What makes his argument silly is he makes it seem like if the phillies beat burnett tonight then they have all the momentum in the world but if they beat gaudin hey it happens. I'm not going to guarantee that burnett will win tonight but it's not a guarantee that his buddy gaudin will go 5 innings.

I think a lot of you are missing the point here.  I was onto Francesa as soon as he started with this "free game" business.  This isn't about Cliff Lee or Chad Gaudin or even Joe Girardi.  This is about Mike trying to set up shows for himself later in the week.  We've already established many times over on these forums that in order for Francesa to be successful he has to stir up controversy and this is just another way of doing so.

Mike Francesa LOVES to be the guy who "breaks away from the pack".  Now most people will tell you that in the postseason no matter where you are as far as having the upper hand in a series you always go for the jugular.  You never ever ever give games away no matter what the circumstances and you always put yourself in the best position to win the series.  Mike on the other hand loves to take "the road less travelled" so on the off-chance that his opinion turns out to be right he can base another entire show around it.  How many times have you heard Francesa say something like "and I always said that this was a good idea/bad idea" when it comes to a coach's decision or a manager's decision.  It's almost like he's bragging that he's somehow smarter than not only the coach/manager but also all of the other sports journalists who took the more conventional route.

In reality though Mike just loves riding a "dark horse" situation and hopes against hope that his strange hunches pay off (and that is all they are is hunches being that Mike has never managed any professional sport in his entire life) so he can not only base future "Mike'd Up" shows around his "dark horse" prediction coming true but also appear brighter than 99.9% of the rest of the sports world that disagree with him.

PS: I'd be interested to know what Mushnick and the ESPN guys feel about this issue...usually if they say the sky is "blue" on a given issue, Mike will argue that it's "green".  It's gotten to the point where Mike Francesa's logic is so transparent it's not even funny.