Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay Signing

This is exactly what I recommended the Mets not do -- sign a 31-year-old with bad knees and no glove to patrol Citi's expanse in left and try to match his impressive early production as his body turns to jelly.

It's not that Jason Bay is a wooly mammoth; his career so far (.280/.376/.519) is worth five years and $80 million.  It's just doubtful that Bay in his 30s is going to resemble Bay in his 20s.

Moreover, Citi is the wrong field for  Bay and he's the wrong guy for the Mets. For the pitching staff of Johan Santana and the Seven Dwarfs to improve, it needs better pitchers, not weaker outfielders. Bay's glove will replace Angel Pagan's or Jeff Francoeur's, which is a regressive tax that somewhat offsets the offensive profits. And those profits might be diminished in that homer suppressant of a park.

All that said, this isn't a horrible deal, which Omar Minaya certainly has in him. It ends before Bay's AARP card gets printed and the money isn't crazy talk. Adding him to a rejuvenated Wright, Beltran, and Reyes fattens the lineup, so if the mound corps can't get anyone out, at least the offense has a chance to bail them out.

Still, the Mets are trying to catch the two-time NL champs and they have no idea whether they're bottom-dwellers or contenders. With all the uncertainty in that lineup, it may be that one more good player simply puts them a few more games clear of Washington. I'm not sure that with Bay they can catch the lumberjack-laden lineup in Philly, not to mention improving squads in Miami and Atlanta. That's why I advised the Mets to chill until mid-season, when they can shop, if warranted, at the inevitable fire sale in Cincinatti or Houston or wherever it's going to be this year. It might just be in Queens.

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One note about JBay's career worth mentioning: his 66 steals in 80 attempts is the sign of a very smart baserunner, but it understates the case. In his second year, he made six outs in 10 attempts. Besides that one year, he's earned 62 steals and eight outs. Those kinds of players can never hurt a team.

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The Most Under-Rated Player In Modern History

It's hard to believe that any player in baseball could be over- or under-rated. Most activities on the field involve one player per team at a time and are measured down to the individual nose hair by the Elias Sports Bureau, whose count is duly recorded for posterity by 73 websites staffed by megageeks who atomize the information and subject it all to regression analysis.

Nonetheless, as long as willfully ignorant sportswriters and sportscasters dominate the debate -- and the Hall of Fame vote -- the wrong measurements will remain valued over those that provide a broader, fuller and more accurate picture of player accomplishments.

The profile of an under-rated player is predictable: Sports media over-rates batting average as opposed to on-base percentage, home runs as opposed to double and triples, RBIs as opposed to runs scored, offense as opposed to defense (except in extraordinary situations), steals as opposed to base stealing percentage, accomplishments in an accommodating ballpark (except in extraordinary situations), being prodigious in a particular facet of the game as opposed to demonstrating broad-based excellence, and maybe most of all, playing on a winning team.  In addition, players whose teammates propel them into spotlight games -- specifically the World Series -- in which to demonstrate their transcendence, often bask in that glow.

(This, of course, applies to everyday players, not pitchers. Pitching wins is probably the single most over-rated statistic in baseball, but that's another story.)

Consequently, the quintessential under-rated player toiled for lousy teams and rarely made the playoffs. He batted in a pitchers' park most of his career, hitting lots of doubles and triples, but not a ton of homers. He was an excellent, but not flashy, fielder who stole bases at a very high rate, hit for a good but not great average while walking like a mall rat, scored a mess of runs but never knocked any in. Our particular fellow may have been the second-best lead-off hitter of all time, but played Scottie Pippen to Rickey Henderson's Michael Jordan.

This player belongs in the Hall of Fame, and not the ancillary wing with Jim Rice, Tony Perez, Phil Rizzuto, Don Drysdale, Don Sutton and Bill Mazeroski. Unfortunately, he'll never sniff Cooperstown without a ride from the Albany airport. Last year, his first year of eligibility, he tallied less than 25% of the Hall vote. It might be his high-water mark.

