Swish!

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I’ve got an AL East Hot Stove preview up at Baseball Prospectus and mirrored at SI.com. In the preview I address four basic questions for each team. Here they are in the context of what I had to say about the Yankees:

What Do They Have? The Yankees’ top asset is money, including more than $75 million in 2008 salaries coming off the books via the free agencies of Bobby Abreu, Jason Giambi, Mike Mussina, Carl Pavano and Andy Pettitte. They’ll need cold, hard cash to fulfill their biggest needs, since the values of their most tradable young players, Melky Cabrera and Robinson Cano, are so depressed as to make selling low inadvisable. They have young, unproven pitching to deal, starting with Ian Kennedy, who fizzled (0-4, 8.17 ERA in nine starts) following a promising late-2007 showing. Phil Hughes, who will compete for a starting slot, is likely off limits, but names like Mark Melancon, a potential future closer, and Dellin Betances, a 6-foot-8 behemoth, could surface — not that they’ll be moved.

What Do They Need? In missing the playoffs for the first time since 1993, with an offense that slipped from an AL-best 6.0 runs per game in 2007 to a mid-pack 4.9 last year, the Yankee lineup looked increasingly outmoded. With Giambi and Abreu both free agents, they have holes at first base and right field, and it’s imperative that they get younger at one position if not both. Further down the wish list is upgrading center field; Johnny Damon is in a defensive decline and Cabrera is taking a Triple-A refresher course. No less glaring is the need for starting pitching, given that 13 pitchers started for the Yankees last year, with the blueprint hinging on youngsters Joba Chamberlain, Hughes and Kennedy having blown up in GM Brian Cashman’s face; all three got hurt, with the latter two so ineffective that they failed to garner a single win. Chamberlain and Chien-Ming Wang (also coming off injury) are assured spots, but the rest is up for grabs, and Cashman plans to overstock the larder to avoid repeating last year’s Sidney Ponson-ocalypse.

What Are They Likely To Do? They’ll pursue the biggest of big game, namely CC Sabathia, who will command a nine-figure deal, but will face competition from multiple teams including the Brewers, who have a $100 million offer already on the table. Expect them to chase former Red Sox nemesis Derek Lowe as well as A.J. Burnett, who opted out of the remainder of his five-year, $55 million deal in Toronto after setting career highs in innings, wins and strikeouts. They won’t net all three but they’ll shoot for two and augment that by re-signing either 20-game winner Mussina (if he surprises everyone and shuns retirement) or Pettitte, who’s coming off his highest ERA since 1999. As for the lineup, [Mark] Teixeira is an ideal fit both offensively and defensively; he would also be the youngest regular aside from Cano and Cabrera. They’ll need to break the $100 million mark to outbid the Angels, the Red Sox and others for his services. In right field they may offer the 35-year-old Abreu arbitration, a route that could net him a higher salary than he would average via the three-year deal he seeks but won’t get here. They may also explore swapping Cabrera for the Brewers’ Mike Cameron, but may have to sweeten the pot to get Milwaukee to bite.

What Should They Do? If the Yanks can only go nine figures on one player it should be Teixeira, given the need for youth and the dearth of A-list first basemen in the free-agent pool. Otherwise they face unappealing solutions like Kevin Millar or an aging Giambi. One alternative would be to trade for the aforementioned [Nick] Swisher, who can play first base, right field or even center field; he would provide flexibility as the winter market evolves. As for the pitching, Burnett’s legacy of injuries should make a team still smarting from the Pavano and Jaret Wright debacles think twice. Lowe, by contrast, is a reliable groundballer who’s every bit as effective and much more durable, with at least 32 starts in seven straight years.

Mere hours after that went up at BP, word came over the wire that the Yanks had in fact acquired Swisher in a five-player deal with the White Sox, sending futilityman Wilson Betemit, Jeff Marquez (a second-line pitching prospect whose stock fell with a lousy year in Triple-A) and Jhonny Nunez (a live arm acquired from the Nationals for infielder Alberto “Attorney General” Gonzalez) and receiving another live arm, Kanekoa Texeira (no relation to the first baseman; note the different spelling), in return.

This is a great first move by the Yanks given the switch-hitting Swisher’s versatility. Though his .219 batting average was the lowest among batting title qualifiers (502 plate appearances), his .332 OBP and .410 SLG (via 24 homers) show that his raw skills are intact. As noted in the Rays’ section of the BP piece (cut from the SI version, apparently, grumble grumble grumble), “He maintained his good power and plate discipline despite suffering through a season in which his BABIP [Batting Average on Balls In Play] fell by 52 points for no good reason given his line-drive rate.” In other words, Swisher’s drop in batting average was primarily due to bad luck, mainly via a .204 BABIP versus lefties; it was a still-low .266 versus righties. If the problem persists, he can be platooned with lefty-mashing Xavier Nady. Swisher, who’ll be 29 later this month, is owed about $22 million including the buyout of his 2012 club option ($10.25 million); the Yanks’ ability to take on salary strikes again.

As for Betemit, having watched him closely for the better part of the past two and a half years as a Dodger and a Yankee, I have to admit that I’ve turned bigger cartwheels upon him leaving than upon him arriving in both instances. A switch-hitter who can play all four infield positions in a pinch is a handy asset to have, but the guy is just less than the sum of his parts, a league leader in Equivalent Underwhelming. Granted, some of that may be managerial misuse; he needs a restraining order against lefthanded pitching, and his defensive numbers at third base are consistently below average via the Fielding Bible’s Plus/Minus system, totaling -17 over the last three years. He may have a big year in the homer-friendly confines of U.S. Cellular Field, and playing under Spanish-speaking Ozzie Guillen instead of crusty old farts like Bobby Cox, Grady Little, Joe Torre and Joe Girardi may indeed help his cause; I’ve started to wonder how much his frequent travels are related to makeup issues (he looks horrible in eyeliner!). I have no first-hand knowledge, but the way he stumbles into opportunties and then quickly gets cast aside leads me to believe he’s got a lousy work ethic, a bad attitude or suspect hygiene. I wish him the best but won’t be surprised at all if he continues sliding off the map.

Bac to the Yankees, what that means for their winter going forward is unclear. All signs indicate that they intend to blow Sabathia away with an offer that could be in the neighborhood of six years and $150 million once he hits the open market at midnight on Friday. At the very least it signals that Teixeira is a lower priority, which I think is a mistake. But Swisher prevents the Yanks from coming off as desperate in their pursuit; they no longer have the “Teixeira or Bust” sign around their necks, and that’s a good thing.

Finally, I had plenty more to say about Teixeira on Wednesday’s WWZN “Young Guns” radio spot, albeit more in the context of the Red Sox, as well as lots of other Hot Stove chatter. Check it out.

