The diffference in the two defenses can be seen via the two teams' Defensive Efficiency Rating, which measure how often a team turns a batted ball into an out. The Angels led the majors with a .731 rating, meaning that batters hit .269 on balls in play against them. The Yanks' DER was only .708, eighth in the AL and two points below the league average. This means that batters hit .292 on balls in play against them, a 23-point difference. Through the first three games, the difference between the two teams is staggering: the Angels DER is .767 (meaning a .233 batting average on balls in play against them), the Yankees' is .670 (a .330 average). Needless to say, that's an astounding difference that goes a looooooong way towards explaining why the Angels have the upper hand in this series thus far.
Ugh. I'm going to pass on a lengthy dissection of the Yankees two losses to the Angels in the Division Series because I simply don't have the time or the stomach for it. But the short version is that Joe Torre screwed up in handling his bullepn last night.
I practically screamed myself hoarse at the TV wondering alound in colorful language why the hell Joe Torre left Mike Stanton in the game in the seventh inning. A one-run lead, with two on, one out, and pinch-hitter Shawn Wooten (a slow-footed righty) at the plate would seem like a situation tailor-made for ground-ball specialist Ramiro Mendoza. But Torre left Stanton in, and though he retired Wooten, Scott Spiezio laced a game-tying single. Inexplicably Stanton stayed in to start the eighth, allowing a leadoff double to Adam Kennedy, a sacrifice bunt, and another double to Darren Erstad. Steve Karsay didn't improve matters by allowing a homer to Tim Salmon, the first batter he faced after Torre finally gave Stanton the hook. But by then the opportunity for a bailout had passed, and Mendoza never got into the game.
On the other hand, Mike Scioscia's handling of his bullpen was fantastic, particularly his use of rookie Francisco Rodriguez. The 20-year old had blown hitters away in a late-season cup of coffee (13 Ks in 5.2 innings!) after striking out 120 in 83.1 minor-league innings, but it took guts for Scioscia to include him on the postseason roster over the more experienced Al Levine and Dennis Cook. But with the element of surprise to accompany his stuff, he's become the Angels' secret weapon, baffling the Yankee hitters.
The equation right now is simple: if the Yankees don't get a well-pitched game out of David Wells today, their season is over. Wells has a great postseason track record (8-1, 2.74 ERA), but he hasn't pitched well against the Angels (6.52 ERA in two starts this season, totalling 9.2 innings), at Edison Field (7.88 ERA in 16 innings over the past 4 seasons), or in the daytime (1-3, 7.15 ERA this season). Furthermore, he's struggled against some of the Angels big hitters, including Garret Anderson (.382), Troy Glaus (.333) and Darin Erstad (.300).
But if there's one Yankee pitcher I'd like on the mound today, it's Wells. So long as his back is healthy, nothing fazes him, and he's always come up big with the money on the table. Right now there's about $130 million of Yankee payroll sitting there, and it doesn't get any bigger than that.
My TiVo-ing, combined with a bit of watching the late late Cardinals-Diamondbacks game, made for a very late night, so I 'm going to clear the bases on a bunch of stuff and get some sleep tonight, rather than write about the Yanks game in depth...
• ...except to say that in one inning, Mike Scioscia may have undone all of the good press that he's generated thus far this season. The Angels manager (who will likely get my vote as AL Manager of the Year over at the Internet Baseball Awards if I'm strict about considering only regular-season performance), will be second-guessed until the cows come home for his decision not to bring in closer Troy Percival to put out the Yankee rally in the eighth inning. Scioscia brought in lefty Scott Schoenweis (his only southpaw in the pen, which should set off some alarms as the Halos go to battle with the Yanks) to face Jason Giambi with two on and two out in the eighth inning, rather than Percival. The G Man was 5 for 20 in his career against Schoeneweiss, including 2-for-3 this year, while Percival was 0-for-5 with 5 K's against him this season. Giambi's game-tying hit may have been something of a fluke as it richocheted off of Scott Spiezio's glove, but Scioscia stil had the option to go to his hoss before the barn burned down. Instead he brought in Brendan Donnelly, of whom Bernie Williams made short work with a long ball.
With the game on the line, obviously Percival should have been in there rather than being saved for the save situation in the 9th inning. As Around the Majors reporter Lee Sinins writes, "When the game's on the line and you're managing for the sake of a manager manipulated stat, rather than the victory, you deserve to lose."
