Baseball 2004 Archives

Theo strikes again, signing Wade Miller.

Mac Thomason rips Baseball America a new one over its preference for toolsy high-upside prospects over guys who have less upside but more likelihood of developing into useful contributors. I'm woefuly deficient in following the minor leagues myself, so I can't judge who's right on the particular prospects in question, but Mac's point is worth considering.

Perhaps the most striking feature of this baseball offseason, coming during an era when effective starting pitching would seem to be in short supply, is the large number of starting pitchers with substantial track records - many of them quite successful in recent years - who have gone on the market. I'm probably missing someone here, but I count 30 starters - 20% of the starting jobs in the big leagues, and more than that as a proportion of guys with any kind of major league track record - who have either been traded or been free agents this off season (this is counting free agents who re-signed or, like Roger Clemens, are now committed to one team, as well as guys in the Randy Johnson deal who were publicly traded before the deal fell through). Of course, with so many pitchers available, it behooves buyers in this market not to overpay out of a concern for scarcity. To make sense of the available options, it's therefore useful to look at them as a group.

In the past, I've found "established performance levels" to be a useful way to organize information about a player's record, including my continuing "Established Win Shares Levels" studies. In that spirit, here are the established performance levels, Win Shares included, for those 30 pitchers, ranked by ERA+ (which I computed as a weighted average); I listed "U" next to the team for guys who are still unclaimed:

Age	Pitcher	Team	W	L	ERA	G	GS	IP	H/9	HR/9	BB/9	K/9	ERA+	EWSL
41	RJohnson	AZ	14	11	2.85	29	29	204	7.19	0.82	1.89	10.69	164	19
33	PMartinez	NYM	16	7	3.12	31	31	203.2	7.49	0.77	2.33	9.81	163	18
29	THudson	ATL	14	7	3.12	31	31	213.2	8.51	0.51	2.22	5.51	147	20
42	RClemens	HOU	17	6	3.50	32	32	207.1	7.79	0.80	3.01	8.86	127	17
32	BRadke	MIN	12	8	3.97	32	32	200	9.71	1.09	1.16	5.48	120	15
39	ALeiter	FLA	12	9	3.53	31	31	180.2	7.97	0.84	4.55	6.65	120	11
27	MMulder	STL	17	8	3.89	30	30	209.1	8.68	0.90	2.75	5.99	120	16
28	WMiller	U	11	9	3.71	23	23	133.2	8.01	0.91	3.90	7.71	119	9
28	JVazquez	NYY	13	11	4.13	33	33	214	8.58	1.28	2.40	7.78	117	16
29	CPavano	NYY	14	10	3.68	33	30	200.2	9.10	0.78	2.17	5.79	116	14
29	JaWright	NYY	9	6	4.29	34	17	114.2	9.10	0.71	3.80	7.70	116	7
28	OdPerez	U	10	9	3.61	31	31	196.2	8.42	1.18	2.00	6.26	115	11
30	MClement	BOS	11	12	3.82	31	31	191.2	7.55	1.02	3.71	8.82	114	11
27	BPenny	LA	11	10	3.76	27	27	158.1	8.79	0.91	2.81	6.65	111	9
32	DLowe	U	16	10	4.57	33	33	195.1	9.75	0.70	3.11	5.08	110	11
42	DWells	BOS	14	8	3.88	31	31	203	9.63	1.02	1.07	4.75	109	12
38	WWilliams	SD	13	8	3.91	30	29	185.1	8.93	0.89	2.50	6.28	108	10
31	RuOrtiz	AZ	17	9	3.94	34	34	208.1	8.17	0.85	4.56	6.22	106	13
34	EDessens	LA	5	7	4.42	41	20	140.2	10.31	1.21	2.73	5.74	105	7
35	JLieber	PHI	8	5	4.21	17	17	111.2	10.77	1.01	0.89	5.28	105	7
31	MRedman	PIT	12	12	4.26	31	31	192.2	9.41	1.02	2.93	5.58	103	10
30	GRusch	CHC	5	8	4.65	32	20	140.2	10.13	0.87	2.83	6.36	101	6
30	MMorris	STL	14	9	4.20	30	30	193.1	8.94	1.25	2.40	6.24	100	9
32	RaOrtiz	CIN	10	9	4.57	33	23	160.1	9.58	1.40	2.88	5.58	98	8
29	EMilton	U	10	5	4.68	23	23	134.2	8.81	1.75	2.86	6.88	95	6
30	KBenson	NYM	9	10	4.52	26	26	156.2	9.69	0.87	2.92	5.90	94	6
31	KIshii	LA	12	8	4.38	29	29	160.2	8.03	1.07	5.62	6.72	93	6
32	PWilson	CIN	9	8	4.55	29	29	179.1	9.84	1.30	2.98	5.42	92	7
33	CLidle	PHI	11	13	5.01	33	32	201.2	9.63	1.09	2.54	5.30	89	7
31	IValdez	U	11	9	5.20	30	28	156	10.54	1.64	2.42	3.82	86	5

Of course, this chart is just past performance; it doesn't show the severe injury risks associated with a large number of these guys, most notably Pedro and Brad Penny . . . Just a few more quick thoughts for now:

*You can clearly see that the Mets overpayed for Kris Benson. While I'm not a fan of Benson, I wasn't opposed to re-signing him, which seemed like a necessary move to avoid opening a hole in the rotation. But it's now clear that there were many other available alternatives of comparable quality, and the Mets should have relied on that to avoid overpaying and, if necessary, sign or trade for someone else.

*The difficulty of sustaining a serious workload in this day and age is apparent from the fact that only Hudson and Vazquez have been able to establish a level of 210 or more innings over the last three-year period.

*Context matters: Carl Pavano's numbers look better than those of Vazquez because he was pitching in a friendlier evironment last year. Derek Lowe's ERAs are actually better than those of David Wells, when you adjust for Fenway.

*Matt Clement is indeed a useful pitcher, and his power would have made him especially valuable to the Mets, but the guy does have weaknesses (mainly walks) that will be exposed at Fenway.

*I continue to think that Billy Beane will be vindicated in his decision to deal Mark Mulder now rather than later as far as Mulder's declining performance and uncertain health/durability is concerned - but that doesn't justify the trade, because it doesn't look like Beane got enough value in return. Good strategy, bad tactics. The same applies to a lesser extent to the Hudson deal.

*Matt Morris' performance no longer lives up to his reputation.

*Somebody could still really make a quiet impact on their rotation by snagging both Odalis Perez and Wade Miller.

So, after all the speculation about Javier Vazquez not being able to pitch in New York, Vazquez apparently scuttles the Randy Johnson deal by refusing to report to the Dodgers for a physical. Of course, it could be that he or the Yankees have something to hide about his physical condition, and it could be that Vazquez is trying to squeeze some extra money out of the deal. But for now, he seems to have decided that he'd rather try to make it here, and prove he could make it a-ny-where . . .

Two of the Astros rotation slots remain up in the air: Wade Miller is leaving town, but Roger Clemens has accepted arbitration, meaning that if he comes back again it will be as an Astro.

Miller's a good pitcher who's been scarred by injuries and Minute Maid Field; if he's healthy, he'd be a great pickup for someone.

Clemens can certainly still pitch, so it's more a matter of motivation. If he does return, Clemens - the winningest righthander since Grover Alexander - could become only the second pitcher (after Warren Spahn) to break 330 career wins in the post-1920 lively ball era.

The Baseball Savant gets carried away with Eric Chavez, comparing his numbers through age 26 to Barry Bonds:

The only real difference between the two at this point is that Bonds was showing a greater degree of plate discipline at this early stage than is Chavez. On the other hand, Chavez is showing much more power than Bonds at this point.

Link via Pinto. Of course, Bonds through age 26 had won back-to-back MVP awards; Chavez has never placed in the top 10 in the balloting. That's because the offensive context Chavez plays in is radically different; for example, the rough measure of OPS+ shows Chavez at 131, 122, 132 and 132 the past four years, compared to 147, 125, 170 and 161 for Bonds.

Even if you ignore context, though, the comparison doesn't hold. Chavez missed 37 games to injury last season, something that didn't happen to Bonds until he was 34. And the comparison totally overlooks a factor of great significance in projecting player development: speed. Chavez has stolen 14 bases and grounded into 35 double plays the past two years, compared to 97 steals and 16 GIDP for Bonds at the same age. (As to the plate discipline, Chavez has drawn 90+ walks once; Bonds had done it three years running). Even with just the raw numbers, you could see several reasons why Chavez' future as a hitter - even ignoring the post-2000 Bonds surge, which is entirely without precedent - shouldn't be compared to Barry Bonds.

Some new developments in the D.C. stadium saga:

D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams and Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp have reached an agreement tonight on the terms of a baseball stadium financing package that they believe likely will satisfy Major League Baseball by guaranteeing construction of a future home for the Washington Nationals, aides said…

Details are still emerging about the new agreement between Cropp and Williams, but the full 13-member council will be asked to vote on an amended plan today…

Hopefully, they have better options on the table than just this.

Looks like Mike Cameron is going to be out for the start of next season. The Mets shouldn’t need an extra incentive to pursue Carlos Beltran, but this would seem to be it.

Aaron Gleeman on Luis Rivas:

The Official Twins Beat Writer of AG.com, La Velle E. Neal III, wrote an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune over the weekend that carried the headline: "Team worries Rivas has become stale."

As you can imagine, I got a nice chuckle out of that one. I also wondered about someone like Luis Rivas becoming "stale." I mean, if you have a bucket of, say, feces, and you leave it out for a week, does it become something worse than a bucket of feces? Does it become "rancid feces" or something? And how big of a bucket would you need to fit Rivas into it, exactly?

Q of the Day: Of the 15 Harvard alums to play Major League Baseball, name the only one to make the Hall of Fame.

Answer in the extended entry:

Read More »

Well, you knew Steinbrenner had to do something to top Pedro coming to Shea, and there was only one pitcher out there (well, other than bringing back Clemens) who fit the bill. Just wait for the first time Pedro and Randy Johnson square off in the regular season . . . although Joe Torre traditionally tries to duck the head-to-head matchups of aces.

Short term - over the next two seasons, maybe three - this deal is a bonanza for the Yankees, who give up the struggling Javier Vazquez and bring in the dominating Johnson plus, apparently, as of the latest report, Kaz Ishii, who can also be potentially useful. I'll have to digest the broader pitcure for the Yankee pitching staff later, but the minimal changes to the everyday lineup, combined with the addition of Johnson, Ishii, Pavano, Wright, Stanton and Rodriguez leaves no doubt where the Yanks felt they needed to improve.

If Vazquez isn't nursing an undisclosed injury - a very real possibility- I envy the Dodgers getting him out of the Bronx, where Torre had lost confidence in him, and into Dodger Stadium, although the Daily News suggested this morning that he could be headed to the White Sox . . . of course, the deal is still cotngent on Brad Penny passing a physical with Arizona, among other things (think the D-Backs ever thought when they traded Penny for Matt Mantei that they'd need to part with the Big Unit to get him back?)

The rationale for dumping Johnson and bringing in Penny makes sense for Arizona, and Shawn Green is still young enough, but Green's injuries and high salary obviously make him a less than ideal return on Johnson.

More to follow on all this, as well as Tim Hudson to the Braves, Beltre to the Mariners, and Renteria and Clement to the Red Sox . . . the moves are just coming too fast to make sense of them all.

You can now buy the departed Redbird Nation blog, starring our old friend and fellow Crusader Brian Gunn, in handy book form here. I've already ordered my copy.

The D.C. Council has pretty much rewritten the city’s agreement with Major League Baseball, leaving the future of the former Montreal Expos once again in doubt.

I’m sympathetic to the argument that D.C. taxpayers shouldn’t get stuck with the whole tab for a new stadium, but the City Council should honor the city’s original agreement with MLB. Doing otherwise only gives baseball an excuse to look elsewhere for a less inept city government that won’t renege on its deals.

UPDATE: David Pinto has a different take, which I agree with in principle, except to say that, if D.C. wanted to draw a line about demanding private financing, the time to do that was when it first made a deal. With baseball already committed to moving and renaming the team and local baseball fans prepared to support it, I think it’s wrong to reverse course like this. Hopefully, an owner or investor will ride in to pony up the money, but the track record of D.C.’s local government can’t be much of an incentive.

SECOND UPDATE (from the Crank): I like the image of Bud Selig as Lando . . . Eric McErlain has been all over this story, and has links aplenty here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Chris Lawrence makes a valid point.

A reader emailed me this question:

"Who is the only player to hit an Inside the Park Grand Slam pinch hit Home Run and have it be the only Home run of his career?"

Well, I didn't know the answer, and haven't yet been able to verify that it happened that way (maybe someone can confirm this in the comments). But assuming that there is, in fact, precisely one such player, I think I found the answer.

This link lists the 12 major leaguers to hit both a pinch hit grand slam and an inside the park grand slam in their careers:

Randy Winn is the 12th major-leaguer, third in the past 50 years, to hit an inside-the-park grand slam (Oct. 3, 1999) and a pinch-hit grand slam (April 4). The others, according to SABR home run analyst David Vincent: Mike O'Neill, Beals Becker, Cy Williams, Marty Kavanagh, Rogers Hornsby, Harvey Hendrick, Les Bell, Hack Wilson, Pete Milne, Tim McCarver and Cesar Cedeno.

(A purportedly complete list of inside the park grand slams is here).

Of the 12, precisely one player had just one career home run: Pete Milne of the 1949 New York Giants. Milne batted 29 times in 31 games for the Giants that year while making just one appearance in the field, so it stands to reason that he was used mostly as a pinch hitter. (The list above identifies the date of his grand slam as April 27, 1949, a game the Giants won 11-8 over the hated Dodgers, so it's not surprising that it won him a job as a pinch hitter). So that appears to be the answer.

As you can tell from my commentary the past few days, I have decidedly mixed feelings about the Mets' signing of Pedro Martinez to a four-year, $50 million contract. Some thoughts, some original, some not, in no particular order:

1. Four years is obviously too much guaranteed time for a guy with Pedro's injury history. On the other hand, the cost of the deal is money ($50 million), players (the draft picks the Mets give up) and opportunity cost (the innings Pedro takes away from other players). Given that Pedro seems unlikely to reach the point where he's pitching a lot of innings but pitching ineffectively, an extra year only costs the Mets one of those, the money. On the other hand, you can hardly blame the Red Sox for deciding that this was crazy money.

2. In the same vein: finding good young hitters is not that hard; finding good young pitchers these days - guys who can consistently take 30 turns in the rotation with a better-than-league ERA - is next to impossible. And Barry Bonds notwithstanding, in general, hitters decline much more predictably with age than do pitchers. And, a starting pitcher usually does much less to block the progress of good young arms, since few teams are so glutted with pitching that they can't quickly find room for a good youngster. All of which are a way of explaining why, as a general matter, I'm more willing to see even a rebuilding team take on an expensive starting pitcher in his 30s, as compared to a Sammy Sosa-type declining slugger.

3. Pedro is, as I discussed yesterday, a pitcher of historic levels of greatness. If you are going to gamble, better to gamble on a guy who's an inner-circle Hall of Famer than on . . . well, on Kris Benson and Victor Zambrano, for example. Given his track record, I view Pedro as much more of a proven commodity, and not a significantly greater injury risk, than Carl Pavano or Jaret Wright, both headed to the Bronx after precisely one year of being healthy and effective. (Of course, all pitchers are greater injury risks than almost all everyday players).

On the durability front, well, Pedro is replacing Al Leiter, who is six years older and was never an iron man himself. Leiter, working for an average salary the past 3-4 years of about $2 million per year less than Pedro will make, averaged 194 innings a year in his seven seasons at Shea, only once throwing more than 210 (Pedro threw 217 last year, but with diminished effectiveness compared to 2001-03). If we get about the same from Pedro, I'll be happy. I don't expect 230 innings.

4. Shea is a great place for a power pitcher, especially with Mike Cameron in center field, and facing a pitcher instead of some Frank Thomas/Edgar Martinez type DH every nine hitters is a great way to cut down the number of stressful pitches thrown. Both of which are a way of saying that Pedro may wind up being more valuable with the Mets than he would have been with the Red Sox. Bringing a power pitcher to Shea is like bringing a power hitter to Wrigley (see, Dawson, Andre; Alou, Moises).

5. Of course, none of this should be viewed as a substitute for the long-term strategy the Mets need to develop young talent. But frankly, I'm not about to hold my breath waiting for that to happen. Given the existing strategy of trying to half-rebuild while continuing to prop up the team with veterans, Pedro is a decent fit in that context.

6. I know the market has changed a lot, but $50 million really doesn't look like an extraordinary amount of money compared to past contracts given to Mike Hampton, Kevin Brown, Darren Dreifort, Kevin Appier, Mike Mussina, Tom Glavine, Chan Ho Park . . . yeah, there's a lot of bad decisions there, but this isn't a Mo Vaughn style 7-year $100-mil-plus millstone here; it's basically one Kris Benson plus one Kaz Matsui. If this deal deters the Mets from two more middle-market contracts like those, where's the harm?

7. Just for a little perspective, if you look at the most similar pitchers at the same age, Pedro is around the same age at which Tom Seaver went to the Reds, Roger Clemens to the Blue Jays, Mussina to the Yankees, and Lefty Grove to the Red Sox. Most of the guys on that list had their ups and downs in their mid-30s, but in general they had some real high points as well. Of course, physically, Martinez resembles Mussina, Grove, Greg Maddux, Whitey Ford or Juan Marichal much more than he does Seaver or Clemens. On a more sobering note, Pedro is also about the same age Frank Viola and Bret Saberhagen were when they left the Mets.

8. Can we finally have a no-hitter now, please?

9. Dan Lewis asks Five Questions:

1) Will this guy improve the team next year?
2) Does the move cost us too much in players?
3) What would our plan have been if we didn’t make this move, and is the gain signficant?
4) What is the effect of the deal if it goes badly?
5) If the deal goes awry, how will we fix it?

Go see his answers; I do think there's a missing factor here: the deal has upside. Although I don't regard it as the most likely possibility, it's certainly one of the plausible scenarios to get 800 innings, 800 strikeouts and an ERA below 3.00 from Pedro over the next four years. Given the scarcity of highly effective pitchers these days, that would be worth more than $12 million a year, in my view. (A return to something close to vintage Pedro, which is not going to happen, would be worth much more). That's one thing that distinguishes this from the contracts that a lot of mid-30s hitters get, where you are paying them a salary equal to the best value they are likely to give you. Hey, you win in baseball by taking risks. This deal is a big risk, but then Vladimir Guerrero last year was a big risk too. This is one that could pay off. Better that than give out more $25 million contracts to guys who are a safe bet to turn in a 4.25 ERA.

