continued from Part II…

Back to the Stadium on Thursday, with my Futility Infielder research assistant, Peter Quadrino in tow instead of my wife. Whereas Wednesday evening had brought unseasonably high temperatures prior to the rain, Thursday felt like a classically crisp October afternoon, with temperatures in the mid-50s as the game started. Paul O’Neill reprised his ceremonial first pitch to a half-empty stadium dotted with the wives and children of men too busy to get to the ballpark on time. Two rows in front of us was a woman with three-year-old twins, one boy and one girl, all of them bedecked in about $300 worth of Yankee Stadium store mersh: pink Yankees cap for the girl plus pink pinstriped Derek Jeter jersey atop a pink long-sleeve Yankees shirt; boy in Yankees cap and midnight blue jersey, mother in Yankee sweatshirt and beige 2000 commemorative World Championship cap. Dressed to the hometown nines, I suppose.

Despite pairing a rookie phenom and a 16-year veteran with a shot at Cooperstown, the starters of this game, Justin Verlander and Mike Mussina, had one thing in common: both hurlers had gotten off to strong starts before more or less limping to the finish line in Mike Mussina in Justin Verlander. Their ERAs by month:

      Mussina    Verlander
Apr    2.31        3.52
May    2.53        1.73
Jun    4.93        4.17
Jul    4.22        1.01
Aug    5.14        6.83
Sep    2.89        4.82

Mussina’s September ERA conceals four unearned runs, the most he allowed in any month, and to some extent his downward spiral began against the Tigers; on May 31, Moose notably waved manager Joe Torre back to the dugout so he could finish off his only complete game of the season. He managed just one quality start out of his next four, and the before-and-after split on his ERA was 2.42/4.28. Still, his overall 3.51 ERA was his lowest since 2003, and both his counting stats (innings, wins, K’s) and his rate stats (K/9, K/BB, HR/9) were easily his best since then.

Verlander was part of a bumper crop of rookie hurlers; as noted in the Hit List, 10 rookie hurlers managed VORP totals above 30.0, as many as in the previous three seasons combined. The 23-year-old Tiger righty was second only to Francisco Liriano at 46.2. Much was made early on of his strikeout rate, just 6.0 per nine innings on the year, but like the Yanks’ Chien-Ming Wang, the kid offers nasty stuff, including a fastball that tops out at 100 MPH, and the data suggests a strong situational pitching abilities. In mid-June, Nate Silver noted the following breakdown:

• Verlander records a strikeout 10% of the time with nobody on base;
• Verlander records a strikeout 21% of the time with runners on;
• Verlander records a strikeout 27% of the time with runners in scoring position!

Mussina came out of the gate in strong form, striking out the side in the top of the first, an inning marred only by a Derek Jeter throwing error on a grounder from #3 hitter Sean Casey. The crowd groused over first-base transplant Gary Sheffield’s inability to haul in the low throw, but as Pete astutely noted, it was Jeter’s failure to set his feet before throwing — a consistent problem — that was the root of the problem.

Another Jeter mistake helped a shaky Verlander get off the hook in the bottom of the first. After a leadoff single by Johnny Damon, Jeter — who’d gone 5-for-5 in Game One — tried to lay down a sacrifice bunt but popped up to catcher Ivan Rodriguez. The move stuck out like a sore thumb after Verlander walked both Bobby Abreu and Jason Giambi to load the bases. He escaped by striking out Alex Rodriguez looking on a pitch that hit triple digits on the radar gun. The crowd, which had cheered A-Rod wildly as he came to the plate, hoping the embattled slugger could put this season’s love-hate relationship behind him to come through in the clutch, groaned loudly. Business as usual.

Here’s an understandably irate Joe Sheehan, dishing out the religion regarding Jeter’s bunt:

That guy who hadn’t made an out all series? The one who hit .343 this season, having the second-best year of his life? He decided — decided — to make an out, squaring to sacrifice and popping up to Ivan Rodriguez. He didn’t work the count, he didn’t go to the opposite field, he didn’t pull a ball into a hole. He tried to bunt. They hadn’t gotten him out yet, and he tried to bunt. The Yankees got two more runners on base in the inning and didn’t score, and if you want to blame the last hitter in the inning for that, you can, but at least he tried.

This has gotten out of control, and needs to stop. I know that any time a good player bunts we’re supposed to genuflect, but Derek Jeter does this far too often. Him laying down a sacrifice — and we can debate whether he was bunting for a hit or not, but it did not look quite like that, and he’s sacrificed in similar situations — is a gift for the opposition, an absolute gift. Any time a .340 hitter offers you an out, you take it and thank him profusely. Jeter does this all the time. I don’t think he’s doing it to burnish his reputation, I think he’s doing it because someone told him a long time ago that it was winning baseball, and no one’s told him otherwise since.

This isn’t Little League. This isn’t college. This isn’t 1905. Great hitters put runs on the board by swinging the bat, not by passing the baton to the next guy in the lineup. I know that Derek Jeter is the Teflon Shortstop, but he’s wrong in his persistence in sacrificing bunting, and he was egregiously wrong today. A sharp single to left might have helped the Yankees put the game away early.

The Tigers struck against Mussina in the second. Craig Monroe blooped a two-out double down the leftfield line, and Marcus Thames laced a single up the middle to bring him home immediately afterwards. Aloud, we wondered at the sequence of events which had brought Thames from the Bronx to the Tigers; I recalled an intermediate stop in Texas but couldn’t remember the how or why, and punched out a text message to a friend for further research (answer: it was a trade with the Rangers that brought back Ruben Sierra in June 2003).

Despite the lead, Verlander continued to struggle; a single by Hideki Matsui and a walk to Jorge Posada to start the second inning looked promising, but Robinson Cano hit a sharp shot to third baseman Brandon Inge right at the bag; he got the forceout and wriggled out of the jam unscathed. A sharp liner off the rightfield wall by Bobby Abreu to lead off the next inning went for naught as Sheffield grounded into a double play.

The Yanks finally broke through in the fourth. After a Rodriguez blooper nearly turned into a three-man pileup, another Matsui single and Posada walk put two men on. Cano flied out, but Johnny Damon cranked a three-run homer that brought the Stadium crowd to life. Jeter immediately ripped a double (yet another reminder about the stupidity of that bunt attempt), and manager Jim Leyland emerged from the dugout to try to calm his rookie hurler.

That might have been the turning of the game; up to that point, Verlander had faced 20 hitters, with 10 of them reaching base via four walks and six hits. He’d thrown 76 pitches, with first pitch strikes to just 11 out of the 20. Following that, he retired the next five hitters — throwing first-pitch strikes to four — before yielding a single to Posada. After drawing to a 1-1 count against Cano, Leyland pulled him mid-batter, giving him the proverbial slap on the ass and thanking him for a job well done. As the Tiger manager said later: “I just didn’t like the fastball before that. It was 92… I just said, ‘This is it. I’m going to make my move now. I know there’s a count on the hitter, but I’m going to make it right now.’ Just all of a sudden, your instincts take over and say, ‘Look, this is just not right.” Those instincts were correct. Leyland summoned southpaw Jamie Walker, who induced Cano to GIDP on his third pitch, ending the threat.