Preacher Roe (1915-2008)

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I have saved the closing words for Preacher Roe, who soon will be eighty-three. Roe is retired but vigorous in West Plains, Missouri, and proud that every one of his grandchildren has gone to college. “I know one of these days the good Lord is going to come calling,” Preacher says, “and when that happens I certainly hope he sees fit to send me up to heaven. But heaven will really have to be something to be better than what we all had long ago in Brooklyn.”
—Roger Kahn, Boys of Summer, “An Epilogue for the 1990s and the Millennium”

The death of Elwin Charles “Preacher” Roe marks the passing of yet another former Brooklyn Dodger from their storied heyday. A native of the Ozarks, Roe was one of the NL’s top southpaws for the better part of a decade, as well as one of the game’s more colorful raconteurs. He was 92, according to the New York Times obituary, 93 according to Baseball-Reference; either way, he led a long, rich life.

Roe wasn’t a particularly religious man; his nickname sprung from an early childhood fondness for a Methodist minister who took him on horse-and-buggy rides. He was anything but a stereotypical backwoods rube; for one thing, he was college educated (Harding University of Searcy, Arkansas). “He enjoyed playing the role of a country bumpkin, but he wasn’t one,” said former Dodgers teammate Ralph Branca. “He was real smart and real crafty on the mound.”

Roe’s journey to stardom was a roundabout one. He was signed by Branch Rickey back in 1938, a point in time when his Cardinals owned more than 30 minor-league teams and backed entire leagues. Like so many other players of that era, he got lost in the Cardinals’ chain; he had just one major league appearance prior to his 29th birthday before being liberated via a trade to the Pirates at the end of the 1943 season. The Pirates’ manager was Frankie Frisch, skipper of the Cardinals at the time Roe debuted.

Roe’s first two season with the Pirates were good ones; in 1945 he led the league in strikeouts and earned All-Star honors. A a skull fracture sustained the following year marred his next two seasons and caused him to avoid flying. His career slipping away, he was traded to the Dodgers in a pivotal deal on December 8, 1947. Sent to Pittsburgh were two pitchers plus All-Star outfielder Dixie Walker, who’d led a revolt against the signing of Jackie Robinson the previous spring, culminating with a petition for which manager Leo Durocher suggested a crudely creative use. In return the Dodgers got Billy Cox, who manned the hot corner at Ebbets Field for the next seven years, utilityman Gene Mauch, and Roe.

The wily 33-year-old lefty, who reminded the great Red Smith of an underfed, underpaid country schoolteacher, quickly became a staple of the staff, posting the lowest ERA of any Dodger starter in each of the next four years. He earned four straight All-Star berths from 1949 to 1952, pitched a shutout in the 1949 World Series, and went 22-3 with a 3.04 ERA in 1951, his best season. In his seven years with Brooklyn, he went a combined 93-37 with a 3.26 ERA and 123 ERA+, pitching on three pennant winners (1949, 1952, and 1953) and two agonizing near-misses (1950 and 1951) but retiring before Dem Bums’ sole World Championship in 1955.

Roe wasn’t an overpowering pitcher. “I got three pitches,” he told Kahn in Boys of Summer. “My change; my change off my change; and my change off my change off my change.” Slow, slower, slowest. “I’d show the hitters the hummer and tell reporters that if it hit an old lady in the spectacles, it wouldn’t bend the frame. But I could always, by going back to my old form, rear back and throw hard. Not often. Maybe ten times a game.”

The real secret to Roe’s success was his “‘Beech-Nut slider,” a spitball. In a controversial 1955 article in Sports Illustrated (one that required some sleuthing to uncover in the SI.com vault), he told Dick Young the juicy details about his money pitch while advocating for its re-legalization:

“This isn’t a confession and my conscience doesn’t bother me a bit. Maybe the book says I was cheating, but I never felt that way. I wasn’t the only one that did it. There still are some guys wetting ‘em up right now. I know one or two of them, but it’s not up to me to tell their names. When they get ready to, ‘maybe they will. I’m just going to talk about me; why I did it, and why I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it.

…”The idea is to get part of your grip wet, and the other dry. When the ball leaves your hand, it slips off your wet fingers and clings, just tiny-like, to the dry part on your thumb. The ball jumps on account of it. If it’s a good ‘un, it drops like a dead duck just when it crosses the plate.”

…”One way I figured out to keep my fingers clean, was to wipe ‘em on the visor of my baseball cap. It looked like I was adjusting it on my head. I always made certain the visor was kept clean. I even went to the trouble of brushing it off with a towel on the bench between innings.

“It didn’t take long for some of the hitters to figure there was something going on between my spitter and the way I fingered the cap.

“That was just fine for me. I started using the gesture as a decoy. That was as good as the pitch itself. From then on, even when I wasn’t going to throw a wet one, I’d go to my cap just to cross them up.

“Jim Russell was one of the guys who suspicioned I was getting the spit from my cap. He was playing with the Braves then.

“This one day, I fingered the tip of my cap, and leaned forward to take the sign. Jim backed out of the batter’s box and gave me a real hard look. He stepped back in again—and I touched my cap again. He stepped out. We did this three times. Finally, ol’ Jim stood there, blind mad, and said: ‘Throw the sonuvabuck and I’ll hit it anyway.’

“I floated up a big, slow curve. Russell was so wound up looking for the wet one he couldn’t unravel himself to swing. He just spit at the ball in disgust as it went by.

“Jim and the other guys who thought I was getting the spit when I went to my cap were close. I tried that in the early days, but I gave it up because it was too dangerous. I had to figure out a way to load up without getting caught. All one winter I wore my baseball cap. I’d be sitting in my living room with it on, and even wore it out in the woods when I was hunting.”

Roe’s hand strayed to his forehead. It dropped and he leaned forward.

“For hours at a time,” he went on, “all I thought about was some foolproof way to get the spit to the ball without getting caught. I said to myself: ‘They’ll be watching me close after I come away from the resin bag. That is when they’ll expect me to do the wetting. I got to set up the spitter before I go for the resin bag. I got to have a secret “source of supply” so I can squeeze the resin bag in my fingers, rub up the ball, and still keep the spit.’

“I fooled around with that idea for a long time. You know, I ain’t very quick. Then one day it came to me. Look, you try it. Put your left hand up on your forehead.”

Roe got up to demonstrate.

“The meaty part is just in front of your mouth when your ringers touch your brow,” he said from behind his hand. “Your two first fingers can just reach the meaty part. ‘Spit on the meat,’ I told myself, ‘and when you move your hand up it looks good and natural like, like you’re goin’ to wipe the sweat off your forehead.’

Roe was a creative practitioner of the black arts, but he was also much more than that, a valiant competitor and an outspoken proponent of Robinson and of integration in general. One of Boys of Summer‘s most memorable passages is when Kahn revisits him in West Plains, Missouri, circa 1971. From page 302:

“That Mr. Rickey,” Preacher said. “First time he talked to me he told me two things. He said, ‘Son. Always be kind to your fans. You get back what you give and when you’re through, you’re just one more old ball player, getting back from life what he gave.’ I heeded that and I wisht someone would give advice to Joe Namath. I don’t know the man personally, but I get the impression he ought to walk more humble.

