Valentine's "Real World Series" a Bad Idea...for Him

Bobby Valentine's in over his head this time.

New Jersey's Bergen Record columninst and ESPN.com-tributor Bob Klapisch worte a piece discussing Valentine's challenge to have a "real" World Series, after his own Chiba Lotte Marines swept the Hanshin Tigers, 4-0, in the Japanese Series. Valentine became the first foreign-born manager in Japanese baseball history to even get to the final round of their playoffs, much less win them, so this accomplishment apparently went to his head pretty quickly.

Valentine had managed the NY Mets (1996-2002) and Texas Rangers (1985-1992) and never won a division title, though he did pick up an NL pennant with the Wild-Card winning Mets in 2000. He was also a very controversial manager, sticking with favorite players in spite of their repeated demonstration that they had no business in the regular lineup. His continued use of Brian McRae and Rey Ordonez in 1999 probably cost the Mets a Division Title, and if it didn't, then his use of Ordonez and Bernard "Innocent Until Proven" Gilkey certainly cost them the 1998 Wild Card. In a hilarious but extremely controversial move, Valentine returned to the Mets dugout after having been ejected from a game in 1999, in a not-particularly effective disguise.



I hope that was worth the suspension the commissioner levied upon you, Bobby.

Anyway, for all his faults, Valentine was reasonably successful as a manager, at least with the Mets, and in only his second year as a manager in Japan, he's as successful as anyone has ever been in that role. This success, as I mentioned, seems to have swelled Bobby's already sizeable ego:

"I can tell you the level of play is equal. [The Marines] are as good as any team I've ever managed.

Putting aside the fact that virtually any manager who wins a World Series (and any player who's won one and is in contention for another) always says this about his current team, we have yet one more reason not to believe Valentine: This team didn't win a World Series.

They won a Japan Series. Yes, I know. It's not polite to disparage the Japanese Leagues. They're people too, and it's racist or prejudiced or something to say that we're somehow inherently better than they are just because we're American. Well, I'm not saying that. If it were somehow an even-grounded competition, where it was just the best of Japan ogainst the best of the U.S., well, we'd still probably win that handily, because we've got more than twice the population upon which to draw for our talent in the U.S. Alone. Also, most of us are bigger. OK, well, I am. In reality, it's not even that close, though, as Major League Baseball has the best talent from around the entire world, and Japan, well, doesn't.

Heck, we could probably win with just the players born in California. All of the following players were either productive (or better) in 2005 or very recently before that: Garrett Anderson, Rod Barajas, Hank Blalock, Barry Bonds, Chad Cordero, Coco Crisp, Bobby Crosby, Doug Davis, Jermaine Dye, Jim Edmonds, Joey Eischen, Scott Eyre, Brian Fuentes, Nomar Garciaparra, Jon Garland, Jason Giambi, Brian and Marcus Giles, Troy Glaus, and Eddie Guardado, to name a few, all native Californians. We've got two decent starting pitchers, five good relief pitchers, two good shortstops, two good thirdbasemen, a first baseman, a catcher, a second baseman, five productive outfielders and Superman himself. And I haven't even gotten out of the first seven letters of the alphabet!

By contrast, the Japanese leagues have only the Japanese population upon which to draw, as well as a few Koreans and some cast-offs from the North American major and minor leagues. To give you an idea of the talent level, here are a few of the players I've found who had playing time on both sides of the Pacific Ocean:

Brian Powell: In the majors, he went 7-18 with a 5.94 ERA in parts of six seasons with four franchises. In the Japanese PCL in 2005, at age 31, he went 14-12 with a 3.51 ERA in 200 innings (2nd in PCL), 160 strikeouts (4th in PCL), 5 complete games and two shutouts.

Julio Zuleta: Hit .247/.309/.466 in parts of two seasons with the Cubs, spent two years in AAA, then went to Japan and became a star. He hit .284/37 hr/100RBI in 2004 and .319/43/99 in 2005, placing 2nd in the PCL in all three triple crown categories.

Alex Cabrera: Had a cup of coffee with the Diamondbacks in 2000, but by then he was already 28 and had a decade's worth of minor league at-bats under his belt. He had generally hit well, but apparently nobody in a major league GM's position took him seriously because he always did it in places like Mexico City and the Texas League, where offense is cheap. He's now been in Japan for 5 seasons and has averaged 43 homers a year, including 25 in only half of the 2004 season, and 36 more this year.

Fernando Seguignol: Hit .249/.303/.451 in parts of five major league seasons, went to Japan and has 75 homers and 192 RBI in the last two seasons.

Tyrone Woods: Woods never made it to the majors, but now in his mid-30's, he's averaged over 40 homers for the last three seasons with the Chunichi Dragons.

Alex Ochoa: Ochoa, a 3rd round draft pick by the Orioles in 1991, never panned out in the majors, hitting .279 with moderate patience but no power or speed in parts of eight seasons with six different franchises. Now healthy, he's been a fixture in Chunichi's lineup for three years, averaging 20 homers and over 75 RBI per season from 2003 to 2005.

Alex Ramirez: There do seem to be a lot of Alexes, don't there? Anywho, this Alex had power, hitting .299 with 34 bombs for Cleveland's AAA affiliate in 1998, at the tender age of 23. Unfortunately for him, the late '90s Tribe was loaded with talent at the corner IF/OF spots, and he never got much of a chance to break in. He also had terrible plate discipline, so it didn't take long for major league pitchers to realize that they didn't have to ever throw him a strike. In Japan, though, he's averaged 30 homers and over 100 RBI in five seasons, despite the fact that he still strikes out about 4-5 times as often as he walks.

That's only seven players, but all of them were wash-outs in the North American major leagues, and all of them are now or have been solid contibutors and/or stars in the Japanese leagues. If you're interested, you can look up Tuffy Rhodes, George Arias, Roberto Petagine, Greg LaRocca, and others as well. The list is almost endless.

Among the players involved in the 2005 Japan Series alone are a handful of washed-up major leaguers, a few on each team:

HANSHIN TIGERS:
Andy Sheets: In parts of seven seasons and over 1000 major league plate appearances, Sheets hit .216/.271/.321 with 19 homers. His first three seasons in Japan have netted him 67 homers, 245 RBI and a .290+ batting average.

Jeff Williams: With a 7.49 ERA in parts of four seasons with the LA Dodgers, and an unimpressive 4.05 ERA in over 650 minor league innings, Williams signed on with the Hanshin Tigers in 2003 and has a combined ERA just over 2.00 and more strikeouts than innings pitched in 2003-05.

CHIBA LOTTE MARINES:
Benny Agbayani: Benny and his jets hit .274/.362/.445 in parts of five major league seasons, mostly with Bobby Valentine's Mets. His minor league numbers had been comparable, but then he went to Japan, AKA "The Land of the Rising (...and Rising, and Rising...) Baseball", where he promptly hit .315 with 35 homers and 100 RBI in 2004. His 2005 stats (.271/13/71) look more like his MLB stats because, as was often the case for him on this side of the ocean, he was injured and only played about 2/3 of the season.

Matt Franco: Another ex-Valentinian Met, Franco hit .267/.349/.391 with 22 homers in almost 1000 at-bats over eight years in the majors, the quintissential backup catcher. In Japan, Franco starts, plays 259 games and hits 36 homers over two seasons, including .300 with 21 of them in 2005.

Dan Serafini: Serafini spent nine seasons in the minors and went 50-45 with a 4.36 ERA and parts of 6 seasons in the majors, going 15-16 with a 5.98 ERA. In 2004, in Japan, he went 5-4 with a 4.13 ERA and in 2005 he became a rotation anchor for the eventual Japan League Champion Chiba Lotte Marines, going 11-4 with a 2.91 ERA.

So, as you can see, the talent level in the Japanese leagues certainly does not appear to be anywhere near the caliber of the talent in MLB. Probably somewhere between AA and AAA, I would think.

"But wait!", you say, "Japanese players have come here and succeeded! What about Ichiro? What about Matsui?"





Presuming that you mean Hideki Matsui, yes, I agree with you, to an extent. While it's true that Hideki Matsui and Hideo Nomo and most notably Ichiro Suzuki have had success in MLB, they're still not as good as they were in Japan. Ichiro hit something like .353/.415/.522 in Japan, but "only" .332/.377/.442 in the American League. Still excellent numbers, but not the kind he regularly logged for the Orix Blue Wave. Matsui, similarly, has seen a notable drop in production since joining the Yankees, going from .304/.412/.582 to .297/.370/.484. That's almost a 150 point drop in OPS, which is enormous.

Furthermore, the group of players who have struggled in the majors after doing well in Japan is much longer than those who have succeeded: Kazuo Matsui, Hideki Irabu, Kazuhisa Ishii, and Tsuyoshi Shinjo (who returned to Japan after struggling for three years in the NL and had the best season of his career in 2004), to name a few. There is at least another dozen I won't even bother to mention becaus emost of you have never heard of them. Their bids for MLB stardom never got out of the minors.

Now, with that said, I'm not sure that the Japan-American Series is necessarily a bad idea, just one that won't ever happen. It's certainly a good marketing idea, as those nutty sports fans over there in Japan are huge consumers and would certainly support such a venture. I'm not as certain that baseball fans on this side of the Pacific would really care all that much, except for nut-jobs like myself and Rogers Horsnby who sit around all winter, staring out the window, waiting for spring. For weirdos like us, having a chance to see major leaguers play a few games in November would be pretty appealing, even if it was against the likes of Dan Serafini and Matt Franco.

Here's another quote from Francona:

"I'd put them up against the winner of the World Series and I know we'd win at least a couple of games."

Well, Bobby, that depends on how many you'd play. In a ten or fifteen-game series, yeah, you might win a couple of games. But four out of seven? Not likely. Sorry to have to be the one to break this to you, Bobby, but the evidence simply does not exist to suggest that the level of play in Japan is "equal" to, or even remotely close to, that in the major leagues. While it's possible that an All-Star team from, say, the Eastern League or the International League, might beat the White Sox once or twice in a dozen games, it's also more than probable that the Pale Hose would make even quicker work of your team than they did of the Astros, a bonafide and talented major league team.

On the other hand, strange things do happen, and one of them could be a series lost by the White Sox, or whomever has won the World Series that year. And that possibility is exactly what will probably keep an exhibition like this from ever happening. When current MLB players go to Japan to play exhibition games, nobody takes it seriously, so even though the MLB teams usually win, nobody takes the losses too seriously. But a Championship Series? An all-the-marbles contest for global bragging rights? Losing that would totally strip the Fall Classic of any and all credibility. The World Series would be seen as an illegitimate waste of time. I mean, really, who cares who wins the MLB World Series if the possibility exists that the winner of that series might lose to some team most Americans have never before heard of?

