Vegas Watch

The LoHud Yankee Blog, via Baseball Musings:

"In what was a bad day for the Scott Boras Corporation, Alex Rodriguez went to the Yankees directly and apparently has all but finalized a 10-year, $275 million deal."

If it's the Yankees and "only" $275MM, I take back everything I said yesterday. I'd make that deal in a second if I was Cashman.

Update: SI's Heyman is reporting the same thing.

Each remaining team's chance of winning the World Series, according to the Vegas lines:

I guessed it would be BOS 36%, COL 36%, CLE 28%. The fact that they won by ten may have contributed to the Red Sox jumping up higher than I expected. It's also possible that I was just completely wrong.

Below is a graph of each team's WS% throughout the series. BOS is in red, CLE in blue. The first number is their % before G1, the second before G2, and so on.

Both teams peaked at exactly 47.5%, the Sox when they were up 1-0, and the Tribe when they were up 3-1. Now we're about where were were before G1. Both teams' percentages are actually slightly lower than at the start of the series. This is because before the NLCS the NL (ARI + COL) was at 34.2%, and Colorado is now at 37.8%.

So here's each team's chance of winning this series before each game:

So, after 22 hours and 24 minutes of baseball*, we're pretty much right back where we started. The Red Sox were -170 to win the series when it began, and are -170 to win tonight.

OK, enough of that. Why did Victor feel the need to run around the bases as slowly as possible after his HR in the top of the second? I understand he was upset with the strike zone in the first (although I'm not sure that was warranted). But walking around the bases is showing up the Red Sox- there's no place for that. I'm probably one of the biggest Victor Martinez fans alive (did you know he won the Carolina League MVP in 2001?), but that was ridiculous.

I have no idea what happened to Rafael Perez. He has faced 13 Red Sox this series; they are 7/11, with two walks, and two HRs. He hasn't recorded a single strikeout.

Oh, and apparently Paul Byrd took HGH (via TBL). Although it may have been for medical reasons. Take from this what you wish.

One final game primer up a little later, then the live-blog.


*The average time of game has been 3 hours and 44 minutes. That's not particularly fast, but remember G2 was 5 hours 14 minutes. So the other five games have averaged 3 hours, 24 minutes. I guess that's because most of them haven't been close, but considering the circumstances (the games are on FOX), that's pretty speedy.