More Links Than Winks

On Tuesday night I attended an early-evening birthday party for a friend, pre-empting my ALDS Game One viewing plans. Fortunately, I had the miracle of TiVo at my disposal, enabling me to time-shift my viewing seamlessly. All told, I saved myself well over an hour’s worth of commercials, pitching changes, pregnant pauses, and McCarver/Buck blathering. The result felt like missing out on a hangover. Suffice it to say that I not only heartily endorse TiVo, I recommend that any serious baseball fan who expects to lead a life beyond the couch in October purchase one.

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”.

• [4 hours and 20 minutes into Wednesday night’s ballgame]: I’m ready for Raul Mondesi to retire already.

Prediction Pain

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

NL East: Braves, Mets, Marlins, Phillies, Expos

NL Central: Astros, Cardinals, Cubs, Reds, Brewers, Pirates

NL West: Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Padres, Giants, Rockies

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:

     PRD  ACT  OFF

NYY 	103	 103	   0

TEX 	 72	  72    0	

PHI	  81	  80	   1

MIN  	91	  94	  -3

BAL	  64	  67	  -3

SEA  	96	  93	   3

FLA   75	  79	  -4

COL   77  	73	   4

KCR  	67	  62	   5

TOR	  83	  78	   5

BOS	  87	  93	  -6

PIT  	65	  72	  -7

CHW	  88	  81	   7

CIN   70	  78	  -8

LOS  	84  	92	  -8

CLE  	83	  74	   9

ARI  	88	  98	 -10

ATL	  91	 101	 -10

OAK  	93	 103	 -10

HOU  	94	  84	  10

STL  	86	  97	 -11

TAM	  66	  55	  11

DET	  67	  55  	12

SFG	  83	  95	 -12

NYM  	88	  75	  13

MON   68	  83	 -15

MIL   71  	56	  15

SDP  	81	  66	  15

ANA  	81	  99	 -18

CHC   88	  67	  21

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.

The Chickens Are Rounding Third

San Diego Padres owner John Moores endeared himself to baseball fans in the days prior to the strike deadline with a statement saying he was prepared to shut the game down for a season in order to get a favorable labor deal. Okay, “endeared” isn’t actually the proper verb; “made his idiocy known” is a more suitable one. Moores’ ultra-hardline stance–one which had no parallel voice even in that season of heated rhetoric–was manipulative and appalling.

It was also a fairly transparent bluff. Moores had already successfully milked the taxpayers of San Diego for roughly $300 million towards a new baseball stadium, set to open in 2004 to replace The Murph. For the Padres, who are covering $153 million of the stadium’s cost, leading in with a full year’s labor stoppage would have been financial suicide.

Now it looks like Moores could be shut down himself. He’s the chairman of a software company, Peregrine Systems, which filed for bankruptcy this past weekend. The company had recently been de-listed by NASDAQ after admitting that it had overstated its revenues by abot $250 million. Since then, it’s been under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and the Department of Justice for fraudulent accounting practices. With over 30 class-action lawsuits pending against Peregrine, Moores’ share of the Padres could be liquidated if he’s found liable.

But hey, what’s a little liability when you’re Fortune Magazine’s 5th Greediest Executive? And what’s a few more feds when you’ve already been the subject of a federal investigation regarding the bribery of a city councilwoman for the ballpark deal–an investigation which brought construction of the park to a halt for over a year? Moores was eventually cleared of wrongdoing: “”It is not a crime to give a gift to a public official.”

In a group for whom convicted felon George Steinbrenner (conspiracy to make illegal campaign contributions to the Nixon campaign ’72) is the model for success, Moores stands out among baseball owners for his greed, his audacity, and his ability to draw federal heat. It was bound to happen sooner or later: the third base coaches are waving his chickens home to roost.

Beware the Naked Man Who Offers to Pitch Relief

As we saw last week, there’s no telling what can happen once a fan runs out onto the field of play. This guy ran onto the field during the A’s-Mariners game on Tuesday night. Clearly, he misunderstood the concept of the term “winning streak”.

The Fragile Equilibrium of Unhappiness

“They don’t have it this year” is Page 2 writer Bill Simmons’ simple eulogy for this year’s Boston Red Sox, writing of their absence of the inexorable IT of which winning ballclubs are made–luck and good timing, “mindless gimmicks” and “quirky stretches,” to use the writer’s own words. I’d planned my own postmortem of the Sox as Tuesday night’s work, but Boston denizen Simmons did the definitive job with his piece, so I’m tempted to save my schadenfreude for another day.