By that point, the TIgers had tied the game. Thames led off the fifth with a double down the leftfield line and advanced to third on a wild pitch; again, my man Pete correctly anticipated the play when Posada came to the mound on a 1-2 count, remarking that perhaps Moose was going to throw one way out of the strike zone. He did, and the ball nonetheless got away from Posada. Grrrr. Inge struck out, but Curtis Granderson plated the run on a sacrifice fly. Carlos Guillen knotted the game at 3-3 one inning later when he crushed a 2-0 pitch into the rightfield stands for a solo homer.

Despite having surrendered the lead, Mussina was still around to face the Tigers in the seventh; their free-swinging approach had kept his pitch count at 77 through six frames. Pitch 78 was a single to Thames, and he advanced to second on a passed ball by Posada. Inge sacrificed him to third, and then Granderson brought him home with a triple into the left-center gap, a shot that emphasized Hideki Matsui’s slow-footedness and the Tiger leadoff man’s speed. Detroit was poised to pad that lead when Placido Polanco ripped a shot down the third base line, but A-Rod nearly made a spectacular play, catching the liner and nearly doubling Granderson off the bag. Damon flagged down Casey’s long fly ball as the crowd breathed a sigh of relief.

After Walker retired Damon on a line drive to second base to start the bottom of the seventh, Leyland unveiled his bullpen’s pièce de résistance: rookie Joel Zumaya, a flamethrower who was one of the game’s 10 best relievers according to the advanced metrics at Baseball Prospectus. “Flamethrower” is understating things perhaps; Zumaya consistently hits triple digits on the radar gun. Pete and I both kept an eye on the Yankee Stadium scoreboard, jotting down the speed of each pitch. Here’s the sequence, the reported velocity, and the results as compiled by Pete:

BOTTOM of 7th, 1 out
Jeter: Ball (100), Ball (99), Strike looking (100), Foul (101), Ball (97), K on foul tip (98)
Abreu: Foul (100; “the ugliest swing I’ve ever seen from Abreu in my life”), Strike looking (86), Ball (101), Foul (102), Groundout 4-3 (86, his first curveball)

BOTTOM of 8th
Sheffield: Line out to centerfield (98, the only solid contact made by the Yanks against Zumaya)
Giambi: Ball (99), Strike swinging (100), Strike swinging (100), Ball (102), K swinging (101)
Rodriguez: Ball (86), Strike looking (102), Strike looking (102), K swinging (101)

“He’s like Mariano in ’96,” marveled the man next to me. Later we were told ESPN’s telecast had him as high as 103 MPH, and that 15 of his 21 pitches had crossed the century threshold. It was a dazzling display, and even as a Yankee fan, I had to tip my cap to the performance. Zumaya? Zoom-By-Ya. Can I get a Kumbaya?

When Tiger closer Todd Jones emerged to start the ninth, the crowd breathed a welcome sigh of relief. The 38-year-old is arguably only the third-best reliever in the Tiger pen behind both Zumaya and Fernando Rodney, not that that’s an argument against his being the closer; given what we know about proper bullpen deployment, the Tigers’ use of Zumaya (83.2 innings) and Rodney (71.2), often for more than an inning at a time, is sound baseball strategy.

The Yanks looked to be summoning some patented October magic when Matsui greeted Jones with a sharp single up the middle and yielded to pinch-runner Melky Cabrera. But with Pudge behind the plate, the maneuver was moot; Melky was never a threat to go anywhere, and even from out in leftfield, we could see his leadoffs were shorter than usual. Jones buckled down and got Posada to strike out looking; only on an 0-2 foul ball did he take the bat off his shoulder. Cano quickly fell behind 0-2 as well but fouled off six straight pitches before succumbing to a fly out. Damon, the sole Yankee hero of the day, became the third hitter in a row to start in an 0-2 hole, and though he drew the count to 2-2, he could only manage a fly ball to centerfield as well. Game to the Tigers, 4-3, and a tie in a series where some had predicted a sweep.

• • •

I’m not really qualified to offer a full analysis of Friday’s Game Three of the Yankees-Tigers series, which took place in Detroit. With close friends from England in town for the weekend, I started my evening with drinks on the roof of the Metroplitan Musuem of Art at sunset, traveled from there to a cocktail party in honor of my friend Nick’s engagement (congrats, Nick and Atoussa!) to a late dinner in an East Village Italian restaurant to a nightcap at a bar that was converted from a laundromat. I didn’t even get home until nearly 2 AM, but determinedly fired up the TiVO and watched the equivalent of a condensed version of the game, fast-forwarding to the payoff pitches, the activity of my thumb all that stood between me and my slumber.

But from what I saw, 41-year-old Kenny Rogers pitched the game of his life. The Gambler — “the consumate October choke-artiste,” to quote Alex Belth — came into the game with a lifetime postseason record of 0-3 with an 8.85 ERA in five starts and nine total appearances. All of those save for a brief relief stint in 2003 came with New York teams; with the Yankees he was bombed in three 1996 starts, most notably departing in the third inning of Game Four of the World Series, having yielded five runs; it took Jim Leyritz’s three-run homer in the eighth to tie the game and Wade Boggs’ bases-loaded walk in the 10th to give the Yanks a lead, enabling them to knot the series at 2-2. With the Mets in 1999, it was Rogers who surrendered the series ending-run in the 11th inning of Game Six, walking Andruw Jones with the bases loaded. Good times.

Add to that the fact that Rogers had never enjoyed much success against the Yanks. He hadn’t beaten them since 1993, and as the New York Times noted, since then he’d gone 0-7 with a 9.21 ERA and a 24/33 K/BB ratio in 56.2 innings — more than a decade of futility. Couple that with Randy Johnson’s herniated disc, and you had a storyline that recalled the famous Warren Brown line, “I can’t conceive of either team winning.” (The quote, written by Brown at the outset of the war-torn 1945 Cubs-Tigers World Series, is actually “I can’t conceive of either team winning a single game.”)

Rogers had his curveball mojo working, and his eight strikeouts fired up a hometown crowd that hadn’t seen a playoff game in nearly two decades. The Yanks were helpless against him; they managed three doubles among their five hits, but only once — in the seventh — did they advance a runner. Bernie Williams, in the lineup instead of Gary Sheffield due to a 12-for-34 (.353) career record against Rogers (Shef was just 3-for-17, though with two homers) had two of those strikeouts, one immediately following a Hideki Matsui leadoff double in the fifth, the other stranding that lone advanced runner, Jorge Posada, to end the seventh.

By then the damage was done. The Tigers rolled up three runs on Johnson in the second inning via three straight singles, a botched double play, a steal and another single. They tacked on two more in the fifth when Carlos Guillen reached on a two-out infield single, a hot smash off the glove of Derek Jeter, and Pudge Rodriguez and Sean Casey followed with doubles; the latter ended the Big Eunich’s night and possibly his season. The Tigers stretched the lead to 6-0 when Curtis Granderson homered in the sixth, so by the time Williams struck out to close the seventh, the Yanks were merely looking for window dressing. And at that, I was looking for my pillow, flooring the fast-forward button to stop only for Joel Zumaya’s rematch against A-Rod (a flyout to end the eighth following Rogers’ triumphant departure).