• Speaking of cows coming home and barns burning down... no, I was never raised on a farm. Just a big fan of Keith Jackson. Whoa, Nellie!
• How about Alfonso Soriano, he of the meager 23 walks this season, laying off of Ben Weber's sliders once he'd fallen to 0-2 with 2 outs in the eighth? Sori's walk absolutely turned the game around. And man, isn't Weber one scary lookin' dude? His in-game demeanor and jerky pitching motion combines John Rocker, Ted Kaczynski, and a hari-kiri swordthrust.
• From Baseball Primer's thread on Game One: "Posted 11:44 p.m., October 1, 2002 (#212) - Mystique and Aura Told you we were showing up."
• The Internet Baseball Awards voting ends Friday. I'm trying to build up enough resistance to the peer pressure to vote for Alex Rodriguez as AL MVP. That's a column for another day, one when the Yanks arent' playing. Bull Magazine's Craig Calcaterra has an excellent piece on the contradictory criteria which the Baseball Writers of America invoke when voting for the MVP. Of closers, Calcaterra writes: "Rule #7: Disregard Rule #5 if the pitcher in question is able to hold a three-run lead in the ninth inning of every third game or so. If he can do this, he is magically transformed into a "closer" and is rewarded with his very own statistic, the save. Do not, under any circumstances, keep in mind that saves are just a measure of opportunity, and that some relievers routinely hold one-run leads in the seventh or eighth innings. These relievers have no special stat like saves, and therefore must be worthless. This rule explains Dennis Eckersley in 1992, Willie Hernandez in 1984, and Rollie Fingers in 1981."
• NY Daily News' Vic Ziegel on Game One of the Twins-A's series: "OAKLAND - Minnesota 7, Oakland 5, Skill 0, and congratulations to the decision-makers who determine the TV playoff schedule. They did the right thing keeping this afternoon game, this series, away from prime time."
• ESPN's Jim Caple reports that the Twins' early-game gaffes started with their trip to the ballpark, as several players, along with GM Terry Ryan got lost when they took the wrong train. Writes Caple:
Everyone knew the Twins were inexperienced but few realized that extended to public transportation.
"We've had guys go to the Astrodome even though the Astros don't play there anymore. We've had guys go to Shea Stadium when we played the Yankees," first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz said. "You just realize we're not the brightest group of players. But when you're with the general manager, you figure you ought to be in good hands."
• The Twins Geek offers his unique perspective on Game One, including the part where he was joined by his Australian friend (and baseball neophyte) Dave:
Dave: Joe Morgan had a baseball career of some kind?
Me: Well, he was the greatest second baseman that ever lived.
Dave: Oh. [pause] But that's debatable, right?
Me: No.
• Great though he was as a player, Joe Morgan is an entirely different league as a commentator, especially when it comes to his online chat sessions. Mike of Mike's Baseball Rants does a brilliant and hilarious job of tackling Joe's ridiculous and often contradictory answers posed in the chat:
Joe is in actuality just an adherent to Reductio ad Absurdum. Reductio ad Absurdum is, of course, is a means to prove a given point by taking its reverse to an absurd conclusion. C’mon you use it everyday. Remember when you first said, “If Miguel Tejada is the MVP, then I’m a monkey’s uncle.” Well, start developing an appetite for bananas and flinging fecal matter.
The only reason that Joe is juxtaposing brilliant insights with inane tripe is to demonstrate to us mere mortals all the more the sagaciousness of said insight. The more he proffers preposterous pap, Batman, the more intelligent he really is. It’s sheer brilliance. By espousing a baseball philosophy awash in ancient, hackneyed saws, he is actually trying to rid the baseball discussion once and for all of all such tripe. You are a brave man of conviction, Joe Morgan. And we salute you along with those about to rock (Fire!).