The 2005 World Series had its worst TV ratings in history, down 30% from last year and down 7% from the previous historic low, the 2002 Angels-Giants series. But if you think that's bad, just wait until another World Series occurs that not only alienates two thirds of the country (like the 2002 and 2005 Series did), but also can be upstaged by an upset from some upstart team of up-washed... sorry, washed-up former major leaguers and nobodies. The empty suits who own and run MLB would never let something like this happen. As Jesse Ventura, former Minnesota governor and current spokesman for NCAA basketball betting or baseball betting or something, so eloquently put it,

"These people did not get the wealth they have by being stupid.”

Bobby Valentine is not stupid, just a little caught up in the moment. So don't hold your breath waiting for the moment the Chicago White Sox will play the Chiba Lotte Marines in any kind of meaningful baseball game. It's not coming.

2005 World Series Preview & Predictions

This is going to be good.

HOUSTON ASTROS:

For the first time in history, the Houston Astros are in the World Series. Heck, last year was the first time in history the Houston franchise had ever won any postseason series, and they came damn close to getting into that World Series, missing the opportunity narrowly because injuries forced them to start Brandon Backe and Pete Munro twice each. Backe had barely 100 major league innings to his credit before the 2004 playoffs, with a considerably worse than league average ERA, and Munro was so good that the Astros released him after the season. This year he went 10-7, with a 4.56 ERA...in AAA Columbus.

But this season, it's different. Sorta. The Astros have not one or two, but three, top-flight, #1-type starting pitchers, in Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and 2005 NLCS MVP Roy Oswalt. Backe is still with the team, and is still mediocre, but if he gets more than one start it will be because Oswalt has assassinated Clemens and Pettitte, which isn't likely.

The trouble for Houston, as you likely know, is that they can't hit. As a team, the 2004 Astros were 5th in the NL in runs scored, 6th in OBP and 6th in slugging. Not awesome numbers, by any stretch, but they got guys on base enough and hit for sufficient power to score more runs than all but five of the 16 National League clubs.

This season, however, is a different story. The 2005 Astros were 13th in batting average, 12th in OBP and 11th in slugging, which allowed them to rank 11th out of 16 NL teams in scoring runs. (For reference, only one team in the American League scored fewer runs than Houston did: The Minnesota Twins. The Twins only scored five fewer runs than the Astros, and if you ask me, they have a better excuse, since there are only two of them, compared with nine Astros.)

There are two factors here that play into how good or bad the Astros' offense really is: Injuries and the Ballpark.

Or should I say, the "Juice Box"? Minute Maid Park played like a slight pitcher's park this year, but in actuality is generally thought to favor hitters, and for the Astros, it certainly did. The Killer Bees had a .776 OPS at home this year, averaging 4.44 runs per contest, but those numbers dropped to .687 and 4.06 on the road, second to last in the NL in road scoring, which helps to explain why they went onlu 36-45 in Away games.

In terms of injuries, the absence of Jeff Bagwell for most of the season and of Lance Berkman for the first month or so hurt them tremendously. Jeff Kent's departure hurt the team at two positions, sending Craig Biggio back to second base, where he hit approximately as well as he had in 2004, but not as well as Kent did, and forcing the Astros to play Chris Burke in left field, where he hit .248 with 5 homers in over 100 games.

The departure of Carlos Beltran, something of a blessing in disguise as it would turn out, made S-DOM ("Speed Demon/Out-Machine", pronounced "saddam") Wily Taveras the regular centerfielder. Bagwell's injury forced Mike Lamb into service at least until Berkman returned from the DL. Lamb was a shadow of his 2004 Self, hitting only .236 in half a season's worth of at-bats, compared to .288 last year. Even when Berkman returned, his injury limited him to mostly 1B/DH duties, and he could not hit with the authority he had shown in the past, and could not run at all. His OPS dropped from 1016 to 935, still very good, but not transcendent, as he had been in 2004.

With a chance to play every day in right field, Jason Lane did not disappoint, hitting 26 homers, but with a .316 on-base percentage due to an atrocious batting eye. Adam Everett lost about 50 points of OPS from his career-best 2004 numbers, but returned essentially to his normal production levels. Brad Ausmus did what Brad Ausmus always does, namely: catch the ball and make outs, 290 of them in 387 at-bats, to be precise. But only one error.

So just about everybody in the lineup was worse than thier 2004 counterpart, except Lane, who was essentially a wash with the Biggio of 2004, and Morgan Ensberg, who brought his own OPS up over 200 points to establish career highs in virtually every offensive category. But even Ensberg struggled early in the season, and as a result of his and his teammates' inneptitude, the Astros scored the fewest runs in the major leagues for the first two months, one-third of the season. Even with the returns of Berkmann and perhaps with Bagwell as a DH a couple of times, the Astros still have to struggle to score.

Interestingly enough, their pitchers were also less effective on the road, going from a MLB-best 3.07 ERA at Minute Maid to 3.98 on the road, good for 8th in MLB and 3rd in the NL. Still very good, but not nearly as dominant as they were in Houston. Their overall ERA of 3.51 was 0.02 away from tying St. Louis for best in the majors. Pretty darn good, as they say in France.

CHICAGO WHITE SOX:

The White Sox are a remarkably similar team to the Astros. Take a look at their rankings within their respective leagues for Runs Scored and ERA, and their home and road splits in those areas:

Home     ERA    Runs
Houston  1st     8th
Chicago  5th     7th

Away     ERA    Runs  
Houston  3rd     15th
Chicago  1st     8th

Total    ERA    Runs  
Houston  2nd     11th
Chicago  1st(T)  9th

Starter  ERA
Houston  1st
Chicago  1st(T) 

Bullpen  ERA
Houston  3rd
Chicago  3rd

Like I said, remarkably similar.

Both teams have excellent starting pitching overall, and very good bullpens, but Chicago's pitchers are hurt slightly by U.S. Cellular Field, which has played as a hitter's park for five of the last six seasons, mostly because of renovations they've been making to the ballpark.

Both teams have sub-mediocre offenses overall, and both offenses are helped by their home ballparks, but this is where the similarity ends. While the White Sox a teeny bit of help from playing in Chicago, going from 9th to 7th in runs scored, the Astros are hurt tremendously by playing on the road, dropping from 11th to 15th in the NL, as I mentioned earler. In short, the Astros go from hitting like Rookie of the Year candidate Tadahito Iguchi at home to "hitting" like Aaron Boone, who will probably be unemployed this winter. The Sox, on the other hand, get some help at home, mostly in the form of the long-ball, hitting 115 of their 200 homers at home. Their closest analog goes from Jeromy Burnitz or Hank Blalock at home to someone more like Aaron Rowand on the road. Of course, Aaron Rowand hits like Aaron Rowand all the time. He can't help it.

Regarding Chicago's pitching, you've certainly heard by now about the four consecutive complete game wins by the White Sox in the ALCS against the Angels. Don't count on that happening again, though, as it had been 37 years since a team had four complete game victories in a postseason series, and that was in the Year of the Pitcher. It's been half a century since there were four consecutive complete games by one team in a playoff series, and there wer eactually five streainght by the Yankees that year, 1956, when I think some other significant postseason pitching accomplishment might have occurred. You have to go back to 1928 to find the last time four straight complete game victories were hurled by one team, so I'm guessing one week is not a long enough time to see anything like that again.

Certainly the Pale Hose have some good starters, as Mark Buhrle, Jon Garland, Jose Contreras and Freddy Garcia finished 3rd, 9th, 11th and 21st in ERA among qualified American League pitchers in 2005. All four of them started 32 or 33 times and pitched at least 204 innings, all won 14 to 18 games, and all struck out at least twice as many as they walked. None of them is likely to win the AL Cy Young Award, though Buhrle in particular would be a good candidate if he'd gotten better run support. None of them has the presence or reputaiton of any of the Big Three in Houston, but all are certainly capable of keeping the White Sox in games, especially against a team that struggles to score runs the way the Astros do.

Chicago's offense is nothing special. They have only one player who drove in 100 runs, Paul Konerko, and he drove in exactly 100. Nobody scored 100 runs or hit higher than .290, on-based higher than .375, and only Konerko and Jermaine Dye had .500+ slugging percentages. Though they had six players with double digits in steals, only S-DOM Scott Podsednik stole more than 16, and as a team they led the major leagues in getting caught stealing, with 67 failed attempts.

PREDICTIONS:

So, that was my analysis, for what it's worth, but what do I think will happen?

Oswalt, Clemens and Pettitte dominate the White Sox, who get desperate and start making dumb decisions (and outs) on the basepaths. That is, assuming that Clemens' 42-year old hamstrings hold up, Andy Pettitte's church prays harder for him than they did in Game One of the NLCS, and Mr. Zapruder doesn't find a roll of film showing Oswalt entering the Book Depository. (I know, that joke is getting old. Sorry.) It should be a close, low-scoring series, which the Astros should win, 4 games to 3.

Unless they don't.

Yankees ALDS Post-Mortem

If I had told you two weeks ago that the Yankees would have held the Angels' leadoff hitter to a .143 batting average, that these "Runnin'Angels" would steal only one base in the series and that the Angels cleanup hitter would not drive in a run, you'd have thought the Yankees would win, wouldn't you? Well, you'd be wrong.

How about if I told you that the Angels' ace pitcher would not win a game in the series, or for that matter, neither would any of their other starters? You'd have thought the Yankees would win that series, wouldn't you? Wrong again.

What if I told you that Derek Jeter would hit two homers in the series and that the Yankees' #3 hitter, Jason Giambi would hit .421(!)? What if I told you that Chien Ming Wang and Shawn Shacon would combine to allow only 3 earned runs in 13 innings of work, and that Randy Johnson would finish the 7th inning of the deciding game without having allowed a run in it? That in the five-game series the Yankees would draw 24 walks allow only five? Sounds like a sure Yankee victory, doesn't it?

Strike three. You're not very good at this, are you?