Long-time readers will recall my Translated Pitcher Records project from four years ago. Hopefully, I'll get back to that one some day. But a simpler way of comparing the very best pitchers over time is ERA+, baseballreference.com's comparison of a pitcher's career ERA to a park-context-adjusted league average. There are two problems, however, with the baseballreference.com leaderboard: it has a very low innings pitched threshold, and thus is loaded at the top with relief pitchers; and, unlike my Translated Records, it isn't translated back into a recognizable ERA benchmark.

So I thought I'd do both; I separated out the pitchers by groupings of innings pitched, and translated their ERAs back into a uniform context of a league ERA of 4.50, which is around midway between the NL and AL ERAs in 2004:

3000 Career Innings or More

#	Pitcher	ERA	IP
1	Lefty Grove	3.04	3940.2
2	Walter Johnson	3.08	5914.2
3	Randy Johnson	3.13	3368
4	Roger Clemens	3.19	4493
5	Greg Maddux	3.19	4181.1
6	Kid Nichols	3.24	5056.1
7	Three Finger Brown	3.26	3172.1
8	Cy Young	3.26	7354.2
9	Grover Alexander	3.33	5190
10	Christy Mathewson	3.33	4780.2
11	John Clarkson	3.36	4536.1
12	Whitey Ford	3.41	3170.1
13	Kevin Brown	3.46	3183
14	Carl Hubbell	3.46	3590.1
15	Amos Rusie	3.46	3769.2

You can see why I stick to the view that Walter Johnson was the greatest of all pitchers, as he stands second only to Lefty Grove here, and in 40% more innings. This list is dominated by pre-1920 and active pitchers, other than Grove and Ford. While I knew he was on the edge of making a Hall of Fame case, I was as surprised as anyone to see Kevin Brown on a list this elite. And this is also further confirmation of precisely how great Kid Nichols was, and why he really gets a raw deal when the great pitchers of old are being ranked.

2000-3000 Career Innings

This second list is guys who have had fairly substantial careers but not a full, 15-years-at-200-innings career:

#	Pitcher	ERA	IP
1	Pedro Martinez	2.69	2296
2	Hoyt Wilhelm	3.08	2254.1
3	Ed Walsh	3.10	2964.1
4	Addie Joss	3.17	2327
5	Al Spalding	3.17	2890.2
6	Rube Waddell	3.36	2961.1
7	Noodles Hahn	3.41	2029.1
8	Sandy Koufax	3.44	2324.1
9	Curt Schilling	3.44	2812.2
10	Hal Newhouser	3.46	2993

You can see here why, for all my mixed feelings about the warning signs and the Mets overpaying, I'm still excited about the possibility of Pedro coming to Shea: he's been head and shoulders above anybody else who's ever pitched, he's still just 33, and a guy that good is worth a gamble. . . Noodles Hahn? Yeah, I'm not too sure about that one either, but Hahn's the classic forgotten type of pitcher, a guy whose big years came with the turn-of-the-century Reds, a dismal franchise in a quiet period in the game's history. . . Curt Schilling is close to qualifying for the next list up, although he's also close to dropping off the bottom if he finishes with a few bad seasons.

The rest of the guys in the under-2000 IP bin fall into three groups: relievers, starting with Dan Quisenberry at 3.08 and including John Franco, Bruce Sutter, John Hiller, Lee Smith, Kent Tekulve, and Doug Jones; very-short-career starters, from Smoky Joe Wood at 3.08 down through Jim Devlin (who was banned from baseball for throwing the 1877 pennant race), Harry Brecheen, Spud Chandler, and Dizzy Dean; and one active starter, Tim Hudson at 3.26.

Well, this would put the Mets one Mike Mussina acquisition from ensuring that no active pitcher wins 300 games . . .The fourth year for Pedro strikes me as the one year too many. I'm more encouraged by the fact that they're pursuing Delgado and Sexson, especially now that they wouldn't need to surrender draft choices to get Delgado (I'd rather have Sexson, although he may be close to signing with Seattle).

UPDATE: At least the Mets aren't doing anything nearly as stupid as trading Carlos Lee for Scott Podsednik. The mind staggers at that one.

SECOND UPDATE: It certainly looks like this is happening, given Larry Lucchino's email referring to Pedro's Red Sox tenure in the past tense.

Another era is ending in Oakland, just as the first Beane Era ended with the departure of Matt Stairs, Ben Grieve, John Jaha, and Jason Giambi. It seems increasingly likely now that Tim Hudson will be traded in accordance with his demand for a new contract by March 1, bringing the era of the Big Three starters to a close.

Hudson, of course, is one of baseball's true elite pitchers, has been since he arrived in the majors in the last century. He's been durable - 2004 was the first time he missed significant time to injury - and unbeatable, 92-39 in his Oakland career.

Of course, I've long been a devotee of Bill James' belief that one thing you have to watch in evaluating pitchers is their strikeout rates; a dropping rate is both a signal (diminishing effectiveness) and has a direct effect on performance, increasing the number of balls in play that can potentially become hits. On the other hand, there are ways for a pitcher to compensate for a loss of strikeouts, at least temporarily, mostly by throwing strikes and keeping the ball in the park.

Tim Hudson in recent years has been one of the most extreme examples of those coping mechanisms you will ever see. Let's look at his season-by-season rates in a number of categories:

Year	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	GB/FB	GDP/9	SB/9	SB%
1999	8.71	4.09	0.53	2.27	0.92	0.92	73.7
2000	7.52	3.65	1.07	2.02	0.71	1.07	88.9
2001	6.93	2.72	0.77	2.26	0.69	0.92	77.4
2002	5.74	2.34	0.72	2.03	1.32	0.19	38.5
2003	6.08	2.29	0.56	2.26	0.86	0.26	53.8
2004	4.91	2.10	0.38	2.53	1.10	0.38	66.7

It's not an unbroken chain in every category, but the overall pattern is crystal clear: a broad-based improvement in every other aspect of Hudson's game but strikeouts since 1999. You have to admire Hudson's determined adaptability, relentlessly cutting walks and home runs, getting more ground balls, and revolutionizing his ability to set up the double play by eliminating his vulnerability to the stolen base almost overnight in 2002. He's even made just 3 errors the past three years compared to 10 the prior three.

That's the good news. The bad news is, his strikeout rate has been sinking like a stone, and Hudson has all but run out of room to squeeze further improvements out of the rest of his game to compensate. Lefthanders are particularly catching up to him, batting .298/.422/.352 against Hudson in 2004.

It's very possible that the smart, gifted and driven 29-year-old ace will come up with new ways to trick batters and reverse the downward trend in his strikeout rate, keeping him at the elite level to which he's grown accustomed. But any team forking over big bucks and top prospects to get him should understand that, if he doesn't, Hudson's days as one of the league's elite may be numbered.

UPDATE: I recognize, of course, that Hudson's alarmingly low 2004 K rate may have been a function of pitching through injuries. The downward trend is still worrisome.

One quick thought on the Yankees' acquisition of Tony Womack (no relation to Dooley). Yes, he's had a big hit or two, but for his career, the 35-year-old Womack has played in 38 of his teams' 39 games in the postseason; here's his postseason career record projected out to a full 162-game season:

G	AB	H	2B	3B	HR	R	RBI	BB	K	SB	CS	AVG	SLG	OBP
158	648	137	25	8	0	79	25	29	104	17	12	.212	.276	.250

Come to think of it, let's check out Jaret Wright's career postseason record; Wright has made 15 appearances in 27 postseason games played by his teams:

W	L	ERA	G	GS	IP	H	BB	K	H/9	BB/9	K/9
18	27	7.24	90	54	306	336	198	282	9.88	5.82	8.29

Well, OK, Wright's numbers - which include a 15.63 career postseason ERA against the Red Sox - are spread over almost two different careers in Cleveland and Atlanta, and the postseason does wacky things to pitcher workloads. Still, if you believe in the Yankee postseason magic, these guys haven't had it in the past.

I was looking over Curt Schilling's career, and two thoughts come to mind:

1. One of the great underrated terrible trades in recent baseball history is the Astros' decision, on April 2, 1992, to trade Schilling straight up for Jason Grimsley. Schilling and Grimsley were both young pitchers trying to establish themselves at this point - Grimsley was 24, Schilling 25 - and both had followed some success as rookies in 1990 (a 3.30 ERA in 57.1 IP as a starter for Grimsley, a 2.54 ERA in 46 IP as a reliever for Schilling) with struggles in 1991 (1-7 with a 4.87 ERA in 61 IP as a starter for Grimsley, a 3.81 ERA in 75.2 IP as a reliever for Schilling). But it should have been obvious at the time not only that Schilling threw harder but that he was closer to breaking through: 103 K and 58 walks for Schilling in 121.2 IP over the previous two years - including 71 K in 75.2 IP in 1991 - compared to an abysmal record of 83 K to 84 walks for Grimsley (and 16 wild pitches) in 118.1 IP. And the results were immediate and dramatic: Schilling posted a 2.35 ERA in 226.1 IP in 1992 for the Phillies - 4th best in the NL - and would pitch a shutout in the World Series by the end of 1993, while Grimsley never pitched a game in an Astros uniform and was released a year later.

It's not clear to me, years later, what Houston was thinking; with Pete Harnisch, Darryl Kile, and Butch Henry, Houston had no shortage of young starters, and Schilling had started in the minors. Perhaps Grimsley had options left and Schilling didn't (after all, the deal was April 2)? Either way, the Astros don't get nearly enough grief for this one in the annals of catastrophically bad trades.

2. If there's one guy whose career path Schilling's resembles, strangely enough, it's Tommy John, and not only because both of them were pioneers in bionic baseball. Through age 33, due to a variety of injuries and misfortunes (including lousy support from their teams) over the years, both Schilling and John had a lot of good baseball behind them and not much to show in the win column: Schilling had 110 lifetime wins at the end of 2000 (when he went 11-12), following his mid-season arrival in Arizona, despite a league-average-or-better ERA 9 times in 11 years; John had 134 wins after his first post-surgery season, in 1976, when he went 10-10, despite a league-average-or-better ERA 11 years in a row. Each had seemingly given his arm in the service of a dismal franchise - Schilling throwing 254.1 and 268.2 IP in 1997-98 with the Phillies, John 269.1 IP in 1970 with the White Sox.

Then, each suddenly reeled off three 20-win seasons in four years, and went to the postseason with two different teams, Schilling the D-Backs and Red Sox and John the Dodgers and Yankees.

Of course, the parallels aren't perfect. Schilling is most unlikely to match John's durability (pitching to age 46) or win total of 288 (John through age 37 was up to 214 wins, while Schilling now stands at 184). On the other hand, Schilling's teams haven't failed in the postseason as John's did in 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981 and 1982 - despite solid efforts from John (a 2.65 career postseason ERA), and Schilling had been the difference for both Arizona and Boston. And John couldn't quite match Schilling's level of dominance - from age 34 to 37, John went 80-35, Schilling 74-28, and John's career winning percentage through age 37 stood at .586 compared to .599 for Schilling (this before John went 23-20 over the next two years pitching mostly for division-winning teams). To say nothing of the fact that Schilling is an overpowering strikeout pitcher who alreadly has 500 more strikeouts than John did in nearly 2000 more career innings.

As you can see, though, the parallels are actually fairly strong, a factor to consider down the road in evaluating both pitchers' Hall of Fame cases.

SI.com writer Peter McEntegart repeats a slightly different variation of a stat I saw Peter Gammons citing the other day:

The most astounding number to come out of the Barry Bonds steroid controversy is not that 93 percent of the 40,000-plus voters on a SI.com poll don't believe Bonds' claim that he was unaware he took steroids. The more intriguing number comes from Stats Inc., which reports that Bonds had never hit a home run longer than 450 feet before the 2000 season, when he turned 36. Since then, he's hit at least 21 homers of 450 feet or farther.

Here is Gammons’ version:

WFAN's Christopher Russo interviewed a home run distance expert who claimed that prior to 2000, Bonds hit three homers longer than 450 feet; in the last five years, he has hit 26.

Either way…well…it seems like telling circumstantial evidence.

Poliblogger passes on this Barry Bonds quote:

Bonds said he never paid Anderson for drugs or supplements but did give the trainer $15,000 in cash in 2003 for weight training and a $20,000 bonus after his 73-homer season.

Bonds said that Anderson had so little money that he “lives in his car half the time.” Asked by a juror why he didn’t buy “a mansion” for his trainer, Bonds answered: “One, I’m black, and I’m keeping my money. And there’s not too many rich black people in this world. There’s more wealthy Asian people and Caucasian and white. And I ain’t giving my money up.”

and asks the relevant question:

Why in the world would a multi-million dollar athlete at the pinnacle of his career employ a trainer who was semi-homeless? I will grant that Bonds didn’t need to buy the guy a house, but you are letting a guy who “lives in his car half the time” to use unknown substances on your body?

So, Bonds now says he took what Anderson gave him but didn't ask what it was. Are you kidding me? Here you've got a guy walking around with the Scarlet "S" tattooed on his head, he knows he's taking a variety of supposedly unidentified substances . . . Absolutely everyone who followed baseball the past five years either (1) thought Bonds was using the stuff or at least (2) was aware of the charges. You thought Bonds was on steroids. I thought Bonds was on steroids. But it never even occurred to Barry Bonds himself that he should look into the stuff he was taking? If so, he was the only guy in the game who wasn't thinking it. He has to know it won't pass the smell test.

Jon Weisman reports the sad news of the death of Brian Traxler, a square-shaped line drive hitter who managed to make a big impression on a lot of fans for a guy who had only one major league hit.

Speaking of the media and ballplayers' personal lives, remember the story about Cecil Fielder's gambling problem? Well, now Fielder has sued the Detroit News for libel:

The libel suit, filed Nov. 23 in Wayne County Circuit Court, accuses the Detroit Newspaper Agency and reporter Fred Girard of defaming and slandering the three-time All Star by reporting that he was "in hiding," "not in contact with his family," not supporting his daughter financially, and had an "unstoppable gambling compulsion," according to the suit.

[snip]

Fielder's lawyers said the stories exaggerated the gambling and reported incorrect information.

In a follow up story Oct. 21, Fielder told the News he planned to repay his debts, saying: "I'm going to be a man about it. I'm going to take care of all my responsibilities."

From the story reported on ESPN, it doesn't sound as if Fielder is disputing many of the key allegations against him - that he gambled away millions of dollars and had lost his Florida mansion as a result of inability to pay gambling debts - and is instead attacking charges that are harder to pin down, like the extent to which he was "in hiding" or in contact with his family. Those are facts as to which it will be hard to show that the News recklessly disregarded the truth if they relied on what somebody told them or on the fact that they couldn't find him, and Fielder will have a tough time proving $25 million in damages if the thrust of the story - massive gambling debts, loss of his house - is true.

I thought what the NY Daily News did to Jason Giambi on Sunday was just reprehensible. Giambi has a lot of well-deserved grief coming over his use of illegal and against-the-rules steroids and his lies to cover up that use. But the Daily News splashed a huge story across the back page about Giambi's love of Vegas nightlife:

The release of his grand jury testimony, which labels him as both a steroid user and a liar, not only makes Giambi the worst kind of bum as far as New York is concerned. It makes his somewhat reckless personal life, until now something of an open secret in baseball circles, fair game for public consumption.

Um, why would that be? What does Vegas have to do with whether the guy cheated and - the question of the hour - how seriously we should take that cheating? And what do you mean, "reckless"? Drugs? Sex? Gambling? Something else entirely? The News never precisely says, burying us instead in innuendo and a bunch of truisms about Sin City:

Read More »

Well, one positive development from all this steroid business is that the Mets have apparently decided to pass on Sammy Sosa.

Jason Mastaitis has picked up on this too and has some other juicy…err…interesting Mets news.

In a post about Pete Rose and Barry Bonds, David Pinto has some provocative thoughts about steroid use and baseball, basically asking why is it wrong:

I want to throw out a hypothetical here. What if a surgeon invented a way to make you stronger with muscle implants? We already harvest hearts and lungs and corneas and livers for transplant. What if there was a way to graft more muscle onto your thighs? Is it different than laser surgery on your eyes so you see as well as Ted Williams? Is it different than getting a new arm through surgery to repair a blown tendon? Hypothetically, the effect would be the same as steroids; a stronger body hitting the ball farther. Would this be okay? Where do we draw the line and why do steroids seem to cross it?

We want to watch big guys hit home runs. That sells baseball. That helps our teams win. That's exciting. Why do we care so much about how they sculpt their bodies to become those hitters?

After all, we don't see to care so much about actors and actresses having plastic surgery. We go see them in movies because they look good, and when they stop being beautiful, we stop watching. Should there be a rule that only "natural" actors be allowed to make movies? Should Hollywood ban everyone who gets a face lift or tummy tuck?

Of course not. Becuase these people are hurting no one but themselves. And the same is true of baseball players.

It’s a very good question, the fundamental kind people too rarely ask. Like in international relations, why is it wrong for countries like Iraq and Iran to pursue nuclear weapons? Asking such questions doesn’t necessarily mean that you will come to a different conclusion, but it does help prevent you from blindly following conventional wisdom. In terms of steroids, there are several reasons why they should be banned and why their usage should be proscribed. Here are just a few…

Read More »

No time to blog this morning, but I'll point you to Jeff Quinton, who picks up the NY Daily News report on Jason Giambi admitting to the BALCO grand jury that he used steroids and human growth hormone. Of course, if this story gets confirmed in the public eye - not that anybody'd be all that surprised - it would reduce Giambi's vulnerability to blackmail by the Yankees.

Of course, the Yankees also have their hands full with not paying their taxes rent . . .

UPDATE: Fixed the reference above. Also, note that Jeremy Giambi also admitted using steroids, which is unsurprising in light of his brother's admission:

Jeremy Giambi's testimony mirrored his brother's -- right down to Anderson's notifying him that he had tested positive for the steroid Deca Durabolin. Jeremy Giambi described to the grand jury how he had injected human growth hormone and testosterone he received from the trainer before the start of the 2003 season, when he played for the Boston Red Sox.

The younger Giambi testified that he knew testosterone was a steroid but that Anderson had described "the clear" and "the cream" only as undetectable "alternatives to steroids."

