re: What explains the wildly divergent baseball scores?

This happens in every sport. If 2 football teams play each other, many times you get very different outcomes. Baseball probably has more variables to greatly affect outcomes though.

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mainieri is clearly to blame for this lack of consistency. fire him

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This is clearly the right answer.

How often do "cinderella's" win football or basketball championships? Hardly ever. One might make it to a BCS game or the Final Four but generally speaking the better team finishes out stronger. In baseball, not so much. More often then not you'll get 2-3 schools most people have never heard of in Omaha, and it's not uncommon for a small school with a decent baseball program to have 1-2 NCs. I remember growing up, going to the games and wondering who the hell are these teams in our home regionals/super regionals lol.

Fresno State two years ago. They only made the tournament because they won the WAC Tournament, then they got hot and won the whole stinking thing as the lowest seed ever. I still can't believe that happened

...sun spots....

Yes, I understand that baseball is unpredictable. I understand that bad teams sometimes beat good teams. I understand that pitching is important, and that sometimes you just can't get your offense going.

But in any one game or series, there is an explanation for an unexpected outcome--pitchers tank, lots of errors, lucky hits, expirementation with the roster, etc. I was just asking which of those things explains the divergent outcomes in this particular series.