Well, it turns out that certain Yankees aren't very good at playing baseball in the postseason, either. While Jeter did his best to carry the rest of the team on his back, with two homers, 5 RBI and a .333 average, his successor in the lineup, Alex Rodriguez, hit only .133 with ZERO RBIs. Furthermore, he got caught stealing once and grounded into two double plays, so he made 19 outs in 22 plate appearances, which is, of course, a statistical anomaly, but it's also atrocious and a huge part of why the Yankees eventually lost the series. (For the record, he also made an error in Game Two, which eventually allowed the tying run to score.) Rodriguez was being called the "unclutchest" player in postseason baseball history by some of the AM sports talk radio personalities on Tuesday morning. You know, if they have to add a word to the language to describe how bad you are, things are not going well.



But before you crucify A-Rod, know that there is plenty of blame to go around. Randy Johnson may have pitched into the seventh inning of Game Five without allowing a run, but because starter Mike Mussina allowed five runs before getting out of the third inning, Johnson's relief efforts offered little relief as the Yankees struggled to score runs all day. The Big Unit also came up very small in Game Three, surrendering five runs in three innings and pressing the bullpen into service much sooner than expected, even though he didn't take the Loss. That dishonor was given to Aaron Small, who went 10-0 in the regular season, based on a little luck and a lot of guile, both of which ran out at the end of September, apparently.



Also running out at the end of September was the Yankees' lineup's abilities to hit for average and/or power, with the noted exceptions of Jeter and Giambi. During the regular season, the Yankees had five regular players hit .290 or better and a team batting average of .276. In the postseason? Two guys, and .253 collective BA. During the regular season, seven regulars plus Tino Martinez had a slugging percentage of .430 or better, but in the LDS, only three (though Cano was close at .421). The team got on base often enough, a .351 team OBP that was very close to their regular season mark of .355, which missed leading the major leagues by 0.001, but because they didn't hit for any power, they could not bring baserunners home, and therefore could not win.

If I may say so, the Angels got some help from the umpiring crew as well, at least in Game Five. Home Plate Ump Joe West called one of the least consistent strike zones I have ever seen, which generally seemed to be about eight inches wide and four feet tall, though it sometimes got considerably wider (and no shorter) if the Yankees had runners on base.

More importantly, West was also responsible for calling Robinson Cano out for running outside the baseline to end the fifth inning. Cano had struck out but ran to first on a passed ball and was safe when Angels' 1B Darin Erstad missed the throw from catcher Bengie Molina. Erstad set up across the 1B bag, effective blocking Cano's path, which is also against the rules if you don't already have the ball, though West didn't seem to mind that. Cano was running along the foul line, right on it the entire way, as shown by the replay, and Erstad could have set up with his left foot on first base and fielded the throw easily if Molina had thrown it that way, but neither of those things happened. At best, this was a too-close-to-call kind of situation, and you hate to see an umpire step in and swing the game around like that if it's not obvious. It's always better to see the players decide things on the field than to win or lose on a technicality. To wit, the next "batter" was Bernie Williams, who hit only .211 for the series and got only one hit with runners on base in the entire series, so perhaps even with the bases loaded and two out, the Yankees' hopes would have been dashed, but it sure would have been nice to play it out, you know?

Still, though, even this is the Yankees' fault. Branch Rickey may have been dead for almost 40 years, but luck is still the residue of design, and if the Yankees had taken care of business and gotten better hitting and/or pitching when they needed it, then a call like this would not have affected them so adversely. Isn't that right, Chuck?

Kudos to the Angels, who overcame injuries and illness to their starting pitchers, atrocious hitting by Steve Finley, Chone Figgins and Orlando Cabrera, and a complete lack of patience by the entire lineup, to win the series. They got just enough baserunners on, got key hits when they needed them, and their bullpen made fools of the Yankee lineup. The road to the World Series goes through the Bronx, as the last four teams to win it had to eliminate the Yankees to do so.

Here's hoping that particular streak ends now.

Book Review: Ebbets Field, by Joseph McCauley

Ebbets Field: Brooklyn's Baseball Shrine
by Joseph McCauley



c. 2004, Authorhouse, $34.75 (Paperback)

A brand new book on an old and endearing subject for baseball fans, Joseph McCauley's book Ebbets Field revisits a long-gone place and time, a favorite subject of young and old fans of the game. McCauley grew up and lives in the Midwest, and is too young (I think) to have ever visited Brooklyn's baseball shrine, but as an avid fan of the game and of baseball nostalgia, McCauley felt that there was a void, at least in his own baseball library, that needed to be filled. To this end, he set out to write the book he wished he could have read. He did two years of research on the subject, visiting the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, the Library of Congress and places in Brooklyn, both for historical reference and historical perspective. He interviewed numerous former fans, players and others who were involved with the franchise before it relocated to Los Angeles.

I am sorry to report, however, that the result is something of a disappointment, at least to me. Much of my criticism of McCauley's efforts probably stems largely from the fact that this is his first effort at writing a book. Because of that, and the fact that his publisher, Authorhouse, is really a self-publishing house, the book is rather cheap, ironically, without being inexpensive. It's a 3/8" thick paperback, and it costs almost $35, and that's without a lot of large color pictures, which generally tend to drive up the price of a coffee-table book. For that matter, this book doesn't seem well-suited to coffee tables, as the cover seems to curl back, even when it's just left sitting for a while. As humid as it gets when it rains around here, a book should not simply deform like that. Not a well-made book, anyway.

Another aspect of the book that makes it less than an ideal coffee table book is that the writing is too dense. There are 58 images in the 89-page book, but most of them are not more than about 2" x 3" and the writing in between is not broken up into sufficiently succinct chunks to be convenient for reading a little at a time. Furthermore, as a rookie writer, and perhaps without an editor, McCauley's book really needed some fine tuning. The book is rife with typos, misspellings, inappropriate punctuation and other errata, some of which would normally be forgiveable in a first edition, if it wre not coupled with these other problems. His journalism degree (as described on the book's back cover) should qualify him to be a writer, but he has only worked as a letter-carrier for the US Postal Service and does not seem to have written anything of consequence in the two and a half decades that have passed since college, and his lack of practice shows. He attempts to cover the histories of the park and of the franchise simultaneously, but it is sometimes hard to follow his train of thought while reading. Other things are not explained very thoroughly, which either means that he makes a lot of assumptions about what his readers know or that it does not occur to him to lay such groundwork in his prose, either of which makes for problematic reading.

All in all, I am truly sad to report that Ebbets Field (the book) offers little of the uniqueness, charm and craftsmanship that Ebbets Field (the ballpark) offered in its heyday. What it does offer is some interesting interviews, a few good pictures and a lot of nostalgia, as well as a chance for an upstart author to get his feet on the ground and a few dollars in his pocket. Best wishes to him.

Boston's Impending Demise, Cano's Hype, and That Other League, Too

Well, so far, so good for my post season predictions. After one game played in each of the four division series, all four games were won by the team I picked to win the series. Let's review...


Boston @ Chicago: Matt Clement got smacked around (8 runs in 3.1 innings), as I had suggested he might. What I did not anticipate was that A.J. Pierzynski would hit not one but two homers, something he'd done only once in over 2300 regular season games, and that was against the woeful Colorado pitching staff in 2003. "A.J." apparently stands for "Another Jack". I also did not count on All-Star Scott Podsednik blasting a three-run jack of his own, given that he had not hit one since September 30th. Of 2004. I wouldn't count on the White Sox scoring 14 runs in any of their remaining games against Boston, but I would count on them winning the series.

The second game proved much closer, as neither Sox lefty, David Wells nor Mark Buehrle, had his best stuff, but both kept his team in the game. Until the Bostons' defense blew it, that is. Tony Graffanino (which, ironically, turns out to be the Italian translation of "Buckner") allowed a double-play ball to go between his legs, allowed two runners to remain on base, and allowed the game to slip away when White Sox second-sacker and Rookie of the Year Candidate, Tadahito Iguchi, hit a three-run homer to put the Chicagos up, 5-4. Another rookie, Bobby Jenks, came in throwing 97mph gas for two innings (since Thursday is a travel day) for the save.

Boston returns home, down 0-2, with Tim Wakefield slated to stop the bleeding on Friday afternoon against Freddy Garcia. The Red Sox are very close to being eliminated, but then that was true in the 2003 ALDS before they came back to beat Oakland, and it was true last year when they were down 0-3 to the Yankees, and that seemed to turn out OK for them. And while it's much more common for a team to come back from an 0-2 deficit in a 5-game series to win (it's happened 4 times since the inception of the Wild Card in 1995, and Boston's done it twice), it's still not likely.

It should also be noted that the Oakland team they came back to beat in 2003 really beat itself in some ways, making 5 errors in those final three games. Additionally, the Yankees team that lost four straight to the Red Sox in 2004 was very thin on starting pitchers. This 2005 edition of the White Sox, with the 4th fewest errors and the second lowest team ERA in the American League, will not beat itself on either of those fronts, which is good because I hear you can go blind.


San Diego @ St. Louis: Jake Peavy was the Padres' only hope of winning a game in this series, and if they'd decided to bring him back on short rest for Game 4, maybe two. Now they'll be fortunate to get out of the series without completely embarrassing themselves. Peavy was nearly as bad as Clement last night (8 runs in 4.1 innings), though he had a better excuse, sort of. Jake had apparently broken a rib or two in the Padres' postseason clincher celebration last week. It seems to me that a team that was not even assured of having a winning record should not be celebrating at all, much less in so raucous and rambunctious a fashion as to break a bone in someone's torso. When will baseball players learn to point those champagne corks away from other people?

The San Diegos did not realize the severity of the injury until Peavy's ineffective performance, and so he won't pitch again this postseason, and neither will the Padres win a game, I suspect. This seems a fitting end for the Padres, a franchise whose own announcer once described its right-fielder's head hitting the outfield wall and rolling all the way back to the infield. This, too, is a terrible thing for the Padres.


Houston @ Atlanta: Andy Pettitte pitched well in Game One, even though he surrendered a homer to each of the Joneses on the Braves' roster (good thing there's only two of them!). This seems familiar, somehow. Anywho, Andy left the game after seven innings, leading 5-3, and despite some shaky work by the Houston bullpen, the Astros took game one thanks to nine walks and three HBP by Braves pitchers, leading to ten runs scored by Houston, despite the fact that they hit only three doubles and no homers in the game. Thursday night's Smoltz-Clemens matchup should be One for the Ages, and there will probably still be 10,000 empty seats in Atlanta.


New York @ LAnahafornia The Yankees took Game One in LAnaheim, 4-2, behind 5.2 shutout innings from Mike Mussina and mostly strong bullpen work. It's didn't hurt that Vladimir Guerrero got himself caught stealing to end the sixth inning with his team down 4-0, either. Well, it hurt the Angels.