He's Tim Raines, and he's the most under-rated player of my lifetime. Raines was a superman who could do everything well, under the worst circumstances, but we didn't notice, because we were looking at all the wrong things.

Let me quote the great Joe Posnanski, from an epistle supporting his Hall vote for Raines based on peak and lengevity.

From 1983-87 -- (his) five year peak -- he hit .318/.406/.467 for a 142 OPS+, the same OPS+ that Jim Rice had during his five-year peak. During those five years, he averaged 114 runs scored, 34 doubles, 10 triples, 11 home runs and 71 stolen bases a year. He led the league in runs scored twice, batting and on-base percentage once, doubles once, stolen bases twice, and could have won three MVP awards. He had 163 win shares in those five years -- an average of 32.6. Bill (James, the mastermind behind Win Shares) says a 30-win share season is an MVP-type year.

That's not even the half of it. Raines' lifetime slugging percentage is higher than Rickey Henderson's and two points lower than Joe Morgan's, despite playing much of his career in that hangar the Expos called home. He's fifth on the stolen base list, but first all-time in success rate (84.7%) among guys with 300 steals.

Baseball writers use an affective-cognitive-conative approach to Hall of Fame voting. First, they use the smell test: did this guy seem like a Hall of Famer. Raines did not, because we were obsessed with batting average (.294 lifetime) and home runs (130 lifetime) during his career. Then they do their due diligence, noting the mediocrity of his triple crown stats (never more than 71 RBIs in a season.) Then they move on to someone else.

On objective measuring systems, Raines is a front row Hall of Famer. On the aforementioned Win Shares scale, which attempts to determine a player's share of responsibility for team wins, he places 40th all time, ahead of the likes of Johnny Bench, Reggie Jackson, Jackie Robinson, Tony Gwynn, Cal Ripken, Yogi Berra and Paul Waner. Not too shabby.

I know, I know, you don't care about Win Shares.You don't care about OPS or stolen base percentage or any of those fancy doo-dads like VORP and BABIP. I understand. We've got a recession, two wars and nuclear weapons in Iran and North Korea to worry about, and there's no room in your head for a new understanding of how baseball really works. I get that. And that's why Tim Raines will remain under-rated and on the wrong side of the doors to the Hall of Fame.
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Menage a Trois and It Was Good for Everyone

The relatively new field of behavioral economics -- think Freakanomics -- has famously determined that gift-giving is an inefficient use of resources because we value what we receive less than our benefactors pay. To simplify the issue, other people generally don't know our preferences as well as we do.

How we value things is a fascinating topic that's served as fodder for innumerable doctoral theses and at least one Cosby show. It certainly loomed large in the recent blockbuster four-way trade that featured two Cy Young winners and a boatload of prospects. And -- Merry Christmas! -- this is an orgy in which everyone can be satisfied.

One thing we know for sure: relative to expectations, the Toronto Blue Jays are doing the jig over their prospect haul for the small sacrifice of a dismal summer wasting Roy Halladay's talent. In acquiring the Phils' untouchable, Kyle Drabek, they replace Halladay today with a potential Halladay long into the future. Drabek appears to be a year away, and even then, the Jays get to play in the low-price sandbox with him for six years.

Two other highly-regarded minor leaguers changed uniforms in the deal, a catcher and an outfielder whom Toronto flipped to Oakland for a third baseman. I know less about minor leaguers than Donald Trump knows about humility, but the experts give the thumbs-up on this trio. Go back two years and compare the empty basket Minnnesota scooped up from the Mets for the last year of Johan Santana's contract. Then remember that Santana was fresher and better-tasting than Halladay. (Santana was 29 and had added about 23 wins to the Twins compared to a replacement over the previous four years; Halladay is 33 and has been 19-20 wins better than a replacement.)

All of this is predicated on the premise that the BJs can't compete with New York, Boston and Tampa Bay in 2010, even with their ace, so they might as well build for the future. They particularly need to offload some onerous contracts, like Vernon Wells', whose salary -- at $126 million over seven years it's half the annual GDP of Guinea Bissau -- is appropriate only in the sense that he possesses all of Guinea Bissau's offensive firepower.