"For all I knew, it could have been baby lotion," Jeremy Giambi told the grand jury.

Jeremy Giambi, 30, also told the grand jury that he had taken several different-colored pills provided by Anderson even though he didn't know what they were.

Nedrow asked Jeremy Giambi why he trusted Anderson.

"I don't know, I guess -- I mean, you're right," Jeremy Giambi testified. "I probably shouldn't have trusted the guy. But I just felt like, you know, what he had done for Barry [Bonds] and, you know, I didn't think the guy would send me something that was, you know, Drano or something, you know, I mean, I hope he wouldn't."

The Giants have to be planning on drifting gradually to a safe distance from the pennant race as the Marlins did this season if they are looking to entrust their closer job to Armando Benitez. As the AP item notes:

[W]hile Benitez has been one of the game's top closers in the regular season with 244 saves in 283 chances - the fourth best percentage all-time -- his postseason history is spotty. He has blown six of 10 postseason save opportunities -- a major league record . . .

Yeah, and that doesn't count meaningful regular season games in pennant races. Brian Sabean is falling back on the "everybody blows games" defense:

"He's 32-years old and has learned a lot from his experience," Sabean said, adding that in this postseason "people with greater reputations proved they're fallible."

Well, not quite, but the erstwhile Yankee radio man and SportsCenter anchor is off to Chavez Ravine, where he'll replace Ross Porter and share a booth with Rick Monday for Dodger broadcasts; they will alternate with Vin Scully, who works alone. From MLB's report:

Steiner, a New York native, said the first game he heard on a big Zenith radio at the age of 6 had Scully calling the Brooklyn Dodgers from Ebbets Field.

Link via Bookworm, who speculates that beat reporter Suzyn Waldman may take Steiner's place in the booth; I'm fairly certain she'd be the first woman to broadcast games on a regular basis for a New York baseball team.

The Daily News claims that the Mets have offered Pedro Martinez a three-year deal worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $37-39 million (about $12-13 million per year), and are contemplating a fourth year guaranteed. While I'm not a fan of the overall strategy of committing more money to expensive stars in their thirties, Pedro is at least a sufficiently high-quality starter - a rare enough thing these days - that it would not be a terrible move, although adding a fourth year guaranteed, with Pedro's health and durability concerns, would be a Very Bad Idea. That fourth year is only worth it if you are - unlike the Mets - willing to risk writing off an extra season of salary to get over the top in the short run.

Anyway, amidst all the gnashing of teeth about Pedro's decline, a little perspective is in order:

W	L	ERA	G	GS	CG	IP	H	HR	BB	K
13	10	3.70	33	33	4	216.2	189	19	70	222
19	7	2.89	33	33	2	233.2	188	26	67	251
16	9	3.90	33	33	1	217	193	26	61	227

That's Pedro in 1996, 1998, and 2004; as you can see, Pedro's performance this season wasn't greatly out of line with seasons he had in his mid-20s. Yes, we'll never see the Pedro of 1999-2000 again (in our lifetimes, we may never see any pitcher that dominating again), and yes, he's lost some gas off his fastball, but the numbers say there's still plenty of gas in Pedro's tank if he can stay healthy.

For reasons that are unclear to me, I got a free sample issue in the mail of "At The Yard," a magazine following the minor leagues. What caught my attention was an article on how Dwight Eisenhower apparently told reporters in 1945 that he had played minor league ball under an assumed name ("Wilson") in 1909 when he was 19. Grantland Rice reported that Ike played center field in the Central Kansas League (presumably a fairly low-level minor league), batting .288, scoring 43 runs and stealing 20 bases in a season of a little over 200 at bats. (Here's what little else I could find on this online).

(A side note: am I the only one who thinks Grover Alexander, a Nebraskan who was three years older than the Kansan Eisenhower also entered pro ball in 1909, bore a striking resemblance to Ike?)

Anyway, as the article (not available online, so far as I can tell) points out, Eisenhower abruptly stopped talking about his pro baseball career after that, and with good reason: he played football and baseball at West Point, which he entered in 1911, and to do so he would have had to sign an NCAA eligibility card stating that he had not played professional sports - and if he signed that card falsely, it would be a violation of West Point's honor code, something Ike would not want to admit to once he was embarked on a career in politics. In today's atmosphere, of course, it's unlikely he would have gotten away with this without someone digging this up.

But if there's some enterprising SABR type out there who would like to dig up the old minor league box scores, this sounds like a fun project to look into.

Wade Boggs leads the new nominees on the Hall of Fame ballot, but while a few of the other new candidates, like Darryl Strawberry, Chili Davis and Willie McGee put together pieces of a Hall of Fame case, nobody else new is a serious candidate, whereas Boggs should and will skate in with little or no debate. I think my favorite Wade Boggs fact is in 1987 when he somehow must have sensed that the ball was livelier, and he announced in spring training that he was going to try to his more home runs. As it turned out, homers were up around the league, and Boggs hit 24 of them (up from a career high of 8; he would hit double figures only once more, with 11 in 1994).

Anyway, there's the usual lively debate about who else goes in; you can go here for a link-filled roundup of my past writings on the returning candidates, and why the only ones I would support are Bert Blyleven, Goose Gossage and Ryne Sandberg (although I may return at some point for a closer look at Sandberg and Alan Trammell).

One of my major projects of late has been plugging the 2004 Win Shares data from the Hardball Times into a series of spreadsheets to (1) analyze the usefulness of my Established Win Shares Levels figures from earlier this year and (2) run similar EWSL numbers for 2005. EWSL is explained here; in a nutshell, it's an application to Win Shares of Established Performance Levels, which take a weighted measurement of a player's accomplishments in a given category over the prior three years. I ran an EWSL analysis of each team starting here, listing 23 players (13 non-pitchers and 10 pitchers).

As I've said before, EWSL is just a compilation of the past, not a projection of the future, although past performance is always a useful thing to have in projecting a ballplayer's future. Anyway, one issue with EWSL, especially on a team level, is that it tends to overrate older players and underrate younger ones by relying on established track records.

That, we already knew. But by how much? I had used a number of adjustments to deal with this issue, and I'll return to those later, but first I wanted to take a look at how the unadjusted EWSL fared as a predictor. So I broke down by age each of the 678 players I had listed to compare their unadjusted EWSL entering 2004 to their 2004 Win Shares, and grouped the results by age. The Average EWSL and Average 2004 Win Shares columns are rounded off; the % column shows the total 2004 Win Shares for that age group (un-rounded) divided by the total EWSL (also un-rounded), with 1.00 meaning the group matched its EWSL, numbers above 1.00 showing an increase and below 1.00 showing a decrease. I grouped the 20-21 and over-40 groups because they were so small (20 was just Edwin Jackson, who never did get a shot in 2004).

Age	#	Avg EWSL	Avg 2004 WS	+/-	%
20-21	6	3	7	+4	2.77
22	13	4	11	+7	3.15
23	11	6	10	+4	1.61
24	26	6	10	+4	1.76
25	39	6	10	+4	1.64
26	70	7	8	+1	1.22
27	60	8	9	+1	1.19
28	60	9	11	+2	1.26
29	49	9	8	-1	0.89
30	62	10	10	0	0.96
31	51	9	8	-1	0.89
32	53	10	9	-1	0.91
33	41	10	7	-3	0.71
34	34	8	7	-1	0.87
35	21	14	7	-7	0.52
36	26	10	9	-1	0.84
37	19	11	9	-2	0.81
38	17	9	8	-1	0.86
39	11	13	11	-2	0.84
40+	9	11	11	0	1.00

Although the overall aging pattern is hardly a surprise, I was struck by how vividly the pattern came out even over a relatively small sample size. (The breakdowns of numbers of players by age is interesting in its own right). The 40+ crowd, of course, was dominated by Clemens and Randy Johnson, which is what throws that off. Since Established Performance Levels acts as something of a multiplier of inexperience, it's not surprising to see the average player doubling or tripling his past track record at a very young age, when many in the group are rookies, and that time-lag may also contribute to why the break point for decline starts at 29 rather than 28. I was also struck by the overall stability of the numbers, as there was relatively little variance in the 2004 quality of production over age groups, although of course the mid-30s crowd did underperform the mid-20s crowd even though the mid-20s contingent included a much larger number of marginal players who won't last past 30.

The wipeout of the 35-year-olds was especially gruesome, and can be attributed partly to having a small sample and the highest starting point in the range. But there were more than just a few disasters in that group: Tim Salmon (down from 18 to 2), Bret Boone (29 to 9), Shigetoshi Hasegawa (10 to 3), John Olerud (20 to 10 - the Mariners had way too many of these guys), Mike Mussina (18 to 10), Paul Quantrill (10 to 6), Pat Hentgen (6 to 0), Fernando Vina (12 to 1), Sammy Sosa (27 to 14), and most egregiously of all, Hideo Nomo (15 to -6).

Anyway, there's more work still to be done, but clearly to be useful as a predictive tool EWSL needs to be adjusted for age in some fashion.

Baseball-Reference.com page sponsorships can get pretty rough on the sponsored player from time to time, but this is a new one: check out Wil Cordero's page:

Support Battered Women sponsor(s) this page.

According to a 2000 UNICEFstudy, 20-50% of females worldwide will be victimized by domestic violence.

What's interesting about the A's apparently acquiring Jason Kendall for Mark Redman and Arthur Rhodes is not the Pirates' end of the deal, which involves getting some face-saving pitching help while getting out from under Kendall's oversized contract, but rather the A's being willing to take on salary to get a catcher (replacing the departing Damian Miller) who gets on base. For all the notoriety of the A's OBP obsession, the team had in recent years been losing ground in that department. Kendall helps turn around that trend (which had gotten a bit better this season).

Good deal for Oakland, in spite of Kendall's cost, age and lack of power.

I wonder whether it would be worthwhile for the Mets to take a look at Brad Radke, although it sounds like his asking price is fairly steep. (Then again, I loved this line: "Radke has said he wants only a two-year deal, but Simon [his agent] said that wouldn't necessarily be the length he proposes." Yeah, the agent will have a lot of credibility on that score.)

On the plus side, Radke's an extreme fly ball pitcher who would profit from pitching at Shea in front of Mike Cameron. And I'm less concerned about signing a free agent pitcher in his 30s as opposed to hitters, given (1) that you need a lot of innings on a pitching staff, so there's less sense that old guys are blocking the development of youngsters, and (2) age is less of a straight-line predictor of career path for pitchers (pitchers in their 20s are a crapshoot anyway). On the other hand, the Mets do need to keep cash free to develop the everyday lineup, and Radke is a guy who gives up a lot of hits.

That’s the rumor:

Take it for what it's worth, but moments ago, during an interview on the Michael Kay Show, Jon Heyman of Newsday said that his sources have indicated that the Mets are likely sever ties with Al Leiter and have targeted Matt Clement to be his replacement.

(Via Jason Mastaitis).

I have to say the Angels got the better end of the deal that sent Jose Guillen to the Washington Nationals for Juan Rivera and prospect Macier Izturis (younger brother of Cesar Izturis). I don't know much about Izturis, but Guillen and Rivera are both the same general type of player - relatively free-swinging right-handed sluggers with a good arm - but Rivera is two years younger, makes a fraction of the money, and doesn't come with Guillen's clubhouse headaches. And Rivera finished with a flourish last year; in his first extended action as an everyday player, he batted .358/.526/418 after the All-Star Break. Given that Guillen himself has only been a productive regular for two seasons, I'd rather have Rivera even before you factor in the money, let alone when you toss in a 24-year-old shortstop who batted .338 in AAA last year.

Nobody doubts that Carl Pavano is a talented pitcher, but I've been hearing people talk about Pavano as if he was a potential substitute for Pedro Martinez in Boston or Javier Vazquez or Kevin Brown in New York. Hold on there, people. Pavano may be just coming into his own, or he may be just coming off a career year. Either way, I don't see a #1 starter.

First off, there's his lack of a track record; Pavano's thrown 100 innings in a season 5 times, and 2004 is the first time he's been better than a league-average pitcher. Then there's the core of the problem: strikeouts. 28-year-old pitchers who don't get a lot of strikeouts do not, in general, become stars. And look at Pavano's K per 9 innings the last four years: 7.59, 6.09, 5.96, 5.63. Certainly not forward progress.

This is not to say that Pavano is doomed as an effective pitcher, or even that it's impossible that he will follow the footsteps of Kevin Brown and Mike Scott and similar pitchers who bucked the trend of history by becoming big strikeout pitchers in their 30s. After all, he had a fine year in 2004 by slicing his walks to less than 2 per 9 innings and avoiding the home run ball, both critical skills. But the odds on the latter are not strong. Consider the ten men identified by Baseball-Reference.com as the most-similar pitchers to Pavano through age 28:

Oil Can Boyd (980)
Dustin Hermanson (973)
Charles Nagy (970)
Luis Leal (969)
Bill Wegman (969)
Art Mahaffey (969)
Todd Stottlemyre (966)
Jim Lonborg (966)
Aaron Sele (962)
Frank Castillo (960)

As you can see, the similarity scores are fairly high - and these guys averaged 41 career wins after age 28. Nagy and Wegman both had their best years at 29, and Stottlemyre had a big strikeout year at 30, but not one of these guys was really on his way up entering his thirties.

I'd put Pavano on the level with Jon Lieber and Brad Radke, both similar pitchers in some ways, although Radke in particular is homer-prone. But Pedro Martinez, who's four years older and with a lot of mileage on his arm, still struck out 9.41 men per 9 innings in 2004 with only a slightly higher walk rate than Pavano. There's no comparison.

I can't say I'm ecstatic about seeing Kris Benson in a Mets uniform for another three years, but re-signing him was clearly a necessity once the team let Al Leiter go. The real proof in the pudding on the acquisitions of Benson and Victor Zambrano will come next year (although the costs will take longer to weigh as we watch the development of Scott Kazmir and the other prospects in the deals). Benson should, if healthy, be at least about a league-average pitcher, which isn't nothing.

Of course, yet again, all of this is just window dressing if Mets management still thinks that the club's problems can be rectified by the elderly and expensive likes of Sammy Sosa.

*The Tigers sign Troy Percival for 2 years, $12 million. Yes, it's just a 2-year deal, but that's elite closer money, and Percival's just not worth it anymore.

*Thank you Mike Cameron? Baseball Prospectus' latest stab at team defensive stats (subscription only) lists the Mets as #4 in the majors for 2004.

*How did I miss this one when it happened? From September, Mike's Baseball Rants has some fun with John Kruk calling Chone Figgins - Chone Figgins - "the most valuable player in the game today."

If you look at the Win Shares numbers from the Hardball Times, you can see that the AL MVP race was, for all intents and purposes, a dead heat between the top five candidates, each of whom was worth approximately 10 wins to his team:

Player	Win Shares
Gary Sheffield	31
Alex Rodriguez	30
Hideki Matsui	30
Miguel Tejada	30
Vladimir Guerrero	29

In a race like that, the more intangible factors - that Guerrero's team was unusually dependent on him (unlike the big Yankee sluggers, who could feed off each other) and that he closed with a bang to push the Angels over the top in the AL West in September, are good reason to give Guerrero the benefit of the doubt. Specifically, in 12 September-October games against Oakland and Texas, Guerrero scored 13 runs, drove in 14, hit 8 home runs, and batted .478/1.087/.547. Interestingly, the "Win Shares Above Average" figures - comparing each player to an average player with similar playing time - give a slightly different picture:

Player	WSAA
Gary Sheffield	15
Johan Santana	15
Alex Rodriguez	12
Hideki Matsui	12
Miguel Tejada	12
Vladimir Guerrero	12
David Ortiz	12
Manny Ramirez	11
Travis Hafner	11
Erubiel Durazo	10

This would seem to support breaking Sheffield away from the pack a bit, especially since I'm not sure that WSAA is a valid basis for a straight-line comparison of a starting pitcher to an everyday player. It's still close enough that I'd give Guerrero the benefit of the doubt, though. I'm particularly suspicious that WSAA seems to favor players with little or no defensive value. For what it's worth, the Baseball Prospectus (subscription only) rates Guerrero #1 in the AL by a fairly decisive margin by its "VORP" (Value Over Replacement Level) rating for position players:

Player	VORP
Vladimir Guerrero	93.2
Melvin Mora	79.3
Ichiro Suzuki	79.2
Miguel Tejada	79.1
Travis Hafner	74.1
David Ortiz	73.1
Carlos Guillen	71.3
Manny Ramirez	70.0

I'm not sure I understand VORP, one of BP's famously intricate measurements, well enough to figure out (1) why Vlad takes such a leap forward by its calculations or (2) why all the Yankees take such a beating (the big three all clock in below 65, with Matsui down around 55). One thing Guerrero did very well this year was slash his usually high number of caught stealings (3 in 18 attempts, compared to an average of 13 in 37 attempts the prior four years); he also grounded into 19 DPs, down a bit on a per-at-bat level from prior years, by cutting his ground ball/fly ball ratio to a career low. These are little things, but the caught stealings in particular had been a quiet drag on Guerrero's production in the past, and Mike Scioscia should get some credit if he's the one who convinced Guerrero to run less.

Another random note: Guerrero's patience at the plate did not fall off as dramatically as it might have appeared; his intentional walks dropped to 14 from an average of 25 a year his last four years in Montreal, but his rate of unintentional walks/at bats was 6.2%, as compared to 7.5% those prior four years.

Sad but encouraging news yesterday, as the Mets let Al Leiter go after a desultory attempt to re-sign him on the cheap. Leiter will be remembered well by Mets fans not only for quality pitching but also for being an all-around gritty, emotional guy who took his job seriously, bonded with the fans and was always accessible to the media. No game he pitched was bigger or better than the utterly dominating 2-hit shutout he threw at the Reds in a 1-game playoff for the Wild Card in 1999.

On the other hand, the team needs a new direction, and tossing overboard a 39-year-old who's been known to meddle in the GM's business is a must. Leiter was still very effective this season, but his durability is questionable - he's thrown less than 190 innings three of the last four years - and he's playing an unsustainable game by nibbling around the corners, walking more batters and striking out fewer:

Year	BB/9	K/9	K/BB
2000	3.29	8.65	2.63
2001	2.21	6.82	3.09
2002	3.04	7.58	2.49
2003	4.68	6.92	1.48
2004	5.03	6.06	1.21

It's to Leiter's credit that he's managed the guile and guts to stay effective against such an evident pattern of declining ability, but he can't keep it up much longer. Let the Yankees have him back.

