Tim Donaghy’s Allegations

Wow. I’m sure you’ve sat with your friends and said things like “they don’t call fouls on Player” or “they want the Team to win.” But when an NBA ref is saying things like they were told to lay off calling fouls on a player so as to not hurt TV ratings…..oh no.

How awful for the NBA to have this come out now durink a Lakers-Celtics final.

What’s scary is where there’s smoke there is usually fire – so maybe Donaghy is exaggerating or desparate, I don’t know what he knows or what his motivation would be, but it won’t surprise me if there’s some truth to this story.

The Math

The Phillies have played 65 games at a clip of .600. If they begin playing .500 ball they will finish with 88 wins.

The Mets have 100 games remaining. If they play 58-42 (.580 ball) they will catch the Phillies.

However the Marlins and Braves and Phillies all play each other, so there are plenty of days where you cannot make up ground, all you can do it potentially lose ground. For example, the Braves play the Phillies 12 more times. One of those teams will win that day…so even if the Mets win that day, they can’t pass anyone. The Phillies play the Marlins 12 more times. The Braves play the Marlins 9 more times. The best the Mets can hope for is that they go 36-0 while all these teams play .500 against each other.

It gets late early, and it’s late.

The Joba Rules & The 4 Man Rotation

So in one of the Sunday papers someone wrote a letter with the follow observation: Little League pitchers who are 10 and under are allowed to throw 75 pitches. 11 year olds can throw 85. If a player throws more than 61 pitches he has to wait three days.

We’re told that poor fragile joba will melt if he throws too much and needs to be “conditioned.” Ok fine.

While the Yankees are conditioning him (by throwing 75 to 77 pitches) why not condition him to throw every fourth day? For years and years and years pitchers were able to throw in a four man rotation. No really. Guys did this for twenty year careers!

When I was a lad pitchers were able to throw complete games! No, really! Pitchers would regularly throw 7, 8 sometimes even 9 innings. If you had an ERA over 3 you weren’t that good and if you had an ERA over 4 you “sucked.” No, really – look it up.

So how about it Yankees? Have him throw every fourth day and just announce that it was the plan all along!