“Second, Mr. Rickey said, ‘Remember, it isn’t the color of a man’s skin that matters. It’s what’s inside the individual.’ And he said some of the people with the whitest skins would be the sorriest I’d meet and some of the darkest ones would be the best, That was 1938. I know now that Rickey hand in mind breaking the color barrier almost ten years before he did. I respect him for that, and I went through my career with that respect always in mind.

“I first seen colored at Searcy, ‘cepting colored passing through on trucks and once a year a colored team’d come down from Missouri for an exhibition game in Viola and draw a crowd.

“Now I’m playing with Jack. I’m gonna tell you frankly I don’t believe in mixed marriages.”

“Neither does Robinson,” I said.

“Well some do, and I won’t argue with ‘em. But as far as associatin’ with colored people and conversing with them and playing ball with them, there’s not a thing in the world wrong with it. That’s my way of looking at the thing.

“Lots of people here reckoned like me. And some did not. A few times people come up to me in the winter and said, “Say, Roe. if you’re gonna go up there and play with those colored boys, to hell with ya.’ But very few. I always said, “Well if that’s how you feel, I considered the fellers I play with, I considered your remark, and to hell with you!”

Here’s hoping Roe finds his new accommodations as rewarding as his glory days in Brooklyn. He’ll be missed.

Our Long National Nightmare is Over

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As a general rule, I avoid overt political content in this space. I started writing about baseball to escape writing about politics and the long-running culture war, and with a few exceptions, I’ve stuck to that. I might fundamentally disagree with readers on matters far more important than baseball, but I enjoy finding common ground on at least one topic, and I prefer not to alienate them once we’ve found that ground. Further more, I don’t enjoy writing while angry, and for most of the last eight years, we’ve had A LOT to be angry about.

At last, our long national nightmare of criminally stupid wingnut rule is (nearly) over thanks to the election of Barack Obama as the first Democratic president since 1992 and the first African-American president in U.S. history. What an awesome, momentous day for America. I am damn near beyond words when it comes to describing how proud I am to have been part of it as a citizen and a voter.

At last, we can move past this confederacy of dunces unbound by the rule of law. At last we have a leader that Americans and the rest of the world can respect, a man who inspires hope instead of preying upon fear, a man capable of advancing the fulfillment of this country’s promise.

Somewhere, Jackie Robinson is smiling.

I won’t belabor the point beyond that except to note that my old nemesis on MSNBC’s Connected Coast to Coast panel for the Congressional hearings on steroids in baseball, Representative Christopher Shays (R-CT) was put out of a job on election day. A blowhard who didn’t know anything about anything when it came to the issue at hand, Shays was so stupefying that I took on the look of a sedated toad while listening to his blathering:

I broke that look out at an election night party for old times’ sake and cracked up an entire room. Thank you, Mr. Shays, for adding to the mirth.

• • •

Unlike host Chris Villani (who produced the station’s election-night coverage), I did answer the morning bell for today’s WWZN-Boston “Young Guns” appearance. My head and stomach were in rough shape from too many Obamartinis and too much champagne, but ragging on Jason Varitek is always worth getting out of bed for. Listen here.

Getting My Phil

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From today’s Baseball Prospectus column:

After nearly 48 hours of second-guessing regarding the circumstances under which Game Five was played and halted, speculation as to how the Rays could sustain their stay of execution to overcome a 3-1 series deficit, and unanswered questions about travel days and the amount of rest Cole Hamels might need before taking the hill again, the Phillies brought the World Series to an abrupt end on Wednesday night. Once play resumed, they outscored the Rays over the remaining 3½ innings to claim the second World Championship of their 126-year history.

…Yesterday morning, on my weekly radio hit for WWZN-Boston’s “The Young Guns” show [linked here, complete with an overly generous helping of “uhhhs” and “you knows” reflecting the caffeine’s slower-than-anticipated effect on my synapses], I was asked what it was that people missed about the Phillies this year, given that four teams (the Angels, Cubs, Rays, and Red Sox) won more games. Obviously, they weren’t hurt by having to face only one of those teams in the postseason, but they shouldn’t have been underestimated by anyone. They did have the game’s third-best run differential (+119), a nascent ace who was the best pitcher of the postseason (Cole Hamels), a bullpen tailor-made for October game-shortening, and a blend of power and speed among a strong, productive supporting cast surrounding the NL’s previous two MVPs and a guy who out-WARP’d them both over the past three years: 

Player         2006   2007   2008  Total
Chase Utley     8.3   10.4   10.6   29.3
Jimmy Rollins   8.2   11.2    7.4   26.8
Ryan Howard     9.7    7.7    5.4   22.8

None of those three players had a dominant series at the plate, but they did have their moments. Rollins was in a 9-for-47 post-season funk before he led off Game Three with a single and scored the first run; he collected three hits and scored three runs in the Phillies’ 10-2 rout the following night. Howard, after being controlled by a steady stream of breaking pitches and unfavorable matchups (for him), took advantage of Maddon’s faith in struggling Andy Sonnanstine and broke Game Four open with a three-run shot, then added another off of lefty Trever Miller later in the game. Utley only collected three hits in the series, but two were home runs, and his defensive wizardry brought to mind a combination of Graig Nettles’ clutch acrobatics in the 1978 World Series and Derek Jeter’s field presence in the 2001 postseason, at least as far as this writer is concerned.

Utley’s play was the big one last night, worthy of World Series lore. He stopped Akinori Iwamura’s up-the-middle single before it could leave the infield, and after pump-faking to first base as Jason Barrett barreled around third, he threw a perfect peg to Carlos Ruiz that beat Bartlett by a mile, preserving a 3-3 tie.

Ultimately, there was much to second-guess regarding Rays manager Joe Maddon’s sequence of pitchers, simply because very little that he tried actually worked. Many (myself included) felt that David Price should have been the call to gain the platoon advantage against whichever lefty pinch-hitter Charlie Manuel sent up to bat for Hamels to resume the game. Price’s strong performances in ALCS Game Seven and World Series Game Two, his dazzling stuff, and his ability to go multiple innings all seemed right for the occasion. The problem was that the pitcher’s spot was due fourth in the next frame, and Maddon tried to avoid burning too many players at once. He instead kept Grant Balfour in the game and watched him turn into a pumpkin and give up a run, then sent J.P. Howell into the game and, because of the matchup that awaited him the following inning, forced him bat for himself and make the one-out sacrifice bunt that set up Utley’s inning-ending play. The lefty Howell proceeded to make a hash of the very matchup Maddon had kept him in the game for, facing righty Pat Burrell, who’s vulnerable to sliders. Burrell smacked a double to deep center field, then groundball specialist Chad Bradford got a ground ball that moved the runner over before Pedro Phreakin’ Feliz got the decisive hit… and so it went. Price wasn’t even sharp when he finally came in, throwing less than half of his pitches for strikes, but having him warm up twice before entry may not have helped. Maddon may have earned his spot as a media darling this year — including among statheads — but he made tactical mistakes all series long, mistakes that loomed large given that the Rays lost three games by a total of four runs. Just like youngsters B.J. Upton and Evan Longoria, he still has a lot to learn.