I can remember, back in the 1980s, when there used to be exciting and interesting arguments over the NL MVP Award - arguments about Gary Carter and Dale Murphy and Mike Schmidt and Pedro Guerrero and Andre Dawson and Ozzie Smith . . . these days, it's just the same old thing every year - Bonds, Bonds, Bonds. There really wasn't a way to deny him the award this season, not with an OBP over .600.

Jon Weisman has a great piece up on the longetivity and replaceability of baseball bloggers in light of the departures of Brian Gunn and Edward Cossette and the death of Doug Pappas. (Link via Pinto). Two thoughts:

1. At least bloggers go away when (and sometimes before) they run out of things to say; by contrast, professional sportswriting is chock full of people who repeat themselves endlessly and have lost the love of what they do, but keep going paycheck to paycheck.

2. My own focus on a variety of topics is what keeps me going here, in my fifth year doing this; I can always put down baseball for politics, politics for baseball, or go write about law or pop culture or just anything. It's liberating and helps alleviate the need to say something fresh about the same topic every day.

I haven't done a trip around the baseball blogosphere in a while; here we go:

*Brian Gunn hangs up his cleats at Redbird Nation. The Holy Cross sportswriting contingent loses one of its best, as Brian becomes yet another blogger to decide that blogging is just too all-consuming. It's a shame; the only problem with Brian's site was that, like Aaron Gleeman's writings, there were never enough hours in the day to read it all if you were reading other sites as well. Let's hope we see him back in print soon, but in the meantime, good luck.

*USS Mariner has a good rundown of dates to keep in mind this offseason, starting with today's opening of teams' ability to initiate formal talks with other teams' free agents.

*Mac Thomason on the Braves' free agents:

[J.D.] Drew was the Braves' best hitter this year, finding his health and having a career year in Atlanta. And it's his home state. Some players would take less to stay at home where they've found success. These players do not have Scott Boras as an agent. Drew will want an eight-figure salary and a long-term contract, one I find it unlikely that the Braves would give. . . . There's still the question of his health, which might drive the price down. But the market is thin in outfielders this year, and it seems likely to me that someone will indeed give Drew a long-term deal for more than $10 million a season. And that it won't be the Braves. . . .

*Speaking of Gleeman, lest I be accused again of ducking the issue, I send you to Aaron's explanation of why Derek Jeter - who was improved with the glove this year - did not deserve the Gold Glove.

*Jay Jaffe studies the Yankees' most recent cost-cutting moves, from declining options on Jon Lieber and Paul Quantrill to letting Fred Hickman (!) go, and concludes that the Yankees do, in fact, have limits to how much money they will spend. Me, I'll believe it when I see it. I think of the bumper sticker slogan used by supporters of New Jersey Senate candidate Bob Franks in 2000 against multi-millionaire Jon Corzine's self-financed campaign: "Make him spend it all, Bob." Make him spend it all, Omar and Theo and the rest. At the moment, however, it looks like a familiar process is starting whereby other teams are already getting scared off from bidding against the Yankees for Carlos Beltran while Yankee players woo him.

*Participate in Tangotiger's fan scouting survey of your home team!

*Jon Weisman discusses a Mike Piazza for Shawn Green rumor, which sounds like a really bad idea for the Mets; Green's not that young, plenty expensive, and appears to be damaged goods (he had a very disppointing 2004), and at that point you might as well just stick with the one who can get behind the plate. I can see why the Dodgers are desperate for catching help, though.

*I'm way late in linking to Wizbang, which sends you to the sad tale of how gambling wrecked Cecil Fielder. By the way, I've seen Fielder's house in Florida, and it is indeed gigantic; it's a sign of the guy's foolishness that he managed to lose the house, when part of the reason why rich people buy big mansions in Florida is because of legal protections against losing your house there if you file for bankruptcy.

*Finally, Will Carroll notes an irony for baseball-and-politics bloggers:

[Ever notice that] everyone says “get back to baseball” to me when we get “too” political, but that we get insanely long participative threads when we talk about anything except baseball?

Or is it just that everyone nods their head and says “Oh, dead on!” when I write about baseball?

Actually, the irony is this: most of the major baseball bloggers agree on the basic ideas they are promoting, there's a lot of agreement and civility among baseball bloggers, in contrast to the acrimony and the adversarial nature of political blogs. But one side effect of that is that it sometimes seems that baseball bloggers (other than David Pinto) don't link to each other enough precisely because we're not attacking each other. And I say that being as guilty of that as anybody.

The invaluable Hardball Times is launching sales of its first book today, the The Hardball Times 2004 Baseball Annual. You can read more about the book here and place an order here. Check it out.

Jason Mastaitis looks at the compensation available for Mets free agents:

Type A: Richard Hidalgo, Al Leiter

Type B: Mike DeJean

Type C: Kris Benson, Ricky Bottalico

For a Type A player, the compensation is the signing team's first-round pick plus a supplemental first-rounder. For a Type B, it's the signing team's first-round choice. For a Type C, it's a supplemental second-rounder. However, if the signing team picks in the upper half of the first round, that choice is protected and it loses its second-round selection instead.

I'd mostly agree with his suggested dispositions, although I think I'd offer arbitration to Bottalico as well. Clearly, the Mets should be looking to keep Benson and get compensation for Leiter, unless Benson's demands are too high or Leiter's very low. I'm more hesitant to offer arbitration to Hidalgo, although he could yet be useful.

The full list of free agents by type, with asterisks denoting the guys who may still have a team or player option to exercise:

Type A Moises Alou (ChC), Wilson Alvarez (LA), *Tony Batista (Mon), Carlos Beltran (Hou), Adrian Beltre (LA), Armando Benitez (Fla), Jeromy Burnitz (Col), Orlando Cabrera (Bos), Miguel Cairo (NYY), Vinny Castilla (Col), Royce Clayton (Col), *Roger Clemens (Hou), Rheal Cormier (Phi), Carlos Delgado (Tor), J.D. Drew (Atl), Cal Eldred (StL), Steve Finley (LA), Nomar Garciaparra (ChC), Mark Grudzielanek (ChC), Chris Hammond (Oak), Dustin Hermanson (SF), Richard Hidalgo (NYM), Jeff Kent (Hou), Steve Kline (StL), Corey Koskie (Min), *Al Leiter (NYM), Esteban Loaiza (NYY), Derek Lowe (Bos), Matt Mantei (Ari), Edgar Martinez (Sea), Pedro Martinez (Bos), Mike Matheny (StL), Kent Mercker (ChC), Dan Miceli (Hou), Damian Miller (Oak), Kevin Millwood (Phi), Matt Morris (StL), Jeff Nelson (Tex), Magglio Ordonez (CWS), Russ Ortiz (Atl), Carl Pavano (Fla), Troy Percival (Ana), Odalis Perez (LA), Placido Polanco (Phi), Brad Radke (Min), Joe Randa (KC), Edgar Renteria (StL), Richie Sexson (Ari), Paul Shuey (LA), *Ugueth Urbina (Det), Jason Varitek (Bos), Omar Vizquel (Cle), David Wells (SD), *Woody Williams (StL), Scott Williamson (Bos), Jaret Wright (Atl).

Type B
Terry Adams (Bos), Antonio Alfonseca (Atl), Roberto Alomar (CWS), Rich Aurilia (SD), Danny Bautista (Ari), Dave Burba (SF), Chris Carpenter (StL), Matt Clement (ChC), Craig Counsell (Mil), Deivi Cruz (SF), *Mike DeJean (NYM), Elmer Dessens (LA), Brook Fordyce (TB), Chad Fox (Fla), Alex Gonzalez (SD), Juan Gonzalez (KC), Cristian Guzman (Min), Jose Hernandez (LA), Orlando Hernandez (NYY), Todd Jones (Phi), Barry Larkin (Cin), Curtis Leskanic (Bos), Cory Lidle (Phi), *Jon Lieber (NYY), Jose Lima (LA), Tino Martinez (TB), Brent Mayne (LA), *Jose Mesa (Phi), Doug Mirabelli (Bos), Greg Myers (Tor), Hideo Nomo (LA), John Olerud (NYY), Antonio Osuna (SD), Todd Pratt (Phi), Steve Reed (Col), *B.J. Surhoff (Bal), Jose Valentin (CWS), Robin Ventura (LA), Ron Villone (Sea), Todd Walker (ChC), Gabe White (Cin), Dan Wilson (Sea), Paul Wilson (Cin), Esteban Yan (Det), Eric Young (Tex), Gregg Zaun (Tor).

Type C
Sandy Alomar Jr. (CWS), Carlos Baerga (Ari), Kris Benson (NYM), Henry Blanco (Min), Ricky Bottalico (NYM), Jermaine Dye (Oak), Shawn Estes (Col), Julio Franco (Atl), Troy Glaus (Ana), Todd Greene (Col), Ben Grieve (ChC), John Halama (TB), Roberto Hernandez (Phi), *Todd Hollandsworth (ChC), Travis Lee (NYY), Al Levine (Det), *John Mabry (StL), Ramon Martinez (ChC), Jim Mecir (Oak), Eric Milton (Phi), Mike Redmond (Fla), Desi Relaford (KC), Rudy Seanez (Fla), Aaron Sele (Ana), Ismael Valdez (Fla), Todd Van Poppel (Cin), Bob Wickman (CWS), Tony Womack (StL).

Beltran, of course, is the big prize among the everyday players, as well as Ordonez. Either one would be a good acquisition; Beltran would be better, but Ordonez could come cheaper. Richie Sexson - who like Ordonez is coming off an injury - would also be a nice fit. As much as I like John Olerud and think his glove would be a big help, I don't see him having enough gas in his tank at the plate to be useful. Carlos Delgado is still a monster, but he'll be 33 next year and showed the first signs of decline this season; I'd stay away if I were a team as in need of youth as the Mets. Another guy who looks interesting on that list is Matt Clement; power pitchers have always had good fortunes at Shea.

Well, I admit I was wrong to say the Mets should have hired Wally Backman to manage, after the Diamondbacks fire him after discovering past arrests for DUI and domestic violence. Lesson for fans: sometimes, the insiders do know things we don't. Lesson for Arizona: do your background checks first. It's a shame, because Backman had the hallmarks of a successful manager. A lot of great managers have had off-field issues, of course, but it's just not acceptable anymore to look the other way at them.

I thought I had deleted this old post, but it looks like I was ahead of the curve for once. DC’s major league team will reportedly be called the Washington Nationals:

Nationals was the primary name of Washington's first American League franchise from 1905 to 1957, a period that included a 1924 World Series title. At several points during that long stretch, however, Senators was used as an alternate nickname.

(Via The Corner).

I hadn't planned on getting back to baseball this week, but of course I can't ignore the Mets' hiring of Willie Randolph as manager.

Of course, first impressions of a first-time manager can be misleading or pointless. On the positive side, Randolph has been with a lot of winning teams and was a smart player himself; he seems like a level-headed, even-keeled guy; he's not the same old retread; and the Mets apparently are not paying him all that much money. On the negative side, he seems a bit too much like Art Howe, there's probably a reason why Randolph has been turned down for so many managerial jobs in the past (although it's true that the "you must interview a minority" rule means Randolph has been interviewed for a lot of jobs where the team already had someone else in mind), and he does continue the sense of the Mets as the second-class organization in town.

Time will tell. I would have preferred Wally Backman myself.

I've been on a break from baseball news about these parts; I'll be looking to refocus on my post-season wrapups after the election. One item of note: a medical examiner's report has attributed Ken Caminiti's death to a cocaine overdose. Of course, the contrubuting causes - "[c]oronary artery disease and an enlarged heart" - can't entirely be separated from Caminiti's other problems, including steroids, but it would seem that the major culprit here was drugs of a non-performance-enhancing nature.

I liked this comment from Shannen Coffin about the Red Sox:

My dad was one of those hundreds of thousands (millions?) of fans who died without ever seeing them win it all. He was way too young to go. As a kid, every year, weathered by years of disappointment, he would tell me, "It's not October yet; don't get too excited." Well, Dad, it's October now. We did it. Wish you had been there with me. Rest in glorious peace.

UPDATE: Also, leave poor Bill Buckner alone!

I'm going to offer a perhaps-unexpected (to new readers, at least) point here and say that now is not the time, and a puff-piece interview on Good Morning America was not the place, for Curt Schilling to stump for President Bush. The stakes in this election are indeed life and death, and of course I welcome Schilling's endorsement. But:

1. I've long been infuriated by entertainers who stick their politics into a venue (interviews, concerts, etc.) where I'm expecting to just be entertained, as opposed to presenting a political argument in a political context. That should go for conservatives in sports and entertainment just as much as liberals. There's a reason why, despite the baseball/politics mix on this site, I labor to keep the two types of content clearly marked.

2. Sox fans are celebrating right now, and, let's be frank, a lot of them are Democrats. Don't spoil that with politics, no matter the cause; just don't (more on that idea here).

Random links:

Commonwealth Conservative on why he loves baseball.

Tim Lambert on - for what it's worth now - home field advantages in the World Series.

The Red Sock of Courage.

Well, this is one Red Sox fans haven't heard before:

[Manny] Ramirez vowed last night that the Sox will be back in the playoffs next year, giving him a chance to take sole possession of the [postseason hitting streak] mark.

"Next year?'' he said in the champagne-soaked Red Sox clubhouse. "I guess we have to go and do it again.''

I have to admit it: try as I might, it's awfully difficult to find anything to add to the moment from last night, just the perfection of the moment of fans and a franchise who'd been denied and cruelly taunted - by fate and by Yankee fans - for eight decades - finally making it to the top of the mountain. Just a few thoughts:

*The Cards had to do the most staggering roll-over-play-dead in the World Series since the 1999 Braves or maybe the 1990 A's. It looks like Game One really was the turning point; after the Cards couldn't get over the hump, they just never got anything going. For a team that took the National League by storm, that was shocking, especially on the offensive side.

*Nice job by Jason Marquis to keep the Cards in the game last night; I'm skeptical of Marquis because he's a high-walk pitcher who doesn't compensate by overpowering people, but after getting on the ropes early he did manage to avoid the KO.

*More, much more on this (and other bigger-picture questions) later in November and December - after this morning, I will probably shift into politics-only here through next Wednesday or whenever it is that the election is resolved - but you have to figure Curt Schilling is suddenly, improbably closing in on a pretty solid Hall of Fame case. Of course, you would have said the same thing (and I know I did) about Jack Morris after Game Seven of the 1991 Series.

*Manny Ramirez matching Hank Bauer's record 17-game postseason hitting streak and winning the Series MVP just feels odd - Manny never did bust out with the big longball, and didn't even drive in a run against the Yankees. Yet again, as always, his overall postseason numbers were less impressive than his regular season stats. Yet, somehow, he just kept poking a hit here and a hit there, and it added up to good things.

*If you own stock in Dan Shaughnessy, sell. (Bruce Allen has the full Boston media roundup)

Never thought I'd live to write that. The dog finally caught the bus; Charlie Brown kicked the football; Gilligan got off the island. Not being a hockey fan - I remember the Rangers winning the Stanley Cup, but I wasn't really able to appreciate it - the closest thing I can compare this to is the fall of the Berlin Wall in terms of the "never thought I'd see the day" factor. Wow, just wow.

Technically, the 21st century began in 2001, not 2000. Which means, of course, that the Red Sox have won a World Series in this century. And the Yankees have not.

It depends what the definition of "choked" is.

Well, after what we saw last week, and in light of Red Sox history as well as the dire condition of Curt Schilling's ankle, it's hard to say that we should count the Cardinals out just yet. But things look pretty grim. I have to say, even though I'm pulling for the Red Sox, I feel awfully bad for Cardinal fans (which must be a sign that I'm finally over my bitterness from 1985 and 1987), who had a genuinely great team this year; that's a rare treat, and one that's spoiled if they don't go all the way, as fans of the 2001 Mariners could tell you.

Pedro may not have been the San Pedro de Fenway of old last night, but he did a tremendous job shutting down the murderous Cardinal lineup. I expect the Cards to come out and finally pond the stuffings out of Derek Lowe, but it will probably be too late.

One memory that came back watching Larry Walker get thrown out at the plate was back in Walker's rookie year, 1989, when the Expos dropped to two games back in the pennant race on August 23, in a game they lost 1-0 in 22 innings when Walker was called out in the bottom of the 16th for leaving third base early on a sacrifice fly. I have to wonder if he's been more tentative about breaking for home on a fly ball ever since.

Even though I know this site has a bunch of Red Sox fan readers, from the perspective of a neutral fan, mainly looking to watch entertaining, competitive baseball, I must confess to being pretty disappointed in this World Series. Thus far, it’s been one-sided, sloppy and anti-climactic.

Of course, I’m sure I would feel differently if my team was on the verge of its first championship in 86 years. Or maybe I’m just grumpy because I had such high hopes and because my prediction now appears to have been far off. But it is looking like it’s over – we all know teams can’t come back from down 3-0…right?

Sad news for baseball fans and music lovers: Robert Merrill, former national-anthem-singing institution at Yankee Stadium, has died at 85. What a great voice he had.

Yeah, Mike Lupica is just all class:

I've mentioned in the past, as a Boston College man, that if Notre Dame can't hold up its end of this football rivalry, we're going to have to drop them the way we did Holy Cross. But I was taught to be more generous than that at BC. So we'll keep playing them, just as long as they understand something: We're their daddy.

If you read the front end of the column, Lupica is laying the groundwork for his preferred storyline that blames everything on A-Rod, totally absolves Derek Jeter, and makes it out like the Yankees' ability to import an endless line of superstars is somehow a burden they have to carry. Well, of course.

A few days old, yet still worth reading: Drew over at Longhorn Mafia has a new #1 on his personal list of toughest sports losses.

Random Game Two thoughts:

*Speaking of Willis Reed (see below), during last night's start by Curt Schilling, I thought back to some of the great or memorable performances by injured players: Reed, Kareem in Game 6 of the 1980 NBA Finals, Nolan Ryan pitching on a fractured ankle in Game 5 of the 1986 NLCS, Kirk Gibson's home run in 1988. What most great performances like this have in common is, they're one-day-only things. Schilling has pressed his luck twice, and there are real questions about whether he can go a third time.