Long story short, the Yanks now trail the series 2-1 and face elimination at Comerica Park as I put the finishing touches on this blog entry. The Octobercoaster may be crashing early, bringing new meaning to the phrase Bronx Bombers.

continued from Part I…

Despite the swift kick in the ribs provided by the Dodgers-Mets result, the situation in the Bronx was looking up, with the October night bearing far more resemblance to a midsummer contest, with temperatures in the low 70s. Andra and I had missed the National Anthem but arrived in our seats — Section 34, Box 538 in Loge, several yard inside the leftfield foul pole — just in time to see Paul O’Neill throw out the ceremonial first pitch. That was shortly after 8 PM, and with real first pitch not slated until 8:20, I figured I had plenty of time to secure us some beers. I went looking for the oversized Heinekens, the stadium’s best beer deal in terms of quality and quantity, but found the Loge level — not my usual stomping grounds — barren of such necessities; in fact it was virtually barren of people relative to a stadium teeming with more than 56 thousand fans.

So I wandered up the ramp to the Upper level, which suddenly seemed even more packed and chaotic than I remembered it, resembling a refugee camp where relief workers had outfitted its needy dwellers in hundreds of dollars worth of pinstriped garb. As I slogged my way down the overcrowded, narrow concourse, I finally realized that it had started raining — a drizzle, not a downpour — and the exposed fans had come inside for shelter, impeding my beerquest. It took me several minutes to find the Heineken stand, where not surprisingly the price had been jacked up. There was no way to avoid being soaked.

I returned to Loge, still shocked by the rain; despite the unseasonably warm temperatures, it hadn’t occurred to me to even check for such a likelihood. Around 8:30, public address announcer Bob Sheppard informed the crowd that the weather front moving through was supposed to clear in 45 minutes, when preparations for play would resume.

Long story short, my wife and I killed time in the rain delay as one does, watching a storm that probably wouldn’t have been strong enough to impede play during a regular-season ballgame. The tarp came off around 9:35; we watched the grounds crew’s carefully choreographed maneuver of dragging the tarp into leftfield to empty the water before returning it to its original position and folding it, then rolling it up. The bases were put back into place, the infield was sprinkled, and I went on another beer run. But when I returned, I could see that the Yankee dugout was completely empty, and the bullpen as well; Tiger starter Justin Verlander had tossed a few balls in the outfield but quickly stopped, realizing he was alone in his assumption that the first pitch was imminent. This wasn’t good.

Soon, despite no additional rain, some members of the grounds crew began preparing the tarp again as the crowd booed the site. Other groundskeepers scurried back onto the field, uprooting the bases and covering both the mound and the home plate area with the special circular tarps. A rumor passed that ESPN was reporting a postponement. No word from on high; Bob Sheppard’s Voice of God is notably mute, and again I realized that despite the shelter of the Loge level, we’d been soaked again; the Yanks delayed the announcement while they bilked a few more dollars worth of concessions out of their fans. Finally, as the sprinkle resumed, an announcement came: game postponed, rescheduled for 1:09 PM on Thursday, tough shit if you can’t make it, chumps

Fans behind me groused about business meetings as they second-guessed the decision to delay the start — “We coulda gotten it in!” — and on the train ride home, an oversized, meshugge Michiganer in a Tigers cap began taunting a 4 train car full of Yankee fans: “You’re too scared to play us!” Uh-huh, settle down there little Tiger. “Just say no to drugs!” advised a tattooed Yank fan.

Cap boy then began complaining not only about having to fly back to Kalamazoo in the morning, missing the once-in-a-lifetime game he traveled so far to see, but also about how rude New Yorkers are. Apparently the byzantine section numbering (even on the third base side, odd on the first base side, with numbers increasing as one moves out from home plate) kept him from finding his seat, counting upwards by twos having gone out of vogue in the midwest sometime around Tiger Stadium’s closing. As he searched for his seat, Yankee fans simply didn’t take his math-addled confusion seriously. Welcome to the Bronx, rube.

The more the rube complained, the less sympathy the riders showed him, their insults becoming more barbed. “The softball team in my town could beat the Tigers — the girls softball team!” growled one Yankee partisan as his buddies high-fived him.

That would be proven demonstrably false within the next 18 hours.

Ladies and gentlemen! Step right up for the thrills, chills and spills of fall! The whiplash-inducing, widow-making, heart-breaking ride of postseason baseball! It’s death-defying, brain-frying and satisfaction-denying, with large objects flying and small children crying! Ride the Octobercoaster if you dare!

The biggest drawback to pulling for two teams in the playoffs is the chance that on a given day, your emotional rollercoaster — that damned Octobercoaster — will crash not once but twice in a given day. That was my Thursday; Wednesday wasn’t so hot either.

To backtrack a bit (we’ll skip the backstory that’s fueled this site since its inception for the moment; you can read about that elsewhere)… As part of my season ticket group, I found myself with two tickets to the Yankees’ game on Wednesday evening, Game Two of their Divisional Series with the Tigers. The Bombers had looked great the night before, rolling up five third-inning runs on Detroit starter Nate Robertson, pummeling the Bengals into submission with a lineup as fearsome as any in memory.

But as excited as I was to go to the game, I was also flustered, because the start time meant having to cut short my viewing of the Dodgers-Mets opener, which began at 4 PM. The Yanks’ placement in the Division Series has become routine; they’ve won the AL East every year we’ve been doing this ticket package, back to 1998. But this is only the second time the Dodgers have made the postseason in that span. They’re the team nearest and dearest to my heart, and there’s no novelty in their reaching the playoffs. On the heels of last year’s 71-91 debacle, their wild (card) ride into October has been a joy to behold, and their matchup with the Mets sets off fond memories of 1988, their last World Championship, when Orel Hershiser and a gimply Kirk Gibson led a rag-tag crew to one of the most unlikely titles of my lifetime. Couple that with the current Mets’ banged-up rotation — with Pedro Martinez out for the season with a rotator cuff tear, and his replacement, Orlando Hernandez, also lost to a calf muscle tear sustained on the eve of the series — and visions of an upset danced in my head.

Such visions quickly gave way to a frustrating reality on Wednesday: the Dodgers can’t win the series without avoiding the kind of mistakes that a good team — particularly one that waltzed through the regular season as the Mets did — will take advantage of. So it was when the Dodgers threatened against replacement starter John Maine, with Jeff Kent and J.D. Drew lacing back-to-back singles to start off the second inning. When Russell Martin ripped a double into the rightfield corner, things were looking up — one run, maybe two. Instead, in one of the most unlikely plays you’ll ever see, both Kent and Drew were thrown out at the plate on the same play, one so crazy that Vin Scully invoked the ancient memory of the team’s ancestors:

“Here comes a throw on that runner and here comes another runner, and Lo Duca is going to tag both of them out and the Dodgers become the Brooklyn Dodgers of old,” Scully said during the second inning of Game 1 of the Dodgers-Mets National League Division Series. He sprinkled in a tale about Babe Herman tripling into a double play — a joke about the bad old Bums. And he said, “We turn the clock back to the daffy days of the Brooklyn Dodgers.”

Oy gevalt. My grandfather once told me that he became a Dodger fan when he saw Babe Herman get hit on the head by a fly ball, but the team has come a long way since then, shedding the aura of hapless bums, breaking through the game’s bitter legacy of segregation, moving across the country and becoming a model franchise with a rich history sprinkled with championships. This return to the roots was too much, even for a team that came into the game having won seven straight, and even for a fan who smiles at the memory of my grandfather relating such antics.

