Two wild card games down. Tampa Bay Rays handily beat the Texas Rangers (good thing) and Pittsburgh Pirates body slammed the Cincinnati Reds. Other words come to mind to describe that game, with reference to the Pirates’ fans: boorish, neanderthals, rude, crude and obnoxious…you get the idea.

Johnny Cueto, the Reds pitcher, was harassed beyond the point of any definition of crowd enthusiasm. While Michael and I agreed that Pittsburgh was likely to take the game, I did not anticipate the rabidity of the onlookers. Reminded one of the old days in the Roman Colosseum with the gladiators. Johnny’s lucky to still have his head. There was no excuse for their behavior.

Having said that, what are the Pirate team’s odds of moving ahead? I say poor. Why? Listen, gentle readers, to Grandma Susan explain the finer points of baseball, based on having watched at least 100 games this season…wow…that’s at least 250 hours spent watching …Michael, take exception to my musings if you will, but this is what I believe to be so.

Baseball is both a physical as well as a cerebral sport. Yes, it requires those gentlemen to utilize their brains as well as their muscles. And based on what I saw from Pittsburgh last night, they have the muscle, but do they have the brains? I say Nay.

The stats show that Pittsburgh hasn’t successfully gotten this far in 21 years. I can see why. It is likely this team plays as did the last one that succeeded 21 years ago. In other words, they have not evolved as other teams have (e.g. Oakland, Boston, Tampa Bay) using sabermetric concepts. They just bludgen the ball. A team that does that cannot succeed.

Watching “sabermetric” teams is like solving a really complex math problem, or a clever crossword puzzle with an embedded metapuzzle. You can observe strategy at work in a physical manifestation.

For example: the A’s know that a particular pitcher has a problem fielding bunts. So what do they do? First batter, first pitch: they bunt. The pitcher messed it up (as they knew he would) and the guy was done for that game. He left within 3 innings. Now that’s strategy, not sabermetrics, per se. But teams whose front office adopted sabermetric methods tend to play with a more cerebral approach to the game. They analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the other team, and take advantage of the weaknesses while trying to avoid the strengths. That’s what it takes to win ball games nowadays. And that clearly isn’t what Pittsburgh has demonstrated. A pox on their house, I say. There you have it, folks.

It’s a long way to the World Series, but I’ll make this prediction here and now: the team that wins will be one that combines brains, athleticism and heart to succeed. We’ll see who that ends up being. The field includes the following teams:

Boston Red Sox
Detroit Tigers
Oakland Athletics
Atlanta Braves
Tampa Bay Rays or Cleveland Indians, depending on who wins tonight
St. Louis Cardinals
Pittsburgh Pirates
Los Angeles Dodgers

Boston and Atlanta have played the best for the longest. Detroit is in the American League Central, which is kinda not so challenging. Los Angeles battled their way up from lots of troubles to take the NL West. So who will emerge victorious? Michael is coming down to visit tomorrow, and we’re going to run the stats and place some fictitious bets. We’ll see. Obviously my favorite is Oakland, but my head says probably not. So if it can’t be Oakland, maybe it can be Atlanta. Or Tampa…Anybody but Pittsburgh!