On the other hand, had Toronto known that Halladay would re-up for just three more years after his current year at $20 million per, they might have signed him and forgone all the agita. Halladay will be 37 when the smoke clears, so he'll have to negotiate his next contract just as his value begins tailing off. Why his agent didn't agitate for a fifth, sixth and seventh year will remain a mystery, unless D.B. Cooper comes forward with the answer.

Over on the banks of the Delaware, they've pulled off a coup by winning the Halladay sweepstakes, inking him to an affordable deal, and adding him to a power-packed lineup. Jettisoning Cliff Lee in order to clear space for Halladay and re-stock the farm is a bit of a head-scratcher, particularly given the lesser reviews of the trio that came back from Seattle. Still, the bottom line is this: the double NL champs improved one tick in '10 with Hallday instead of Lee (add in that Halladay is a northpaw in a rotation listing south), five ticks in '11 with Halladay instead of Drabek, et. al., and fewer ticks -- and maybe a few tocks -- as Halladay ages and the prospects mature.

There has been a lot of teeth-gnashing in Philly about why they couldn't reel in more for Cliff Lee than three lights of the West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx. Although Lee is signed for just one more year and seems poised to hit the free market, his team will get two picks before the second round if Lee bolts. This smacks of an arbitrary payroll ceiling and a severely limited time frame. Without Lee, the Phils are rock and paper; with him they would have been scissors too.

Whatever is the opposite of "collateral damage," that's the Mariners' role. Cliff Lee landed in their pocket, and all they had to do was clean out the lint. Sure Phillippe Aumont and the other prospects might turn out tres bien, but ...Cliff Lee. You make this move everyday of the week and twice on Sunday. Seattle makes another deal or two like this and they'll clinch the AL West by Memorial Day.

In sum, Toronto did better than expected, Philadelphia improved a hair and Seattle put itself back on the map. That's what economists call synergy.

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Addendum to Last Post

I made two assertions yesterday that require correction/explanation. First, I said Javier Vazquez is signed for below-market money next year, $9 million. The Associated Press reports he's due $11.5 million, which is more like market value.

Second, the deal includes 19-year-old right-hander Arodys Vizcaino, the Yankees' second-best prospect out of the Dominican who can crank it up to 97. Prospect watchers say he is the real thing following a short-season stint in which he blew away 52 batters in 41 innings. I'll see him in Charleston in 2010 and let you know, but he's at least three years away.

Finally, an omission that isn't inconsequential: Javier Vazquez is in the last year of his contract, which obviously curtailed his trade value some.

None of this changes the premise of the previous piece. Vazquez was worth a lot more than a spare part and some maybes.

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Not Miguel Cabrera, Mind You

Veteran righty Jason Marquis just signed a $15 million, two-year deal with the Nationals to eat 200 innings with below-average results for an up-and-coming staff. Another veteran rightly, Javier Vazquez, just fetched Melky Cabrera for the Braves in a trade with the Yankees.

What do these two statements have in common? Evidentally, nothing.

In a time when arms are worth their weight in highly-enriched uranium, the Braves parlayed an above-average starter with a below-market contract -- he's due $9 million/year -- for... Melky Cabrera? Is there any commodity more abundant in baseball than fourth outfielders? Didn't they just cut Ryan Church and trade Jeff Francoeur? What, Ryan Spillborghs wasn't available? The Royals wouldn't part with Willie Bloomquist? Gabe Kapler's demanding his own conditioning coach?

This is a miserable waste of a valuable commodity by Atlanta. Frank Wren must have had a plane to catch when he made this deal, because a #3 starter should fetch real value, not the third trombone in the nobody parade.