Which comes down to essentially the same point Simmons makes: these Sox didn’t have enough of IT to get riled up about as we rooted against them. Not the way we could enjoy watching 2001’s Duquette-led ship of fools hitting the iceberg, as its passengers choked each other to death on their way to drowning. This year’s ship developed a slow leak a good ways out of the harbor–during the first round of interleague play–but aside from casting Jose Offerman overboard in spectacular fashion, never rewarded us with their typically unified front of divisiveness.

That was the case, at least until the team was truly dead in the water (OK, I’ll stop with the maritime theme…) following their last go-round with the Yanks. Since then, the Sox’s triumverate of superstars each found time to become embroiled in petty controversy (…which mean’s it’s time to bust out that can of schadenfreude after all):

• Manny Ramirez, whose bonehead-first slide in a May 12 game cost him six weeks with a broken finger, thus foreshadowing the team’s initial swoon, caused a flap over his at-bat theme music and then was vilified for not running out a routine groundout against Tampa Bay. Manager Grady Little didn’t immediately yank Ramirez, which apparently caused him a sleepless night. Now, with all due respect to Little and anybody else who was kept awake by his gnashing, in my book any guy with an OPS over 1000 and a history of hamstring problems can pull up once in awhile if there’s nothing on the line. Given that Ramirez has shown via his absence just how valuable he is, and given that he’s tied to the Sox with a supposedly “immoveable” or “untradeable” contract (to use the words of two writers), doesn’t it make sense to think in terms of the big picture of having him as healthy as possible?

• Nomar Garciaparra, who has lost considerable ground to Alex Rodriguez and Miguel Tejada in the Great Shortstop Trinity or Quartet or Whatever since injuring his wrist and missing most of last season, evoked the ire of one Steve Buckley of the Boston Herald with a flippant remark. Responding sarcastically after a tough loss to a question about why the Sox road record was better than their home mark, Garciaparra triggered a bitter back-page tabloid rant in which the writer told the shortstop, “You don’t deserve to play in Boston.” Buckley attempted to hang Nomar for the high crimes of complaining about the fans and the media, even fabricating a story which had the Boston shortstop calling the pressbox to complain about a scorer’s decision. He’s right about one thing; Nomar doesn’t deserve such horseshit treatment. “If we’re all so negative, so cynical, so pessimistic, so Calvinist, believing that every pennant is predestined in spring training,” writes Buckley , “then you should probably not be here.” Probably not.

• Pedro Martinez decided that he’s calling the shots up and down the Boston organization. On Saturday, Martinez threatened to leave the Sox after 2004 “”if they don’t pick up the option soon and negotiate with me.” Invoking the heartwarming free-agency saga of Alex Rodriguez by threatening “to hear what other teams have to offer” Pedro reminded the Sox that “that could be very risky.” Never mind the fact that he’s got a ticking time-bomb for an arm and that contract Armageddon is not one but TWO years away; he doesn’t get to hear jack shit from other teams for a long while no matter how the Sox treat him.

That hasn’t slowed his Napoleon complex, however. Fresh off of his 20th victory, Martinez declared himself shut down for the season without consulting manager Little–this before the team was actually mathematically eliminated from the Wild Card. Now explain to me again why the Sox should eagerly commit money to this delicate flower well before they have to?

Look, contrary to Simmons’ excellent analysis, the Red Sox failure this season is simple to explain. They underperformed in 1-run ballgames (13-22), and this skewed their Pythagorean projection (a simple prediction of a team’s Won-Lost record based on Runs Scored and Runs Allowed). The Sox, with 799 scored and 621 allowed, project to a winning percentage of .613 and are 6.6 games below that projection. The Yankees, with 848 scored and 676 allowed, project to a winning percentage of .602 and are 3.7 wins above that–a 10-game swing between projection and performance. That’s where the Sox season died.

There’s a fragile equilibrium to an unhappy ballclub. In order to make a team truly worthy of one’s enmity, poor performance on the field must be accompanied by ever more sour missives delivered at and by the players through the media. Just when it seemed the Red Sox didn’t have enough of IT to pull this off, just when I’d dismissed them, it’s apparent that they’ve hit their stride after all. With writers and players finally pointing the fingers, the team has arrived at last during the season’s final weeks. What an amazing comeback!