Robinson Cano, (who was named after Jackie Robinson, in case you hadn't picked that up from the fact that the FOX and ESPN announcers mention it at least twice an inning, three times if Cano is actually batting that inning) hit a 3-run double in the 1st to put the team up, 3-0, and because the Yankees won, his limited offensive abilities and shoddy defense were largely overlooked.

I call his defense "shoddy" because, even though he was not charged with an error in Game One, he made at least two plays (or rather, he didn't make them) that a good defensive secondbaseman would not have screwed up. One was a bouncing "single" up the middle, I think by Darin Erstad in the 9th, which hopped right over Cano's glove, but didn't actually touch him, so they ruled it a hit, and Vlad Guerrero scored. The very next play, a hard grounder by catcher Bengie Molina to Jeter (right at him, or he wouldn't have gotten to it), should have been a double play ball. Instead, Cano hesitated for a moment before throwing to first base, almost as though he'd forgotten that they still needed two outs, and so Molina, who runs just slightly faster than most dead people, was safe at first. Again, they called it a "fielder's choice", because technically you can't anticipate the double play, and there was no error scored, but Cano should have made that play.

Because of where I live, and because I'm a cheapskate and won't spring for satellite TV, I harldy ever get to see a Yankee game, and yet it seems that whenever I do watch one, Cano makes an error, or doesn't make a play that a major league second baseman is supposed to make. This can't just be coincidence.

And as for his limited offensive abilities? Let me show you. These are the pitch-by-pitch descriptions of cano's at-bats in Game One:

1st inning, 2 out, 3 on base: Ball, Strike (looking), Strike (foul), Ball, Foul, R Cano doubled to deep left, J Giambi, G Sheffield and H Matsui scored

3rd, 1 out, none on: R Cano fouled out to left

6th, 0 out, none on: R Cano flied out to left

9th, 0 out, none on: Ball, R Cano flied out to left

Do you see a pattern here? This guy goes to his left more often than Howard Dean! Granted, Bartolo Colon has a heck of a fastball, but Cano is a left handed hitter, he know's the heater's coming, and he ought to be able to turn on it once in a while. Instead, he can't do anything with it except bloop it into left field and hope Garret Anderson is playing him too shallow, which is probably what happened in the first inning, as the Angels may have been trying to minimize the damage on a short hopper or a grounder through the infield. Cano saw six pitches in that first at-bat, with the bases loaded, but in three other at-bats with no one on base he saw a total of only four pitches, twice flying out on the first pitch, and the third time, on the first pitch near the strike zone. He was a little more patient in Game Two, seeing 14 pitches in his four at-bats, with a double and an RBI. Perhaps he was just a little over-anxious in his first postseason game.

We can hope, or we can analyze. Since I'm an engineer (and this is my website) I'm choosing Option 2.

Player   AB   R  2B  3B  HR  RBI  BB   SO
   C    522  78  34   4  14   62  16   68
   A    567  92  28   7  17   73  29  100

See the similarities? Player C is Cano, of Canourse, and Player A is 2003 RoY Angel Berroa, Kansas City Royals shortstop. If you think those numbers look similar, check out these:

Player   AVG   OBP   SLG  AB/SO  AB/BB
Cano    .297  .320  .458   7.68  32.63
Angel   .287  .338  .451   5.67  19.55

That's almost creepy.

Cano doesn't strike out quite as often as Berroa does, but he doesn't walk nearly as often, which isn't much in the first place. Getting a free pass about once every 8 or 10 games does not bode well for his future. Joe Morgan indicated last night that Joe Torre thinks Cano can hit in the .330-.340 range, but if he doesn't learn to lay off a pitch once in a while, that's not very likely to happen.

Now, the six remaining Royals fans out there are probably thinking "Yeah, but Berroa stole 21 bases that year, too! And he plays good defense, and does other stuff, good, too!" Well, Berroa has only stolen 21 bases in the two seasons since then, and has been caught 13 times, including only 7-for-12 this season, so his speed does not appear to be much of a factor in his offensive "contributions" any more. Since we're trying to project what Cano might look like in a few years, the comparison seems valid.

Furthermore, Berroa may be a flashy defensive player, but even in his rookie season he made 24 errors, and he has made more errors than anyone in the major leagues for the in the last three years combined. Add to this the fact that in the last two years he's combined to "hit" below .270 with little power, little speed and even less patience than he showed as a rookie (he drew only 15 unintentional walks in over 600 at-bats in 2005), and you've got a guy that even the hapless Royals know will not help them to their next winning season.

Cano's an AL Rookie of the Year candidate based on his .297 season batting average and 14 homers, not (of course) on his 17 errors in 131 games. Those 17 errors constituted the third most among all MLB second-sackers in 2005, behind only ex-Yankee Alfonso Soriano and Milwaukee's Rickie Weeks, both with 21, although Weeks did that in only 96 games. Robinson Cano, it seems to me, is not so dissimilar to Berroa, and I wonder if it might make sense, especially if he wins the Rookie of the Year Award on the merits of those misleading batting average and home run numbers, to trade him and get some value in return before the bottom falls out, whenever that is.

Hopefully not before the Yankees finish sending the LAngels back to LAnahfornia to watch the ALCS on TV.

MLB Playoff Predictions & Analysis: Round 1

This is one of the easiest columns of the year to write, for three reasons:

1) Significance. I have a topic of obvious interest both to myself and to readers, and no shortage of other writers' analysis on which to draw.

B) Timing. I have a definite deadline by which the column must be done, namely before the start of the first round of playoff series, in order for my writing to be relevant.

iii) Accountability. I have none. I can make any prediction I want, and regardless of the outcome, there are absolutely NO consequences for me. I don't get fired, or docked any pay, or put on probation, or reassigned to cover high school girls JV field hockey. Nothing. Even if I'm wrong on all counts I probably won't lose one regular reader, which is fortunate, because that would leave me with so few of them that Mordecai Brown could count them on his pitching hand.

On the other hand, where I have two more fingers than Mordecai, I do have to look myself in the mirror every morning, so I'd better try to do this right.

ALDS: Boston Red Sox vs. Chicago White Sox

SOX WIN!!!

Which ones? Who knows? The Red Sox will start Matt Clement (6.00), David Wells (4.50) and Tim Wakefield (3.15) in the first three games of the series, and presumably Curt Schilling (4.02) if it goes to Game Four. Those numbers in parentheses are their ERAs since the start of September. The Pale Hose will counter with Jose Contreras(1.99), Mark Buehrle (3.38), Jon Garland (3.71) and then Freddy Garcia (3.98) if it goes that far.

Clement has been all but awful since he was hit by a batted ball in mid-summer, and though you can harldy blame him ifhe's a little tentative on the mound these days, you also can hardly count on him to pitch a good game. Wells has been consistently inconsistent all year, and Buehrle should help to minimize the damage Boston's lefties can do, especially if they're away from the hitter-friendly Fenway Pahk. The Red Sox could be down 0-2 going into Game Three, with a knuckleballer controlling their fate, though statistically Wakefield vs. Garland seems to give them the best chance to win. Even so, It's hard to know which Curt Schilling will show up to face Garcia in Game Four.

Prediction: Sox in Five. Oh, sorry, White Sox.


ALDS: New York Yankees vs. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

Which is still a stupid name.

Game one pits Mike Mussina against Bartolo Colon, and while that matchup generally favors the Angels, the Yankees have generally hit Colon very hard throughout his career, whereas Moose has historically done much better against, um... LAnahfornia(?). Whether tonight's starter is the same Moose or not remains to be seen, but the Yanks certainly have a fighting chance in Game One.

The Yankees' Game Two starter was recently changed from Shawn Chacon to Chien Ming Wang, presumably because the Yankees' feel that Wang's sinker will sink more if he doesn't go a whole week between starts. Sinkerball pitchers often seem more effective if their arm is a little tired rather than over-rested, but Wang will have his work cut out for him against John Lackey, who quietly won 14 games with the 6th best ERA in the American League (3.44). Only Johan Santana and Yankees' Game Three starter Randy Johnson struck out more AL batters. If Lackey has a weakness, it's walks, as his 71 free passes also ranked him 6th in the AL, so the Yankees's hitters would do well to be patient with him. Given that the Yankees had the second most walks in the majors, that shouldn't be a problem.

Game Three matches the aforementioned five-time Cy Young Award winner against Jarrod Washburn, whose 8-8 record belies his 3.20 ERA, which ranked 4th in the AL. Unfortunately for him, his run-support was the 5th worst in the AL, hence the so-so record. With Johnson pitching much more like himself lately (6-0, 1.93 ERA in his last eight starts), look for the Yanks to win this one. And if it comes to Game Four, Shawn Chacon (2.68 ERA at Yankee Stadium) should beat Paul Byrd handily.

Prediction: Yankees in Four.


NLDS: St. Louis Cardinals vs. San Diego Padres of San Diego

See how stupid that sounds?

Speaking of stupid, how stupid is a system in which a team that's 82-80 makes the post season and not one, not two, but three teams with better records get to watch the playoffs from the comforts of their own homes?

The Padres have no business being in the post season. They went 34-39 after the All-Star Break, stumbling to the weakest division title in history. The team does not have a player with 20 homers, or 85 RBI, or 95 runs scored, or 25 steals. It has one .300 hitter, Brian Giles, who hit .301. Certainly, PETCO Park is not a hitter's paradise, but the team was nearly as bad on the road (.741 OPS) as it was at home (.707). Only Jake Peavy is really a "good" starting pitcher, and he's better than that, but other than him, the Cardinals should not have any trouble with them. If the Padres are lucky, Carpenter struggles tonight and Peavy and a decent bullpen get them one win, but they'll either have to go to Woody Williams or to 15-game loser Brian Lawrence for Game Four, neither of which is an attractive option. Lawrence shut out the Barry-less Giants over 9 innings in a generally meaningless late September game, but still finished the month with a 6.18 ERA. Williams started thjat game the Pads lost 20-1 to the Rockies, a glorified AAA team.

Pedro Astacio, Williams and Adam Eaton do not constitute any kind of threat to Jim Edmonds, Larry Walker, and Albert Pujols, who ought to win his first of several MVP awards this year.

Prediction: Cards in Four. Tops.