The problem for the Dodgers is that while Kent had waited to see whether Martin’s drive would be caught, Drew had bolted, and was practically running up Kent’s back as the ball was relayed back into the infield. Third base coach Rich Donnelly couldn’t put up the stop sign for the latter without it being interpreted as for the former, winding up with two men on third base like some all-too-familiar slapstick comedy come to life. Kent dove and catcher Paul Lo Duca turned and tagged him out, then whirled back around to nail Drew as he arrived. As Thomas Boswell recounts:

Because Kent was in a funk, Drew was presented with the rare chance to make three base-running mistakes on one play. He hit the trifecta. First, he ran up Kent’s back between second and third base, forcing third base coach Rich Donnelly to wave Kent home to avoid two runners on third. (Herman would be proud. He ignited the three-Dodgers-on-third fiasco.) Next, when Donnelly yelled for Kent to “Go, go!” Drew thought Donnelly was yelling at him — neglecting to observe that, under such a scenario, he would be out at home by the length of the Triborough Bridge. Finally, while Mets catcher Paul Lo Duca was wallowing in the dirt, tagging Kent, then jumping up and spinning to show the ball to home plate umpire John Hirschbeck, Drew froze for a second in the baseline 40 feet from home plate before resuming his headfirst suicide mission.

“Donnelly was getting ready to stop Kent [at third] but J.D. was running all the way [from first]. He was about 10 yards behind Kent, so it kind of altered his decision on Kent,” Little said. “If he [Drew] continues on without stopping, I don’t know if Lo Duca gets them both. He might have snuck in there.”

Ugh. In any event, the Dodgers did come away with a run in that inning, when Martin scored on Marlon Anderson’s subsequent double, but the lost opportunity lingered. In the fourth inning, the team’s ace, Derek Lowe, surrendered solo homers to both Carlos Delgado and Cliff Floyd, putting the Mets ahead 2-1. It appeared the Dodgers might retaliate in short order when they chased Maine with two on and one out in the top of the fifth, but relievers Pedro Feliciano and Chad Bradford retired Kenny Lofton and Nomar Garciaparra, respectively, to end the threat. The Dodgers slipped further behind when Lowe faltered in the sixth, surrendering a two-run double to David Wright following singles by Lo Duca and Delgado. It took Met manager Willie Randolph’s decision to let reliever Guillermo Mota bat with two outs and the bases loaded to avoid further damage.

But if the Dodgers have proven one thing this year, it’s that they’re a resilient team, one unwilling to simply surrender to their worst slumps or their dumbest gaffes. When Anderson reached on a bunt to start the seventh, then was safe at second on a throwing error by Jose Valentin on a fielder’s choice, they suddenly had the tying run at the plate. Pinch-hitter Julio Lugo struck out, but Rafael Furcal brought Anderson home. A long fly ball by Kenny Lofton sent Wilson Betemit, who’d reached on the error, to third base, and then Garciaparra laced a double down the leftfield line to plate both runners and tie the game. NOMARRRRR!

As soon as Kent struck out and the seventh-inning stretch began, I had to depart for Yankee Stadium, leaving behind a 4-4 tie. My wife and I planned to meet on the dining concourse of Grand Central Station to grab a quick bite before the game, and as we awaited our order, I peeked into a bar where the Dodgers had coughed up the lead. Only later would I learn that manager Grady Little had called upon Brad Penny — he of the 6.25 second-half ERA, the bad back, and the one-inning start the prior week. What the hell was he thinking? Penny had surrendered two walks, an RBI single by Delgado and then an RBI double by Wright to open the game back up. I was lucky I’d missed it; back home I would have probably embedded several objects in our living room wall at the simple sight of that overweight doofus, the Bad Penny, taking the hill.

By the time we finished our meal, the bar had emptied; the Dodgers had mounted one last comeback effort but had fallen 6-5, with Mets closer Billy Wagner striking out Nomar with the tying run at second base. Ouch!

Score that one swift kick to the ribs.

to be continued…

Sorry to have dropped off the face of the earth just as things were getting good. I spent most of this past weekend communing with the TV and the computer as I watched one of the most eventful final weekends in recent memory. It was probably to my wife’s advantage that she was out of town for a few days; I’m not sure I let go of the TiVO remote all weekend, and things got so intense watching the Dodgers on Friday night that I simply shoved my coffee table into a corner of the room so as better to maximize my pacing/jumping space and minimize the number of shin bruises.

The sweetest part of the weekend, of course, was the Dodgers reaching the postseason by winning the Wild Card; even better, they clinched in San Francisco, slaying some ghosts in the process. As you can imagine, I was PUMPED, even though the clincher was blacked out on the Extra Innings package; by the time I started thinking about suddenly, desperately shelling out for MLB’s GameDay Audio, the score was 3-1 L.A. and I figured it best not to mess with success. So I took one for the team, watching station-to-station pixelball on GameCast, sans Vin Scully’s call. You know what? It felt just as good when they won.

Of course, the Yanks’ clinching homefield advantage for the entire playoffs is pretty cool as well; I’ve got two teams in the running, and like 2004, I hold out the faint hope that they’ll meet in yet another World Series.

In any event, most of what I have to say about the weekend and the pending playoff slate wound up in the season’s final Hit List, which took forever and a day to write; I’m relieved to put the column up on the blocks for the winter, if only to get my Sundays back and to redirect some of the energy I put into that effort back to this blog. Here’s the eighth-ranked Dodgers entry:

The plucky Dodgers win six straight road games to secure the NL Wild Card, losing the NL West title only on the basis of a tiebreaker (they were just 5-13 against the Padres) but returning to the postseason for the second time in three years. Sweeter still, they do it by clinching on their archrivals’ field, chasing the ghosts of Joe Morgan’s 1982 home run away. James Loney’s nine-RBI game and Greg Maddux’s stellar start on three days’ rest key a dramatic week punctuated by the cool-as-ice performance of 36-year-old rookie closer Takashi Saito (third in the NL in Reliever Expected Wins Added at 5.469). The Dodgers will face the Mets in the first round, and their rejiggered rotation–which now includes Hong-Chih Kuo instead of Chad Billingsley and ahead of ailing Brad Penny–comes in at a 3.81 Quick ERA; given the battered state of the Mets rotation, this matchup has upset potential.

And here’s the top-ranked Yankees’ entry:

In an uneven week that sees them blast out 16 runs one night and then come within two outs of being no-hit the next, the Yanks clinch home-field advantage throughout the postseason while savoring their ninth straight AL East title and celebrating a league record for attendance (4,248,067). Nonetheless, this is a vulnerable team; Randy Johnson’s herniated disc emphasizes the Yanks’ relative lack of power pitching and less than dominant rotation. But despite wrist injuries that limited Hideki Matsui and Gary Sheffield to a combined 91 games, the Bombers banged out 930 runs, 60 more than any other team; when you can put forth a lineup with an All-Star in every spot and the league’s hottest hitter in the #9 hole, you’ve got little to complain about. Look out, Detroit.

As nice as it is to have two teams in the playoffs, Wednesday’s slate forces me to leave the house before the end of the Dodgers-Mets opener to head up to Yankee Stadium for Game Two of the Bombers’ series with the Tigers (the Pinstripes looked pretty good last night). I know, I know, tough break, ain’t it?