Following the Script

On Saturday, the Yankees wrapped up the AL East title, thus making official what had been a foregone conclusion since vanquishing Boston one last time on September 4. With a week left in the regular season and not much in the way of competition except those pesky Devil Rays, the big suspense in the Bronx is attached to personal milestones, playoff pairings, and postseason roster and rotation decisions. Oh, and the small matter of whether or not Mariano Rivera’s shoulder can hold up.

In the milestones department, Alfonso Soriano is one bomb short of his quest for 40 homers and 40 steals and nearing the ML record for homers by a second baseman. Bernie Williams is on the cusp of 200 hits, 20 homers and 100 RBI, and not quite dead in the AL batting race. Jorge Posada and Robin Ventura are within striking distance of 100 RBI, giving the Yanks as many as five with that distinction. The team itself is 2 wins shy of 100. Most of these numbers will round into shape but don’t expect to hear any whining unless that last one goes unfulfilled. I had them down for 103 and I think they’ve got a shot.

The playoff pairings aren’t set in stone, but it’s virtually certain (one Anaheim win or one Boston loss) that the Wild Card will come from the Wild Wild AL West and will face the Yankees. The A’s lead the Angels by three games with six to go, meaning that they’ll likely win the division and place out of a third straight 5-game ALDS matchup with the Yanks. The Yanks and A’s do have something going, however; they’re vying for the league’s best record and thus home-field advantage in the playoffs. The Beaners are one game up on the Bombers at this writing.

Joe Torre has two big decisions facing him this week, and while Michael Kay and Suzyn Waldman may feign suspense to keep viewers tuning in, anybody who watches the team knows that the answers have already been scripted.

On the leftfield situation, where Rondell White, Juan Rivera, and Shane Spencer are vying for the starting role and perhaps a roster spot, here is what Joe will say: “Obviously, with Shane’s hamstring the way it is, we have to consider some other options. This Rivera kid has really shown us what he can do, and we’re still hoping Rondell can get it going and help us out. Shane, well, you know he can hit lefties, so he could be a pinch-hitter for us.”

On the starting rotation, where five distinguished starters are competing for four slots in the rotation: “The Posada incident wasn’t a factor–that’s a family matter we’ve already taken care of. We felt that since El Duque has had a bit of experience coming out of the bullpen, he’s the most suited to the task. That may change depending upon the matchups, if we get through, but for the time being, we’re going this way.”

At the beginning of the season I complied this chart, showing the postseason stats of the Yankee starters:

           W-L   ERA    IP    ER

Pettitte  10-7  4.34  149.1   72

Hernandez  9-2  2.48   90.2   25

Wells      8-1  2.74   85.1   26

Clemens    6-6  3.33  127.0   47

Mussina    4-2  2.56   66.2   19

Hitchcock  4-0  1.76   30.2    6

--------------------------------

TOTALS   41-18  3.19  549.2  195

Hitchcock is unlikely to make the postseason roster, but everybody else has a legitimate case as a starter. Though he hasn’t pitched particularly well in the second half, Clemens gets it on pedigree. Despite his recent controversies, Wells is in, for making Boss Steinbrenner’s hamburger gambit look smart. Pettitte’s been the Yanks’ most consistent pitcher during the second half, 10-2 since the All-Star break. The choice for fourth starter ultimately comes down to Mussina and Hernandez.

Despite his gaudy 16-10 record, Moose has struggled the hardest of any Yankee starter this season, with his 4.33 ERA to show for it, but the Yanks are committed to him long-term. They’ll push El Duque into the relief role because they can. Hernandez has spent a season on the brink of being traded, and the Yanks seem destined to exert their leverage at all times by reminding him that he’s expendable. More tellingly, he’s also the only one of the bunch who’s made a relief appearance since 1998.

It may be stretching things to say I don’t agree with a decision that hasn’t even been made, but I’m bracing for this one. Other than any medical report on Rivera’s shoulder (which has seemed to hold up through two non-consecutive appearances since returning from the DL) and Sori’s 40-40 quest, it’s the only real drama in the Bronx right now.

Royster Strikes Out

The Milwaukee Brewers are bad, downright awful, in fact. Having already lost over 100 games this season, they’re the worst team in franchise history–even worse than the 1969 Seattle Pilots (64-98). And even less likely to leave behind a bestselling epitaph.