NLDS: Houston Astros vs. Atlanta Braves

This is the toughest pick of the bunch. You know the Astros have Pettitte, Clemens and Oswalt going in Games 1, 2 and 3. You know how good they've been this year. You know about Roger Clemens' seven Cy Young Awards and Oswalt's two straight 20-win seasons. You know Andy Pettitte's reputation as a "Big Game Pitcher". You may not know, however, that Pettitte has a career ERA of 7.54(!) against the Braves in the postseason, but it's also worth noting that the Andy Pettitte who put up those numbers in 1996 and 1999 was never as good as the 2005 version is.

The Braves' current rotation of Smoltz, Hudson and Sosa is not the stuff of legend that constituted their rotation in the 1990's, but it's capable of keeping the team in games. Smoltz, for one, actually has the numbers to back up his big-game pitcher status (14-4, 2.70 postseason ERA, and he's never lost a game in the Division Series) and Hudson's no slouch either (3.44 ERA in four trips to the postseason).

You know that Houston's offense has been just as bad as their pitching has been good, but this is not the same offense that struggled to score 3.5 runs per game through April and May. A healthy Lance Berkman, plus Morgan Ensberg, Jason Lane and the suddenly-powerful Craig Biggio give the 'Stros at least a decent offense.

The Braves' hitters are not an uber-patient lot, but they'll take a walk. Unfortunately, Astros pitchers don't really give up walks, as their 440 allowed were the fewest in the NL. They don't give up hits, either, (.246 opponent batting average was also lowest in NL) or extra-base hits (.389 opponent slugging percentage was second to the Mets, who had the help of a pitcher's park, unlike Houston). The Braves' best hitter, Andruw Jones, hit only .208 in September, lowering his season average to .262, which will hopefully end his chances of being named NL MVP. Other aspects of the Braves' offense are solid, but nothing seems to indicate that they'll be good enough to beat the Astros' Big Three.

Houston has a better rotation, a better bullpen, and an offense sufficiently capable to win some games, and beat the Bridesmaid Braves.

Prediction: Astros in three. Get out the brooms, baby.

The Great AL MVP Debate: Ortiz or A-Rod?

Is it just my imagination, or does it seem also to you that every year there is some ridiculous argument about the MVP or Cy Young Award going to someone who clearly does not deserve it, at least by any objective measure?

In 2001, Ichiro won the AL MVP even though he wasn't even the best player on his own team (that was the now-unemployed Bret Boone), much less the best player in the American League (which was Seattle's Alex Rodriguez).

And lest you think I'm Yankees-biased, also in 2001, Roger Clemens won a Cy Young Award that probably should have gone to Freddy Garcia, who had an ERA nearly half a run lower and 19 more innings pitched than the Rocket, but went only 18-6 instead of 20-3, as Clemens did, due largely to the run-support he garnered from being a Yankee. Clemens became the first starting pitcher in the history of major league baseball to win the Cy Young Award without a complete game to his credit.

In 2002, A-Rod (now a Texas Ranger) was refused, nay, cheated out of another MVP Award when Miguel Tejada got some clutch hits in September and the Athletics won the AL West. Miggy got all the good press, while A-Rod, stuck on a last-place team, hit 23 more homers thasn Tejada, leading the AL in numerous offensive categories and winning a gold glove for his work at shortstop.

In 2003, some writers tried to convince you that Albert Pujols was the NL MVP, and not Barry Bonds. "Bonds only played 130 games", they said, "...Bonds didn't even drive in 100 runs," they said, while ignoring the fact that when Bonds did play, the rest of the league was so scared of him that he got walked 148 times in those 130 games. Mercifully, the press didn't buy their own argument, and Bonds won his 6th MVP in a landslide.

Last year, despite leading the NL in WHIP, opponent batting average, starts and strikeouts, being second in innings pitched, shutouts and ERA (to Jake Peavy, who pitched only 166 innings) and "winning" 16 games, including a perfect game against the Braves in May, for a team that lost 111 of them, Randy Johnson did not get the NL Cy Young. Instead, Roger Clemens became the first starting pitcher in the history of major league baseball to win two Cy Young Awards without a complete game to his credit. (In case you're wondering, this year Clemens has one complete game, or one less than Zach Greinke.)

And this year? Well, it seems that there are MVP and Cy Young debates in both leagues, but I'll just take the issues one at a time, and handle only the AL MVP for now. More on the rest later.

The two main contenders for this crown are:

"...in the white trunks with blue pinstripes, standing 6'3" and weighing in at 225 lbs, playing Gold-Glove defense at third base for the New York Yankees...Aleeexxx Rrrrrrodriguez!!!"

"...and in this corner, wearing the white trunks with red trim and (appropriately enough) red socks, standing 6'4" and weighing in at 230 lbs (on the Moon, maybe...), leading the American league in homers, RBIs and successful efforts to make sure his team's bench doesn't float away while his teammates are playing the field, Daviiiidd 'Big Papi' Oooorrrtiizzz!!!"

Let's look at some of their basic stats, where the numbers in parentheses is the player's current rank in the American Leage for the given stat:

        R      HR     RBI       BA       OBP      SLG       OPS
Papi   108(1)  42(1)  130(1)  .297(16)  .396(4)  .603(1)   .999(2)
A-Rod  108(1)  41(2)  112(4)  .319 (3)  .419(2)  .596(2)  1.014(1)

Neck-and-neck, as they say. Or at least they would, if Ortiz had a neck.

These are the (mostly) traditional statistics, which is all that most of the BBWAA members look at, if they look at anything at all. Ortiz holds a very slight lead in homers and slugging percentage, while A-Rod has a slight lead in on-base percentage and OPS. Rodriguez has 18 fewer RBIs, good enough for only 4th in the AL, but Ortiz has a sub-.300 batting average that is good enough for only 16th in the AL. What I have not shown you here is that A-Rod has 13 steals in 19 attempts, and is generally considered a good baserunner in general, able to advance two bases on a hit when necessary. Big Papi was successful in his only stolen base attempt, probably because the opposing catcher was so dumbfounded at the sight of 250 lbs of Dominican Thunder rumbling along the basepaths that he forgot to throw the ball. For an hour.

In any case, there is no clear-cut winner emerging from this type of analysis, so let's dig a little deeper, shall we?

       RCAA  WARP  VORP    EqA     EqR     RAP    RARP
Papi   50(2)  7.1  73(2)  .334(4)  121(2)  41(5)  62(2)
A-Rod  69(1)  9.2  86(1)  .345(2)  129(1)  61(1)  81(1)

Now for the explanations:

RCAA is a stat created by Lee Sinins, and it stands for Runs Created Above Average. It's a measure of how many runs a player created for his team above an average player playing the same number of games at that position. A-Rod has a considerable edge here, which was as of Sunday, 9/11/2005. Remaining stats are all as-of Thursday 9/15.

WARP is a Baseball Prospectus stat, and stands for Wins Above Replacement Position. It takes offense and defense into account, even pitching, if that were applicable, and combines it to see how many more wins a player is worth than a replacement-level (not an average) player at that position. BP does not have this stat available on a page where I could check ranks, but the only player I could find with a number higher than Rodriguez's 9.2 Wins was Baltimore's Brian Roberts, at 9.6. For reference, Mark Teixeira, Miguel Tejada, Vladimir Guerrero and Derek Jeter all had WARP numbers equal to or higher than Big Papi's 7.1 Wins.

VORP, another BP stat, stands for "The number of runs contributed beyond what a replacement-level player at the same position would contribute if given the same percentage of team plate appearances. VORP scores do not consider the quality of a player's defense." Again, Rodriguez has a notable edge here (13 runs) because Ortiz is essentially a DH, and while he's a great one, there are lots of good and really good designated hitters, but only a handful of good thirdbasemen.

EqA is Equivalent Average, Baseball Prospectus' all-encompassing rate stat, where EqR (Equivalent Runs) is the counting stat that goes with it. These numbers adjust for a player's home ballpark, the quality of the pitching he faced, and other factors that make people think Jim Rice belongs in the Hall of Fame. A-Rod holds a slight edge in both categories.

RAP is Runs Above Position, and is defined by BP as "The number of Equivalent Runs this player produced, above what an average player at the same postion would have produced in the same number of outs." This is where the case for Ortiz gets a little thin. Because he's expected to be a great hitter, Ortiz ranks "only" 5th in the AL in this category, behind Brian Roberts, Mike Young, Miguel Tejada, and of course A-Rod.

And finally...

RARP is Runs above Replacement Position, which Baseball Prospectus says "...compares a hitter's Equivalent Run total to that of a replacement-level player who makes the same number of outs and plays the same position." Again, A-Rod and Ortiz are ranked #1 and #2, but 19 runs is a big gap, even bigger than the one between David's front teeth!

None of this is to say that A-Rod will win the MVP, just that he should, if the season ended today. But since there are two and a half weeks to play, anything can happen. Ortiz might hit ten more homers while A-Rod goes 3-for-37 and makes nine errors, in which case Ortiz probably should win the MVP, especially if such events result in the Yankees missing the playoffs for the first time in a decade. But that's all speculation.

Given the facts, as you can see, despite what certain on-air radio personalities will tell you, Rodriguez has been the better player this year. Sure, Ortiz has some impressive numbers with runners in scoring position and such, and that gives him a few more RBIs, but in just about every other regard, A-Rod has been the best player in the AL, has led a contending team all year, and is therefore the Most Valuable Player, any way you slice it.

Washed up? Not So Fast...

Ken Rosenthal of The Sporting News wrote a piece this week about players who apparently are "washed up". I'm not as ready to throw some of these players to the curb as Rosenthal is, but I won't likely be drafting any of them onto my Fantasy Team next season either.

Sammy Sosa, Orioles
Age: 36
Salary: $17.875 million
Telling fact: Sosa's .376 slugging percentage is the eighth-lowest among AL qualifiers for the batting title.

Rosenthal mentions that Sosa's problems this year have largely been due to injuries, namely a staph infection and a lesion on his big toe. Of course last year it was The Sneeze, and before that it was...well, who can remember? Sosa hasn't played more than 137 games in a season since 2002, and this year's .671 OPS marks the fourth straight season in which he's declined in that stat (and most others, I might add). With that said, neither of these injuries is normally considered career-threatening, and I don't think there's anywhere to go but up from a .671 OPS. Well, I guess there's Christian Guzman, but I think Sosa will retire before allowing himself to sink to that level. Sammy needs 12 homers to get to 600 for his career, and I wouldn't be too surprised if he's got that many by June. Look for Sosa to make some lucky GM look like a genious for signing him to some incentive-laden deal this off season, as he'll cash in on most of them. I just hope it's not Brian Cashman.