There were some prospects in this deal, so maybe one of them is the second coming of Joe Dimaggio. Even then, the Braves' plan was supposed to be to flip one of their surplus quality starters for a big banging outfielder who could solidify a gelatin lineup and challenge the Phillies for the division title NOW. What they got was Melky Cabrera, all .274/.336/.416 of him. (That would be the numbers from his best year -- last -- which  marked year five of the "Melky the Future Star" show.) The Braves needed a hitter, not another edition of Garret Anderson.

Here's another data point in the argument against us Yankee haters. Credit Brian Cashman yet again for conning a perfectly respectable GM into giving him a good starter -- Vazquez has been worth 13 wins over the last three years relative to a replacement level pitcher -- in exchange for a replaceable part. This deal had little to do with New York's advantages, monetary or otherwise, and everything to do with Atlanta misjudging the value of a precious commodity.

Melky Cabrera!

Blue Ribbon Red Tape

When I covered state government as a reporter it was commonly known that if the governor didn't want to address an issue, he appointed a committee to study it. The more accolades he heaped on the committee members, the less likely we'd ever hear from them again.

So what does it tell us that Bud Selig has appointed a Blue Ribbon Panel to study...everything?

And what a distinguished panel it is. It could hardly get more distinguished if it comprised Kennesaw Mountain Landis, Abner Doubleday, Connie Mack and Branch Rickey.. No, really. Because the only difference between my group and Bud's is that my group is actually dead.

Bud's committee is the same retreads as every other Blue Ribbon Panel he's ever appointed. A bunch of old owners, a bunch of old executives, a bunch of old managers, a bunch of old players and representing all of fandom, a bunch of old George Will. Is there anything this illustrious group might conclude that they haven't already whispered into Bud's ear? It'd be like appointing your wife to study your sex appeal.

Among the issues this group will purportedly investigate are:

1. Whether there should be expanded instant replay. So is there an umpire on the committee? Uh, well, no.

2. How to speed up the action. So is there a player on the committee? Uh, no.

3. How to attract more young fans. So is there anyone under 40 on the committee? Uh...

4. What to do with the DH. So is there a union member or executive on the committee?

If Bud wants to know how to improve baseball, he could start by getting a Blue Ribbon Panel to tell him how to appoint members of a Blue Ribbon Panel. Of course, that's not the point, is it? What Bud really wants is cover for doing nothing by pointing out that the best minds are working on the great issues facing the game. Then, when they conclude that the solution to all of baseball's problems is a salary cap (of which, admittedly, I'd be fond) the Commish can simply blame others when it doesn't get done.

It's a great strategy for keeping the status quo. But Bud already knew that. The same distinguished gentlemen of his last Blue Ribbon Committee told him so.
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The Greatest Trade In Baseball History

The Seattle Mariners today made the greatest trade in baseball history by aquiring Milton Bradley from the Chicago Cubs for Carlos Silva.

"Are you nuts?" says you. "Bradley is a brittle cancer with a $33 million price tag." You are correct, sir (or madam, as the case may be.) But Carlos Silva is to strikeouts what Tiger Woods is to fidelity. Carlos Silva is  a major league pitcher like I am a Mongolian loofah sponge. And Silva is selling for the low, low price of $23 million over two years, plus the $2 million sendoff required for him to slink into oblivion in 2012.

Last year, the 30-year-old righty took the mound for a grand total of eight games. This was a blessing for the Ms, because in the 30 innings he managed to stay upright, opposing hitters uncorked a .324 BA against him and crossed the plate 29 times. Silva earned every bit of his 8.60 ERA, striking out 10 batters, one fewer than he walked. He accomplished this feat in one of the best pitching parks in the AL.

Of course, that was an off-year for him. In '08, Silva limited opposing hitters to a .330 batting average and sported a snazzy 4-15, 6.46 line. In '06, Silva went 11-15, 5.94 for Minnesota and held the league to a .326 batting average. In other words, against Carlos Silva, a utility infielder is Albert Pujols.

It's easy to see why Carlos Silva can't retire major league hitters: he doesn't have major league stuff. Good pitchers whiff a batter an inning. Marginal pitchers fan six per nine. Over his eight-year career, Silva sent 3.78 per nine down on strikes. That stinks like a limburger fart.