In any event, even though I rooted for the Rays, I had no real problem with the Phillies winning. They’re an engaging team with some standout players, and like the Rays, they’re largely homegrown, and they’re well-run. I pulled for the Phillies in their three most recent World Series appearances. The 1980 team, the lone champion in franchise history, featured the core of players who had come up short in their two previous battles with the Dodgers, but with the amazing Mike Schmidt and likeable players such as Tug McGraw, Bake McBride and Greg Luzinski, they were easy to pull for, and in the historic view, they remain a testament to one of the great player development machines of the era. The 1993 bunch, with guys like Lenny Dykstra and John Kruk, was a gritty, lumpy crew that seemed like the second coming of the 1982 “Harvey’s Wallbangers” Brewers I had once fallen for. These Phillies are worthy heirs to that lineage. Congrats to them and their fans.

It Never Rains…

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Since we last spoke:

• In Friday’s column at Baseball Prospectus, “A Tale of Two Right Fielders,” I discussed the way the spotlight seemed to find the Phillies’ Jayson Werth and the Rays’ Rocco Baldelli all night long in Game Two. Both players took unlikely routes to the World Series, and each threw out the other on the basepaths along the way to the Rays’ 4-2 victory.

• In Friday’s chat, I fielded questions on the World Series, the offseason, and the Hall of Fame. A brief sampling:

oira61 (San Francisco): It seems like there are no players on either team who are already good Hall of Fame candidates (though guys like Utley, Upton, etc. have time to qualify.) Can you ever remember a Series without such an established veteran star?

JJ: Wow, that’s a good question, one that pretty much ties into what I was saying a couple of days ago about how rare it is to get two fresh teams facing off in the series for the first time in awhile. Add to that the fact that both teams are dominated by younger guys whose best days may still be ahead of them and you wind up with a situation like this. I’m jogging my memory and looking back over the WS matchups and thinking that we’ve hit a real stumper. At the time, people wondered aloud if the 1998 Yankees would yield a Hall of Famer, but now it’s apparent that Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter will make it if nobody else does, to say nothing of Tony Gwynn from the opposite dugout.

The 1982 matchup maybe – at the time it certainly wasn’t apparent that Ozzie Smith, Robin Yount, Paul Molitor or Don Sutton would make it (Sutton would win 60-something more games in the majors), and Rollie Fingers was sidelined too. Definitely a question to sock away for future pondering.

Swingingbunts (NY): I think the 1997 World Series is a good match for the 1st question. The Indians had Manny and Thome but they were only 25 at the time. The Marlins had Sheffield who was only 28. That’s about it.

JJ: Fair point, though I guess one might have been forgiven for hoping that Kevin Brown or Orel Hershiser might continue building strong cases, David Justice (31 and coming off a monster year) too.

Ameer (NYC): …Follow-up to the first question of the chat–who do you see as the most likely HOF candidates on each of these WS teams? I know it’s a lot harder to make any kind of prognostication with the kids, like Price, but hey, it’s fun to take a guess.

JJ: …Looking at these rosters, I’d say both Utley and Howard have uphill battles given their relatively late starts to their careers, though Utley could be the Jeff Kent of the next decade albeit with better defense AND plate discipline. Rollins may make a run at 3000 hits; despite his flaws, he’s got 1461 through his Age 29 season and he’s generally been very durable. The sky’s the limit for Cole Hamels if he stays healthy…

And you an say that about Longoria, Upton, Price, Shields, Kazmir… all of them or none of them might pan out as HOFers – if I had to pick one I’d put my money on Longoria.

blaseta (Calgary): Do you see the Jays having any chance at signing Derek Lowe? They seem like a really good fit with their strong infield defense. Personally, I think they’d be much better signing him then they would be if they got AJ Burnett back given their respective histories. Am I making sense are is my dislike of AJ getting in the way?

JJ: Lowe has been among the most durable pitchers in the majors; he’s second to Maddux in games started over the last four years while Burnett is… not. He’s a horse and there aren’t too many teams who COULDN’T use a pitcher like that. Which means the Jays would have to outbid the Dodgers, Yankees, Mets and anyone else who throws their hat in the ring.

As for Burnett, he’s got a MUCH higher upside, but with the high reward comes a very inflated risk, not to mention his reputation as a jackass, which as you acknowledge can distort the perception of his value. If he opts out, I think the Jays are better off looking in another direction rather than paying him, though I’m sure somebody will.

• On Monday night, I partook in a World Series roundtable along with colleagues Will Carroll, Steve Goldman, Derek Jacques, Christina Kahrl, David Laurilia and Joe Sheehan. Despite the incessant tangential banter about the career of Hall and Oates (much of which thankfully took place before I arrived on the scene), we did spend a lot of time talking about baseball and in particular the rapidly deteriorating weather conditions which led to the suspension of the Game in the middle of the sixth inning. I laid out my feelings on the topic of whether the game should be halted as the weather worsened (I’ve italicized reader questions to make them more clear than they are at the BP site):

Jay Jaffe (7:49:58 PM PT): I can’t believe there’s no contingency for suspending a non-tied postseason game after the fifth due to unplayable weather conditions. This is horse****.

Jay Jaffe (8:16:09 PM PT): “Tim (Philly): This is an absolute embarrassment. Had the Rays not scored, theres no way they’d have called the game. I don’t want to hear a single Rays fan say they got unlucky breaks this series. Major League Baseball just handed them the World Series.”

For what it’s worth (i.e., not much), MLB’s resident prince of darkness Bob Dupuy told Chris Myers that they were going to bring out the tarp at the end of the half inning because conditions had gotten so bad. I’m not exactly ready to buy that, but even if it’s true, it’s a loooooooong stretch to say delaying a tie game with a team down 3-1 is handing anybody the World Series.

Let me get this straight: you seem to think a team that was 12 outs from a World Champions are going to curl up into a fetal position and let themselves be steamrolled by the Rays simply because of the timing of a tarp?

Jay Jaffe (8:37:23 PM PT): “Jon (SF): Maybe I am naive or missing something, but I fail to see how the Phillies are being screwed. Please explain.”

At the simplest level, the idea is that the two teams should both be playing under the same conditions for an even amount of time. When the lights are turned on for a game, for example, they have to be turned on at the start of an inning so one team doesn’t gain an advantage.

At a deeper level… reader tirk44 sums it up well: “Thinking ahead the Rays must be feeling good. They have a 3 1/2 inning game whenever this gets started, and the Phillies’ best pitcher is likely done for the year. It’s not a stretch to say that the pitching matchups, and home field advantage, favor the Rays in games 6 & 7″

Jay Jaffe (9:26:04 PM PT):…I’ll cap this with a closing observation based on watching part of the post-game press conference. It sounded quite apparent that there was a mandate from MLB to the umpiring crew prior to the game to play all nine innings even if that required an unprecedented (in WS history) suspension of play. If that’s the case, then maybe there was a bit more leadership than I’ve given credit for. The timing of the suspension was still awkward and arguably bent towards the Rays, but I think we can all agree that a title granted via rainout would have been the worst of all possible outcomes.