*Tim McCarver said last night that Manny Ramirez is an "outstanding two-strike hitter." Well, I don't generally accept things like this on faith if they can be checked, especially concerning the two-strike hitting of a guy who struck out 124 times this year, so I looked at Manny's numbers the last three years, from ESPN.com:

Count	Avg	Slg	OBP	OPS
0-2	.221	.372	.228	600
After 0-2	.217	.380	.250	630
1-2	.206	.381	.210	591
After 1-2	.221	.409	.283	692
2-2	.269	.469	.274	743
After 2-2	.261	.463	.375	838
3-2	.271	.508	.521	1029
2 Strikes	.245	.440	.338	778
All	.325	.613	.423	1036

The "Two Strikes" line adds up his 0-2, 1-2, 2-2 and 3-2 numbers. At first glance, Manny is a terrible two-strike hitter until he gets to 2-2, and only really good at 3-2. But nearly everyone is horrible on those counts; the fact that Manny slugs nearly .400 even on 0-2 and 1-2, .469 on 2-2 and over .500 on 3-2 is not bad at all, both absolutely and in comparison to his usual spectacular production. The average AL player batted .269/.431/.337 this season, but .195/.300/.266 with two strikes, a 26.3% dropoff in OPS; Manny falls off by 24.9% over a three year-period, which is visibly but not outstandingly better.

*Entering Game Three of the World Series, the Cardinals are 29-10 in postseason games at Busch Stadium since 1982, and 16-26 on the road; since 1996, the breakdown is 14-6 at home, 10-14 on the road.

*I wonder what Bill James thinks, being associated with a team that bats Orlando Cabrera second. Repeat: "I am just a consultant, I'm not the manager."

*Are the Green Monster seats now officially the cool seats now that Hollywood stars like Tom Hanks sit in them?

*I liked the way Cal Eldred went high and outside after Ortiz' foul homer; a lot of guys love to follow those up by jacking one out, and Eldred tried to get him to bite.

*Well, you get your bombs with Mark Bellhorn, and you get your boots. I still think he's worth the tradeoff as compared to Pokey Reese.

*Unless I heard wrong, Joe Buck described Jason Marquis as being "infestive" in this postseason, but then again that sounds about right.

*Buck was also doing a way-premature Sox-finally-win-the-championship victory lap in the 7th, before two wins were in the books. The announcers seem to have forgotten about the Cardinals, even after they posted the best record in baseball and dominated the National League. Coming from a crew of one guy whose dad was the Voice of the Cardinals and one who played in three World Serieses for the Cards, that has to grate on St. Louis' fans.

A doctor weighs in on what went wrong to cause a pepper spray projectile fired by Boston cops to kill a young woman celebrating the Red Sox' ALCS victory.

UPDATE: My bad; I really just skimmed this before I linked to it, since the writer appears to have some useful knowledge on the subject, but I don't necessarily endorse the implication some people have drawn from this that the Boston PD doesn't deserve a good bit of the blame for this. I absolutely don't think that the Boston PD should be let off the hook here, and I say that as a great believer in giving cops the benefit of the doubt in dealing with difficult situations. One of the first rules of policing is, either you shoot to kill or you don't shoot. Projectiles like this shouldn't be fired directly at people if there's no reason to use deadly force.

Nice article here on Iraq’s national baseball team. It is truly a shame, however, to hear that so many of the players enjoy playing the game, but fear its association with America. That fear is indicative of the climate of terror which some hope to permanently reinstate in Iraqi society and which is anathema to the spirit of the joyful pastime we often take for granted.

This game felt rather anticlimactic, as Game Ones often do after an exciting LCS, even as dramatic as the game was. I don't know, I just kept feeling like the Sox had this one, even when it was tied (and yes, I'm rooting for the Red Sox, not least for the effect a Sox championship will have on Yankee fans). Although the point when Manny - well, I was taking sporadic notes, which just say "Ack! Manny can't field!" That point was not a good feeling for Sox fans.

Speaking of Manny, breathes there a man alive who would not be mortified by that Stevie Wonder "That's What Friends Are For" montage FOX Sports did of slo-mo scenes of Manny with his Sox teammates?

Obviously, your moments of zen were the Bellhorn home run and Foulke freezing Jim Edmonds in the 8th with the bases loaded. And, of course, the relentless David Ortiz.

I spotted a guy in a "Cedeno" jersey on the Cardinals, and the announcers kept calling him "Roger Cedeno," and I even recall the Roger Cedeno being on the Cardinals this year. But then I saw him get a hit in an important situation, and concluded that it had to be a different guy.

Captain's log: it turned 10 p.m. in the bottom of the fourth inning. Way to reach out to young fans.

Kelly Clarkson, singing "God Bless America," looked like either somebody played a prank with lampblack around her eyes, or she got her nose broken in the last 24 hours.

You lives by the knuckleball, and sometimes it goes away. Wakefield has decent stuff early, but just stopped throwing strikes. Pirates and Sox fans will recall that sometimes this goes on for years. Hopefully, he'll find the zone again.

No, I'm not doing a prediction this series, because I'm not a doctor and can't predict the status of Schilling's ankle, on which all turns.

McCarver thought Varitek did a good job blocking the plate on Jason Marquis' Enos Slaughter imitation in the 8th inning, and McCarver does know a thing or two about how hard it is to block the plate. But it looked like a lousy job to me, or at best a valiant but highly ineffective effort.

As I've noted before, a good Game One sets the stage for a series. Sometimes in ironic fashion - like in 1986, when the Red Sox won a 1-run game on a ball that went through Tim Teufel's legs (and it looked like the Mets couldn't touch Bruce Hurst), or in the 1988 NLCS, when the Mets rallied in the ninth to break Orel Hershiser's scoreless streak. Tonight's dramas - Wakefield's control, Manny's fielding, Womack's collarbone, the Cardinal bullpen, the Fenway home cooking.

At this point, if you suggested to me that David Ortiz arrives at the games after a stroll across the Boston Harbor, I don't know that I could disbelieve it.

Poking my head around on the web site of the Saw Doctors, one of this site’s favorite bands, I had to laugh at this paragraph from a review of an August 12 performance by the band in Cape Cod:

With a tip of the hat to Massachusetts, [Leo] Moran introduced “To Win Just Once” off “Sing A Powerful Song” CD saying, “people keep telling me we should dedicate this song to the Red Sox. I don't know anything about baseball” [Link added]

If he did, he would see just how applicable are the song’s words (originally written for an Irish boxer who qualified for the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics). Submitted for your consideration, here are the lyrics:

Read More »

While we're doing the memory lane stuff, consider this: The Red Sox franchise still has a winning record all time in World Serieses, having won 5 in the 1903-1918 period and lost 4 between 1946 and 1986. What's interesting is when you look at it another way: the 1946 St. Louis Cardinals were the first team ever to beat the Red Sox in a World Series. And the 1967 Cards were the second.

Among the teams that have faced the Sox in the Series since 1918, those 1946 Cardinals are unique in another way: they didn't win 100 games. Since then, you have the 1967 Cards (101 wins), the 1975 Reds (108 wins), the 1986 Mets (108 wins), and the 2004 Cardinals (105 wins). The Sox sure know how to pick 'em.

You heard it here first (I think):

1. The Yankees now have an enormous incentive to convince Jason Giambi to retire so they can get out of his contract (have the insurance company pay it, maybe get relief on the luxury tax).

2. The Yankees are, presumably, in possession of Giambi's medical records, which may indicate things Giambi doesn't want publicized.

3. As you may remember from the Dave Winfield/Howard Spira saga, Steinbrenner is not above getting involved in some pretty seedy things, potentially including extortion and blackmail, when he has a grudge against one of his own players.

This is all speculation, of course; I don't know anything more than you do about any of this. But if I was with the Players' Union, I'd be watching very carefully to see that undue influences aren't brought on Giambi to retire.

This should be a great World Series. Brian Gunn over at Redbird Nation has a typically excellent recap of last night’s game, including this line:

Jeff Suppan outdueled Roger Clemens tonight. You know that, I know that, but I don't care -- I'm gonna say it again because I like the way it rolls off the tongue: Jeff. Suppan. Outdueled. Roger. Clemens.

And I liked these comments about the Astros:

[T]hey played some great ball against us. When one samurai warrior defeats another, he doesn't gloat over him; he thanks him for giving him a worthy competition, for bringing out his best. These Astros brought out the best in us. And even though I don't feel great about denying them the first World Series in their entire existence, I thank them all the same.

For the Sox side, you’ll probably want to read Bill Simmons if you haven’t already.

Finally, since you’re going to hear a lot about the 1967 Series in the next week or so, you might as well brush up on the facts of that one. As for predictions, I’m really on the fence about this series, but here goes: Cardinals in 7.

UPDATE (From the Crank, who's been very happy to see the Mad Hibernian at least temporarily back on the blog): You can get more on Bob Gibson, the hero of that 1967 series, in my extended comparison of Gibson to 1926 World Series hero Grover Alexander.

This is hardly news, but if you look at the standings after the July 31 trade deadline, the postseason runs of the Red Sox and Astros become a good deal less surprising. The best record in baseball after the deadline? The Sawx, at 42-18, a .700 clip. Second best? The Astros, 40-18 (.690). The Cardinals, who had wrapped up the NL Central already by late July, also actually picked up the pace, going 39-20 (.661), tied with the Braves for the third best record. The Yankees were sixth at 36-23 (.610). The Runs Scored and Allowed breakouts for the Sox and Yanks are even more dramatic. Runs Scored per game: Sox 6.27, Yankees 5.63. Runs Allowed per game: Sox 4.55, Yankees 5.15.

Of course, I didn't put any stock in rational analysis before this series; like a lot of people, I stuck with the idea that the Yankees would beat the Red Sox because they always do. No more.

(On a side note, until I looked at these standings, I hadn't grasped quite how complete was the late-season collapse of the Brewers, who had looked so promising in the early going. Folks, it's a long season).

I'd missed this - this time it was Newsday that jumped the gun, and Allan Wood nails them. Link via Armchair GM, where Dan Lewis and friends are back and blogging again.

It's gonna be a long, angry and expensive off-season for the Yankees. If George fires Cashman, the Mets should immediately sack the rest of their front office and hire him. But there will be plenty of time for recriminations. For now, it's just enough to savor a remarkable comeback. Check out my live blog of Game Seven below.

Congratulations to the Red Sox on their historic comeback. They sure earned this series victory, especially with epic wins in Games Four and Five that will be long remembered. Check out the Crank below for his definitive commentary.

Watching this game, two rather obvious things struck me about the Yankees:

1) Their pitching just wasn’t that good. On paper, it looked good, but it just wasn’t. In the playoffs, you win with pitching and the Yankees flat got out-pitched in the second half of this series. (Roger Clemens really would have helped.)

2) They miss the Jason Giambi they thought they were getting. In the 7th when it looked like they were coming back, up stepped John Olerud and Miguel Cairo. I like Olerud, but he is near the end. Giambi was supposed to be a pillar of the offense, but he’s been out for so long and was so weak earlier this year that it’s easy for people to forget what was expected from him.

Should be an interesting World Series. Do not count out the National League though – that’s been a truly excellent series in its own right. In fact, I hate to bring up 1986 - well, no I don’t - but the Red Sox had a mighty stirring win in that ALCS as well (remember Dave Henderson?).

We shall see, but these Red Sox have certainly earned their place in the sun.

LIVE-BLOGGING: THIS POST WILL BE UPDATED WHEN POSSIBLE

Peter Gammons is on the pregame show . . . he's trying to fudge, but you can hear it: he thinks this is finally the year.

These are the saddest of possible words, Matsui to Jeter to Posada.

Yes, Simmons is right. They will rename it Papichusetts. 2-0 Sox.

Most similar player to David Ortiz through age 28: Tony Clark. You know it's coming: At the end of his next contract, Ortiz will be signed by the Yankees.

Yankees had 61 come from behind wins - that means they were trailing in 122 games this year. That's a lot, isn't it?

John Sterling goes out on a limb: "I'd say Ortiz has been the toughest batter the Yankees have faced all year."

It just cracks me up that one of the Yankees' major radio ad sponsors is Johnnie Cochran.

Brown drills Cabrera to load the bases. Mister Brown is out of town. After 1.1 innings. Hide the walls!

Grand slam Johnny Damon. 6-0 Sox before the Yankees have a hit. Game Seven of the 1934 World Series comes to mind, when the home town Tigers got blown out 11-0 and the Detroit fans started pelting Cardinals left fielder Joe Medwick with bottles, rotten fruit, and auto parts (said Medwick: "I know why they threw it at me. I just don't know why they brought it to the park.").

Sterling: "The crowd, really, in stunned silence." Charlie Steiner compares Ortiz to Frank Lary. A work colleague emails: "I think we've seen Brown's last pitch in pinstripes."

20-20-24 outs to go, I wanna be sedated . . .

Reality check: 24 outs against these Yankees is a lot.

No hits for the Yanks in the first two innings. Game One comes to mind. The symmetries are hypnotic . . .

Jeter singles in Cairo. 6-1. Meyers and Leskanic are up in the Boston pen already. Get real: 5-run lead, exhausted bullpen. You gotta give Lowe some rope here if you want to win the game.

Lowe gets out of the inning. Pedro is getting ready to get warmed up anyway. All hands on deck.

We know this much: if the Sox win, the odds of Clemens beating the Cards tomorrow increase exponentially.

I guess Johnny Damon's slump is officially over. 8-1 Sox.

Javier Vazquez goes down like a tree struck by lightning!

When you are the Red Sox playing the Yankees, leaving the bases loaded with a 7-run lead feels like cause for genuine concern, rather than pure piggishness. It's not paranoia when they are really out to get you.

The Post is getting its editorial ready.

Dr. Manhattan emails: "Well, the first part of 1999 NLCS Game 6 is going according to schedule..."

Yankees still have only one hit. Maybe we won't see the Derek Lowe Face tonight.

Top of the 7th, Gordon and Heredia warming in the bullpen. Sterling and Steiner are thanking people - it seems to have just hit them that this may be their last broadcast of the season.

Pedro's coming in. Why? This could be a volatile situation. I'd rather bring in Mendoza while you have enough lead to have a margin for error.

Sterling is talking up 2005 season tickets. Lowe leaves after just 69 pitches, Matsui smacks a 2-0 double off Pedro. Cue "Jaws" music.

Bernie doubles, 8-2. Lofton singles, 8-3. Olerud hobbles up to the plate.

Olerud whiffs, Lofton on second, two outs. Crowd chanting "Who's Your Daddy" over and over and over.

Bellhorn homers, 9-3. People are starting, slowly, to realize why Bellhorn was one of the stars of the Red Sox this season. Homer is reminiscent of Strawberry's homer off Al Nipper in Game 7 in the 1986 World Series.

Al Leiter apparently said on TV that Pedro wanted in. Um, who is the manager?

I hear "Let's Go Red Sox" chants as Timlin sets them down in the 8th. Where are the Yankee fans?

Cabrera hits a sac fly off Gordon to make it 10-3; Gordon needs the winter to rest. Mariano's coming in, for the same reason Gagne was on the mound at the end of the Cards-Dodgers season; why not go down with your best guy, no matter how hopeless the odds?

This still seems like it can't be happening.

Well, it's over. The Yankees Lose! Theeeee Yankees Lose! The Sox have extracted revenge for last season; the Yankees, gigantic payroll, stacked roster and all, have choked in a way no baseball team has ever choked. The series starts Saturday at Fenway.

The story of the 2004 Yankees is a remarkably simple one. The Yankees' team ERA after the All-Star break was 4.95, putting stress on the team's top relievers to keep them in games. Rivera, Gordon and Quantrill combined to throw 111.2 innings in 107 appearances in 76 games after the break. None of the three were as effective in the ALCS as you'd like; Gordon and Quantrill were terrible, and Rivera mortal. And Brown and Vazquez, the Yankee starters who collapsed in the second half after looking like their 1-2 punch early on, were shelled in this series. That's all you need to know.

Astros have just tied Game 6 of the NLCS 4-4 in the ninth against Jason Isringhausen.

RUNNING UPDATES: Somehow, Izzy got out of the jam, and we go to the bottom of the ninth with Albert Pujols leading off against Brad Lidge. What will FOX do if this game goes extra innings and runs into the Sox-Yankees game?

You have to say Jeff Bagwell has redeemed himself in this postseason, the game-tying hit here being another example.

OK, I don't think I'll be updating this one - still got too much else to take care of before the AL game. Bottom of the 11th.

One more: Take that, Jeff Kent. Two-run walk-off homer by Jim Edmonds to send this to Game Seven, just minutes before the opening of the ALCS Game Seven. I'm wondering if any postseason series has seen walk-off homers by both teams - I'll probably think of one later if it's been done.

Fifth in a series of reflections on sports by "Andy Tollhaus," an Army officer currently serving in Iraq.

October 20, 2004, 3:45 AM
FOB Danger
Tikrit, Iraq

I just woke up for Round 14 of the Red Sox-Yankees title fight. I turned on the
TV to find a very comforting image: a close up of Curt Schilling peering in over
his glove with the score across the top showing 0-0 in the 2nd. With all the emotions just conjured up, it’s hard to remind yourself that the Sox are actually trailing in the series two games to three.

It’s been a long, painful, tiring ride, just to get to this point. Not only have the games started at the ludicrous hour of 3 AM here in the Fertile Crescent, but for a while it looked as if the Yankees were just going to steamroll my beloved Sox. This series has been highly anticipated for a year, now. For the first couple of days, though, it seemed as if it was all hype.

The Division Series against the Angels was easy enough -- both for the Red Sox and for me. It started with an early, 11 PM start time and an easy Game 1 win for the good guys. I asked the company I fly with to put me on the late night/early morning schedule, so I’d be able to watch the games when I’m not flying. It backfired for me during Pedro’s 5 AM start in Game 2, though, as I drew a mission with a 6 AM takeoff time. The game was on TV during our mission planning, but it was only the 2nd or 3rd inning when we walked out to the aircraft. Of course at the same time, the Twins had taken a lead in the top half of the 12th in a classic Yankees game. As I took off for the mission I thought that the Yankees were down two games to none with their backs against a wall. The Twins’ loss didn’t really matter all that much, though, since it really was inevitable that we’d have a classic rematch between the two bitter rivals. The Yankees did their usual comeback routine with very little attention from me. In fact, I was having a hard enough time watching the Sox. After missing Game 2 for a mission, David Ortiz hit his walk-off homerun in Game 3 against the Angels while I was walking back from the bathroom. Feeling that this one was in the bag, I took my toothbrush with me to the bathroom during the pitching change so I could go right to bed when the Sox won it. Ortiz wasted no time proving me right, hitting Francisco Rodriguez’s first pitch out of the park.