In fact, it's worse than that. In his last 100 starts over four years, Silva has been seven losses worse than a replacement level pitcher --  a guy out of triple-A who's getting sent back as soon as Eric Bedard comes off the DL. That is fantasmagorically abysmal. That is Double-A demotion abysmal. But since Silva earns 28.75 times as much as the President of the United States, Mariners brass was loathe to kick him to the curb.

In other words, the Mariners, who receive $6 million of Tom Ricketts' money in the deal, got Carlos Silva to go away for $2 million. What a racket! Milton Bradley could trot out to left field, moon Bill Gates, take the collar, boot the winning hit, flip off the crowd, spew expletives to the media, tip over the post-game spread and spontaneously combust, all in his first game in Seattle and still qualify as a bargain compared to his trade dopleganger. The Mariners swapped Phyllis Diller for Lindsey Lohan. You do the math.

If, instead, Bradley plays 100 games before inevitably getting hurt and hits his lifetime average of .370/.450 while clogging up the DH spot, he'll be worth four more wins than Silva. That ain't chicken scratch for a team that is a bat or two from favorite status in the AL West.

All this is just the capper on a great off-season for Seattle. They were the beneficiaries of the Phils' sudden Cliff Lee allergy and they inked Chone Figgins away from archrival Los Angeles. That creates a formidable rotation fronted by Felix Hernandez, Cliff Lee and Eric Bedard, if healthy. (Granted, that's like saying the Tigers have an outfield that includes Ty Cobb, if alive. But Bedard's due to hit the 150-inning mark one of these decades.) They add Figgins and Bradley to Ichiro and Franklin Guttierez, plus a little pop from Russ Branyan, and suddenly you have a team with great starters, the best defense in the league, and an offense that no longer conjures up images of -- Tinkerbell. Still, I think Seattle is a bopper away from beating the Angels and Rangers.

I'm not sure that big bopper is on the free agent market this year, but since Lee is only signed for one more season, M's GM Jack Zduriencik might be willing to empty the farm for Adrian Gonzalez, whom the Padres have offered for the right prospect haul. In any case, there could be some meaningful games this September at Safeco for the first time since 2001. If that's the case, Pacific Northwest denizens can thank The Greatest Trade In Baseball History for helping make it possible, even if Milton Bradley spends the 2010 season orbiting Pluto.
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Pre-thinking Analysis

In the neighborhood in which I grew up, populated by a heterogeneous mix of wise guys, it was a rare occurrence indeed to achieve the completion of any sentence that began with an exceedingly stupid premise.

For example, suppose while analyzing the Phillies' decision to trade for Roy Halladay and jettison Cliff Lee, someone on your street were to note that Cliff Lee was a great "post-season pitcher." The vapidity of this statement could not be overlooked or remain unchallenged. Barely would the speaker have reached his sentence's conjunction than the entire assembly would be riding him verbally for his badly-misfiring neurons. Were he to persist, a noogie, wedgie or purple nurple would be in order.

Evidently, street rules are not in force on sports talk radio. All yesterday my radio spat out the knuckleheaded assertion that Philly was giving up a "great post-season pitcher" for one who had not proven himself, as if this were a viable measurement like team winning percentage or doubles. I kept waiting for someone knowledgeable to interject a polite point of information that, well, "post-season pitcher" is a figment of the host's imagination.

To be sure, Cliff Lee has been a lights-out pitcher in the post-season -- that is, in the FIVE PLAYOFF GAMES he has pitched during his six-year career. He's been a lights-out pitcher for most of the past two seasons, when he's posted ERAs of 2.54 and 3.22. Which proves only the following: Cliff Lee is good.

News flash: Roy Halladay's not too shabby either. You might just say he's the mound king of the junior circuit, or was until joining Johan Santana in the NL. In his 12-year career, Halladay has a 3.43 ERA with three times as many strikeouts as walks. If you want to know what kind of "post-season pitcher" Halladay would be, allow me to give you a preview: if he pitched enough innings, he would have about a 3.43 ERA with three times as many strikeout as walks.