Mike Piazza, Mets
Age: 36
Salary: $16.071 million
Telling fact: Piazza's career-low .770 on-base/slugging percentage represents a fifth straight season of decline.

Rosenthal suggests that Piazza's career as a catcher is over, that he should go to some AL team and DH. But I say buyer beware. Here are Piazza's key stats as a catcher and otherwise since the start of 2002:

 AB AVG OBP SLG OPS
Non-C  334 .231 .327 .404 .731
As c 1184 .284 .366 .503 .869

For his career, Piazza has hit .313/.374/.556 for a .931 OPS as a DH, but that's in only 160 at-bats, more than half of which came before 2002, when Piazza was perennially hitting .300 or better with 30 homers and piles of RBIs. Recent history suggests that Piazza's best position is still catcher, if only because his offense does not justify being a DH anymore. Besides, Piazza's .771 OPS may be the lowest it's ever been, but he still ranks in the top third in that category among major league catchers with at least 350 at-bats. Rosenthal suggests a change of scenery, and I agree. Colorado, with a young catcher in J.D. Closser but no real backup plan, could use a guy like Piazza next year, if he'll take a salary more in the Jason LaRue/Rod Barajas range ($2-3 million) instead of what he's been making.

Bernie Williams, Yankees
Age: 37 on Sept. 13
Salary: $12.357 million
Telling fact: At the start of the week, Williams had started 76 games in center field, a position he no longer can play effectively.

Well, actually, the statistics don't seem to bear that out. Bernie's about three runs below average for the season, according to Baseball Prospectus. This is just slightly less than Corey Patterson's zero runs, the same as Johnny Damon and Juan Pierre, both at -3, and better than Mike Cameron (-6), all of whom were mentioned by Rosenthal as supposed 'upgrades' on Bernie for next year. Williams' Range Factor is 2.39, better than Cameron, Pierre and Patterson, though notably worse than Damon's 2.98. That 2.39 is almost exactly the same as Andruw Jones' 2.41, and both players have made only 2 errors this season, albeit in about 500 fewer innings for Bernie. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Bernie deserves a Gold Glove, but he may not be as completely washed up as people think. The real problem is his bat, as his .721 OPS is currently good enough for 124th out of 149 players who qualified for the batting title.

It's hard to know with a guy like Bernie Williams whether he needs more or less playing time to get better. Tony Clark and David Delucci, after flopping as part-time players last year, have both flourished this season getting the majority of their team's at-bats at their respective positions. With other players, especially aging ones like Williams, sometimes they need to be platooned to make sure they feel spry when they do play. In either case, it's a sad decline to a great Yankee career.

Tim Salmon, Angels
Age: 37
Salary: $10.15 million
Telling fact: Salmon is likely to miss the entire season after undergoing surgeries on his left shoulder and left knee.

Tim Salmon is still alive??!!? Get outta here!!

Seriously, Salmon hasn't played since the middle of last August, and in limited playing time in 2004, he hit only .256 with two homers. The Angels are a pretty loyal organization, to their players at least, if not their franchise location, so Salmon will probably get a minor league deal next year and a chance to make the major league roster. With talent like Vlad Guerrero and Garrett Anderson in the outfield, not to mention Steve Finley's multi-million dollar salary taking up outfield at-bats, plus young studs like Casey Kotchmann and Dallas McPherson coming up, a move like that can only hurt the team, unless Salmon can return to form, an extraordinarily unlikely possibility. At least he hasn't had to tell people he plays for "the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim", which is still a stupid name.

Bret Boone, unemployed
Age: 36
Salary: $9 million
Telling fact: Boone batted .170 during his three-week stint with the Twins while trying to salvage his career.

Boone's not that old, so his potential to become a reasonably productive player once again will have almost entirely to do with whether or not Jose Canseco's allegations of Boone's steroid use are true. If they are, then Boone's rapid decline might be due to sudden changes in body chemistry, and he may be able to retrain himself to perform with out the drugs, much as Jason Giambi seems to have done. If not, however, then Boone's just getting old a little sooner than we expected. Boone may be the best bet on this list to return to respectability next year, though it should be noted that 'respectability' will probably look something like .260 with 18 homers.

Bobby Higginson, Tigers
Age: 35
Salary: $8.85 million
Telling fact: Higginson was 2-for-26 before undergoing right-elbow surgery in May.

Bobby Higginson is still alive??!? Just kidding. Bobby hit .077 in ten games this season before going back on the DL. Hit hit approximately .240 with no power in 2003-04, and hit .282 with no power the year before that. He hasn't had anything you could objectively call a "good" season for a starting right fielder in this millenium, not since his 2000 campaign in which he hit .300 with 44 doubles and 30 homers. I'll be very surprised if he's ever able to produce numbers half that good in any season in the future. Maybe any two seasons.

Nomar Garciaparra, Cubs
Age: 32
Salary: $8.25 million
Telling fact: At most, Garciaparra will appear in only 63 games.

OK, so Bret Boone isn't the most likely player on this list to rebound next year. Nomar is four years younger than most of these other players, and his inneffectiveness clearly has everything to do with his injuries the last two seasons. He played only about half a season's worth of games in 2004, but he still hit over .300 withh a slugging percentage near .500, and is hitting .327 with a .946 OPS in the 28 games since he returned from the DL this season. Rosenthal quotes a GM who suggested that Nomar will make "between $2 million and $8 million" next year, which is a lot like saying that the Cubs will win somewhere between "50 and 100 games" in 2006. Look for some team to get a bargain at the low end of that range, as few GMs will want to venture more than $4 million on a guy who hasn't been healthy for a full season since 2003.

Frank Thomas, White Sox
Age: 37
Salary: $8 million
Telling fact: Thomas appeared in only 34 games.

Thomas is probably the saddest case on this list. A two-time MVP who once looked like a lock for the Hall of Fame, his injuries seem to have undermined his candidacy. I don't happen to agree with that school of thought, but many people, people who have a lot more influence on that decision than me, do. The Big Hurt played like a man on a mission during the two months he was off the DL, "swinging hard in case he hit it" as they say, and smacking a dozen bombs in 105 at-bats while hitting only .219. That approach will not do as much damage to his career batting average as it will on his quest for 500 homers and a sure place in Cooperstown.

Richard Hidalgo, Rangers
Age: 30
Salary: $5 million
Telling fact: Hidalgo has batted .221 while playing his home games at Ameriquest Field, one of the best hitter's parks in baseball.

Frankly, any idiot who signed Richard Hidalgo to any kind of deal over the major league minimum deserves whatever he gets. Hidalgo had hit .256 with only 4 homers in almost 200 at-bats with Houston last year before he was traded to the Mets, where he hit .228, albeit with more power. Since he started playing regularly in 1999, Hidalgo had hit below .240 more often than he's hit over .275, and he doesn't walk enough or steal bases to compensate for hitting so erratically. He is only 30, but it seems he's a better bet for another .220ish average than he his for another productive year. At least he'[s not in the midst of a multi-year deal that's keeping some team from signing a player they need.

Rafael Palmeiro, Orioles
Age: 40
Salary: $3 million
Telling fact: Palmeiro is 2-for-26 since his suspension for testing positive for steroids.

Calling Palmeiro 'washed up' might be a little premature with only 26 at-bats as evidence. He was hitting .280 with 18 homers through the end of July, when he was suspended. He's not young, but will likely come back and help some team in a limited DH/1B role next year. Teams will take a chance on him if only for the opportunity to be the beneficiary of one of the few 600th Career Homers in history.

Juan Gonzalez, Indians
Age: 35
Salary: $600,000
Telling fact: Gonzalez had only one at-bat this season due to a right hamstring injury.

Well, I got to see Juan-Gone play...in Rochester, just before he got called up to the majors and promptly got himself placed on the DL again. Another former two-time MVP, Gonzalez has a hard road back to any kind of major league career. He hasn't had a remotely healthy season since 2001, but still has enough upside if he can stay healthy that he's probably worth another minor league deal plus incentives like he got from the Indians this year. While he may be 'washed up' at least the Indians were smart enough not to break the bank finding out whether he was or not.

Though Rosenthal didn't mention them, I would add a few more names to the potentially wased up list, including...

...Vinny Casilla, who's hitting only .250 with 11 homers, had to go on a "tear" to et to that, with four homers in August, after zero in July. Unfortunately for him, Colorado can't use him, because that seems to be the only place where Vinny even looks like a major league hitter.

...Tino Martinez, who somehow managed to hit 10 home runs in May, bu hasn't his more than 3 in any other month this year. That's not going to get it done for a major league firstbaseman. Well, maybe for the Devil Rays.

...Steve Finley, hitting only .215 with nine home runs this year. He's making eight million bucks for each of the next two years, Angels fans.

Book Review: Bat Boy, by Matthew McGough

Bat Boy: My True Life Adventures Coming of Age With the New York Yankees
by Matt McGough
c. 2005, Doubleday, $22.95

The world of baseball has always been rich enough to accomodate both young boys' dreams and grown mens' nostalgia.
- Matt McGough, from Bat Boy

I have only two criticisms of Matt McGough's new book, "Bat Boy": It's too short, and it didn't happen to me.

Most young boys who grow up watching, playing and following baseball dream of someday occupying the position of their favorite ballplayer, nay, perhaps even to become that player, if such a thing were possible. For Matt McGough, a teenage Yankee fan in the 1980's (like me) that player was Don Mattingly. As it turns out for most of us, McGough did not have the magic to turn himself into Donnie Baseball, nor did he have the talent to become a professional ballplayer, but he had the determination to attempt what is likely the next best thing: being the Yankees' Bat Boy.

In 1992 McGough became the first Yankees Bat Boy, at least as far as anyone could remember, to attain the position as a result of something other than blatant nepotism. His two-year stint in that role provided him an ample supply of memories from which to draw material for his book, which he wisely chose not to write until ten years (and some writing classes at Williams College) had passed. McGough's tome recounts his many experiencess, from that of an innocent child, an awe-struck observer at the infamous "Pine-Tar Game", to that of a law-school student with the good fortune to be recalled for service during the Yankees' historic 1998 playoff run, but sadly recognizing that this phase of his life was clearly over.

Along the way, McGough relates his inauspicious start as an unsure-of-himself 17-year old trying to find his way in the Yankees' clubhouse, to an all-too-sure-of-himself 18-year old, shirking his stated duties as Bat Boy to do favors for the players and make shady memorabilia deals. The pages between are filled with practical jokes and blind dates, late night card games, batting practice and fist fights, paltry paychecks and generous tips, road trips (both with and without the team), fatherly advice, friendships gained and lost, and financial decisions he'd later regret. These are just a few of the authors many experiences, and with almost every one, there is some lesson that the author, now ten years wiser, imparts to his audience.