• The Mets' season was a trainwreck wrapped in a disaster, buried under a shitpile of bad contracts. Proving that shit does indeed run downhill, they made manager Bobby Valentine the scapegoat for their miserable season, conveniently avoiding the fact that it was General Manger Steve Phillips who traded for Mo Vaughn, Jeromy Burnitz, and Roberto Alomar, and signed Roger Cedeño and Rey .000rdoñez to cumbersome contracts. Not that Valentine didn't contribute to his own demise, but by firing him, the Mets clearly did him a favor. They extricated him from an overpaid, underachieving, over-the-hill ballclub that had lost respect for him and seemed unwilling to take his input at any level. My hunch is that they'll be wallowing in the damage Steve Phillips has done long after Bobby V. has moved onto his next job (Texas, again?). And it'll be awhile before they're an interesting ballclub again.
• The Mets' managerial vacancy means it's speculatin' season in the Big Apple, with plenty of Yankee- and Met-related names surfacing as candidates: Lou Piniella, Buck Showalter, Chris Chambliss, current Yankee coaches Lee Mazzilli and Willie Randolph, as well as current Giants manager Dusty Baker. I'd love to see Randolph get a shot and wouldn't be surprised if Maz get it. But I won't complain too loudly if Sweet Lou finds his way back to NYC to give George Steinbrenner a bit more competion for headlines.
• Speaking of Yankee coaches, my pal Nick will sleep better at night knowing that Mel Stottlemyre and Don Zimmer have decided not to retire and will return to the Yankee coaching staff next season.
• Speaking of managerial firings, Brewers manager Jerry Royster got his just desserts. I've already filed my position paper regarding Royster's role in the Jose Hernandez strikeout fiasco, but I also think that Hernandez deserves some of the blame. If he'd gone to Royster and said words to the effect of "Hey skip, thanks for watching my back with the fans, but I'm man enough to handle this by showing up and playing ball the way I have been all season," the situation would probably have been defused. I doubt Royster would have been so protective without Hernandez's complicity. Perceptive Brewers fan Harvey's Wallbanger had a good prescription for the Brewers over at Baseball Primer: "... if any team needed Leo Durocher with a permanent hangover as manager this is the squad. They made indifference an art form... I rarely encourage the General Sherman modus operandi but if there was ever a time to just burn it all to the ground and rebuild with the remaining rubble this is it."
• Following up his fascinating interview with orthopedic surgeon Dr. Frank Jobe, Baseball Prospectus' Jonah Keri has a great Q & A with Tommy John, who's now a Double A pitching coach. John has some interesting, unorthodox views on arm care, and advocates pitchers throwing every day:
[W]hen I had the surgery, I was forced into throwing every day to rebuild my arm strength. All of a sudden, my arm felt better than it had in its life. I'm not talking about throwing five minutes. I would warm up in the bullpen for 10 or 15 minutes, 15, 20 minutes of BP, then 10, 15 minutes more back in the bullpen, six days a week. On days where I wasn't throwing batting practice, I'd throw off a mound a half hour to an hour... It's hard for people to buy into the fact that throwing will strengthen your arm. A lot of them think rest will strengthen it. It won't. It might make it feel better but it won't strengthen it.
Here's hoping Keri continues what could well turn out to be a fascinating series by interviewing other pitching iconoclasts such as Dr. Mike Marshall (he of the 106 appearances in 1974) and the legendary Johnny Sain.
• If ESPN "analyst" Rick Sutcliffe is good for anything besides sucking up all of the oxygen in the room, it's picking up when a pitcher is tipping his pitches. In last year's World Series it was Andy Pettitte, in the recent Dodgers-Giants series it was Jay Witasick, and now it's Curt Schilling. Will Sutcliffe's observations be enough to alter the course of the Cards-Snakes series? Tune in for the next episode of "As The Curve Turns".
Being a Writer of Sorts when it comes to baseball, I'm prone to offering predictions at times when others do so; monkey see, monkey do. Today's fun comes as we look back at those predictions and see just how far off base they were. At the outset of the season, I made two sets, one for my site and one over at Baseball Primer. On my site, I predicted the standings in each division, on Baseball Primer, I went for an actual win total based on those same standings.
The good news is that I picked four of the six division winners correctly. The bad news is that's about all I did right. The two divisions in which I was wrong, my picks didn't even make the playoffs (Seattle and Houston). My NL champs, the Astros, are decidely earthbound this October. And my NL Wild Card (the Mets) went up in smoke. Five out of eight playoff teams doesn't sound awful, but given that two of those were perennials in the Yanks and the Braves, it's not so hot.