The sweep gave the Sox a couple of days to get their pitching rotation in order and me a couple of days to make sure I had my sleep schedule down. Still on “deep nights,” as we call it, I’d been going to bed around 8 AM and waking up around 4 or 5 in the evening. I’d maintained this schedule for about a week by the time Game 1 rolled around, so I was primed and ready to roll.

Looking back at what could become one of the greatest series of all time, I realize that I need to record my own personal view of this bit of baseball history. As I sit here and watch Game 6, I’ll create a daily log of personal events during this series. I’ve got to warn you, though, this reflection may be as long and as rambling as the series itself.

Read More »

There would indeed be a little bit of humor, in this election season, if we were to see an Astros-Red Sox World Series, Texas vs. Massachusetts. Here's a little quickie trivia (answers to follow later):

1. Who was the last team from a major party presidential candidate's home state to make the World Series in an election year?

2. Who was the last team from a successful major party presidential candidate's home state to win the World Series in an election year?

("Home state" here meaning the conventional view - the state where the candidate spent his adult life and won elective office, rather than, say, considering Bush from Connecticut and Kerry from Colorado, the states of their birth)

UPDATE: The first commenter gets it, so think of your answer before you check the comments.

As I suggested in an unsuccessful prediction back in September, the most reliable guide to predicting what would happen to the Red Sox is, "what would hurt the most?" My older brother suggests winning the ALCS, finally getting past the Yankees, and getting shut down by Roger Clemens in the World Series. That's certainly a possibility right now. Of course, staging a historic comeback - the first team down 3-0 ever to force a Game Seven - only to end with just another loss to the Hated Yankees would rank pretty high, especially since only three days ago Red Sox Nation was swearing it wouldn't believe again. Who knows? Maybe some new cruel symmetry will emerge, as in 1986 when the Sox won Game One of the World Series on a ground ball through Tim Tuefel's legs . . . karma they got back in spades a few days later (and on the subject of 1986, I did think it unfair to lay out the Sox' long string of Game Seven losses without noting the 1986 ALCS, when Jim Rice & Co. pounded John Candelaria as a visibly exhausted Clemens shut down the Angels 8-1 in Game Seven).

Turning to last night, I enjoyed the irony, after pregame predictions of rampant early bunting by the Yankees against the sore-ankled Curt Schilling, of Jason Varitek dropping a bunt single in the second that caught A-Rod napping at third. I'm sure the irony wasn't lost on Varitek.

The umps, led by Cowboy Joe West (best known for body-slamming Dennis Cook in an early-90s brawl between the Mets and Phillies) did a good, tough job last night, having the good judgment to reach collective decisions - even if it meant reversing themselves - in the face of a hostile crowd that wound up requiring cops in riot gear to line the field (the NYPD doesn't fool around these days). But, not being a rules afficionado, I'm still puzzled - on the play where A-Rod was called out for whacking Bronson Arroyo's wrist to knock the ball away at first base - why they sent Derek Jeter back to first instead of second after recalling his run. Had the play not been interfered with by Rodriguez, after all, Jeter would have been at second.

That play, by the way, reminded me of the horrific collision at first between Todd Hundley and Cliff Floyd (back when Floyd was a young first baseman for the Expos) that shattered Floyd's wrist, set his development back several years and almost wrecked his career. Rodriguez and Arroyo were very fortunate to get out of that collision unscathed. Yankee fans, meanwhile, did themselves no credit with their response to the play, although as Yankee booster Tim McCarver rushed to point out, Sox fans had had a similarly bad reaction to Jose Offerman being called out for running out of the baseline in the 1999 ALCS.

This was one of those classic examples of a game where you keep expecting another shoe to drop, and it never does. I just had a feeling early on that the Sox were never going to get that fifth run, and it was all going to come down to whether or not they could hold the lead and avoid a replay of Game Seven from last year (another one of those symmetries - I may be all in favor of rational analysis of the regular season, but there are more things in heaven, earth and postseason baseball than are dreamt of in our philosophies). Still, it may catch up to the Sox tonight that they had to use Foulke again - he seemed to be losing steam rapidly just in his one inning of work - while Rivera and Gordon got the night off (me, I would have left Schilling in - Al Leiter felt the same way - although Francona undoubtedly knew things I didn't about Schilling's ankle, and of course Francona wouldn't have been the first manager to get ripped for leaving Schilling in too long in a big game).

Anybody still upset that the Sox didn't have Pokey Reese's bat in the lineup last night?

If you're wondering, it's gray and damp but not raining yet here in New York, and WCBS has been saying the weather is "go" for tonight's game at Yankee Stadium.

Now, the Red Sox have really been pushing the limits of what they can expect from Tim Wakefield, and they've had some tense moments with Jason Varitek's problems trying to catch him. But does anyone doubt that they would be toast now if they didn't have a knuckleballer who's almost immune to the fatigue concerns that plague normal pitchers?

UPDATE: Aaron Gleeman has the must-read analysis of the day, a breakdown of the number of pitches thrown by the various Red Sox and Yankees pitchers the past three days.

Last night's action almost defies belief, let alone explanation - what unbelievable baseball. I mean, here we have two teams playing 26 innings in 27 hours, and as soon as the Sox-Yankees game ended, it was on to the 8th inning of a 0-0 tie in Houston. Dr. Manhattan emailed this morning to compare this to the 1999 NLCS - a comparison I'd been thinking of last night myself - when the Mets fell behind 3-0, rallied to finally beat John Rocker in Game Four, won the classic rain-soaked "grand slam single" game in 15 innings the next day at Shea, and then lost Game Six - after coming back from 5-0 and 7-3 deficits - in 11 innings two days later. That series involved the home team coming back from a deficit in extra innings twice in as many games, and ended with Kenny Rogers walking in the winning run. 1986 also comes to mind - especially with the parallel of two heart-stopping serieses running at the same time - with the Mets and Astros playing a 12-inning classic at Shea followed by a 16-inning topper in Houston the next day (again due to rain).

David Ortiz has been the anti-Manny, raising his game in the postseason as much as Manny's falls off; he's in George Brett territory right now. The two teams seem to have almost given up hope of stopping Ortiz and Matsui. It's Poppy vs. Godzilla!

The Red Sox can eschew the bunt all they want - the Yankee announcers said only 12 sacrifices all year, which sounded low to me but I'm in too much of a hurry right now to check - but if that's the strategy, they really need to use better judgment trying to steal bases. The caughts by Damon and Ortiz in the late innings last night were devastating.

Assuming no rainout tonight - and the day is certainly off to a rainy start here in NY - everything will turn on Curt Schilling. The Yankee bullpen is exhausted as well, but the Yankees are at home, they can still afford to lose one, and there's no reason Jon Lieber can't at least go 6 innings. If Schilling's ankle holds up, he may be able to give the pen a serious rest; if he goes down in the first three innings again, I have trouble imagining this one being close.

As for the NLCS, I hope you saw a happy Jeff Kent last night, a rare sight indeed.

Predictions for the rest of the serieses? You think I'm crazy? Well, maybe. I'll say this: I still, in my guts, expect the Yankees to face the Cardinals.

After Pedro gets lit up in the top of the 6th, the Sox find themselves down 2 with 8 outs left. The good news: Mark Bellhorn's on second, Tanyan Sturtze is in, and Mariano and Gordon will be tired when and if they get in. And that means hope.

RUNNING UPDATES: Sturtze walks Cabrera - not an easy thing to do, as we saw last night - and Gordon's coming in to face Manny with the tying runs on base. Gordon has thrown 3 innings the past two days, including two late last night.

Gordon gets Manny to hit into a double play. Rally over. Ugh.

Sox are probably 1-2 outs away from seeing Rivera again.

Cairo doubles off the ubiquitous Timlin. And remember, he's the weakest of the Yankee hitters.

Jeter bunts him to third. Timlin needs to whiff A-Rod here.

And he does!

Sheffield intentionally walked, Timlin's out, in comes Foulke. Game on the line here, the ace is in to face Matsui.

Foulke gets him to fly out weakly to Manny.

David Ortiz goes deep off Gordon to lead off the 8th. He could run for mayor right now and win in a walk.

Gordon walks Millar. Roberts in to run for him again. Enter night, exit light?

Nope, Mel leaves him in.

0-1 on Trot, 0 out, Roberts on 1st.

2-1.

3-1, crowd's on Gordon something fierce, Yankee announcers depressed.

Roberts running 3-1, Nixon singles him to third. Varitek will face Mariano. Kapler running for Trot, who I suppose still isn't 100%? He used to run well.

2-0. Is Rivera sharp? Yankees playing back for the DP, ceding a tie.

Sac fly ties it.

Mueller grounds out to first, Kapler to 2d, Bellhorn up.

1-2 to Bellhorn.

Bellhorn whiffs. 4-4 going to 9th, bullpen cupboards are pretty close to bare. Due up top 9: Bernie-Posada-Sierra. Bottom: Damon-Cabrera-Manny. Foulke and Rivera both tired, Foulke sounds sharper, Sox are at home. Odds favor the Red Sox here, but only slightly. Odds really favor a 10- or 11-inning game.

2-out walk to Sierra. 1-2 to Tony Clark.

Ground rule double to right for Clark, Sierra has to stop at third. Cairo up, 2d and 3d and two outs.

Cairo pops out. Progress, of a sort, that you wouldn't hit for him there, but aside from Lofton there's nobody left on the Yankee bench to hit. Foulke's thrown 22 pitches, he will likely be done now if this goes to a 10th. Can Rivera be beaten a third time in one postseason?

Infield hit for Damon on Rivera's 15th pitch. Winning run on first, nobody up in Yankee pen. Can Cabrera bunt here or at least take a pitch?

Damon caught stealing. We will probably go 10 now.

Groundout on a 2-0 pitch. Manny up with 2 outs and bases empty; he will probably swing for the fences and whiff.

Rivera can be tough to bunt on, but man does that decision to have Damon run look bad right now. 2-0 to Manny, Yankee announcers moaning about call of check swing.

Fly to center, we go 10. Bronson Arroyo is in, Jeter up.

Jeter pops out, A-Rod whiffs, 1-1 to Sheffield, Felix Heredia warming up.

Sheffield whiffs. David Ortiz will lead off the bottom of the tenth. Dare to dream again? If Ortiz hits one out here, they'll make him an honorary Kennedy.

Called strikeout on check swing. Calls are even now? Minky up, Quantrill warming in the pen.

3-0 to the Mighty Mink.

Minky doubles. Kapler up, 1 out, Quantrill coming in, his 266th appearance in the past three years.

Kapler grounds out, Varitek up with 2 out, man on 3d.

Varitek pops out. I've got to get in the car, so I'll wrap this later.

I can't be the only one dragging badly this morning from staying up to 1:30 to see the end of the Yankees-Sox game. I know they needed a later start to avoid conflicts with football and the Cards-Astros game, but this is ridiculous . . . what a thrilling finish, enough to suck back in all the Red Sox fans who had written off the series, enough to put the history 3-0 deficits out of mind until the end of tonight's game - at the end of which, if Boston wins, the series looks much more like a battle. And, of course, the most staggering fact of all - the vulnerability of Mariano Rivera, who's now blown as many saves in this postseason as in the prior nine years.

I was really amazed by the ingratitude of Sox fans towards Mark Bellhorn, who was taunted with the "Pokey, Pokey" chants when he bobbled a grounder in the 6th inning. Bellhorn has had such a great year, yet Boston fans only focus on the negative.

I feel like if I went out in my front yard last night and threw some pitches, Orlando Cabrera would swing at them.

Remember: after tonight, if he loses, the next time you see Pedro Martinez he may be in a Yankee uniform. Which only makes Yankee fans' taunting of Pedro - for showing the Yanks respect, no less - all the more inexplicable.

Over the weekend, John Heyman of Newsday analyzed the status of the Mets’ managerial quest:

Whether it be Omar Minaya's early influence or merely the odds of finally getting one right, the Mets appear to be on the verge of getting one right.

Minaya interviewed highly respected Rangers hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo on Friday and will interview beloved Yankee Willie Randolph when he returns from Boston. In between those two, Newsday has learned that Minaya will squeeze in a meeting with Bobby Valentine, the one encore candidate we'd enthusiastically endorse for his New York track record…

Valentine's candidacy is an intriguing plot twist, though one person with ties to the Mets said he believes it's still largely a "two-horse" race between Jaramillo and Randolph, with Valentine and former Angels and Astros manager Terry Collins under consideration but less likely.

I confess to knowing nothing about Jaramillo, have always admired Randolph and would actually be receptive to a comeback by Valentine. I don’t have strong feelings about Collins.

Anyway, if you’re looking for more Mets analysis, Jason Mastaitis has a two-part prescription here and here. His recommendations include a farewell to John Franco, Al Leiter, Cliff Floyd and Richard Hidalgo, signing Carlos Beltran and starting Victor Diaz in left field next season, among other things. Also, check out this picture for a trip down memory lane.

The evidence pointing to steroid use by Barry Bonds continues to build:

Barry Bonds was using an "undetectable" performance-enhancing drug during the 2003 baseball season, his weight trainer claimed in a conversation that was secretly recorded last year and provided to The Chronicle.

Trainer Greg Anderson, 38, who is Bonds' longtime friend and a defendant in the BALCO steroids conspiracy case, also said on the recording that he expected to receive advance warning before the San Francisco Giants superstar had to submit to a drug test under what was then baseball's new steroids-testing program.

The recording is the most direct evidence yet that Bonds used performance-enhancing drugs during his drive to break the storied record for career home runs. Major League Baseball banned the use of steroids beginning with the 2003 season. It has long been illegal to use them without a doctor's prescription.

"The whole thing is, everything that I've been doing at this point, it's all undetectable," Anderson said on the recording of the drug he was providing Bonds. "See the stuff I have, we created it, and you can't buy it anywhere else, can't get it anywhere else, but you can take it the day of (the test), pee, and it comes up perfect."

There was another reason the trainer was confident that Bonds' drug use would escape detection: Anderson said he would be tipped off a week or two before Bonds was subjected to steroid testing.

"It's going to be in either the end of May or beginning of June, right before the All-Star break, definitely," he was recorded saying. "So after the All-Star break, f -- , we're like f -- ing clear."

Now, if this tape is authentic, that would certainly strongly suggest wrongdoing on Anderson's part, and the high likelihood that Bonds was in on it (he certainly benefitted from it). Anderson's and Bonds' lawyers are denying the tape's authenticity, as you would expect. I regard this as the first sign that we have enough to move the debate about Bonds - which has thus far seemed to me to be based on speculation rather than evidence, even if it's speculation I tend to sympathize with - into the open.

Bonds is rapidly approaching one of baseball's most hallowed records. Hopefully, if the evidence surfaces to show that he has used illegal performance-enhancing drugs, MLB can stop him before he gets there, rather than have the record tainted. On the other hand, one wishes there was some way that, if Bonds is actually clean, he could be definitively cleared of all this. But we are rapidly reaching the point where the skeptical fan may start to believe the charges.

Utter humiliation for the Red Sox tonight, as the Yankees pour on 19 runs in their own house. After coming so close last season, Sox fans may now have to lament an offseason of having been destroyed by the Yankees. Horrendous. I'm not at the point where I can discuss this rationally, and I'm not even a Sox fan.

Holy Cross alum Brian at Redbird Nation has a fine writeup of last night's action in St. Louis, with bonus points for saying the weather was "Worcestering" out. I still haven't read enough about the game yet to find out who was shooting off the fireworks in the pouring rain in the middle of the 7th inning.

Oh, and: yes, I know I'm against big free agent signings, but I do want Carlos Beltran for Christmas (and yes, that's a baseball-reference.com link with 2004 stats, hooray!). He's the type of free agent worth pursuing - a top-of-the-market player, broad base of skills, showing rapid improvement in patience and power the past two years, runs well, plays great defense, and he's only 28 next season. And just imagine a defensive outfield with Beltran and Cameron.

Jeff Quinton wonders about reports that the Mets might be looking to deal Cliff Floyd for Sammy Sosa. Now, there are two possible ways for me to react to this. One would be to take a rational look at the two players, break down their age, productivity, injury histories and remaining contracts.

I choose the second way. No. The Mets simply need to break their addiction to bringing in expensive old guys. Even if they may be better or cheaper or younger than some other expensive old guys they are shipping out. The first step is recognizing you have a problem. If you can't dump Floyd's salary for younger talent, then eat the contract. And Glavine's, too, and the rest. (I'm OK with keeping Piazza, given the difficulty of replacing him, but Leiter has to go). A GM who can't stop the importation of old, expensive players simply has no business with this team.

As you can tell from my debate summary, I missed most of the ballgames last night. Of course, that's aside from the fact that Major League Baseball scheduled the two games to run against each other . . .

On the Yanks-Sox side, Pedro running out of gas has become a theme. You may have been surprised when it was John Olerud who delivered the knockout blow, given Olerud's struggles the past two seasons; even in his rejuvenated form with the Yankees, Olerud didn't hit for power. But the unflappable Olerud has long had a knack for big hits against top pitchers, especially when the rest of the team is hitting. On the NL side, any series with the Cardinals in it will be a long one for pitchers on both sides.

Mike Mussina's shot at perfection fell pretty far short last night. Here's a look back at the night in September 2001 when he came just one batter (Carl Everett) short of a perfect game at Fenway.

In the movies, or in a novel or a play, the ideal opening act is one that introduces all the major dramatic tensions without resolving any of them. In an action film, you want a gripping opening, but one that won't overshadow what comes later.

That's what we saw last night. We weren't treated to a historic comeback, or a perfect game, or a game-breaking ninth-inning rally, or vengeance for past defeats, or a beanball war. But we got a tantalizing taste of each. Dramatic themes have been introduced: Will Curt Schilling bounce back in his next start, or is he ailing? Can the Red Sox stop Hideki Matsui? Will Joe Torre ever be dumb enough to use Tanyan Sturtze again? How much gas is in Joe Frazier's car? (Well, maybe not that last one).

Stay tuned tonight - same bat time, same bat channel.

Before the season, I evaluated each of the teams around the majors based on Established Win Shares Levels (see here for a discussion of EWSL and here for the team method). Over the offseason, I'll be taking a look back at how teams matched up against those established levels, both to explain where things went right or wrong and to fine-tune EWSL's usefulness (within its natural limitations) as a predictive tool. For now, in advance of their playoff showdown, let's look at how the Yankees and Red Sox stacked up to their preseason predictions. You'll note some variance from the preseason numbers I ran because I did the Yankees before the A-Rod trade.