Their offense is pretty pathetic, last in the league in runs scored, and 14th out of 16 in OPS. But faced with a series which actually meant something–three games against the San Francisco Giants this weekend, games with NL Wild Card implications–manager Jerry Royster chose to make his team even more feeble than it already is. Royster benched All-Star shortstop Jose Hernandez in order to prevent him from breaking the single-season major league record for strikeouts in front of the home crowd.

Hernandez has struck out 188 times this season, one short of the record Bobby Bonds set in 1970. With a week to go, he’s a lock to break the record if he plays at all. But Royster didn’t bench his shortstop to avoid the record, as Florida Marlins manager John Boles did by sitting Preston Wilson during last season’s final week. The manager of the Brewers is simply trying to protect his player, upset because Hernandez was being booed at Miller Park for NOT striking out, among other things. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “Fans in the right-field stands assembled what looked like 188 ‘K’ placards, which were removed at an usher’s request.”

They do know their strikeouts in Milwaukee. Last year’s team set a major-league record for striking out with 1399, led by Hernandez (185) and Sexson (178). This year they’ve cut down considerably (1079 with a week to go), which is even one less thing the Milwaukee faithful have to cheer about. Royster doesn’t see it that way, however: “I don’t think he deserves any treatment like that. What he deserves, if he gets it, is the strikeout record. Also what he deserves is praise for the way he’s played. He’s getting none of that. He’s only getting where people are trying to humiliate him… We won’t avoid the record. I will help him avoid being humiliated.”

Somebody else will have to nominate Royster for the Humanitarian of the Year Award. I’ll take issue with the fact that he can’t even lose right. Hernandez, who’s hitting .282 AVG/.351 OBP/.473 SLG/824 OPS with 24 HR, is the team’s second best hitter. Without him the enfeebled Brewers managed only three runs and 14 hits over their three games with the Giants. Not that one hitter would have definitely made a difference against the Giants, but Hernandez’s presence in the lineup rather than rookie Bill Hall (hitting .158 through the end of the series) couldn’t have hurt the team, and was merited given the circumstances of games with playoff implications. Is the integrity of the schedule too much for Milwaukee to handle?

Royster, who may well get fired at season’s end anyway, deserves some grief over this. A seven-year contract to manage the Brewers ought to be sufficient punishment.

As for Bonds’ record, it will likely fall to Hernandez during the Brewers’ series in Houston. It’s amazing that that the mark has stood for 32 years, given that strikeouts rates have increased about 20% in that span. Here are the National League rates of K’s per team per game, taken at five evenly spaced intervals from the time Bonds set the record until now:

1970: 5.88 per team per game

1978: 5.10

1986: 6.01

1994: 6.32

2002: 7.01

The stigma against strikeouts isn’t what it used to be; it’s worth noting that of the top 40 single season totals, only two of them happened before 1970, and one of them was Bonds’ previous high of 187 in 1969 (the other was previous record-holder Dave Nicholson’s 175 in 1963). Several players have come close to breaking the record in this span, including Wilson, former Brewer Rob Deer (who didn’t play several games during the season’s final week in 1987, when he finished with an AL record 186), Pete Incaviglia, and Jim Thome. It was bound to fall sooner or later.

Postscript: Score an error for me on the Preston Wilson comment; it was 2000, not 2001 when Wilson struck out 187 times. Furthermore, while Boles vowed to bench Wilson down the stretch to avoid the record, he did back off somewhat. The Marlins outfielder played in 161 games for the season, with two pinch-hitting appearances in the final week.

The Marquis of Splits

True story: Giants pitcher Russ Ortiz comes to bat in the 6th inning of Wednesday night’s Dodgers-Giants game, having given up the tying run and then pitched out of a jam moments earlier. He’d thrown 116 pitches at that point. My pal Nick turns and asks me what I think of Baker letting him bat rather than pinch-hitting for him.

Invoking the names of Shawon Dunston and Tsuyoshi Shinjo, I reply that Ortiz is as good a hitter as anybody on the Giants bench, recalling that he’d hit a sac fly in his previous at bat, and that I’d witnessed him smacking a 2-run double against the Mets earlier this season. Seconds later, Ortiz drilled Robert Ellis’ third pitch over the leftfield wall, giving the Giants a 4-3 lead which they never relinquished. Ortiz didn’t throw another pitch, but he didn’t have to–his work was done.

Being right on that particular call didn’t feel so good. But despite the result, this Dodgers-Giants series has been a treat thus far. I’ve stayed up until around 1 or 2 AM the past four nights, either watching the game or following it via the Internet (tonight I’m listening to Vin Scully via MLB.com’s GameDay Audio, which I finally shelled out for–more on that another time).