McGough is refreshingly honest about his feelings, as he rcalls them, from this time of his life. He does not mind sharing his vices along with his more noble motives and prouder exploits. His persistence and tenacity served him well in getting the job, as well as keeping it, once his love of the game and of his boyhood idols gave way to typical teenage apathy and overconfidence, taking his enthusiasm for shining cleats and folding jockstraps with them.

At first glance it might seem like Matt McGough was, for a time, the luckiest kid in the world. But let us not forget the words of that great old sage, Branch Rickey, "Luck is the residue of design." One of the quotes on the back of the book compares the author to Holden Caulfield, but I see this comparison doing a disservice to McGough. The problem with Caulfield, the "hero" of the Catcher in the Rye, was that he never really chose into anything, preferring instead to allow his environment to act on him, and never really experiencing life. McGough's "luck" stemmed not from confluences of circumstances beyond his control, but from his persistence at pursuing his dreams and from his willingness to do things, to try things, to make choices, even if they may turn out badly, if only so he could say that he had the experience.

Bat Boy is a wonderful, witty, well-written book. McGough's accounts are funny at times, as he relates stories that show both himself and others in a humorous light. Other stories are melancholy or even suspenseful, but in the end, almost all are touching and meaningful. McGough's ability to maintain the tension of a story in his prose serves him well, as you'll feel compelled to keep reading long after you should have gone to bed, or to work, or to get up from your comfortable chair, put down this remarkably engrossing book, and go do something productive for a while. For the record, I'm betting that you won't be able to put it down either. Maybe it's a good thing the book's not any longer than it is after all.

Silva, the Twins, I-Rod, and Other Useless Info.

The following was sent to ESPN's Jayson Stark, for his Useless Information Department column. Unlike those fancy-schmancy ESPN writers though, I do not have the Elias Sports Bureau to do all my dirty work/research for me, hence the disclaimer below about my sources. Whether he finds this useless enough to include in a column, who can tell, but I figured someone might find it interesting (besides me) so here it is:

Jayson,

Here's some Useless info on walks for you. I hadn't planned on it being this long, but you know how these things go. Most of the stats came from either ESPN's website or some combination of www.godofthemachine.com and baseballreference.com, except for the team walks info, which came from MLB.com.

The Twins' Carlos Silva has only 8 walks in 180.1 innings, for a walks/9IP rate of 0.399. By contrast, in the 22.5 innings or so it takes Carlos Silva to give up a walk, Al Leiter walks about 16 batters.



Nobody in baseball right now is closer to Silva's rate than David Wells, who has almost twice as many walks, 14, in fewer innings, 145. Nobody in this century has come closer to Silva's current rate than Babe Adams, with a .616 w/9IP rate for the Pirates in 1920, when he walked 18 batters in 263 innings.

To find someone who walked fewer than 0.4 batters per nine innings, you have to go back to the immortal George Zettlein, who walked only 6 batters in 234 innings in 1876. Of course, it took 9 balls to walk a guy at the time, so that's hardly a fair comparison. Silva, if he can keep this rate up, would be the stingiest pitcher at giving up walks since the implementation of, not only the "4-ball walk", but the "eight-balls-or-fewer-walk". And that's saying something. What, I don't exactly know, but something.

The record for fewest walks by a pitcher who qualified for the ERA title is 13, by Bret Saberhagen, with 177 innings in 1994, and he had to miss a month and a half due to the Strike to do that.

Furthermore, led by Silva, Brad Radke (21 Walks in 179.2 innings), Johan Santana (36 walks in 188.2 IP), Kyle Lohse (36 in 152.2) and Joe Mays (36 in 141.1), the Twins have far and away the fewest walks allowed of any team in baseball, with 282 in 133 games. The next closest team, Cleveland, has walked 57 more batters in the same number of games. The Twins' team walk rate, 2.12/game, would be the lowest in a season since 1968, the so-called "Year of the Pitcher", when the Giants just barely edged them out, at 2.11 free passes per game. But since offense was down all over that season (and indeed, in that era), this seems a little unfair as well. To find the next team that edges out the 2005 Twins you have to go way back to 1935, when the Pirates allowed only 2.04 walks per game.

On the flip side, Detroit Tigers' catcher Ivan Rodriguez has walked only 6 times all season (twice intentionally), and is on a pace for only 7 walks in 530 at bats. The next-most impatient player is Robinson Cano, with 14 walks in 410 at-bats, and Cano regularly swings at pitches that go over the umpire's head to the netting behind home plate, while he's still in the taxi on the way to the Stadium! The Royals' Angel Berroa also has only 14 walks, in 500 at-bats, but at least Berroa has been plunked 14 times as well.



To find someone who qualified for the batting title and walked less frequently that Ivan the Terrible Plate Discipline, you have to go back to 1909, when the Cleveland Naps' George Stovall walked only 6 times in 565 at-bats. Nobody since the end of the Dead-Ball Era has come closer to I-Rod's current pace than Virgil Stallcup, who had 9 walks in 575 at-bats for Cincinnati in 1949, or once every 64 at-bats. I-Rod walks once every 71 at-bats, or roughly the number of at-bats it takes Brian Giles to accumulate 15 free passes.

The difference between I-Rod's batting average and on-base percentage is 0.008, which I think would be the smallest in history for anyone who played enough to qualify, though I have no good way of checking this.

Anywho, if you kept reading this long, I appreciate your patience. And if you can find a use for some of this otherwise Useless Information, I'll be even more appreciative.

Keep up the good work,

Travis

Jaret Wright: The Wrong Stuff

That THUD you heard Saturday afternoon was the other shoe dropping for Jaret Wright.

Wright was making only his third start since returning from nearly four months on the disabled list. Yet, already the AM sports talk radio crowd is ready to crown him the #2 starter in the Yankees’ postseason rotation, which is still over a month away, as you know, and as they should know too. Nevertheless, every weekday morning, without fail, the relative merits of various Yankee starting pitchers are discussed and a new, daily decision is made regarding who should get to start for the Bronx Bombers in the postseason.

“Aaron Small is 4-0…Shawn Chacon has been their best pitcher…Randy Johnson gives up too many homers…Leiter’a a seasoned veteran…Mussina’s too inconsistent…and etc.”

Never mind that Chacon, Small and Wright have pitched well for only a handful of starts, after having largely inconsistent or unimpressive careers before that. Never mind that nobody knows whether or not the Yankees will even make the playoffs, much less have six healthy starters from which to choose, come October.

Well, if there was any question about whether Jaret Wright has “returned to form”, let the record state now: The answer is ‘yes’. Unfortunately that “form” is that of a relatively hard-throwing pitcher with control and confidence problems, not the 15-game winning workhorse the Yankees thought they paid for when they signed him to a three-year, $21 million contract in the off season.

Jaret Wright has been lucky since he came off the DL, plain and simple. I’ll show you:

8/15/2005: Wright faced the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, who, despite playing better since the All-Star break, are not a good-hitting team. They don’t have a guy with a .300 batting average or a .385 OBP in the lineup, and have only two players slugging over .500, one of them for only half the season. They do score a little better at home than on the road, but that just makes them mediocre, not good.

…In the second inning of that game, he got a pop-out from Aubrey Huff, but then hit Johnny Gomes with a pitch, who promptly stole second base. He then walked Travis Lee, who despite having an excellent first name can’t hit his way out of a paper bag. In the process, Wright threw eight straight balls (including the one that plunked Gomes), before he got Alex Gonzales to line out and induced a pop up from the inexplicably anxious Toby Hall, who had no business swinging at the first pitch he saw.

…In the fifth inning, he allowed a leadoff double to Gonzalez, who went to third on a wild pitch and scored on a single by Hall. A double play got him out of that jam, but then he hit Julio Lugo with a pitch, and lucked out when he got caught stealing. (For the record, Lugo is an excellent base stealer, but should not have been going on a 1-0 pitch, against a clearly-struggling pitcher, with his team down by two runs in the fifth inning.)

…in the seventh inning, he hit Gomes with another pitch and allowed a single before Tanyon Sturtze relieved him, after throwing only 79 pitches, and got out of that jam. So while he allowed only two earned runs in six innings and change, he also threw a wild pitch and hit four batters. Not exactly what you’d call dominance.

8/22/2005 Wright starts against Toronto, walks the bases loaded in the first inning, throwing 27 pitches in the process, but get out of it without allowing a run. Afterwards he settled down and was mostly pretty good against a team that hits pretty well on the road, allowing only four hits (no walks, one wild pitch) in his remaining six shutout innings, which were only possible because of the luck he had in the first.

8/27/2005 The luck runs out. Well, not for the Yankees, who almost miraculously overcome a four-run deficit in the ninth inning to win, but definitely for our man Jaret. Wright got into trouble immediately against the worst-hitting team in the American League. But with two on and nobody out, he got three straight outs to eliminate the threat.

…In the fifth inning, with the bases loaded and two out, he allowed a double and two singles to score three runs, then another run to score on a wild pitch, putting the Yanks down, 5-3. He had thrown 109 pitches and would not come out for the sixth inning. Even in the innings in which he did not allow a hit or walk, he went to 2-0 or 3-1 to a lot of batters, many of whom would be riding the bench or waiting in AAA if under contract with a good team. He threw a first-pitch ball to 14 of the 24 batters he faced. Even a team as bad as Kansas City would not let him get away with that.

Again, fortunately for Wright, and even more so for the Yankees, they happen to have one of the best offensive teams in baseball and they happened to be facing the worst pitching staff in the major leagues. And without their closer, Mike "Mac the Ninth" MacDougal available Saturday, the Royals' fate was left in the hands of Jeremy Affelt and Shawn Camp. Affelt did his job as a pitcher well enough, striking out Bernie Williams and inducing a double play grounder that should have ended the game as a 7-3 victory for the Royals, if he had not made a bad throw to second base. But alas, favor smiled upon the arrogant and overpaid, as the Yankees took advantage of the defensive mishap to push five runs over the plate and win the game, 8-7.

Having been at the game myself on Saturday, I can say without question that this was one of the most boring contests I had ever personally witnessed, until the ninth inning. Many of the 54,452 fans in attendance got up and left in the eighth inning, to beat the traffic, presuming that the Yanks had little or no chance to overcome such a steep obstacle as a 4-run lead by a team against whom you had gotten only four hits in eight innings.