The commissioner who gave us an All-Star game that ended in a tie did manage to avoid a situation that would be ridiculed even more. So he’s got that going for him.

• Finally, in addition to discussing the sodden conditions, my column for today puts the oh-fers of Carlos Peña and Evan Longoria — a combined 0-for-31 leading up to the fourth inning of Game Five after combining for 26 hits, nine homers, and 21 RBI in the first two rounds of the postseason — into historical context. Not all of the baker’s dozen players on the list, which spans 100 years, failed to collect a hit in the World Series, but the performances of Dave Winfield (1-for-22 in 1981), Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire (a combined 2-for-36 in 1988, albeit with two homers) aren’t much better for having avoided the horse collar. Here’s a couple of interesting ones:

7. Davey Johnson, Orioles, 1969
Perhaps better known for piloting the 1986 Mets to their second World Championship, Johnson also played a part in their first one, albeit reluctantly: the All-Star second baseman went just 1-for-16 as the heavily favored, 109-win Orioles fell to the Miracle Mets. Of course, there was plenty of blame to go around on a team that hit just .146 over the five game series, and Johnson wasn’t even the worst offender. Brooks Robinson went 1-for-19 (albeit with two RBI to Johnson’s zero), and Paul Blair and Don Buford each went 2-for-20, but Johnson’s link to the Mets’ two championships stands out, and that’s why he’s noted here.

8. Dick Green, Athletics, 1974
The Big Green Machine’s second-base situation—exacerbated by manager Dick Williams’ penchant for pinch-hitting for the light-hitting Green—had already drawn heavy scrutiny the previous fall, when owner Charlie Finley forced backup second baseman Mike Andrews to sign a false affidavit saying he was injured after Andrews made errors on consecutive plays in the decisive 12th inning of Game Two. Finley wanted Andrews deactivated in favor of rookie Manny Trillo (who would later share in the 1980 Phillies’ World Championship), but Commissioner Bowie Kuhn saw through the ploy, and Andrews’ teammates mutinied, taping Andrews’ uniform number to their uniforms during a workout.

Green had gone just 1-for-16 in Oakland’s 1973 victory, but he under-did that the following year. New skipper Alvin Dark maintained Williams’ tendency to pinch-hit for Green, who went 0-for-13 in the five-game victory over the Dodgers, but Green’s slick fielding nonetheless helped him earn the Babe Ruth Award, given by the New York chapter of the BBWAA to the World Series MVP; Rollie Fingers won the official World Series MVP Award for collecting a win and two saves.

Anyway, it remains to be seen whether Pena and Longoria can hit their way out of consideration for an updated list, or when that might happen; given Tuesday night’s grim forecast, MLB has decided not to attempt resumption of the game until Wednesday evening. As noted at the end of my piece, FanGraphs’ live win expectancy figures show the Phillies with about a 58 percent shot at winning the game once play resumes, and even if the Rays should come back to force a Game Six and a Game Seven, Hamels would be available on three days’ rest for the latter, assuming the travel day is absorbed by the rescheduling. The Phillies and their fans can gripe about getting a raw deal from Mother Nature and MLB, but they still hold a considerable advantage.

Radio Radio

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Recently the guys who run “The Young Guns” show on Boston’s WWZN have begun posting MP3s of their guests. My hit from this morning, discussing the outlook for the Phillies-Rays World Series, the fate of Manny Ramirez and the pair of offseason quandries the Red Sox face regarding Jason Varitek and David Ortiz, is here. Last week’s show is here, in case you missed it.

I’m on at 8:05 AM Eastern every Wednesday morning at 1510 AM on your dial or 1510thezone.com on your browser, for those wishing to catch the show live.

In other series news, 27 out of 33 “Designated Hitter” alumni (a/k/a guest authors) of The Baseball Analysts website picked the Rays to win the World Series. My invitation to participate was mis-routed and thus late, and so my response has been posted in the comments and included in the aforementioned totals. Thirteen of the 33 see the series going to six games, with another 10 calling it in seven.

Triple Threat

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It’s all the Jaffe you can eat today. I’ve got my hand in not one but two pieces today at Baseball Prospectus. First, there’s a little something that Joe Sheehan and I cooked up, a thought experiment in which we pooled the Rays’ and Phillies’ rosters and chose up sides, schoolyard style, based simply on who we’d want to play for us over the next two weeks.

The idea was to illustrate Tampa Bay’s edge in depth, and I think we did that. The first 21 picks featured 11 Rays and 10 Phillies, but of the next 19 picks, 13 were Rays, and the last 10 picks were all Phillies. In general, Rays were chosen ahead of their Philly counterparts, with Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins, Cole Hamels, Brad Lidge and Ryan Madson rating as the exceptions. The lower portions of Philadelphia’s lineup, bench and bullpen, in our consensus, simply don’t match up to those of the Rays. That said, our agreement to avoid positional hoarding within the closed system of the draft meant that one person’s choice often dictated another, and a straight reading of the picks as overall, objective rankings is likely to be misread. Speaking for myself, I chose strategically, focusing on choices where the gap between the players at the two positions was the widest and deferring ones where it wasn’t as clear (see the Ryan Howard/Carlos Pena bit below).

Also up is today’s column, examining the Rays’ historic turnaround in Defensive Efficiency, a topic I first addressed in the spring with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Back in mid-April, when PECOTA’s forecast for an 88-win season for the Rays still rated as outrageous, I dug deep to expose an underlying assumption of that projection which seemed even more outrageous. Namely, the Rays’ rise was predicated on a record-setting year-to-year improvement in Defensive Efficiency, the ability of their fielders to convert batted balls into outs. As with the bullpen, the 2007 Devil Rays’ defense had a claim as the worst in history via the lowest Defensive Efficiency since 1954, the earliest year of our database. Crunching the numbers, I concluded that PECOTA was predicting a 46-point DE improvement for the 88-win Rays, a jump that would rank as the second-greatest of all time. I remained skeptical:
The take-home message here is that the magnitude of the defensive jump that stands as part of the foundation of this year’s Rays forecast is virtually unprecedented over the last half-century. The franchise has plenty of reasons for optimism, both for the 2008 season and in the years beyond, and if nothing else they should be a damn sight more appealing than the eyesores of yesteryear. But at the moment, the case for their sudden rise into contention appears to be overstated, and we’d be well served to temper our expectations.

Holiday bird-feasting is still about a month away, but it’s time to eat some crow here, since the Rays not only surpassed the 88 wins but also the 46-point jump. As with the bullpen’s WXRL total and Fair Run Average, they set a record for the largest year-to-year improvement in our database, and they led the majors in that category as well. Nate Silver’s roll continues.