Expect a report of the Yanks game tomorrow…

You know you’re as marginal as marginal major leaguers get when in the Age of the Long Ball, you’ve gone over 1,000 at-bats in your career without getting a single major league home run. And you know you destined for the Hall of Punchlines when your life as a player pales before that of your alter ego, a bobblehead which has become the modern-day equivalent of the Honus Wagner T-206 card in rarity if not value. Such is the case for Jason Tyner, the 29-year-old journeyman Minnesota Twins outfielder.

Tyner may be enjoying a renaissance of sorts, hitting .315/.348/.357 in a reserve role for the plaoyff-bound Twins, whose outfield/DH situation has been decimated by injuries (Shannon Stewart, Torii Hunter, Jason Kubel) and ick (Rondell White, Lew Ford, Ruben Sierra) even as the team has rallied to reach October after an awful start. In the grand scheme of things, that hardly matters unless you’re a Twins fan. What matters is that at least one Tyner bobblehead has been liberated and is now residing in the East Village of New York City. It’s not mine, but I can claim to have midwifed the acquisition.

But first, some back story. Tyner was drafted out of Texas A&M by the Mets in the first round of the 1998 draft. In taking him 21st, the Mets passed over useful players like Brad Wilkerson (33rd), Aaron Rowand (35th) and Adam Dunn (50). Similarly useless Bubba Crosby, another product of a Texas school (Rice) was taken by the Dodgers two picks later.

The 6’1″, 170-pounder showed some promise as a speedy leadoff hitter over the next couple of seasons, most notably hitting .313/.390/.369 with 49 steals for the Mets’ Double-A team in Binghamton in 1999. Promoted to the majors in June 2000, Tyner played only 13 games with the Mets before being packaged along with Paul Wilson in a near-deadline deal with the Devil Rays that brought Bubba Trammell and Rick White to the Big Apple. Finishing out the season in Tampa, he hit just .226/.261/.258 in 124 at-bats, managing just four doubles and no triples or homers. That lack of power soon became his trademark.

Tyner fit in perfectly on the hapless Devil Rays, hitting .280/.311/.326 and stealing 31 bases as a fourth outfielder in 2001 for a team that lost 100 games. In some places that will get you released, or at the very least ridiculed. In Tampa, it was enough to get a day in his honor. In March 2002, the Devil Rays announced that they would give away 5,00 bobbleheads on June 2. Alas, not even the Rays could stomach Tyner’s .214/ .249/.238 performance in the early months of the season, and with Carl Crawford nearing readiness for the majors, the Rays shipped out their punchless wonder five days before the festivities.

As Chris (now Christina) Karhl wrote for Baseball Prospectus at the time:

Apparently, the Devil Rays’ bobblehead giveaways scheduled for this year were for two of these very gentlemen, Jason Tyner and Toby Hall. Think about that. As dumb as baseball’s dumbest organization is, they did have the smarts to finally cut bait on Tyner, baseball’s worst regular. That’s a cause for hope, right? I suppose that depends; only the Devil Rays would consider making Jason Tyner a regular in an outfield corner. There is an astounding lack of self-awareness, not only on the organizational management level, but in the team’s marketing division. A bobblehead doll for Jason Tyner?

BP staffers like to joke about accumulating Lame Shares, but I think the Devil Rays are the first team to take that concept to heart and use it as a way to outdo themselves in finding new and interesting ways to run fans off. There is something ageless about a Jason Tyner bobblehead doll, of course, in that rather than try to give fans something that symbolizes hope or optimism or a commitment to improvement, or even something like a Randy Winn bobblehead doll that wouldn’t say much of anything at all, the Devil Fishies want to give their fans something that represents how totally hopeless this franchise is, just like Jason Tyner. It’s sort of like a Jose Tartabull doll for the Kansas City A’s to tell fans to abandon hope, or one for Jim Gantner with the Brewers to remind fans that the hometown nine is well-intentioned and mostly harmless. A Jason Tyner bobblehead doll might be the game’s most compelling anti-marketing tool this side of Bud Selig.

At the time it appeared possible that the bobblehead giveaway was simply forestalled. But Tyner didn’t make it back to the big leagues that year, prompting Kahrl to revisit the topic a few months later:

Look, at this stage of the game, there are really only two questions to worry about as far as the D-Rays are concerned: will a strike wreck their shot at 110 losses (and do they have what it takes to do it in fewer than 162 games?), and what happened to all those Jason Tyner bobblehead dolls? Having already decided that trying to build a set of the political leaders of Europe in 1914 would be a vanity I should not indulge, I’d be really unhappy if I didn’t fill my tchotchke bill with the ultimate expression of Devil Ray-dom. Just to think on all those Jason Tyner bobbleheads, gathering dust in some Florida warehouse filled with surplus tinned beef from the Spanish-American War, it’s almost enough to make you moderately interested.

Though Tyner made it back to the majors for 46 games with the Rays in 2003, his big day was never rescheduled, and at the end of the year he was put on waivers. He went to spring training with the Rangers but was cut, spent half a season with the Braves’ Triple-A team in Richmond, the highlight of which was his first professional home run. It came on May 6, in the 2,632rd at bat of his career, off of Columbus pitcher Jim Mann.

It wasn’t enough. Tyner soon found himself the victim of a numbers game in Richmond, but he caught on with the Indians’ Triple-A team in Buffalo, hitting .350/.417/.392 over the last two months of the season. That drew the attention of the Twins, who kept him at Rochester for most of 2005, where he hit another bomb on May 15. He hit well in a September call-up (.321/.367/.375) and found himself back in Minnesota in mid-July when, in a two-day span, Lew Ford, Shannon Stewart and Torii Hunter all hit the DL. The Twins didn’t have a whole lot of choice, but fortunately Tyner came out of the gate strong. He got two hits apiece in each of his first three games and had 18 hits in his first 12 games. His moderately useful work as a reserve has lifted his career line all the way to .272/.309/.315. Still, he’s in the No Homers Club (no, not that one).

But enough about the player. The bobblehead never was too far from this writer’s mind given the futility it (the doll, not my mind) represents. Back before Tyner was recalled, I referred to him in a June 11 Hit List entry on the Giants: “Moises Alou returns after missing a month due to an ankle sprain and hits .273/.360/.636 for the week, including a homer on his own bobblehead day (somewhere, Jason Tyner is weeping).”

A month later, I even had a bobblehead doll sighting of sorts. In her column, Kahrl noted that the Twins’ release of Ruben Sierra “clears space on the roster for the club to bring up a fifth outfielder (Jason Tyner? The Jason Tyner? Man, I still want one of those)” Check that last link; it points to the promotion company that created the doll; their website trumpets it among dozens of others, failing to note its dubious distinction. Nonetheless it’s there, a plastic apparition of sorts. I emailed the photo to my friend Nick Stone, calling the it “the closest you might ever get.”

A few weeks later I linked the image in yet another Hit List entry on the Cardinals. “Meanwhile, Albert Pujols proves he’s human by going all of 33 at-bats without a homer. Somewhere, a Jason Tyner bobblehead is crying.” Never let it be said that I don’t know when to drive a joke into the ground.