The Giants pulled ahead early in the first three games against shaky Dodger starters, only to let the Dodgers claw their way back into the game. Both teams have illustrated why they’re still in the postseason hunt, hustling all-out, gambling for the extra base and chasing down balls with abandon (see Paul Lo Duca’s catch on Monday). Stars have starred–Jeff Kent has a pair of homers, Barry Bonds has been on base 12 out of 15 times (3 walks per night), Shawn Green’s 5-for-11 with 4 runs, Adrian Beltre’s 5-for-12 with 4 RBI. And unlikely heroes have emerged. Ortiz struck the big blow last night. Benito Santiago has 5 hits and 2 walks in the past two nights, Marquis Grissom robbed Rich Aurilia of a game-tying 9th inning homer on Monday and homered himself on Tuesday to bring the Dodgers back into the game. Giovanni Carerra stopped the bleeding by giving the Dodgers 3 1/3 innings of strong relief after Omar Daal departed early on Tuesday. All of it has made for some of the season’s most memorable baseball.

Tracy’s handling of Grissom is one of the things which exemplifies why the Dodgers are still in the race. Almost exactly a year ago, I practically beat my head against the wall regarding Grissom’s play: “Marquis Grissom plays ball like his doppelganger, comedian Martin Lawrence, and he gets on base slightly less often. The Marquis de Sade drew an amazing total of 3 walks in 278 ABs through July; if that’s not grounds for a restraining order preventing Tracy from leading him off, it ought to be.”

Going into spring training, the Dodgers had three candidates for the centerfield job and leadoff spot:

1) 35-year old Marquis Grissom, coming off of a 654 OPS, making $5 million.

2) 33-year old Tom Goodwin, coming off a 622 OPS, making $3.25 million.

3) 30-year old Dave Roberts, who had a career 601 OPS in less than 200 big league plate appearances, making $217,500, just above the big league minimum.

Not a particularly appetizing menu. But Tracy saw something in Roberts during the spring and made him his leadoff hitter and CF against righties. Roberts has put up a .350 OBP and 45 steals. Grissom has played against lefties and also picked up some games in LF when Brian Jordan got hurt, posting an 831 OPS overall, including a .510 SLG. Goodwin was released and caught on with the Giants, where he’s up to his usual tricks with a 617 OPS. Combined the Dodger CFs have put up .337 OBP/.413 SLG/750 OPS, which isn’t great, but it sure beats the .282/.377/659 they posted last season. Faced with the daunting limitation of two unproductive players with moderately expensive contracts, Tracy wasn’t afraid to try Door #3, and in doing so solved two problems at once.

Despite choosing Roberts as his starter, the mileage he’s gotten out of Grissom is impressive. Here are Grissom’s platoon splits over the last two seasons:

        AVG   OBP   SLG   OPS   PA

2001 L .254  .270  .500   770  137

2001 R .207  .242  .363   605  329

2002 L .290  .352  .603   955  144

2002 R .268  .298  .441   739  188

Last year 71% of Grissom’s plate appearances were against righties, this year only 57%. (I don’t have platoon breakdowns for sac flies and bunts, so they’re not included in the OBP and PA calcs). He’s destroyed lefties, and he’s even held his own against righties.

Tracy’s decision to play Roberts this year resembles his choice of Paul Lo Duca as his regular catcher last year. Lo Duca entered the season as a 29-year old with around major-league 200 PAs in his career. Given the starting job, he responded with a 917 OPS and even spent a stretch of the season as the Dodgers’ leadoff hitter (which I studied in great detail). He was moved out of the spot primarily because he was leading the league in batting with Runners In Scoring Position. Lo Duca hasn’t had as good a season this time around, but take away his anemic August (440 OPS) and he’s at a very respectable .306 AVG/.340 OBP/.441 SLG. As Monday night’s game showed, the guy plays all out as well.

Decisions like these have helped Tracy overcome injuries to the pitching staff and subpar production from Jordan, Eric Karros, Adrian Beltre, and his middle infielders (except for Alex Cora, another player whom Tracy has spotted well). He’s the NL Manager of the Year for my money.