My mom and wife and I though, stayed, and toughed it out, and were therefore rewarded with one of the more exciting and dramatic come-from-behind wins in recent Yankees history, if not all time. I would like to be able to say that we did this because we are all such die-hard fans and that we never gave up hope that our boys could pull it out and win one for the Gipper, or at least for Gary Cooper. But the reality is that I live over two hours away and that my mom and I, who actually consider ourselves baseball fans (unlike my wife, who slept through most of the first seven innings) only get to one Yankee game a year, and we weren't about to leave early from it. I'm so cheap that I was actually hoping that the ninth inning might end in a tie so we could get some free baseball, "extra innings" and thereby stretch out baseball dollars a bit further. "Let's see, $150 for nine innings averages out to about $17 per innings, so if the game goes into the tenth..."

In the end, even though the game wasn't a bargain, we certainly got more than we bargained for, and I wouldn't have traded such a comeback for a 22-2 drubbing any day.

How the West Was Lost

Eleven years and eleven days ago, the Lords of Baseball missed an opportunity to do something about the debacle that is this year's National League West.

I know that doesn't make a lot of sense, but stick with me here. On August 12th, 1994, the Major League Baseball Players' Association went on strike. In response, the owners locked the players out for what would eventually become the longest strike in professional baseball history, and in doing so, they locked themselves away from addressing an issue that could have been dealt with in the very first season of three-division/wild-card play: What happens if a "Division Winner" isn't even, well, a winner? What do you do if a division is so weak that the best team in it doesn't even have a winning record?

Of course, as you know, there were no official "Division Winners announced for the strike-shortened 1994 season. ESPN's Rob Neyer has argued that this is an injustice to those teams that held the lead when the strike occurred. Every other award for players and teams was given: Cy Young Awards, MVPs, Silver Sluggers, Gold Gloves, and etc. Why not Division winners? For one thing, it would screw up the "XX consecutive division titles" mantra of both Atlanta Braves fans and enemies all over the world. Of course they couldn't possibly have known at the time that the Braves would reel off another ten (maybe eleven?) straight division titles after the 1994 season, so it's hard to imagine that this had anything to do with the decision not to name 1994 division champions.

Another possibility for this decision may have to do with Montreal. The Expos had the best record in baseball at the time the strike hit, 74-40, a healthy six-game lead on the Braves. However, even then, and even with their success, the Expos ownership was trying to find a way to get out of Montreal, and hanging a name like "Division Champion" on a team sure has a way of making it seem like such a move is unnecessary, you know? I can't say with any certainty that there was some sort of conspiracy here. Again, the owners and those in charge of MLB, including Acting-Commissioner-For-Life Bud Selig, couldn't have known exactly what a laughingstock the Expos franchise would eventually become. Nor could they have known just how severely the owners would screw up the situation before resolving it, if indeed moving the team to a city that has already lost two other franchises can be called a "resolution'. Still, it's worth considering the possibility that MLB had a vested interest in making sure that Montreal did not officially "win" its division, if only because it would make it that much harder to move the franchise later.

The most likely reason that MLB did not announce 1994 Division Champions is the most obvious, least subversive, and possibly the worst reason of all: Laziness. They had a big issue to address with the Texas Rangers, a bad team that "won" its division despite a losing record, and rather than deal with that issue by creating a rule stating that a team has to have a winning record to get into the playoffs or something like that, they simply brushed it off. They considered it a fluke, and joked, "When will that ever happen again?"

The answer to that question, of course, is "ten years later", in the 2005 NL West.

A quick perusal of the 1994 AL Division standings will show you that the Yankees led the East, the White Sox led the Central, and the Texas Rangers, with a 52-62 record, led the West. The Rangers held that lead very tenuously, with only a one-game margin over Oakland and two games over Seattle. Texas had played only 2-7 in August, so that bad stretch represented half of their sub-.500 deficit alone, and a decent finish to the month might have brought them back to respectability. But Oakland had also had a rough time in the dog days of summer, going 4-7 in August after two consecutive winning months, and Texas couldn't capitalize on Oakland's poor play. Seattle was red-hot in August of '94, with a 9-1 record, but that followed a seven-game losing streak, so it's hard to imagine that they would have put a run together. California had barely won 40% of its games, and would have been in last place in five of six divisions in major league baseball, so despite their relatively small 5.5 game deficit, they could not have been considered contenders in any sense of the word.

So it was Texas who was "winning" the American League West when disaster struck and thoughtless greed robbed us of lots and lots of baseball games, as well as pennants and pennant winners. The Rangers had a decent but flawed offense, with perennial All-Stars Ivan Rodriguez, Juan Gonzalez, Jose Canseco, and other role players helping them score the 5th most runs in the American League. The pitching, however, was another story entirely, perhaps even another genre of story, though I can't decide whether it would be considered comedy or tragedy.

Kevin Brown and Kenny Rogers, both solid starters with roughly league-average ERAs, with a combined record of 18-17 and an ERA of almost 5.00, "anchored" the rotation, the rest of which was a mess. In their desperation, the Rangers turned to a lot of youngsters and rookies. Someone named Hector Fajardo (23) went 5-7 with a 6.91 ERA and 23-year old rookie Rick (s)Helling took a lot of them, as his 5.88 ERA, would attest. Rookie John Dettmer (24) posted an ERA half a run better than the AL average in nine starts, but somehow went 0-6. Steve Dryer (24) compiled a 5.71 ERA in his five games. Roger Pavlik (26) amazingly managed to stay in the rotation for 11 starts despite a 7.69 ERA. Brian Bohannon (25) posted a 7.23 ERA in five starts and six relief appearances, and was permitted to leave as a free agent after the '94 season despite his status as a former first-round pick for Texas.

They got starts from re-treads Rick Reed (5.94 ERA), Bruce Hurst (7.11), Jack Armstrong (3.60 in only two games), and even Tim Leary (8.14), who was dead at the time, I think. Leary, Dreyer, Hurst, and Armstrong never again pitched in the majors after 1994, and Fajardo and Dettmer were done after cups of coffee 1995. Rick Reed was desperate enough to cross the picket lines in 1995, and eventually fashioned himself a career as a "poor man's Greg Maddux", but could do little to help the '94 Rangers.

In the bullpen, closer Tom Henke was OK, and Darren Oliver was a decent reliever as a rookie, but Matt Whiteside, Cris Carpenter and Jay Howell all had ERAs over 5.00 while carrying the bulk of the bullpen workload, and 40-year old Rick Honeycutt was hardly the LOOGY the Rangers thought they were getting when they signed him in the off season. His ERA skyrocketed from 2.81 in 42 innings in 1993 to 7.20 in 25 innings in 1994. Not surprisingly, the Rangers allowed him to return to Oakland as a free agent after the season.

All of this is just a long-winded way of showing that the 1994 Texas Rangers, with the second to worst team ERA in the AL, were not a good team in any respect. Their decent offense and horrendous pitching put them in a category not unlike, well, this year's Texas Rangers. The 2005 version of the team is currently ranked 11th in team ERA and third in runs scored, which makes them slightly better than their ancestors of eleven seasons ago in both respects. But this year's team is 58-66, and rightfully sits well out of contention for anything, 13.5 games behind Anaheim for the AL West division lead and 11 games behind the Yankees and Indians for the Wild Card lead.

But the 2005 Padres? San Diego has not been above .500 since August 12th, eleven years to the day that the aforementioned strike began, when they were 58-57. They have not been more than two games over .500 since July 22, when they were in the midst of losing eight in a row and 12 of 13. It's not as though they've just had bad luck or lost a lot of close games. (In fact they're 22-12 in 1-run games.) But their expected win-loss record based on the runs they've scored and allowed is 58-66, three games worse than their actual record. So in a backwards sort of way, the Padres have actually been lucky, or at least fortunate.

They've also been lucky that all of their competition for the NL West division title has gone down the tubes. Barry Bonds has been hurt all season, and Jason Schmidt has not been himself when he has been healthy enough to pitch, so the Giants have not been above .500 since May 25th, when they were 23-22. The Dodgers have had numerous injuries as well, and have not see the mediocrity mark since mid-June. Arizona has improved tremendously since 2004, but is still five games behind the lackluster Padres. With a mediocre offense and terrible pitching, the Diamondbacks don't appear to have enough venom in their sac to really hurt anyone down the stretch, much less to win the division.

So it's up to San Diego, a team that can't win consistently. A team that would most appropriately be described as mediocre, at best. A team that might finish the regular season with a losing record and still win the World Series. Back when divisional play started in 1969, this was the argument of some of the old-school types who wanted to maintain the tradition of having only one team from each league get into the playoffs, which would guarantee that the League Champions would not have losing records. Similarly, when the three-division format was proposed for 1994, it was argued that the chances of a losing team entering the playoffs would be increased, and indeed they were.

That very first year, a bad Texas team was in fact winning its division when the strike hit in mid-August. And that team was not one or two games under .500 like the Padres are right now, but ten games under .500, and unlikely to improve much down the stretch. Of course, MLB had some pretty big problems on its hands already, namely how to get the players and owners to agree on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, and consequently, how to get the players to in fact play. To their credit, they resolved that issue, though it took them more than half a year to do so.

But they missed an opportunity to address the issue of a losing team winning its division. They could have, and certainly should have instituted a rule stating that if a team finishes atop its division without at least a .500 record, that team would not make the playoffs and would be replaced by the team with the best record that was not otherwise going to make the playoffs, either by winning its division or the Wild Card. It seems a little silly, I suppose, to say that a team can play an entire season, finish it with the best record among its divisional rivals, and not make the playoffs, but doesn't it seem even more silly to say that a team that lost more games than it won should get into the playoffs due to geography rather than baseball prowess, while teams with winning records watch the playoffs from home?

And if so, it would certainly be beyond silly, perhaps ridiculous, if that team were to happen to get hot in October and win the World Series. It's not out of the realm of possibility, either. Since the three-division format started, four of the ten World Series victories have gone to Wild Card teams, teams that did not win their own division, and two other Wild Card teams have gotten into the World Series. All it would take is to hot pitchers and a little luck, and we could be blessed with the first ever World Champion Loser.

We've got six weeks to see whether my suspicions are realized, but mark my words: if the Padres win the NL West with a losing record, there will be outrage among baseball fans, and not just the old-school and purists either. And if San Diego should catch lightning in a bottle for two weeks and end up winning the World Series, the Commissioner and his cronies will be forced to finally address the issue, lest they become irrelevant and baseball become, well, hockey.