game round to determine the ultimate wild card team.

It’s just going to be tough to beat last year’s final day magic.

It does look like for the first time since 1967 that there will be a batting Triple Crown winner in MLB in Miguel Cabrera. He leads comfortably in Batting Average and RBI’s and has a one homerun lead over Josh Hamilton from the Rangers. The Rangers do have a meaningful game today though so anything can still happen. Should Hamilton hit one today Cabrera stills win the TC even with a tie.

Now there is talk about who will win the MVP in the AL between Cabrera and the Angels rookie star Mike Trout. The nod should clearly go to Cabrera just based on his stretch run that helped propel the Tigers to the AL Central title as they passed the White Sox with a few days to go. The Angels failed to make the playoffs even though that’s certainly not Trout’s fault. One could argue that his presence was the main presence needed to keep the Angels that close near the end of the year.

But there is a baseball statistics organization out there called SABRE. Someone from there created an incredibly terrible new stat called WAR (wins above replacement) which attempts to gauge the amount of wins a team would have with a player who played in place of a different player. Trout apparently has a number around ten and Cabrera a number around six. They can’t get rid of this thing fast enough. It’s bad enough that we have to deal with a stat called OPS which simply adds On Base Percentage to Slugging Percentage, but now this. Yet what don’t have is a stat called Game Tying and Go Ahead RBI’s which would give a far better yardstick against which to measure a players clutch hitting performance.
We used to have Game Winning RBI’s but the way that was measured was absurd. If a player drove in the first run of the game and the game was never tied then that run was the game winning RBI. But the game could have ended up 10-9 and that first run really didn’t mean anything beside a go-ahead RBI, which would have still counted in my category, although there would not technically be a game-winning RBI in the sense of that old stat.

Anyway, I had been rooting for the Mets R.A. Dickey to win the pitching triple crown but he came up short last night. He should end up leading the NL in strikeouts but will end up one win behind the Nationals Gio Gonzales in wins and about .20 behind the Dodgers Clayton Kershaw in ERA. Credit Kershaw for putting pressure on Dickey in his last start of the year when he pitched a complete-game shutout to take the lead in that stat.
Dickey pitched last night but gave up three runs growing his ERA and getting a no-decision in the Mets next to last game of the year.
But give Dickey even more credit as it was announced last night that he will need surgery later this month to fix an abdominal tear that he has been playing with for quite some time.

But the most incredible thing about baseball this year is that the Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles are in the playoffs and at the same time. We can even throw in the fact that Oakland’s presence is a miracle as well since they were picked for last place, but the Nationals are currently tied for the best record in the NL and they won their division convincingly. The Orioles still have a chance to tie for the division lead (not sure of the tie breaker if they tie the Yankees tonight) and in a division with the Yankees, Rays and even the Red Sox and Blue Jays, no one gave a second of thought to the Orioles contending for this spot in the playoffs.

Showtime’s Dexter and Homeland had great season premiers this past Sunday. Dexter is in its 7^th season and Homeland its second. Think of Homeland as sort of a “24” for today without the real-time structure that 24 had. Both lead actors (Claire Danes and Damian Lewis) in that series won “Best Actor” Emmy’s for last year’s season.



Claire Danes



I like Claire Danes. She could be in my harem if it was legal to have one. She might not be the lead harem mistress though even from that show. That spot between the two main women on the show would go to Morena Baccarin who plays Lewis’ wife. She was the girl who played the lead role in the science fiction series V on ABC and she also plays on The Mentalist, which I have still never seen.



Morena Baccarin



Fringe has returned to FOX for its 5^th and final season. It was sad news to me to find out that it will not return again. It had been getting pretty good the last couple of years and I adore Anna Torv, the lead female. Torv (from Australia) is one of those foreign actors who work in an American accent like Hugh Laurie (England) from House and Ryan Kwanten (Australia) who plays Jason Stackhouse on True Blood.



Anna Torv



This is my busiest time of the year so I don’t get a lot of chance to write now. I sort of wish that Summer was busier and Fall was slower so I can enjoy the weather more at this time of year. But I’ll take busy at any time of the year over slow, especially these days.

We are still taping the Dungeon of Manlove show. It’s been a lot of fun. In a way I wish it were more mainstream so that the potential for more people to listen to it would be greater. But I just don’t think it would be as fun for anyone involved or anyone who does listen now. If you dare, you can take a listen right from this page in the Dungeon Player near the upper right portion of the page.

That’s all I got…

Done