Game of the Day (8/6/91)

Phillies 6, Cubs 2 (11). Chicago's Rick Sutcliffe was a former Cy Young winner. Philadelphia's Bruce Ruffin hadn't posted an ERA+ better than 81 since 1987. But in 1991, both of them were basically average pitchers.

Game of the Day (8/5/91)

Astros 2, Padres 1 (12). Houston's Pete Harnisch and San Diego's Greg Harris were both having excellent years. It was Harris's first time as a full-time starter, and Harnisch's first time posting an ERA better than league average, and both were young enough that their production could have been taken as a highly promising sign. Neither pitcher would ever really be a star, but both ended up with creditable careers.

Game of the Day (8/4/91)

Mariners 5, Angels 2 (12). The two starting pitchers in this game were not particularly similar in terms of performance... but both of them debuted with the Mariners, and both of them had four-letter first names that included the letters R and K in that order, along with last names that included A, N, S, O, N, also in that order.

On the other hand, Seattle's Erik Hanson was a 6-foot-6 right-hander who would end up throwing barely half as many career innings as California's Mark Langston, a notably shorter and significantly slimmer left-hander.

Game of the Day (8/3/91)

Cardinals 6, Pirates 5 (10). St. Louis's Bryn Smith was 35 and had left his best years behind him; after the '91 season, he had about 50 innings left in his career. Pittsburgh's Doug Drabek was on his way to 22 wins and the Cy Young. The matchup wasn't as uneven as it sounds, but it wasn't particularly even either.

Game of the Day (8/2/91)

Phillies 6, Expos 5 (11). The Phillies started Danny Cox, who had fairly recently returned to the majors after a two-year absence. The Expos responded with Dennis Martinez, who had very recently thrown a perfect game. So... not the most even of matchups.

Melog Rankings (Pre-Olympics 2016)

The tennis schedule is a mess right now - and as a result, so are the rankings.

This was touched on briefly last time, but I probably didn't quite give it the emphasis it deserved. The Olympics are coming up, and the tennis schedule was radically adjusted to compensate for their presence; there will be only one 250-point event this week (Atlanta), and one next week (Los Cabos). The Rogers Cup (held in Toronto this year) would normally have been scheduled to take place next week, but was shifted two weeks earlier, also to adjust for the Olympics - and as usual, no other ATP event can take place in the same week as a Masters.

The results of all those machinations were... interesting. Here is a table showing what the schedule between Wimbledon and the Cincinnati Masters has looked like each of the last two years. (The table is color-coded by surface - hopefully in self-explanatory fashion; blue is hard, brown-orange is clay, green is grass. Davis Cup quarterfinals were played on varying surfaces so they're left in black. Week 3 for 2016 was just completed.)

Week	2015	2016
1	Newport; Davis Cup QF	Bastad; Hamburg; Newport; Davis Cup QF
2	Bastad; Bogota; Umag	Gstaad; Kitzbuhel; Umag; Washington
3	Atlanta; Gstaad; Hamburg	Toronto Masters
4	Kitzbuhel; Washington	Atlanta; Rio Olympics
5	Montreal Masters	Los Cabos; Rio Olympics

Bastad and Gstaad were both held a week earlier than usual. Hamburg, Washington, and Kitzbuhel were both held two weeks earlier than usual, as was the Rogers Cup. Atlanta, meanwhile, is a week late, and Los Cabos, which replaces Bogota on the schedule, is three weeks late.

What that means is that as of now, the ATP rankings (and my rankings, for that matter) include two Rogers Cups (Novak Djokovic won one and lost the final in the other, and temporarily gets 1600 points for the combination), along with two Washingtons and two Kitzbuhels, but no Atlantas or Bogota/LosCaboses. (They also include no Olympics - but that will still be true two weeks from now, as no ranking points are being given for the Olympics this year.)

All of this will come out in the wash two weeks from now... kind of. But the compressed post-Wimbledon clay schedule (especially moving Hamburg to the week after Wimbledon) will have consequences that last for the next twelve months, as the fields in those events were severely diluted (players outside the top 100 received direct entry into several of those 250-point events).

Put it this way: The top seed in the 500-point event in Hamburg was Philipp Kohlschreiber, who came into the event ranked #22 in the world by the ATP. In the first week of this year, the tournament held in Brisbane had all eight of its seeds ranked in the top 20 - and yet Milos Raonic gets only 250 points for winning that title, and Martin Klizan gets 500 from his victory in Hamburg.

(Or put it this way... the final in Kitzbuhel this year was Paolo Lorenzi over Nikoloz Basilashvili. After that match, both of those men lost before the semis in the events they played the next week - which doesn't sound all that uncommon until you realize that both of them were playing Challengers.

Let's get into the mess.

Game of the Day (8/1/91)

Royals 6, Brewers 5 (11), KC's Mike Boddicker made over 300 starts in his career. Milwaukee's Jim Hunter made six. But hey, a third of Hunter's starts were Games of their respective Days, and I'm fairly confident that Boddicker can't say that...