The repeated references struck a nerve with Stone, who decided to take action. “While I’ve never considered myself a bobblehead collector, I was intrigued by Tyner as a player because of his complete inability to hit for power, and the absurdity of his story; getting sent down a few days before his bobblehead night. I think over the years I had occasionally checked eBay without any luck. I hadn’t given it much thought recently until both [Jay] and Christina Kahrl mentioned Tyner after his recent call up.” To Stone’s surprise, he found one on eBay, with an asking price of $5.50. A few days later, he’d won the doll without much trouble. “I made a last minute bid with a very high maximum, but only ended up paying $36.50.”

He was surprised at the lack of competition. “It takes two people to have an auction, but in this case, one of them didn’t show up. Either the other bidders weren’t that keen, or they thought that it wouldn’t take much to get it. Considering that this bobblehead was never ‘released,’ I would have thought that the rarity of it, combined with the back story, would drive the price through the roof.” Stone notes that Chien-Ming Wang Trenton Thunder bobbleheads are going for over $300. “I had envisioned boxes of the dolls stacked in a forgotten corner of a cavernous warehouse never to be opened, not unlike the the warehouse scene at the end of the first Raiders of the Lost Ark movie!”

As for the doll’s origin, the seller told Stone he’d found it at an estate sale. A deceased Devil Rays employee? Not necessarily. According to the St. Petersburg Times, the ballclub donated the lot of them — reportedly 15,000, not 5,000 — to charity: “This past offseason, the Rays gave them to the Pinellas Education Foundation for use at Enterprise Village, where they are among the items students can ‘buy’ with their earnings after learning about business and commerce.”

In other words, there may be a few Tampa-area schoolkids running around with Tyner bobbleheads. Either they have yet to flood the market (just one other recently completed auction turned up on eBay) or the sentimental attachment is too great for those kids to let go of their treasured dolls. Is Stone worried his new prized possession will decrease in value? Not really. “Since I paid a reasonable price and have no interest in selling mine, it doesn’t bother me too much,” he says. And he offers advice for the Foundation: “The charity would do well to occasionally post them on eBay in order to maximize their value instead of flooding the ‘market’ by selling them all at once. This might price the kids out of the market, but really, are there any kids out there who really want a Jason Tyner bobblehead? After my eBay experience, I wonder if there’s anyone out there who really wants a Jason Tyner bobblehead besides you, me, Christina Kahrl, and the handful of people I bid against.”

As for the Devil Rays, now under new management, they’re trying to move beyond the doll and the legacy of futility it represents, even if the results haven’t shown up in this year’s standings. “We’re more focused on trying to compete in the AL East,” says a source within the front office, who reports, “People mostly ‘comment’ on [the doll] by way of joking about it. There are some Tyner bobbleheads floating around the office here and there, although I hate to say that there’s no gigantic bowl of them.”

Despite some technical difficulties that delayed its start and had the old rage-o-meter in the red for a few minutes, my chat at BP yesterday was pretty fun, lasting nearly three hours — much longer than I intended to go. Tons of questions about JAWS, Frank Thomas, Trevor Hoffman, the MVP races, the Hit List Comedy Gold awards, Chien-Ming Wang, a good deal of busting on the Blue Jays and Tony LaRussa.

Wang was a big topic of discussion at BP yesterday because Nate Silver took a look at the postseason rotations using his Quick ERA toy to assess “true” rotation quality. The QERA formula is QERA =(2.69+K%*(-3.4)+BB%*3.88+GB%*(-0.66))^2 where K% and BB% are the number of strikeouts and walks per plate appeareance, and GB% is a pitcher’s groundball/flyball ratio expressed as a percentage [GB/(GB+FB)]. Why use just these? As Nate writes, “These three components — K rate, BB rate, GB/FB — stabilize very quickly, and they have the strongest predictive relationship with a pitcher’s ERA going forward. What’s more, they are not very dependent on park effects, allowing us to make reasonable comparisons of pitchers across different teams.”

The upshot of all of this is that WANG’s QERA was estimated at 4.58, nearly a run more than his actual ERA of 3.63, and not exactly what you’d want from a #1 starter in a postseason series, 19 wins be damned. Silver wrote:

Wang is one of those pitchers who, like Tom Glavine, continually manages to post an ERA that is far superior to his peripherals. Even after accounting for his superior groundball rate, the numbers say he’s a #3 starter, not a #1. What’s unusual is the way in which Wang is getting lucky. His BABIP is very normal, and he’s actually been a bit worse with runners in scoring position. So what gives? Wang has allowed just a .230/.271/.316 line to the hitter leading off the inning, and it’s very hard to score runs when your leadoff man gets on only 27% of the time. There might be some element of skill in attacking leadoff hitters, and Wang is undoubtedly a smart pitcher who understands good situational baseball. Nevertheless, this has to be mostly luck, and the secret sauce reminds us that finesse pitchers tend to get creamed in the playoffs. This is a very vulnerable rotation, especially with both Johnson and Mussina nursing injuries.

The “secret sauce” of which Nate speaks is from another one of his articles, an adaptation of a chapter from Baseball Between the Numbers where he and Dayn Perry examined more than a century’s worth of playoff teams to see which factors correlated best with postseason success. In fact, only three passed the test of statistical significance; they are:

• A power pitching staff, as measured by normalized strikeout rate
• A good closer, as measured by Reliever Expected Wins Added (WXRL)
• A good defense, as measured by Fielding Runs Above Average FRAA

Following up on this, my pal Nick asked about Wang:

Nick Stone (East Village, NYC):[A]s someone who watches a lot of Yankees games do you think that Chien Ming Wang’s success has a lot less to do with luck than his strikeout rate would indicate? Wang consistently hits the mid 90s with lots of movement, has allowed only 12 hr in 212 IP, and seems to be able to maintain a 3-1 G/F ratio in his sleep. While I usually shy away from scout terms like “stuff”, I do think there is more to Wang than his a perusal of his stats would suggest. In my mind, this guy is clearly not a Granny Gooden/Kirk Reuter with a razor-thin margin for error.

Jay Jaffe: I do think there’s something to be said for Wang’s stuff, his mid-90s velocity, his ability to keep the ball on the ground and avoid home runs; in fact, given that he also has allowed just 9 steals with 11 CS, I’d say we’re looking at a Tommy John-family pitcher minus the lefthandendess, and that’s a good thing because those guys tend to last longer than cockroaches.

That said, a good portion of the reason for his success is that the Yankee defense has improved in terms of efficiency; their .707 is 2nd in the AL to Detroit whereas it was 10th last year. I see that as a result mainly of last year’s outfield being absent for most of this year, but some improvement in the infield may have also taken place.

The Tommy John family of pitchers has nothing to do with the surgery; it’s a concept Bill James introduced in his 1984 Baseball Abstract:

1. they are left-handed
2. they are control-type pitchers
3. they cut off the running game very well
4. they receive excellent double-play support
5. they allow moderate to low totals of home runs, lower than normal for a control pitcher
6. they are able to win while allowing an unusually high number of hits per game
7. their won-loss records tend to be very team dependent, often more exaggerated than their teams’–that is, a higher winning percentage than a winning team’s or lower than a losing team’s

Wang meets all of these criteria except for the first. With a 3.14 K/9 rate, 0.50 HR/9, 9.62 H/9, the aforementioned shutdown of the stolen base, the number two ranking in the entire major leagues in total Double Plays behind him (33), and a 19-6 (.760 winning pct.), there’s really no doubt about it; if anything, what’s interesting is that as a righty, he’s got the platoon advantage more often than most TJ-family pitchers, though lefties and righties’ splits against him are basically indistinguishable (.275/.321/.384 for lefties, .279/.319/.367 for righties).