AL East: Yanks, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Devil Rays, Orioles
AL Central: Twins, White Sox, Indians, Tigers, Royals
AL West: Mariners, A's, Angels, Rangers
More of the good, the bad, and the ugly comes when we look at the win totals I predicted for each team. The good news is that I wrote the Yankee in at 103 wins, tops in baseball, which is exactly where they stand. The bad news is that the only other team I got exactly right was the Texas Rangers, who gave us exactly the 72 wins I targeted. Here's how I did, ranked from best to worst predictions:
Ugh. Overall, I was off by an average of 8.5 games, within 5 games on only 10 out of 30 teams, and off by more than 10 on another 10 teams. On playoff-bound teams, I was off by an average of 9.25 games, seriously underestimating the A's, the Braves, and the Diamondbacks, and completely missing the boat on the Angels--but then again, nobody anywhere picked them for anything either. Three of the teams I had going nowhere--Tampa Bay, Detroit, and Milwaukee--fell short by 11 to 15 games, proving I can't even sell a lousy ballclub short with accuracy.
If there's a trend to be found in my picks, it's a consistent underestimation of the extremes. I predicted only one team with 100 wins, five with 90 to 99, nine with 90 to 99 losses (that is, 72 wins or less), and none with more than 100. In actuality, three teams won over 100, eight finished in the 90s, four teams with losses in the 90s, and four with more than 100 losses.
But before you bust on me for how badly I did, let's see your team-by-team win predictions, sport.
• • • • •
I'll be revisiting my individual award picks, as well as offering some revised ones, in the next several days amid my playoff-related writing. For now, I'll offer up some whack-ass playoff predictions that you can take to Vegas if you're in a farm-losing mood. Since I don't have the time to evaluate these matchups more thoroughly, I encourage you to check out Aaron Gleeman's excellent preview over at Aaron's Baseball Blog in addition to the stuff the pros are dishing out.
Yankees over Angels in 4 games: The Angels have been playing the Yanks as tough as any team in the AL over the last few years; they're 24-21 against them since 1998, the only team with a winning record. They also fare well against lefties, with an OPS 40 points higher (802 to 762) against them. But the Yanks pitching seems to be clicking about as well as it has all season, and the Angels showed a bit of fatigue down the stretch as they struggled to clinch a playoff berth. This will be a hard-fought series, but the Yanks will prevail.
A's over Twins in 4 games: NY Times writer Murray Chass calls this the Aberration Bowl because of Bud Selig's contention that low-payroll teams which make the playoffs are an aberration. Since one of them has to advance to the second round, we'll all be able to tell another one of Selig's statistics ("no team in the lower half of payroll has ever advanced beyond the first round of the playoffs") to shut up. Both of these teams are dangerous in a short series. The A's offer their trio of front-line starters, two of which (Zito and Mulder) are lefties, which the Twins don't hit well. The Twins don't have the pitching that the A's do ("What kind of playoff rotation features Rick Reed as its highlight?" writes Baseball Prospectus' Derek Zumsteg), but they have a pronounced home-field advantage in the Metrodome, where the balls always seem to bounce their way and crowd noise can really rattle a pitcher. If they can take one of the first two games in Oakland, the A's are in trouble. That's a big if.
Braves over Giants in 3: The Giants got hot at the right time and outlasted my Dodgers, but Dusty Baker's teams have yet to show me they can win in the playoffs. If anybody's going to figure out a way to stop Barry Bonds, I'd bet on the Braves vaunted starters. And despite Atlanta's offensive woes, I'd still take my chances with Glavine/Maddux/Millwood over Ortiz/Rueter/Schmidt, and with Bobby Cox over Baker. Considering I'd rise from the dead to spit on the Giants, I guess I'm even rooting for the Braves here.
Cardinals over Diamondbacks in 5: Snakes, I hate snakes. Especially these purple-and-teal-wearing ones. Johnson and Schilling are almost enough to get them through a five-game series, but sooner or later Bob Brenly's dumb moves will catch up with him, and the Snakes are already hurting without Luis Gonzalez. St. Louis is peaking, they're relatively healthy, and they've got emotion on their side. It's in the Cards.
Beyond that: Cardinals over Braves in 6 and Yankees over A's in 7 (it's the pitching depth), meaning I will get to use the World Series ticket I'm holding for Game Two. Yanks in 6. Book it.