Rather than embark on another lengthy history lesson involving other teams who improved dramatically from year to year, I added a handful of World Series notes. Many of them are Rays themed, not because I have anything against the Phillies (despite their having steamrolled my two favorite NL teams on their way to the pennant) but because between the my previews for the Division and League Championship Series and articles covering the latter I’ve got at least 10,000 words about the Phillies under my belt this month. No disrespect, all due respect, fugeddaboutit, howyadoin’…

Here’s a taste:

The Rays’ hitting is better than most people think

There’s a popular misconception that the Rays aren’t a great-hitting team, one borne of the fact that they finished just ninth in the AL in runs per game, fourth in on-base percentage, and eighth in slugging percentage. They had some injuries which affected those rankings — Evan Longoria’s wrist, Carl Crawford’s hamstring, B.J. Upton’s shoulder — but as the ALCS showed, all of those players appear to be in working order right now, to say the least. That trio alone combined for 26 hits, eight homers and 23 RBI in the seven-game series, and Carlos Pena and Willy Aybar added another 15 hits, five homers and 12 RBI between them. These guys have some punch.

What the regular-season numbers ignore is the fact that the Rays play in very pitcher-friendly park. According to the five-year park factors on our Equivalent Average page, Tropicana Field has the fourth-toughest park for offense in the league behind Seattle, Oakland and Minnesota, depressing scoring by about three percent. Equivalent Average adjusts for that, and the Rays’ .265 EQA actually ranks third in the AL behind only Texas and Boston: 

Team          PF    EQA   EQR    Runs
Rangers     1018   .278   857.9   901
Red Sox     1049   .270   787.5   845
Rays         972   .265   766.4   774
Twins        961   .264   755.4   829
Tigers      1029   .264   758.1   821
Yankees     1019   .262   731.9   789
Indians     1009   .261   733.9   805
Orioles     1023   .259   716.5   782
White Sox   1039   .259   720.6   811
Angels      1016   .254   678.2   765
Blue Jays    990   .253   672.8   714
Mariners     953   .250   662.7   671
Royals      1013   .246   629.4   691
Athletics    957   .244   619.5   646

Speaking of adjusting for offensive context and clearing up misconceptions, it’s worth noting that Citizens Bank Park isn’t exactly Coors Field East; its 1006 Park Factor means that scoring is inflated there by less than one percent. Once you adjust for that, the Phillies’ .267 EQA ranks fourth in the league behind the Cardinals, Mets and Cubs. They certainly have more raw power than the Rays, but this isn’t a mismatch.

If that’s not enough, I’ll also be partaking in BP’s Game One roundtable, with a chat of my own scheduled for Friday. Better go ice my shoulder…

October Surprise

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As noted in my previous post, with the Dodgers out of the playoffs, I was pretty skittish about investing much emotional energy in the remaining ALCS battle as the Red Sox stormed back to force a seventh game against the Rays after being down 3-1. Moments after sitting down to Game Seven, I was IMing friends following Dustin Pedroia’s first-inning homer. “Two batters in and I’m ready to chew a limb off,” I wrote.

Luckily, Game Seven turned out to be one for the ages, and I emerged with limbs (if not fingernails) intact. Pedroia’s homer was the only one hit the Sox would collect off Rays starter Matt Garza until the seventh inning, by which point the upstarts from Tampa Bay had taken a 2-1 lead against Jon Lester, courtesy of an RBI double by Evan Longoria in the third and an RBI single by Rocco Baldelli in the fifth. Garza struck out nine Sox hitters, seven of them swinging, making their lineup look old and impotent — such a joy to see David Ortiz and Jason Varitek flailing after all the grief they’ve caused over the last few years.

Former Dodger Willie Aybar added an insurance run via a solo homer in the bottom of the seventh, and after Boston’s Alex Cora (another former Dodger) reached on an error by Jason Bartlett to start the eighth, Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon pulled Garza and essentially traded pitchers for outs, maneuvering through his battered bullpen to get the most favorable matchups.

Maddon used four relievers to get out of the eighth, the last of whom became the story of the night. As the overall #1 pick in the 2007 draft, David Price is hardly an unknown in the baseball world, but with just 15 big-league innings under his belt to that point in time, bringing him for such a crucial situation — two on and two out in the eighth, with J.D. Drew at the plate and all the money on the table — was still a gutsy move. At Baseball Prospectus, where we’ve touted the Rays as contenders since pitchers and catchers reported, the idea that Price could get key innings in the postseason was one that’s been circulating for awhile, but watching that possibility come to life nonetheless made for stirring theater: “David Price in October Surprise.”

Price struck out Drew on four pitches, the last of them a 97 MPH low-and-away fastball against which Drew tried to check his swing. He came back to nail down the ninth inning, walking Jason Bay but going through a very weak bottom of the order like a hot knife through butter. Mark Kotsay fouled two off to fall behind O-2, took two balls and then struck out looking on a pitch similar to the one that capped Drew’s at-bat, Varitek went down swinging against a slider over the middle of the plate, and pinch-hitter Jed Lowrie grounded to second base to seal the game and the pennant for the Rays. Thriling stuff, not only to see the stake hammered through the heart of the Red Sox but to see the upstart Rays get one step closer to completing their amazing worsst-to-first journey.

For today’s Prospectus Hit and Run column, I took a look at the turnaround of the Rays’ bullpen since last year, when they were the worst in the majors according to BP’s Reliever Expected Wins Added metric (they were first this year) and virtually tied for the worst since 1954 (as far back as our play-by-play-based database goes) in Fair Run Average, their runs allowed per nine innings after adjusting for their performance in handling inherited runners. I looked at the nuts and bolts involved in turning such a historically awful unit around and the historical precedents for doing so:

Maddon and GM Andrew Friedman couldn’t be blamed for wanting to burn the bullpen to the ground and start over, and that’s almost what they did. They signed free agents Troy Percival and Trever Miller, and shifted 2007 starters Jason Hammel and J.P. Howell to the bullpen. Here’s what they got (relief stats only): 
Name              IP     FRA  WXRL    LEV
J.P. Howell      89.1   2.78   4.6   1.41
Dan Wheeler      66.1   2.94   2.1   1.84
Grant Balfour    58.1   0.96   3.4   1.34
Jason Hammel     50.2   5.81   0.7   0.84
Troy Percival    45.2   5.26   1.7   1.51
Trever Miller    43.1   3.32   1.5   1.07
Gary Glover      34.0   6.21   0.5   0.81
Al Reyes         22.2   4.86   0.0   0.98
Chad Bradford    19.0   2.65   0.8   1.53
David Price       8.2   1.20   0.1   0.60

Percival, who’d come out of retirement to put together a nice second half in St. Louis in 2007, was installed as the closer, and despite serving stints on the DL in June and July, he saved 27 games and put up a 3.69 ERA into mid-August before injuring his knee while fielding a bunt. He was rocked for seven runs in his first four appearances upon returning, lost his closer job and pitched sparingly while dealing with assorted maladies, and was left off of the post-season roster. Balfour and Wheeler, acquired in separate deals near the 2007 trade deadline, both filled in for Percival, with the former coming up from Triple-A Durham and carving out a roster spot for himself in the closer’s absence. Howell emerged as a multi-inning lefty stopper, giving Maddon a much more versatile palette to draw on for the late innings, while Miller did solid work as a lefty specialist. Meanwhile, 2007 mainstays Glover and Reyes both struggled with injuries and ineffectiveness and were cut loose in midseason as more effective pitchers were added to the roster; Reyes was designated for assignment shortly after the team traded for Bradford in early August.

