Wandering the sports pages...

With their win over the Bucks in Milwaukee last night, the Celtics have clinched a play-off spot, even if the ESPN standings page doesn't seem to have realized it yet. They've got 35 losses with 4 games left, and are one of the 8 Eastern Conference teams with fewer than 40 losses, so they've clinched. Winning just 2 of their last 4 would guarantee that they win the Atlantic Division, something they've not accomplished since 1992, when the roster featured Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish. It's a weak division, it's not the greatest accomplishment (assuming they pull it off) and they're not yet a legitimate contender, but it's something.

When Ainge took over 2 years ago, they were a 44-38 team getting swept out in the second round of the play-offs. They could very easily be a 44-38 team getting swept out in the second round of the play-offs again this year. Yet if you look at the roster composition right now compared to what it was two years ago, it's hard to come to any other conclusion than Ainge has done a great job so far. They're at least as good as they were when he was hired, but significantly younger and more talented.

The Patriots' schedule was released yesterday, along with everyone else's. Some of the highlights:

• They've got 4 prime-time games
  
  
  
  • Thursday, September 8 - Kicking off the NFL season at home against Oakland
  
  
  • Sunday, October 30 - Coming off their bye, at home against Buffalo
  
  
  • Monday, November 7 - 1 week after hosting the Sunday night game, they host the Monday night game against the Colts.
  
  
  • Monday, December 26 - The day after Christmas, 3 weeks after hosting the Jets, they play in New York on Monday night
  
  
  
  
• In addition, they've got 4:15 games at Pittsburgh and Denver, and hosting the Jets, as well as a Saturday afternoon game hosting the Buccaneers in December.


• They play only 2 home games before their week 7 bye.


• They've got back-to-back road games twice in the first 6 weeks. Because they open and close at home, they've only got back-to-back home games once during the season. Their last 9 games are all alternating home-away.

Schilling made his debut for the Red Sox last night, and was strong for four innings, and OK for 5. He gave up 2 HR in the 6th that provided the margin in the Yankee 5-2 win. The big problem was the Boston offense, and, in particular, the opportunities wasted by David Ortiz. With runners on 2nd and 3rd and 1 out in the first, he hit a weak fly ball to left that didn't get a run in. With the bases loaded and 1 out in the 3rd, he hit a medium fly ball to left, far enough to get 1 run in, but not to advance anyone else. His first two at-bats, he had 5 men on base, 4 in scoring position, and brought in 1 while making two outs. Jaret Wright wasn't particularly effective, but they let him off the hook. I continue to be unimpressed with the Yankee rotation, with, as always, the exception of Johnson. Tonight, the Red Sox face him with Bronson Arroyon on the mound. Last night, the Red Sox had the better starter and lost. Can they turn the tables tonight?

Johnson, 1-0, 3.75
Arroyo, 1-0, 3.00

Anyone want to make the case that the Red Sox have a starting pitching edge tonight?

In 2003, Manny Ramirez went homerless in his first 8 games, the longest stretch to start a season in his career. If he fails to hit one out tonight, he'll extend his current streak to 9.

One of my pet peeves is people who greet any statistical information with the old "lies, damned lies and statistics", what I like to call the "mating cry of the innumerate". But there sure are things that get thrown around as if relevant that really aren't, people that "use statistics like a drunk uses a lamppost - not for illumination but for support." There was a wonderful example of that in yesterday's Mike Vaccaro panic piece in the NY Post, in which he wrote the splendid paragraph:

Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera have never missed the postseason, which is remarkable, and even more astonishing if you think that Mickey Mantle missed October six times in 18 years as a Yankee, Joe DiMaggio three times in 13 years, Lou Gehrig seven times in 17 years and Babe Ruth eight times in 15 years.

Wow - sounds impressive, right?

Of course, Dimaggio (and Ruth and Mantle) played in a time when you had to have the best record in the league to play post-season ball. Jeter came up in 1995, the same year the baseball went to a 3-division format with a wild card. Now, not only did you not have to win your league to make the play-offs, you didn't even need to win your division. Since Jeter first came up, the Yankees have won their division 8 of 10 years. They've had the best record in the AL, however, only 5 of 10. Dimaggio's Yankee teams had the best record in the AL in 10 of his 13 years. And all 3 of the Dimaggio Yankee teams that didn't win the AL had better records than the 2000 Yankees.

Even Mantle, who played several seasons into the decline of that edition of the Yankee dynasty, and which Jeter's team hasn't fully reached yet, had the best record in the AL in 12 of his 18 seasons. 4 of the 6 seasons in which Mantle's teams didn't make the post-season were in the early 60s, when the team was old and the pitching was gone. And at least one the other two were seasons that would have resulted in post-season play in the Jeter era. The 1954 Yankees won 103, and finished 8 games behind the 111 win Cleveland Indians.

Nate Silver has an interesting piece (pay-side only) at the Baseball Prospectus site on the possible effects of change-ups on BABiP. When Voros McCracken developed the DIPs statistic, he identified that knuckleball pitchers did have some small tendency to reduce hits on balls in play. Nate's research indicates that it may be true of pitchers with extremely effective change-ups as well.