But Tracy’s biggest test may be to come, as he patches together the Dodgers’ tattered rotation from here on out. Coming into Thursday night’s game, LA had only 1 quality start in its past 7 games and 2 out of 12. In that span they’ve lost two key pitchers to season-ending injuries–Kazuhisa Ishii to a fractured skull off of a line drive, and Kevin Brown to back problems. They’re thin in pitching, which is never a good thing at this time of year. But if anybody’s going to find a way to pull it off, I believe it’s the Dodger manager.

Clearing the Bases

Here’s a handful of good links from around the web which I wanted to call your attention to before I get back to watching and writing about the Dodgers…

• James Surowiecki writes the excellent Tommy John a household name. It also put orthopedic surgeon Dr. Frank Jobe on the map for figuring out how to repair John’s torn ulnar collateral ligament with such success that John won 164 games AFTER going under the knife. Baseball Prospectus’ Jonah Keri had a fascinating interview with the doctor. Among the topics discussed are the complexities of repairing the shoulder as opposed to the elbow, recovery times for TJ surgery, and the phenomenon of pitchers claiming they throw harder after the surgery than before, an effect Jobe dodges the credit for: “What the surgery does is restore the ligament’s stability to where it was four or five years ago. A pitcher might say the operation did it, but it’s just more stability in the arm contributing to better mechanics.” Jobe also offers his views on the way pitchers are handled, and points to regrowth of cartilege as one of the most promising areas of research in its impact on pitcher (not to mention the rest of the world).

• By hanging with the red-hot Oakland A’s, the Anaheim Angels have shown everybody that they ‘re for real. Gary Huckaby of Baseball Prospectus analyzes the Angels over at ESPN and admits that Huckaby admits that nobody in BP’s cast saw it coming: “Every single person at Baseball Prospectus picked the Angels to finish dead last in the AL West. Not a single contributor picked them to even beat out the pitching-poor Rangers for third in the division.” He points out how the Angels are strong across the board, featuring some of the league’s top pitching, an excellent (and economical) bullpen, and the benefit of several hitters at or near their peaks. Elsewhere within ESPN’s vast media empire, Rob Neyer and Tony Gwynn offer their takes, with the former talking to GM Bill Stoneman and the latter extolling the virtues of manager Mike Scioscia.

• Twins Geek John Bonnes gets to celebrate early; as his team has already clinched its division. After the drama the Twins have been through off the field, it’s impossible for any rational fan not to savor the irony of their success. So here’s a hearty hoist of the mug to the team and its fans for getting the laugh on Bud Selig; let’s hope the Twins can lose owner Carl Pohlad and find a way to build on this season.

Bonnes is looking ahead to the AL playoffs in his column. Today he examines the Yankees, and the way the Twins match up with them. Bonnes points out that the Yanks’ two lefties (Pettitte and Wells) may spell bad news for his team, as the Twins don’t hit southpaws very well (712 OPS, vs. 797 OPS against righties). More bad news for the Twinkies: their most consistent pitcher, Rick Reed, has posted a 10.39 ERA against the Yanks this season, and Bernie Williams owns Twins closer Everyday Eddie Guardado (1380 OPS in 28 ABs). But Bonnes notes that while the Twins went 0-6 against the Yanks, all of those games were played in a 10-day span in May, which might limit their applicability in drawing conclusions.

• Lest Twins fans get too down about their chances, ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian points out that their home-field advantage is significant enough to be a factor in a short series. The fast turf, the white ceiling, the Homer Hankies, and the noise level–not to mention the team’s 49-26 performance at home this season–are enough for Kurkjian to warn the Twins potential opponents to “Beware the Metrodome.” As somebody who rooted for the team during its two unlikely World Series victories–during which they went 8-0 at home–I think Tim’s definitely onto something.

• Twins fan Aaron Gleeman spent a lot of time watching baseball via DirecTV, enough so to offer his opinions (scroll down to the September 13 entry) about the announcers for half of the teams in the bigs, as well as ESPN and Fox. Among his favorites are the announcers for the Giants (Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow), the Twins (Dick Bremer and Bert Blyleven), the Yanks (except for Suzyn Waldman, of course) and Braves groups, and of course, Vin Scully.

• I keep meaning to add this MLB Contracts site to my links page. This unofficial site (run off of a British server) is an incredibly handy resource for looking at the contracts of a particular team or at the year-by-year breakdowns of an individual player’s deal. Though it’s by no means complete, it’s well worth a bookmark the next time you want to complain about the lousy, overpaid bum of your choice.