New York Yankees

Adjusted EWSL: 323.3 (108 wins)
Unadjusted EWSL: 310.3 (103 wins)
Weighted Age: 32.721
Actual Record: 101 wins

Pos	Player	EWSL	2004	Age
C	JPosada	25	20	32
1B	JGiambi	32	8	33
2B	MCairo	3	13	30
SS	DJeter	22	26	30
3B	ARodriguez	34	30	28
RF	GSheffield	31	31	35
CF	KLofton	18	7	37
LF	HMatsui*	19	29	30
DH	BWilliams	21	16	35
C2	JFlaherty	5	3	36
INF	EWilson	2	5	30
OF	RSierra	6	9	38
13	TClark	5	8	32
SP1	MMussina	18	10	35
SP2	JVazquez	18	10	27
SP3	KBrown	12	9	39
SP4	JContreras*	7	2	32
SP5	JLieber	4	11	34
CL	MRivera	15	16	34
R2	PQuantrill	10	6	35
R3	GWhite	5	-1	32
R4	TGordon	8	15	36
R5	FHeredia	6	0	29

Not a lot of things you didn't already know here: the Yankees actually underachieved this year, due to major fall-offs from Giambi, Mussina, Vazquez, and Kenny Lofton, while the main guys who stepped way up to pick up some of the slack were Matsui, Cairo, Gordon and Lieber. There's also the guys I hadn't listed in the preseason:

Pos	Player	EWSL	2004	Age
SP	OHernandez	4	9	38
1B	JOlerud	20	6	35
P	TSturtze	5	3	33

Five guys also contributed one Win Share each. You will note that Olerud's 6 Win Shares, like Contreras' total, is only for his time with the Yankees. . . and yes, I know 38 is an approximate age for El Duque, but I have to use something.

Boston Red Sox

Adjusted EWSL: 307.3 (102 wins)
Unadjusted EWSL: 307.3 (102 wins)
Weighted Age: 31.735
Actual record: 98 wins

Pos	Player	EWSL	2004	Age
C	JVaritek	14	18	32
1B	KMillar	16	17	32
2B	PReese	7	3	31
SS	NGarciaparra	22	6	30
3B	BMueller	17	12	33
RF	TNixon	19	4	30
CF	JDamon	19	26	30
LF	MRamirez	28	28	32
DH	DOrtiz	12	25	28
C2	DMirabelli	4	7	33
INF	MBellhorn	9	21	29
OF	GKapler	7	5	28
13	EBurks	12	0	39
SP1	PMartinez	19	16	32
SP2	CSchilling	20	22	37
SP3	DLowe	15	6	31
SP4	TWakefield	13	8	37
SP5	BKim	16	0	25
CL	KFoulke	17	15	31
R2	SWilliamson	7	4	28
R3	MTimlin	8	6	38
R4	AEmbree	5	4	34
R5	RMendoza	4	3	32

A real tribute to the Sox here for surviving the big dropoffs from the contributions of Nomar (even before he was traded), Nixon, Lowe and Kim. Ellis Burks, of course, never did get a role on the team, so his inclusion here is more a feature of February. The two guys who picked up the most slack were Ortiz (who had 15 win shares in 2003) and Bellhorn; the Sox went far this year by ignoring Bellhorn's 177 whiffs and cashing in on his cheap (less than $500,000 this year) production. But the team's additions, including one guy I totally overlooked in February (Bronson Arroyo) made a difference:

Pos	Player	EWSL	2004	Age
SP	BArroyo	2	10	27
3B	KYoukilis	0	8	25
SS	OCabrera	19	5	29
RP	CLeskanic	6	3	36
1B	DMcCarty	1	3	34

Plus, Dave Roberts and Brian Daubach with two Win Shares apiece, and six other guys with one Win Share apiece, including the disappointing Doug Mentkiewicz (19 EWSL entering the season). Cabrera, clearly, was a useful pickup, and the Greek God of Walks, with his .367 on base percentage, gave the Sox some valuable fill-in work.

After a 42-year wait and more heartbreaking playoff losses than you can count, the Astros are apparently, at long last, about to win a postseason series. Of course, nothing was more epic than their first two losses, the 1980 series (following their victory in the 1-game playoff with the Dodgers) that concluded a best of 5 series against the Phillies with four consecutive extra inning games, and the 1986 classic with the Mets, with a walk-off homer in Game Three, a 12-inning heart-stopper in Game Five (with Nolan Ryan matching Doc Gooden with a 2-hit 12-K performance despite breaking his ankle in the third inning) and the unforgettable 16-inning seesaw affair in Game Six. And, of course, I'm glad to see Bagwell and Biggio finally taste some success in October.

It's wierd to see Jose Vizcaino out there; it seems like a generation ago that he was with the Mets (I was still in law school then), and he was neither outstandingly good nor outstandingly young then. . . am I the only one who keeps expecting Lance Berkman to break into an ad for Little Chocolate Donuts?

One entertaining moment from last night's game was during the confrontation between Eric Gagne and Albert Pujols in the 9th; it was a fine illustration of the focus that has made Gagne such a lights-out closer. Pujols fouled a ball viciously off his foot, and was hopping around in agony - and while he's writhing in pain, Gagne calmly steps forward, takes the ball and talks to his catcher without paying Pujols the slightest notice. Then, maybe two pitches later, Gagne throws a curveball that sails up and in just above Pujols' head. An accident? Maybe; not too many people throw a curveball as a purpose pitch, especially one that was almost a wild pitch with a man on first. But for a guy who's still in enough pain that he's barely able to plant his feet, the curveball sealed the deal as far as making Pujols uncomfortable in the box, and he hit weakly into a double play shortly thereafter.

Other thoughts: Man, the Astros outmaneuvered themselves in using Brad Lidge for only 2/3 of an inning and leaving Russ Springer to take the loss; does someone at FOX Sports stay up at night thinking of annoying ways to distract from the game? The dirt-level "Diamond Cam" is silly enough, but that "Scooter" guy explaining things reminded me way too much of the paperclip guy from Microsoft Word; Game Two of the Yanks-Twins series was the first time Mariano Rivera blew a save in the postseason without costing the Yankees a series.

Ken Caminiti has died, at age 41, of a heart attack. Caminiti's death may well be a wake-up call to the major leagues about the hazards of steroids, which he admitted using during his career. Or not; he had apparently been battling a cocaine addiction recently, and cocaine, of course, is not exactly good for your heart either. In any event, a terrible tragedy for a guy who loved the game and gave it everything he had.

I first saw Caminiti when he debuted with the Astros; he drew comparisons to George Brett after a hot first week or two, then didn't hit like that again until the steroids. A lot of people will remember Caminiti as a heavily-muscled slugger, but the memory I'll always have is of him in his Houston days, endlessly diving over railings and into dugouts to catch errant foul popups.

Watching the playoffs, I must say, even as a sworn enemy of reality TV, I had to laugh at some of the promos for Fox’s “My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss.”

I'm not thrilled with the Mets repatriating Omar Minaya instead of finally bringing in someone with a fresh perspective and the authority to make decisions without much input from ownership. Minaya was previously marinated in the Mets' decisionmaking process, which is terribly broken.

A commenter named Wally, over at Avkash's place, rounds up a complete list of Minaya's moves in Montreal. Go check it out (scroll down).

Has Andruw Jones' home run come down yet?

Tremendous, tremendous performance tonight by Jose Lima, a guy who's been given up for dead many times in his career, and often for very good reasons. Of course, as is well known, Lima's usefulness is in direct proportion to the size of the ballpark he's pitching in. I was dubious about leaving him in to finish the game with Gagne ready to go, but he slammed the door quite efficiently. Reminded me a lot of Bobby Jones' performance against the Giants in the 2000 NLDS, a guy who's had a checkered career just putting together his best-pitched game at exactly the right moment. And you just have to love a guy like Lima, frankly; he's one of the game's true characters.

The invaluable Jim Baker has a column over at Baseball Prospectus (subscription only) carving up an assertion by Frank DeFord that there should be more teams in the baseball playoffs. As Baker points out, the current Divisional Series schedules have already forced most of us who work for a living to abandon hope of being able to see all the games, and he gives a little bit of hypothetical scheduling to demonstrate how awful a schedule might look if you doubled the size of the first round and still wanted to have no overlapping game times. (Baker also does a quick number-crunching exercise to show that Derek Jeter is a solid playoff performer, compared to a number of playoff veterans (notably Manny Ramirez) who have failed to perform to their regular-season level, but that Jeter can hardly be said to have raised the level of his game in October, unlike, say, Pete Rose or Reggie Jackson.

Well, someone forgot to tell David Ortiz and the Red Sox that they aren’t “living in a world of reality” if they think they can win it all.

David Pinto, in his pre-game comments, noted that this would be Boston’s first sweep of a post-season series since 1975 against Oakland. (He also had some interesting comments regarding Kelvim Escobar’s torso.) Anyway, Ortiz’s Todd Pratt-style walk-off home run over the Green Monster advances Boston to what is probably an inevitable showdown with the Evil Empire.

Should be fun, or as some might say, wicked awesome.

Color me unsurprised that (1) the Cardinals are crushing the overmatched Dodgers but (2) they will likely be without the services of perennially injury-prone Chris Carpenter for the rest of the postseason.

Following up on something I wrote about repeatedly in the regular season, the Cards' starting infield finished with 113 Win Shares, tied for fifth all time with the 1982 Brewers (Cooper, Gantner, Yount and Molitor) and 1913 A's (with Eddie Collins and Frank "Home Run" Baker) and behind the 1914 A's, 1908 Pirates (Honus Wagner and co.), 1912 A's and 1934 Tigers (who had four guys each drive in 100 runs), and ahead of the 1975 and 1976 Reds, the 1927 Giants, and the 1946 Cardinals.

If you aren't reading Redbird Nation on a regular basis, you are missing a lot. Brian Gunn has an interesting analysis of the importance of ace pitchers in the postseason - frankly, it's the sort of thing I used to write and hope to get back to again some day - as well as a fascinating analysis of marginal relative attendance figures that shows how St. Louis draws more fans compared to its market size than any other team. Brian only does a top 10, but I'd love to see the whole list.

I'm too late into the game to do LDS (gag) predictions, so let me offer a few totally unoriginal thoughts before we go further:

*Can the Red Sox go all the way? Only if they don't face the Yankees. No, there's no point in analyzing that rationally at this stage. It just will not happen.

*Can the Yankees go all the way? I just don't see it. I know I go back and forth on the Yankees every year, but let's be realistic - they don't have the pitching. The bullpen isn't deep, not since Quantrill's arm finally fell off in August, and the starting rotation, even with three #1 starters, lacks a single pitcher you can genuinely bank on at this point in the season. They may go far, but eventually that has to catch up with them. Alex Belth's pre-season comparison to the 1987 Mets looks a lot better now, although as I said at the time, the better analogy is the 1999 Indians.

*On the Yankee front, by the way, A-Rod fell four RBI short of 110, so his streak of consecutive seasons of 110 runs and 110 RBI ends at six, one short of tying Babe Ruth and Jimmie Foxx for the third longest such streak of all time.

*The Cards, although they have their own pitching issues, are just way, way too strong for the rest of the NL field. The only team I thought could have derailed them was the Cubs, given the possibility of a sudden hot streak by the Cub pitchers.

*Go read Simmons on the Red Sox if you haven't yet.

Last year, I thought the Twins' best postseason bet rode on Johan Santana dominating the Yankees in a short series. That didn't really work out. Obviously, it still does. But these Yankees are no longer vulnerable to lefthanded pitching; just look at new acquisitions Gary Sheffield (.314/.550/.423 against lefties this season) and Alex Rodriguez (.311/.659/.422). Combine those guys with a big year for Jeter against lefties (.314/.532/.378), and suddenly you have a team that looks more like lefty-mashers.

The Twins look, on paper, like a pretty solid team. But let's not forget that these guys were 46-30 this season against the weak AL Central. Against the AL East and AL West? 35-33, an 83-win clip. Not so impressive. Compare that to the Yankees, 71-41 against the same two divisions (albeit without playing themselves), a 103-win clip, or the Red Sox, 70-42, a 101-win pace.

So Ichiro finally broke George Sisler's long-standing hits record of 257, going 3-for-5 last night against the Rangers. But that's not all: if he manages two more 5 at bat games today and tomorrow, he'll also break Willie Wilson's single-season at bats record of 705. At a minimum, unless Ichiro takes both days off, he'll be just the third major leaguer to notch 700 at bats in a season. For a guy whose durability was questioned when he arrived here as an undersized outfielder from short-season Japan (where his career high in at bats was 546), that's impressive work.

So the season's longer. It's been longer for 42 years. Sisler had a longer schedule to work with than Jesse Burkett, who had 240 hits in a 135 game season in 1896 (288 per 162 games). (Ty Cobb broke Burkett's record in 1911). The original record of 138 hits was set by Ross Barnes, in the NL's inaugural 1876 season, in 66 games (339 per 162 games). Yes, that puts Ichiro in perspective, but don't cry for Sisler; it's the way the game's history has gone.

Mark Prior came up huge today, with 16 K and only 3 hits and a walk allowed in going 9 innings against the Reds, with the three main wild card contenders now tied in the loss column. Unfortunately for the Cubbies, one hit was an Austin Kearns homer that tied the game 1-1 in the 7th. Still tied in the 10th at last check, with Ryan Dempster in a 2-on 2-out jam.

UPDATE: Still tied after 11.

UPDATE: Bottom 12, 2-1 Reds after Valentin doubled in Dunn, man on first, Nomar up, 1 out.

UPDATE: Reds win.

UPDATE: A's win, Angels lose to Rangers; all tied up again in the AL West. Texas is 3 back with 3 to play, but with the A's and Angels facing off for the last three games there's no way for them to tie it up. Barring a big Dodger collapse against the Giants, the only races left are the AL West and the NL Wild Card.

I noted a few years ago the similarity between (1) the battles between conservatives, particularly bloggers, and the mainstream political media and (2) the battles between statistical analysts of baseball and the mainstream baseball media. Peter Gammons has given us yet another example of this attitude:

Teammate Dave Roberts says Orlando Cabrera is one of those players who is not particularly good playing on bad teams where the only things that count are sabermetrics, but is much better playing for a good team where little things can make the difference between winning and losing.

Cabrera is a dashing, 78 rpm defender who sometimes almost plays too fast. But he gives himself up when necessary, pounds high fastballs and clearly loves playing on a Red Sox team that is in contention and sold out every game all season. . . Roberts is right about Cabrera, and the same thing can be said about Derek Jeter -- who the stats Nazis will insist from their garages isn't an exceptional shortstop -- and Brian Roberts. On the other hand, there are some star-type players that are not as good on a pennant contender.

"Stats Nazis in their garages" does have about the same ring as "a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas." (For the record, I blog in the basement, not the living room or the garage). Ironically, of course, this comes just a little over two weeks after Gammons wrote a warm endorsement of the very types of new statistical analysis of defensive stats that have long supported the case against Jeter's defense and that led the Red Sox to trade for Cabrera. In fact, in that column, Gammons cited Cabrera as a prime example of the value of such stats. As I've noted repeatedly, we have yet another example of how Gammons gives vent to the views of different sources with diametrically opposite world views.

Studes notes that the Yankees are likely to finish around ten games better than the record that would be projected, via Bill James' Pythagorean theory, from their runs scored and allowed. He notes the teams qualifying for postseason play since 1900 that have exceeded their projections by the most: 1970 Reds (11 games), 1961 Reds (10), 1997 Giants (10), 1931 Athletics (9), 1930 Athletics (8), 2002 Twins (8).

See a pattern? How about their postseason records? 1970 Reds (4-4), 1961 Reds (1-4), 1997 Giants (0-3), 1931 Athletics (3-4), 1930 Athletics (4-2), 2002 Twins (1-4). Total: 13-21, one World Championship (the 1930 A's, who played a Cardinals team with a nearly identical Pythagorean record).

Much as I dislike Barry Bonds and don't want him breaking the home run record, I'm constrained to agree with John Perricone and Bud Selig that we have long since passed the point where opposing managers aren't just being foolish in walking Bonds all the time, but downright unsportsmanlike. Let the man hit.

Stat of the day: the Cubs are batting .272/.480/.327 since the All-Star Break. Of course, a .480 team slugging percentage for a full season would be most impressive by historical standards. For the starting lineup, the numbers are even more impressive:

PLAYER	G	AB	H	2B	3B	HR	R	RBI	BB	AVG	SLG	OBP
Michael Barrett	53	177	56	16	3	6	25	21	12	.316	.542	.361
Derrek Lee	65	252	68	19	0	10	44	47	25	.270	.536	.338
Mark Grudzielanek	55	174	54	10	1	4	21	16	8	.310	.448	.342
Nomar Garciaparra	33	127	38	10	0	4	21	16	9	.299	.472	.353
Aramis Ramirez	56	201	62	9	0	19	35	44	18	.308	.637	.363
Sammy Sosa	61	238	56	7	0	17	33	37	18	.235	.479	.295
Corey Patterson	63	264	74	17	0	13	43	33	16	.280	.492	.329
Moises Alou	63	230	70	17	2	18	48	49	34	.304	.630	.388
Starting 8	65	1663	478	96	6	100	270	263	140	.287	.533	.343

Once again, the Cubs have a team that's long on home runs and short on patience. But when you've got this kind of wall-to-wall power, it hardly matters. While Mark Prior, Kerry Wood and Matt Clement have struggled, it's been the less-vaunted Cubbie offense - even adjusting for the fact that it's been a good hitters' year at Wrigley - that's carried the load as the Cubs stay in the wild-card hunt down the stretch run. And while Nomar and Sammy may be the biggest names here, they haven't been particularly close to the biggest bats, as Moises Alou, Aramis Ramirez and the long-awaited breakout of Michael Barrett have made a much bigger impact.

Eric McErlain has a couple of good posts, one lamenting how the Mets not only destroyed their credibility with their fans by trading Scott Kazmir but completely failed to anticipate or understand why people were so upset, the other discussing the development of a baseball stadium in Washington to house Les Expos (See here for a photo of the likely site).

ESPN and the Associated Press botched this one on Friday:

Ichiro Suzuki broke the major league single-season record with his 199th single in the seventh inning of the Seattle Mariners' game against the Oakland Athletics on Friday night.