One thing I didn’t check but notice in retrospect: Wang’s Batting Average on Balls in Play (.289) is actually much HIGHER this year than it was last year (.270), suggesting that situational pitching, as Nate pointed out, may be a bigger part of his story than the improved Yank defense. Also, his ERA is lower by 0.39, but while his K/PA has dropped 11 percent, it’s his HR/9 where the real improvement lies: a 41 percent drop from last year.

Wang was still the topic of discussion when I went to last night’s Yankees-Orioles game with Alex Belth. The lineup, which included Jason Giambi for the first time in a week, might have been on the short list for the most devastating Murderer’s Rows ever; each player has at least one All-Star appearance to his credit:

1. Johnny Damon, CF
2. Derek Jeter, SS
3. Bobby Abreu, RF
4. Alex Rodriguez, 3B
5. Jason Giambi, DH
6. Gary Sheffield, 1B
7. Hideki Matsui, LF
8. Jorge Posada, C
9. Robinson Cano, 2B

When one of the hottest hitters in the majors — Cano is batting .369/.385/.656 with 23 2b, 11 HR, and 51 RBI since August 8, and is now running second in the AL Batting Average race, ahead of Jeter — is hitting ninth, you’re talking serious firepower, an embarrassment of riches. The game was a rout, with the Yanks chasing Oriole starter Kris Benson in the third inning, with Giambi, Abreu and Posada bashing homers off of him. Giambi’s was his first since August 20, a span of 65 at-bats; he’s been slowed by a torn ligament in his wrist that has Shef learning first base. Abreu’s was his third in as many games and his fourth in eight games; he’s hitting .345/.437/.536 in pinstripes.

Benson departed for Bruce Chen, who got the final out of the third, then was torched for five runs himself in the fourth; he knocked Rodriguez down, at which point I shouted, “Hey tough guy, how many outs you got?” The answer was none; Jeter had walked and Abreu had singled — giving way to pinch-runner Bernie Williams — following Damon’s homer. A-Rod responded with an RBI single, Giambi followed with a two-run single (his third hit of the night already; the second an opposite-field single that defeated the now-standard shift against him). After a Sheffield single — his second hit of the night, following a sharp double that gave hints that his bat speed is on its way back — Chen was toast.

The Yanks continued dishing out Cream of Whoop Ass, with Cano adding a two-run homer in the seventh, and by the end of the game — we stuck around, having a blast watching the scoreboard (Jon Weisman has a nice summary of that angle, which included four games relevant to the NL playoff picture and a Dodger victory), playing peek-a-boo with a 14-month old baby girl in the row in front of us, and chatting with blogger Benjamin Kabak — every single position player had departed for a sub. Andy Cannizaro, Kevin Thompson, Sal Fasano (whom I couldn’t stop yelling at; the pear-shaped backup catcher totally entertains me with his junk-in-the-trunk waddle), Andy Phillips, Melky Cabrera — come on down! Final score: 16-5.

For all of this, Wang wasn’t too sharp, slogging through six innings and giving up 10 hits (eight singles and two doubles) and four runs, though he did strike out four. Sitting on the bench for extended periods of time might have had something to do with it; by the fourth the Yanks had already scored 13 runs. But still, the question remained as to whether Wang will ever convert that mid-90s speed into a higher strikeout rate, generally held to be the predictor of pitcher longevity. I’m skeptical myself; the sinker is his bread-and-butter pitch, and it’s not one designed to miss bats, it’s designed to generate ground balls. He’s got a four-seamed fastball and a splitter, but he doesn’t rely on those to deceive batters nearly as much. It will be fascinating to see how he develops, and whether he can be The Man in the playoffs. Torre officially announced that he’s starting the Division Series opener, so we’ll soon find out.

I’ve got a Baseball Prospectus chat scheduled for Wednesday at 1 PM. Drop by, or submit a question beforehand — the Hit List, JAWS, Yanks, Dodgers, the NL Wild Card race, the postseason, the offseason, the secret lives of futility infielders, and barrels full of rabid monkeys — it’s all fair game.

With the Dodgers idle after Sunday’s second Nomar Garciaparra walkoff of the week — NOMAAAAAAH! — this one a grand slam to close out the regular-season schedule in Chavez Ravine, Monday night was a helluva night for scoreboard watching as I finished the week’s Hit List. The NL playoff picture, in particular, is more fun than a barrel full of monkeys. Rabid, knife-wielding monkeys intent on stabbing one in the stomach with rusty blades, at that.

With the Phillies a half-game up on the Dodgers in the Wild Card race and playing the Astros, I had that game on and was following along, cursing as Jimmy Rollins broke open a 2-2 game with a two-run homer. Meanwhile I was eyeing ESPN’s scoreboard page, where I spied the NL West-leading Padres jump out to an early 5-1 lead on the Cardinals, who came into the game having lost five straight. With the score cut to 5-2, I told my wife, “Call St. Louis collect and tell them to stop sucking!”

No sooner had I said that when I saw that Jim Edmonds, who hadn’t played in four weeks due to post-concussion syndrome, had apparently hit a three-run homer to tie the game. I didn’t actually see the bomb live, mind you, but I watched the scoreboard page refreshed with his name in the homer column, and quickly flipped the channel to watch the replay.

No sooner had Edmonds and I pumped fists in unison as he rounded first base than I sat back down and saw that the Astros had re-tied the game in the seventh on a two-run single by Orlando Palmeiro. Figuring that I’d done a good job of not jinxing things by actually missing the key plays, I went back to the Hit List and discovered on my next glance two minutes later — I don’t have a very long attention span these days, and who wants to watch a Brad Ausmus at-bat, even on GameCast? — that Mike Lamb had singled in the go-ahead run. “Everything is coming up Milhouse!” I wrote in an instant message.

Meanwhile, the Yankees — who needs to watch them in these post-clinch days, especially against the Devil Rays — were pounding the living snot out of poor Tampa Bay 12-1. Glancing at the box score, I patted myself on the back for skipping over a laudatory comment about Jae Seo’s recent work as he’d been torched for eight runs, including two three-run homers in the first by Bobby Abreu and Hideki Matsui, in 1.2 innings. Feh, Mark Hendrickson can do that.

That wasn’t the only blowout going on at the time, either. I checked in on the White Sox via GameCast; they were down 14-1 in the seventh, while the Twins, whose magic number to reach the postseason coming into Monday was at two, led the Royals 3-1 in the sixth. Clickety-clack on the IM: “I see that the World Championship has called Ozzie Guillen in the visitors dugout of Jacobs and told him that it’s time for them both to see other people.”

By this point I’d surrendered the TV to Andra so she could tape Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, so I spent another hour flipping back and forth on the GameCast as I closed out the Hit List. The AL picture tidied itself up with the White Sox elimnation, leaving only the Central title to be decided between the Tigers and Twins. Meanwhile, the Phils lost, moving the Dodgers into a tie for the Wild Card (wohoo!), but the Padres managed to break the tie in the seventh with a Brian Giles double and a Mike Piazza single, and even with Trevor Hoffman sitting this one out as Scott Linebrink closed out Albert Pujols and Scott Rolen, they never looked back.