The year-to-year increase in WXRL ranks as the greatest of all time: 

Year   Team        WXRL   Prev   Diff
2008   Rays        15.2   -1.8   17.0
2007   Indians     13.5   -1.5   15.1
1996   Padres      16.0    1.3   14.7
1970   Phillies    11.3   -2.7   14.0
2001   Astros      13.3   -0.4   13.7
2002   Twins       16.7    3.5   13.2
1993   Dodgers     11.8   -1.1   12.9
1992   Indians     10.4   -2.4   12.8
2006   Mets        17.8    5.0   12.8
2004   Cardinals   15.0    2.4   12.6
1974   Braves       5.9   -6.6   12.5
1991   Braves       7.8   -4.6   12.4
1996   Yankees     14.2    1.8   12.3
1998   Padres      15.9    3.8   12.1
2007   Royals      10.4   -1.6   12.0
1989   Cubs         8.8   -2.4   11.2
2002   Braves      18.9    7.9   11.0
2004   Padres      11.0    0.6   10.4
1992   Astros      11.1    0.8   10.4
2000   Mariners    12.0    1.8   10.2
2007   Braves      11.4    1.2   10.2

The list is heavily weighted towards the modern era, where bullpens get more usage than in the past and thus generate higher WXRL totals and larger year-to-year fluctuations. Nonetheless, such improvement is a good indicator for success. Fourteen of those 21 teams made the postseason, five of them (the 1991 Braves, 1996 Yankees, 1998 Padres, 2004 Cardinals and now these Rays) won the pennant, while the 2006 Mets and 2007 Indians came within a game of doing so. Oddly enough, those Yankees, who benefited from Mariano Rivera’s first full year in the bullpen, were the only team here who actually won the World Series.

My money says the Rays could be the second one. Given the similarly long layoffs that seemed to hamper both the 2006 Tigers and 2007 Rockies, teams that clinched the pennant early while the other LCS went the distance, I think the Phillies are actually at a disadvantage having rested for six days. After all, it’s not like the extra rest will spur them to start Cole Hamels — the best starter in the series — three times instead of two. Furthermore, the Rays enjoy the edges in both topline talent — an idea Joe Sheehan and I explored in a little exercise that will run tomorrow at BP — and in all of the non-Hamels pitching matchups. They’re my pick in six games, and I’ll be cheering for their amazing story to continue. Go Rays!

• • •

Quick post-pub side note: ESPN’s Jayson Stark has some interesting stuff on the link between the drawn-out postseason and the less-than-competitive World Series we’ve seen in recent years (three sweeps in the past four years, with the 2006 five-gamer the exception):

• In the 25 years of the two-round division-play era, there were only five World Series in which at least one team had five or more days off before the Series started — and only two in which one team had four more days off than its opponent.

• But in the 14 postseasons since the expansion to three rounds, we’ve already had EIGHT years (including this one) in which at least one team had to wait around for at least five days for the World Series to begin.

• And now, for the first time ever, we’ve seen three straight years in which one of these World Series teams had a full week between games. The Phillies can only hope that’s not as dangerous a development for them as it was for the 2006 Tigers and 2007 Rockies.

The aforementioned 1996 Yankees also fit the bill as a team that struggled upon taking time off. They clinched the AL pennant on October 13, then had to wait until October 20 to start the World Series. The Braves, who had clinched on October 17, pounded the Yankees by a combined score of 16-1 in the first two games before the Yankees shook off the rust and stormed back to take the next four (thanks to Nick Stone for the reminder on that front).

Good stuff, definitely something Bud and the boys at MLB should consider — particularly getting rid of those non-travel off days that have sprung up like mushrooms over the past few years while pushing the World Series ever closer to November.

Dreams and Nightmares

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Writing up a postmortem of the NLCS for Baseball Prospectus today, I was forced by the events of last night in Fenway Park to graft a new head onto my piece like some Dr. Frankenstein. Having watched enough of the Red Sox from the vantage point of a Yankees fan last year, I could see all too well what was in store:

No lead is safe.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from rooting against the Red Sox over the past decade or so, it’s that in Fenway Park a ballgame is never as over as it seems based merely on a lopsided score. The Green Monster, the Pesky Pole, and the odd angles in between all appear designed by some sadistic baseball god to exert a gravitational pull towards entropy — an entropy where the only thing more chaotic than the endless rallies which generate a seemingly insurmountable early lead are the endless rallies where that lead is swallowed into some rip in the space-time continuum which leaks odd bounces and extra outs. It ain’t over ’til it’s over, indeed.

Thursday night’s ALCS Game Five was just such a game, yet another surreal encounter in a series that has been full of them. With the defending World Champion Red Sox having been pushed to the brink of elimination by three straight losses to the Rays by a combined score of 31-13 and with the Monster having been used for target practice by its upstart visitors, the early home runs hit by B.J. Upton, Carlos Peña, and Evan Longoria — a trio that’s now combined for 10 in the series — felt like reruns. By the time the Rays took a 7-0 lead into the seventh inning, they’d been prematurely anointed AL champions by the TBS crew and most of a country that’s forgotten the lessons of the 1999 Division Series and the 2004 and 2007 ALCS. For those of us wanting to see the villain killed off, it’s just another installment of that z-grade horror series, Nightmare on Lansdowne Street.

Scarred by such lessons, I’ll confess to having not let myself get too absorbed in this series thus far, particularly because of my immersion in the NLCS as both a diehard Dodgers fan and a hopefully more level-headed analyst. I love a post-season doubleheader as much as the next man, but there’s no suffering through five-and-a-half hours of strike-zone nibbling, ineffectual relief pitching, and multiple lead changes for a man with a Tivo and a desire to some claim on sanity, particularly one with the sting of the Dodgers’ defeat still fresh in mind. Prior to Thursday night, I might have admitted it was my loss, but fast-forwarding to the improbable heroics of David Ortiz and J.D. Drew in front of a reanimated Fenway crowd reminded me down to the pit of my stomach that I haven’t missed a damn thing. I’ve seen this show before, thank you, and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t end well.

As for the Dodgers, who bowed out on Wednesday night, here’s some of what I had to say:

Still, it was a thrilling ride for the Dodgers, the best they’ve given their fans in the 20 years since Kirk Gibson and Orel Hershier willed another injury-wracked team past the heavily favored Mets in the NLCS and then the equally heavily favored A’s in the World Series. Derided for winning just 84 games, these Dodgers put their strongest team on the field in October, one that over the course of a full season might have been ten wins better than their final record, and one that clearly illustrates that for all the faults of their management — the wasteful contracts dispensed by Ned Colletti, the lineup dickering of Joe Torre — the team’s deep reserves of both talent and money can make them a formidable club when they do get it right.