• Shilling for myself: I recently added a listing for this site (under “Stats and Analysis”) over at HeavyHitter.com, “the world’s largest baseball directory.” You can stop by there and vote as to the quality of this site; positive votes help to increase this site’s visiblity within their listings, and would certainly be appreciated.

Time for the Dodgers game…

Stuck Inside Manhattan With the Dodger Blues Again

I’ve come down with a case of Dodger Blue Fever. I stayed up until 2 AM Monday night sweating out the Dodgers-Giants result from the West Coast, and I’m prepared to do the same again tonight. With these heated rivals in a dogfight for the NL Wild Card, my long-dormant allegiances have been stirred. I’d rise from the dead to watch these two teams mix it up in a meaningful late-season series.

As a lapsed Dodger fan now living in NYC and rooting for the Yankees at much closer range, it’s been awhile since I got a charge out of my old team. I’ve carried a grudge against them ever since they folded the tent at the ends of 1996 and ’97 season, hastening their plunge into the clueless oblivion of the Fox era. Late-night vigils for West Coast scores were no longer worth keeping for such a listless and mediocre ballclub, not when a great one was a Bronx-bound subway ride away.

My allegiance to the Dodgers had been founded on continuity–a love for the team handed down from my grandfater to my father to me and my brother, and a stability within the organization that gave us time to form attachments to its key personalities. The stability of the Dodgers’ O’Malley era was characterized by a single stat: two managers for forty-three years. From 1954 to mid-1996, Walter Alston and Tommy Lasorda guided the club, in most years able to offer up a contending–if not quite championship-caliber–ballclub. By contrast, the Foxies burned through three underachieving managers in five years, none of whom ever made his mark on the team before bad front-office decisions took their toll.

But Jim Tracy changed all of that. I don’t have much of an idea how he’s pulled it off, but Tracy has done an amazing job of keeping the Dodgers in postseason contention in each of his first two seasons. His teams have overcome devastating injuries, clubhouse distractions, and some horrible contracts–they paid $22 million for six wins last season, and another $30 million for 14 wins from Kevin Brown over the past two. Tracy has gotten more out of players like Marquis Grissom and Alex Cora than even their mothers thought possible, and his patience through substandard years by Brian Jordan and Eric Karros has been rewarded by their hot Septembers (5 HR/20 RBI/987 OPS for Jordan, 2/9/843 for Karros). Paul Lo Duca has become an All-Star caliber catcher, and one of the league’s more exciting players. Already on Tuesday night, he’s tagged up and scored on a popout to second base and slid into the dugout at full steam to catch a foul ball. This team hustles for Tracy–they look ready to run through walls for him. Clearly, Tracy has won their respect; he’s won mine as well.

Though I only experienced it through ESPN’s GameCast and the occasional SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight update, last night’s ballgame felt like one for the ages. Hideo Nomo fell behind early, yielding a solo homer to Jeff Kent and and an RBI double by Tom Goodwin (whose salary the Dodgers are paying) in the first inning, and a Rich Aurilia solo shot in the third. The Dodgers got it all back and then some in the fourth inning, as Brian Jordan hit a grand slam off of Jason Schmidt. The Dodgers furthered their lead in the fifth on a two-run double by Adrian Beltre–this just after the umps let slide a fan-interference call which prevented Goodwin from catching a Beltre foul.

Barry Bonds brought the Giants back with a 2-run homer off of 79-year-old Jesse Orosco. The undead Karros countered with a solo shot, making it 7-5. Goodwin scored from second on an infield hit and a Beltre error, cutting the score to 7-6.

The ninth inning was an absolute classic, with Dodger closer Eric Gagne facing the meat of the Giants’ lineup: Aurilia, Kent, and Bonds. My palms were sweating and my heart was pounding as the ESPN GameCast ploddingly plotted the action, telling me that Aurilia had flied out deep to centerfield; I had no idea until seeing the replay on Baseball Tonight how close he’d come to a game-tying homer. Marquis Grissom absolutely robbed him. Gagne rung up Jeff Kent for the second out. Tracy elected to walk Bonds rather than give him an opportunity to tie the game; the gamble paid off as Gagne punched out Benito Santiago to end the game, bringing the two teams to a tie in the Wild Card race.

As I write this, tonight’s game is on TV. The Dodgers have clawed their way back from an early deficit, and are down now 5-4 in the 8th on Tuesday night/Wednesday mornign, 1:15 AM EST. I’m wired on this race. Go Blue!