As the game wound down, I outlined various NL playoff scenarios via IM for a friend with Mets tickets:

• If the Phillies win the Wild Card, the Mets play either the NL Central or NL West winner, whichever has a worse record. The most surprising result of last night’s play is that the slumping Cardinals’ lead over surging Houston (whom I roundly dismissed in the previous two Hit Lists) has dwindled to 2.5 games with seven to go (six for the ‘Stros). Right now the Baseball Prospectus Postseason Odds Report gives the Astros a 7.8 percent chance of pulling off such an unlikely scenario. Even if the Cards do win, they’re currently 3.5 behind the Padres in terms of having the better record, so they’d play the Mets, while the West winner (likely the Padres at 87.1 percent, with the Dodgers at just 12.9) would play the Phils.

• Other scenarios are simpler. If the Dodgers win the Wild Card (41.0 percent), they’d play the Mets in a rematch of the magical 1988 LCS matchup. The Padres and Cardinals would reprise last year’s Division Series, or the Pads and Astros would… meet to discuss which of the two teams got the better of their 12-player deal back in December 1994. Or something.

• If the Padres win the Wild Card (8.9 percent), they’d play the Mets, with the Mike Piazza storyline likely dominating the airwaves. The Dodgers would get either a rematch of their 2004 Division Series with the Cards, or a throwback to the strike-induced 1981 Division Series via a matchup with the Astros.

Cribbing from Dodger Thoughts (whose Jon Weisman tells me he wasn’t actually at the Four-Homer game, contrary to my understanding), here’s how the slate plays out:

• If PHI finishes ahead of a tied LA and SD, there would be a tiebreaker game for the NL West title in LA on October 2.

• If SD finishes ahead of a tied LA and PHI, there would be a tiebreaker game for the NL Wild Card in PHI on October 2.

• If LA finishes ahead of a tied SD and PHI, there would be a tiebreaker game for the NL Wild Card in PHI on October 2.

• If SD and LA finish tied ahead of PHI, SD would be the NL West champion and LA the NL Wild Card.

• If all three teams finish tied, SD would play at LA to decide the NL West champion October 2, and the loser of that game would go to PHI to decide the wild card October 3.

Fun stuff, even with those monkeys. Did I mention how sharp their teeth were?

Last Friday night, I finally got a chance to watch Twins reliever Pat Neshek. By way of belatedly introducing this week’s Hit List, in which Neshek appears, I just had to share a few of my favorite things about this guy.

1. First and foremost, he’s a rookie big-league pitcher who has his own blog; he’s been doing it since spring of 2004, when he was pitching in High-A ball. It’s not a scandal sheet where juicy tidbits of inside gossip are dished out, but it’s not a slick, filtered production either. Mainly it’s just cool to see a player make an honest attempt to connect with fans and share his wide-eyed take on being a rookie in the bigs (scroll down about 1/4 of the way here to see his illustrated take on signing a contract with Topps, for example).

2. Neshek throws with a very funky motion that includes a herky-jerky stutter at the beginning that must drive hitters bat-shit crazy. He drops down to begin his delivery from a submarine position, but brings the ball up so that he’s basically throwing slightly above sidearm. He describes how he developed his delivery here (with photos):

My best guess is the following hypothesis. In my last High School game I was drilled in the forearm by current Phillies farmhand CJ Woodrow. Up to this point I was a normal over the top thrower. In fact the first time I was drafted it was by the Twins in 1999 and I was throwing directly over the top, I’m sure they still have video of it. That next day after getting hit in the arm I had trouble gripping a baseball. About two weeks into summer baseball I still could not throw a baseball unless it was from three fourths / sidearm angle. I tried to pitch but my mechanics wanted me to go over the top but it hurt too much to do that. I continued to play shortstop all summer turning double plays and throwing the ball from down under. I eventually finished the summer season and took off the rest of the time until I started college, which was about a month and a half. During that time my forearm healed and when I got to Butler I felt fine throwing the ball. One problem though, I had a whole new arm slot and it wasn’t anything I thought it could be. During my freshman year at Butler I was watching a tape of me throwing and this was one of the first times I had seen myself throw on TV since high school. A lot changed in my mechanics from high school to college and I never noticed nor felt like I was throwing any different. After viewing the tape I was shocked and tried for a few months to change my mechanics. Near the end of the season I watched myself again after trying to improve the delivery but it still looked the same. Butler Head Coach Steve Farley tried for the rest of the year to work on making me “Look Normal.” During my Sophomore season on an average day near the end of Fall Ball, Coach Farley came up to me and said “Do your own thing” “That’s your own unique style and it works” and something to the extent of “I give up with you.” From that point on I stopped feeling bad about having the worst mechanics in college baseball and used my style as strength. So now if you ever see me pitch you’ll know how I pitch like that!

Neshek describes his repertoire in a March 2005 interview with Seth Speaks:

I guess if I were to describe myself I would say that I’m a guy looking to come at you, compete, throw in the zone and not let up looking to strike the batter out. Yeah it’s a different arm angle from most guys. I throw a four seam/two seem fastball, slider, change up from a little above sidearm and a sinker that I throw submarine. My fastball is usually my out pitch but if my slider is on I go with that.

Aaron Gleeman links to a short clip of Neshek’s delivery that shows the arm angle but not the stuff that precedes it, which appears to be every bit as important.

3. Neshek’s funky delivery has been done up in Lego, courtesy of Bat-Girl. What, you were expecting Joe Sheehan?

4. He has a cool-looking autograph and is in fact a collector of both autographs and cards. Like any reliever, he’s got a lot of time on his hands, and he must have spent a fair amount practicing his signature. He actually trades signed cards with fans and runs his own auctions on eBay. In a couple of his recent entries (September 5 and 11, 2006, can’t seem to find the way to permalink), he describes a trip to the MLB Players Association office, where he was given some boxes of baseball cards. He opens a couple of the boxes and describes the various sets, then runs stats for how much of a set he’s completed and how many doubles he had. Endearingly nerdy.

5. In his September 15 entry, Neshek is believed to have made big-league history by photo-blogging the Twins’ rookie initiation ritual, for which he was dressed up in a magenta and black skirt, witches hat, fishnet stockings and silver platform shoes. He described the experience as “Not Fun!” but the photos speak otherwise, showing him and the other unidentified Twins rooks — one dressed as Elvis, one looking like the cop from the Village People, one that might be the Tin Man, another in a Tarzan outfit, Matt Garza in a yellow bikini, Boof Bonser (I think) in a modified girls’ school uniform — are mostly smiles. Hilarious stuff, and the reason Neshek made it into this week’s Hit List.

Not that Neshek hasn’t done good work this year. Recalled just before the All-Star break, he was charged with just three runs in his first 25.2 innings. But September has been a cruel month; he’s yielded six in 7.1 frames, and he took the loss in the game I caught on Friday. Overall, he’s got a 2.45 ERA in 33 innings, and an awesome 48/6 K/BB ratio, and he’s held righties to a .158/.179/.250 performance in 76 at-bats (lefties hit .233/.292/.512 off of him in 43 at-bats). He’s fourth on the Twins in Reliever Expected Wins Added, with 1.034, and that’s helped them to lead the AL in that category. Since the Twins appear likely to play into October, he should get plenty of TV time over the next few weeks. Catch him while you can.