As for what comes next, the Dodgers face some truly vexing questions with regards to their free agents. Can they afford to keep Ramirez, given the probability that he may command something well beyond $100 million to cover the twilight years of his late 30s and early 40s? Can they afford not to, given that they haven’t had a single player hit over 20 home runs for them since 2005, and that Manny Being Manny was such a huge hit with the fans of Los Angeles? If they keep him, can they dig a ditch deep enough to sink the costs of both Juan Pierre ($28.5 million remaining) and Andruw Jones ($22.1 million remaining, in a heavily back-loaded deal), both of whom want out of LA every bit as badly as the fans want them gone? Will they let rotation anchor Derek Lowe walk after he piled up 135 starts for them over the past four years, tied for second-most in the majors? Will they pick up the $8.75 million option on Brad Penny, who put up a 6.27 ERA after a Cy Young-caliber season, and who has managed just one more start over the past five years than Lowe has in four? What of Furcal, who’s had stretches of MVP-caliber play when healthy, but who was limited to just 36 games this season? If they let Furcal, Jeff Kent, Nomar Garciaparra, and Casey Blake all leave, how many of their infield spots will they turn over to youngsters Blake DeWitt, Chin-Lung Hu, and Tony Abreu? Can they trust Colletti to make better decisions than the ones that put them into such a bind this year? These things give Dodger fans plenty of reasons to lie awake at night.

For better or worse, such decisions will be dealt with in due course. In the meantime, this Dodger fan would like simply to say thank you and farewell to the exciting and occasionally frustrating club that provided such a thrilling joyride over the past two and a half months after so much disappointment prior. Having watched Ramirez star in so many installments of those aforementioned Nightmare on Lansdowne flicks, it was refreshing to sit back (or, more often, bolt upright) and appreciate his tremendous gifts as a hitter, even if he did shoot a man in Boston just to watch him die, or whatever crimes it was that the mainstream media would have had you believe he committed to grease his skids out of Beantown.

Furthermore, it was a gas to watch the Dodgers’ highly-touted young nucleus, which bore such harsh criticism for their late-2007 fade, shed some baggage by helping to capture the NL West flag and then to roll past the heavily-favored Cubs in the first round. If Kemp, Martin, Billingsley, Ethier, Clayton Kershaw, Hong-Chih Kuo, James Loney, Jonathan Broxton, Cory Wade, et al weren’t good enough to be National League champions yet, they’re still on the sunny side of 27, and time is on their side. It’s been 20 years since the Dodgers were such fun, and I already can’t wait for the next one to start.

The end wasn’t pretty, but it was a great year for the Dodgers. Reading the entertaining post-mortem on the excellent and well-named Mike Scioscia’s Tragic Illness blog, I was reminded of all of the improbabilities that occurred between spring training and the team’s elimination:

Who could have seen Nomar and LaRoche getting hurt in the same spring game? Is it more surprising that DeWitt was the Opening Day 3B or that he was the starting 2B in the NLCS? Are you more amazed that Andruw Jones had quite possibly the worst season in baseball history (even those against ardently his signing never saw this coming, don’t lie) or that Joe Torre would actually bench Pierre? That the shortstop who would get the most at-bats this season would not be Rafael Furcal or Chin-Lung Hu, but Royals bust Angel Berroa? That Russell Martin would make only four fewer starts at third base than LaRoche? That Kuo would become one of the most dominating relievers in the entire sport, and that Wade would become a huge part of the bullpen? Every team has injuries, but how many teams can claim to be in first place in September despite having their Opening Day starting pitcher, ace closer, shortstop, second baseman, third baseman, and center fielder either on the DL or in the minors?

Some seriously crazy stuff had to go down in order for the Dodgers even to assemble the unlikely cast that they did, let alone to get so far into the postseason, and if that doesn’t sum up baseball’s charms, well, I’ll once again invoke some familiar words:

You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat. Losing after great striving is the story of man, who was born to sorrow, whose sweetest songs tell of saddest thought, and who, if he is a hero, does nothing in life as becomingly as leaving it.” — Roger Kahn, The Boys of Summer

A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns… And Comebacks

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Well, my Dodgers-in-six prediction isn’t looking so hot these days. Here’s what I’ve been up to since then:

• My rundown of the first two games of the NLCS, with a statistical look at the Phillies’ reliance on the home run ball for their scoring.

• Some notes for Game Four that foreshadowed Derek Lowe’s early exit and showed how Phillies skipper Charlie Manuel went against type by calling upon closer Brad LIdge in the eighth inning.

• A closer examination of Manuel and Torre’s bullpen handling in Game Four.

• With the Red Sox joining the Dodgers in the 3-1 pit of despair, today I’ve got a look at the history of teams that came back from such deficits to win a seven-game series. I expanded what was originally intended to be an Unfiltered post into a full-fledged piece, with details about each comeback. What follows here is a bare-bones version on the times that it’s happened.

• • •

From 1922 to 1984, the World Series was the only seven-game series on the baseball calendar. Prior to that, it had occasionally been a best-of-nine affair instead of a best-of-seven, but since the first 3-1 comeback didn’t happen until 1925, it makes for an acceptable shortcut to begin counting at the point where the Fall Classic reverted to its current form. In 1969, expansion split the two leagues into two divisions apiece, giving rise to the League Championship Series, but those remained best-of-five contests until 1985.

In this span of 63 World Series, only four teams came back from 3-1 to win:

1925 WS: Pirates over Senators
1958 WS: Yankees over Braves
1968 WS: Tigers over Cardinals
1979 WS: Pirates over Orioles

From 1985 to 1993, the postseason consisted of three seven-game series a year, the two newly-expanded League Championship Series and the World Series. Of the 27 series in this era, three teams came back from 3-1 to win, with one team doing so twice in the same year:

1986 ALCS: Red Sox over Angels
1985 ALCS: Royals over Blue Jays
1985 WS: Royals over Cardinals

Since 1995, the postseason has become a three-tiered extravaganza, though the two LCS and the World Series remain the only seven-game series. Of the 39 series from 1995 through 2007, four teams have come back from 3-1 to win:

1996 NLCS: Braves over Cardinals
2003 NLCS: Marlins over Cubs
2004 ALCS: Red Sox over Yankees (was 3-0)
2007 ALCS: Red Sox over Indians

In all, that’s 11 comebacks out of 129 series (8.5 percent). In the seven-game LCS era, that’s seven out of 66 series (10.6 percent). Going just by World Series, that’s five out of 85 (5.9 percent), by LCS it’s six out of 44 (13.6 percent). All told, that’s roughly one in 10 times, with the odds apparently greater if you’re the Red Sox.

The full details on each comeback/meltdown, as well as a look at the historical breakdown of each team winning Game Five and the series, are available in the subscriber version.