With a hit in the seventh inning for his second single of the game, Suzuki bettered the mark of 198 singles set by Lloyd Waner of Pittsburgh in 1927.

Of course, as I noted in a column about Ichiro three years ago, the major league record at the time was 206 set by Wee Willie Keeler in 1898, and the AL record was 185 by Wade Boggs in 1985. Ichiro broke that AL record in 2001, extending it to 192, and has now broken Keeler's record as well, with 211 singles through last night. But a little halfway competent research would have indicated the right record.

In early 2002, I took a look at the pitchers who won 300 games and where they stood relative to Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine at the same age, finding that Maddux was ahead of every modern (post-1920) pitcher who had won 300, while Glavine was also well-situated. As the two near the end of their age-38 seasons, let's update the chart, and add Mike Mussina into the mix:

Pitcher	Thru 35	At 36-37	Thru 37	At 38	Thru 38	After
Maddux	257	32	289	*14	303	--
Carlton	249	36	285	15	300	29
Clemens	233	27	260	20	280	*48
Seaver	245	19	264	9	273	38
Grove	223	34	257	14	271	29
Spahn	203	43	246	21	267	96
Sutton	230	28	258	8	266	58
Glavine	224	27	251	*9	260	--
Wynn	201	34	235	14	249	51
Perry	198	33	231	15	246	68
Ryan	205	26	231	10	241	83
Mussina	*211	--	--	--	--	--
Niekro	131	32	163	16	179	139

* - And counting

First of all, ignore Phil Niekro, who's the outlier here. As you can see, a lot of these guys hit the wall right around 36-37, although the effect is exaggerated by the fact that several of the more recent pitchers were around that age in the 1981 strike season. Maddux remains well-situated to rack up a truly impressive number of career wins without having to have any more great seasons, although perhaps not as well situated as Clemens, who stands two wins from becoming only the second pitcher (Spahn was the last one) since the 1920s to win 330 games.

Glavine is still in the game, but frankly he needs to get out of Queens (which would probably help the Mets as well). As for Mussina, his struggles of late don't portend well, but he's ahead of Ryan, Spahn, Wynn, Perry and Niekro at the same age, and with the Yankee offense behind him he should have a few more years of smooth sailing if he gets straightened out.

For comparison, let's run the chart of the remaining 300-game winners from the 1890-1930 period (the 1880s guys are not even worth comparing):

Pitcher	Thru 35	At 36-37	Thru 37	At 38	Thru 38	After
Young	351	54	405	18	423	88
Johnson	354	43	397	15	412	5
Mathewson	373	0	373	0	373	0
Nichols	361	0	361	0	361	0
Alexander	266	34	300	15	315	58
Plank	224	44	288	15	303	23

Alexander, at least by this age (in the mid 1920s), is actually a decent comparison to Maddux. Mathewson retired at age 35, and at 37 was in Europe serving in World War I.

A new feature over at Baseball-Reference.com: the site has long had Similarity Scores so you could compare a player's most comparable players through the same age. Now, at least for batters, you can look over the list of the ten most comparable - and their stats after that age. Here's the numbers for Barry Bonds from age 36 (in 2001) to 2003, compared to the average from 36 on for his most comparable players through age 35:

PLAYER(S)	G	AB	HR	R	RBI	AVG	SLG	OBP	OPS+
Bonds	426	1269	164	357	337	.345	.808	.542	257
Average	393	1272	66	194	202	.255	.460	.360	125

The list of comparables includes three active players - Jeff Bagwell, Frank Thomas and Rafael Palmeiro - but the numbers are even lower if you remove them. The others' average numbers are not that bad for old guys, but they give you a sense of how truly unique what Bonds has done is. Lest you think this an unfair comparison, the other seven are all in the Hall of Fame, including Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Frank Robinson and Mel Ott.

All of whom were in increasingly steep decline at Bonds' age.

Somehow, I managed to miss this story.

Looks like my prediction isn't holding up too well, as the Yankee-Red Sox series reverted to form with the Yanks' mauling of Derek Lowe and Pedro Martinez, leaving the Sox to pick up a game and a half on the Yankees in their remaining 11 other games even if they sweep next weekend's series at Fenway. Of course, that's not impossible (the Sox play 8 games against Baltimore and three against Tampa Bay, while the Yankees have 1 against the Rays, three vs. the Twins and six against the woebegotten Blue Jays), but don't bet on it.

Well, this is the first time in my lifetime - or at least my memory - that anybody has cracked 700 homers. Savor the moment . . . even if, like me, you can't find much to like about Bonds. It's still a unique one.

The invaluable Jason Mastaitis reminds me of something I either hadn't known or had forgotten (unsurprising, given how poorly I follow the lower minor leagues): Jason Bay used to be a Mets farmhand until he was traded in the deal that brought in Steve Reed to throw 26 innings in the all-important 2002 stretch drive. Could the Mets use a 25-year-old outfielder who makes $305,000 and has career averages of .293/.563/.382?

Don't answer that.

I also agree with Mastaitis that Wally Backman sounds like he would be a fine choice to replace Art Howe.

Jonah Keri has an interesting look, over at BaseballProspectus.com (subscription only), at the sudden development the last two years of two over-30 utilitymen (Mark Loretta and Melvin Mora) into major star-caliber players. He includes a chart of players who took major leaps forward after age 30, from a database going back to 1972. (Side note: here's an example of BP's insistence on using its own proprietary stats, in this case VORP, hampering its studies - they could have used Win Shares without any substantial change in accuracy and been able to run the study back another 100 years).

Anyway, I found the distribution of these leaps forward by older players over time interesting:

1973-78: 5 in 6 years. OK, we can discount that some due to the
paucity of pre-1972 data. Note that 3 are in 1973, when the DH was
introduced.

1979-92: 13 in 14 years, two of which were in the high-offense 1987
season.

1993-2004: 30 in 11 years.

Logical inference? Well, could just be a small sample size. But it
could be either that (1) physical fitness and simlar issues have created
greater opportunity for late-career advancement in the post-1993
environment, or (2) players can be affected unequally by an upswing in
offense, leading some guys to blossom more than others (consistent with the
1973 & 1987 results).

To no one's surprise, the Mets have fired Art Howe, but will be asking him to manage out the balance of the season rather than hand the reins to a Moose Stubing-style caretaker. Which is pretty classless, but then, for the money they are paying Howe, he can suck it up.

More [please] later [not] on [Larry] possible [Bowa] replacements.

Mike Carminati will no longer be performing his relentless and often hilarious fiskings of Joe Morgan's chat sessions on ESPN, on account of ESPN deciding to move Morgan's chats behind the wall of "premium" content you have to pay to get. Of course, paying for the Morgan chats is like when PT Barnum got people to pay admission to see "the Fabulous Egress". While I have my theories, it's never been entirely clear how such a smart player can be so stupid about the game he mastered. If another Joe Morgan came up today, Morgan probably wouldn't think he was any good.

That horse was dead anyway; I gave up about a year or two ago arguing with people who think batting average and RBI are important but statistics aren't. But Carminti's posts were entertaining nonetheless.

Aaron Gleeman has some additional thoughts.

How do teams go about developing or acquiring the best players in baseball? Well, for a snapshot from the 2004 season, I thought I'd take a look at the top 20 players in each league, by Win Shares, and how they got where they are. Where players were acquired by trade, I tried to break out the factors that led them to be traded - i.e., trading veterans for prospects, trading a prospective free agent, just making a bad deal, etc.:

National League:

Player	Team	Acquired
Barry Bonds	SF	Free agent
Scott Rolen	STL	Trade (economic factors)
Albert Pujols	STL	Home-grown (draft)
Jim Edmonds	STL	Trade (other team's mistake)
Mark Loretta	SD	Free agent
Adrian Beltre	LA	Home-grown/foreign player
Bobby Abreu	PHI	Trade (other team's mistake)
Sean Casey	CIN	Trade (prospect acquired for veteran)
JD Drew	ATL	Trade (straight up deal)
Todd Helton	COL	Home-grown (draft)
Adam Dunn	CIN	Home-grown (draft)
Lance Berkman	HOU	Home-grown (draft)
Mike Lowell	FLA	Trade (other team's mistake)
Brian Giles	SD	Trade (economic factors)
Phil Nevin	SD	Trade (other team's mistake)
Jim Thome	PHI	Free agent
Jason Kendall	PIT	Home-grown (draft)
Jimmy Rollins	PHI	Home-grown (draft)
Randy Johnson	AZ	Free agent
Derrek Lee	CHC	Trade (economic factors)

Of course, I should note that the Pirates got a very good deal for Giles, economic factors and my own skepticism at the time notwithstanding. I'm also willing to call the Drew-Marquis deal a fair one for now, whereas the Derrek Lee-Hee Seop Choi deal was clearly motivated by economics even though Choi is a fine young player. And yes, I'm as amazed as you are to see Mark Loretta on that list. Also, I could be mistaken about whether economics were a big mover in the Jim Edmonds deal.

American League:

Player	Team	Acquired
Gary Sheffield	NYY	Free agent
Hideki Matsui	NYY	Free agent (foreign)
Alex Rodriguez	NYY	Trade (economic factors)
Manny Ramirez	BOS	Free agent
Carlos Guillen	DET	Trade (other team's mistake)
Miguel Tejada	BAL	Free agent
Johan Santana	MIN	Rule V draft
Vladimir Guerrero	ANA	Free agent
Ichiro Suzuki	SEA	Free agent (foreign)
Johnny Damon	BOS	Free agent
Hank Blalock	TEX	Home-grown (draft)
Jose Guillen	ANA	Free agent
Derek Jeter	NYY	Home-grown (draft)
Michael Young	TEX	Trade (other team's mistake)
Travis Hafner	CLE	Trade (other team's mistake)
David Ortiz	BOS	Free agent
Melvin Mora	BAL	Trade (young player acquired for veteran)
Lew Ford	MIN	Trade (prospect acquired for veteran)
Carlos Lee	CHW	Home-grown (draft)
Ivan Rodriguez	DET	Free agent

Yup, Carlos Guillen, Melvin Mora and Lew Ford are still hanging in there. And yes, the Yankees have the top three players in the league. Wonders never cease.

Let's group these, putting the foreign and domestic free agents in one category, as well as lumping together the various types of trades made principally for baseball reasons rather than financial ones.

Method	#
Free agency	14
Economic deals	4
Strategic trades	11
Rule V draft	1
Home-grown	10

Leaving aside the fact that big organizations like the Yankees and Cardinals have an advantage in being able to sign anyone they draft, you've got 45% of star players coming either through free agency or through deals where a big factor was the other team's need to either dump salary or avoid losing a prospective free agent (on the other hand, some free agents, like David Ortiz, were acquired without breaking the bank in a bidding war). For obvious (ahem, Yankees and Red Sox) reasons, the proportion is much higher among AL teams. But savvy trading and scavenging (the Twins stand alone here in stealing Santana off the Rule V draft, but I can't think of a more idiotic and unjustified deal than the Devil Rays trading the rights to Bobby Abreu, acquired in the expansion draft, for Kevin Stocker) is still a close second as a way of striking gold. Just a quarter of the Top 40 are truly home-grown products.

How to explain the Mets' second-half collapse in three easy lessons?

1. Here are the combined post-All-Star Break stats for Mike Piazza, Cliff Floyd, and Richard Hidalgo:

AB	H	2B	3B	HR	R	RBI	BB	K	SB	AVG	SLG	OBP	OPS
467	98	21	0	19	57	59	57	104	9	.210	.377	.296	673

Bear in mind that this is the middle of the Mets' batting order (Jason Phillips and Todd Zeile have been worse). Full second-half batting stats are here.

2. Here are the combined post-All-Star Break stats for Tom Glavine, Al Leiter and Steve Traschsel:

W	L	G	IP	ERA	H/9	HR/9	BB/9	K/9	WHIP
7	16	33	194	4.92	10.30	1.0	4.6	5.2	1.65

Bear in mind that these are the aces of the Mets' staff; Jae Seo and Kris Benson are worse. Full second-half pitching stats are here.

3. Games played by Todd Zeile after the break: 46. Games played by Jose Reyes and Kaz Matsui combined: 43. No, you don't want to see Zeile's numbers, or the Mets' defense without Reyes. You just want to see Zeile retired, and the season over.

Following up on an earlier post, a few diligent readers sent me links to this AP story observing that President Bush - unlike Senator Kerry - has raised a lot of money from baseball owners and, to a lesser extent, baseball players. Of course, given that a lot of these people know Bush personally from his days as owner of the Rangers, that's not all that surprising, nor is it surprising that the owners would, as a result, view Bush as being sympathetic to their interests.

Bill James - yes, Bill James, writing a guest column over at the Hardball Times - makes the obvious-when-you-really-think-about-it point, though to a surprising extent, that the 162 game schedule increases Ichiro's odds on breaking George Sisler's hits record by something like a factor of 9-to-1, whereas it less than doubled Roger Maris' odds of breaking Ruth's home run record (as a matter of probabilities; in practice, you either break the record by Game 154 or you do not).

Link via Pinto.

Peter Gammons can be very frustrating for sabermetrically-inclined readers; he clearly understands and enjoys sophisticated analyses of the game, but he's also prone to Luddite anti-stathead diatribes. As I've often noted, the reason for this is that Gammons will repeat basically anything his sources around the game's front offices tell him, and many of them remain contemptuous of statistical analysis on anything but the most rudimentary level. To give a political analogy, Gammons is David Broder and Bob Novak rolled into one, dispensing the insiders' views from both sides of a raging debate with equal vigor. In fact, given how closely Gammons' columns reflect conventional wisdom, you can measure the influence of sabermetric ideas within the game by how often they show up in Gammons' work as opposed to how often he bashes them.

So, it's welcome to see Gammons picking up on the Hot New Thing, the pursuit of sophisticated defensive statistics and their role in the reshaping of the Oakland and Boston rosters. And, of course, he throws us sabermetric types the ultimate bone at the end:

Statistical analysis, whose roots make Bill James an absolute must for the Hall of Fame . . .

Too true; read the whole thing.

Also, Jim Baker looks at the historical performance of wild card teams in the playoffs, with some surprising results - including the fact that baseball's wild card teams have won more playoff games than they have lost, with a record of 85-79 (or 78-72, if you exlude the 2002 World Series matchup of two wild card teams).

I think there's a simple reason why the Red Sox are going to pull down the Yanks from behind, even trailing by 3.5 games, and win the division:

False hope.

Think: finally slaying the Yankees in the regular season, and coming from behind to do it, is the only way to top last season for giving Sox fans false hope of finally winning it all.

Then they lose to the Wild Card Yankees in the ALCS.

You heard it here first.

Answering a question I asked in late July, the Mets radio announcers noted that tonight's save by Armando Benitez against the Mets, his 11th of the season, established a new record for saves by one pitcher against one team in the same season.

Shoot me now! I demand that you shoot me now!

The Mets have been absolutely unwatchable (or unlistenable, as the case may be) the past few weeks; with the exception of David Wright's at bats, each game seems to fade in my memory almost immediately into a blur of despair. This blog was necessarily going to be tilted more in a political direction than usual in the stretch run to the presidential election, but that's been exacerbated of late by the need to avert my eyes from the train wreck that has been the Mets of late.

It could be a coincidence that uber-groundball pitcher Derek Lowe turned his season around immediately upon the Red Sox ditching Nomar and bringing in glove wizards Orlando Cabrera and Doug Mientkiewicz. Could be, but not likely.

When the deal was made a month ago, I looked at the Hardball Times' Fielding Independent Pitching numbers, which seek to project a pitcher's ERA as if he had an average defense behind him (FIP) compared to the pitcher's actual Runs Allowed, and found significant underperformance by the major Sox pitchers, particularly those with high numbers of ground balls allowed and especially Derek Low:

Pitcher	IP	RA	FIP	+/-	GB/IP
Schilling	145.2	3.58	3.15	+0.43	1.26
Martinez	136.2	4.35	3.96	+0.39	1.19
Lowe	117	7.46	4.83	+2.63	2.31
Wakefield	116.2	5.01	4.63	+0.38	1.59
Arroyo	110.2	5.63	4.32	+1.31	1.27
Foulke	53.2	2.18	3.46	-1.28	1.06
Timlin	53.1	3.71	3.67	+0.04	1.59
Embree	37.2	5.26	4.54	+0.72	1.22
TOTAL	771.1	4.81	4.07	+0.74	1.46

So, how have things gone since the deal?

Pitcher	IP	RA	FIP	+/-
Schilling	43	3.14	4.19	-1.05
Martinez	44	2.45	2.45	0.00
Lowe*	49	4.78	3.67	+1.11
Wakefield	39.1	5.03	6.64	-1.61
Arroyo	33.2	4.81	3.21	+1.61
Foulke	17	1.59	2.12	-0.53
Timlin	11.2	7.71	3.86	+3.85
Embree	6.1	4.26	4.26	0.00
TOTAL	244	4.02	3.87	+0.15

Now, the individual numbers at such small sample sizes are bound to be flukey, although it's clear that Lowe is no longer getting completely murdered by his defense. But the overall conclusion is clear: since the deal, the Sox pitchers are pitching slightly better (as Peter Gammons and others have noted, Lowe's walk rate has dropped dramatically since the deal, perhaps due to greater confidence in his defense), but their defensive support has been dramatically better, as their FIP has dropped by 0.20 R/9IP while their Runs Allowed-FIP margin has dropped by 0.59. Maybe, just maybe, Theo and Bill James & co. know what they are doing.

* - There may be an error in the Hardball Times numbers for Lowe, but I can;t fix it without comparing apples to oranges.

Like many bloggers, I often get emails from people who have started new blogs. I have less and less free time these days to check these out and less and less room on my blogroll for new additions, and frankly - if you're thinking of doing this - while I'm sympathetic to new bloggers, I'm much more interested in getting an email with a link to an interesting post than just "look at my blog."

That said, here's a roundup of people who asked me to pass on a link, most of them baseball blogs; if you're in the mood to go exploring, check them out:

Baseball Addict

College Basketball Blog

The Senseless, Wacky, Crazy, Downright Twisted Dictionary to Major League Baseball

Bijan Bayne (the author of "Sky Kings: Black Pioneers of Professional Basketball")

Ump Is Blind (a humor site)

BaseballAvenue

The Torch (a political site)

Balls, Sticks, & Stuff (Comments on sports...and other stuff too)

I'll have more in part two of this tour in the next few days.