A's 5 Red Sox 4, and the Rise of BAP

I went against my own better judgement, and even my BAP intuition, and picked the Red Sox to win this series. And it wasn't even all rose-colored glasses. My thinking was that Pedro would win games 1 and 5, but then would only get one start against the Yankees, putting New York in the World Series. Of course, none of this takes into account the large difference in BAP abilities. If you dig back in my blog you'll find me coming to a conclusion that reads something like this:

The A's are surprisingly an amazing BAP team. The Red Sox are the anti-BAP.

The A's have the reputation of being a station-to-station team because of Billy Beane and their low stolen base totals. But what seems to be lost in that is they do have players that can take an extra base, and they almost never get runners thrown out on the bases. They also don't ground into many double plays. Now, that's mostly a function of not getting many men on base, but still it's true.

Almost every game I've scored for BAP with the A's has given them a positive number of EBs. Conversely, the Sox always seem to end up with low or negative numbers of EBs. So here it is, essentially a battle between BAP Good and BAP Evil, with me rooting for the wrong team. Life as a Red Sox fan.

Which brings me to a joke that a co-worker and I shared today:

Question: Why don't Red Sox fans go to Hell?

Answer: They're already there.

The Numbers

OBP - Bos .413, Oak .365
SLG - Bos .435, Oak .244
OPS - Bos .848, Oak .609
BAP - Bos .609, Oak .683
EBs - Bos 1, Oak 7
BA - Bos .261, Oak .195
SecA - Bos .348, Oak .366
BA+SecA - Bos .609, Oak .561

BAP and SecA both win, and everyone else loses. This seems like a great time to update the standings:

BAP - 6-0
OBP - 5-1
SLG - 5-1
OPS - 5-1
BA - 5-1
BA+SecA - 4-2
SecA - 3-3

BAP sees things the others don't see. Cool!

Bum of The Day - Has to Kim, but otherwise it would be Grady. Trading a Nixon-Rincon matchup for Brown-Bradford? Yikes? And I like pulling Walker for Jackson as a defensive replacement, but if you know you're going to do that, how can you have Walker hitting between Nomar and Manny?

Most Likely To Remember the Game When They Are 80 - Got to be Ramon Hernandez. A bunt single with two outs and the bases loaded in the bottom of the 12th? Are you kidding?

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