Of course there are other variables in the post-season. It always comes at the end of a 162-game schedule, so players who wear out might have less success in the playoffs. The competition tends to improve, so players who feast on the league's bottom-dwellers and hangers-on would tend to scuffle. The weather begins to turn cold and there are longer layoffs than during the regular season. Probably least of all the differences is the one sports talk hosts weigh most heavily: there is a lot riding on the outcomes of post-season games.

The spotlight cuddles up to some personalities and repels others, but any athlete who has advanced to the Major Leagues has been through hundreds of "critical" games. It's really quite a rare player who "chokes" or "steps up." Mostly, players play, and the vagaries of the game sometimes loom larger when we're paying special attention than when we're not.

I'll probably have something to say about this intriguing array of interlacing trades, but you can be sure it won't have anything to do with who is a good "post-season pitcher."

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An Homage to Ed Wade

And so draws the curtain on the December finals-time hiatus...

The Hot Stove percolates more actively this millennium and with more onlookers. Some observations:

The Braves offered their impressive relief tandem of Rafael Soriano and Mike Gonzalez arbitration, knowing they wouldn't accept, and then reeled in Billy Wagner and Takashi Saito with reasonable one-year deals. The applecart overturned when Soriano cheated Atlanta of the draft picks by accepting arbitration. Keeping all three, while not the worst idea if you're New England's team, or Orange County's, is cost prohibitive for the Braves. But I'm surprised by the bag of chips they got in return for Soriano, especially considering how badly Atlanta needs hitting.

Chief Nakahoma barely broke a sweat last year celebrating Brave home runs, and Chipper isn't getting and more chipper as the years pile on. (Join the club, Larry.) Atlanta's usually deft GM, Frank Wren, should be able to parlay his unique pitching surplus for a couple of guys who can swing the bat pretty much anywhere but shortstop or catcher. I don't know why he didn't dangle Soriano as bait for such. Word on the street is that he's willing to part with Javier Vazquez or Derek Lowe. Perhaps one of those guys for a proven slugger like Josh Hamilton or a group of positional prospects.

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Time for the yang on all the Yankee-bemoaning yin:

For all their significant advantages, the Yankees certainly haven't skimped on the brass. Brian Cashman has once again cranked the machinery on a three-way deal that brings to the Bronx something for nothing. In relinquishing prospects Austin Jackson, Phil Coke and Ian Kennnedy, and middle reliever Brian Bruney, to fill their single biggest major league need -- center field -- Cashman has improved his club without sacrifice. Curtis Granderson is young, affordable (as if that matters) and valuable on both sides of the ball. The prospect status of Jackson, Coke and Kennedy had begun running out and Bruney is an inter-changeable part. Kennedy alone among that group might have delivered value to the Yankees, but unlikely the value -- tomorrow -- that Granderson will deliver.

The move has a second benefit for NY: it moves Melky Cabrera and Brett Gardner into part-time, defensive replacement, pinch runner roles for which they are better-suited. It also leaves the Yankee minor league cupboard almost completely bare, but when has that been a problem?

We can whine all we like about Steinbrenner domination of MLB world, but if all it took to get Granderson were these guys and some imagination, any team could have swung the deal. Credit Cashman for getting there first.

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The Brewers should consider trading Prince Fielder.

There, I said it. Milwaukee isn't positioned to contend in the next two years, not with that pitching staff, and they won't be able to afford the portly basher when he hits the free agent market. His body type and fielding challenges suggest a rapid drop-off in his 30s, so why not package him following a gargantuan year for a couple of major league pitchers, which would be one more than they currently sport. The Beerman's two best starters in '09 were Yovani Gallardo and "ppd. rain."

They have to find someone to overvalue Fielder, i.e., someone who believes his future value is reflected in his present line of .299/.412/.602, 46 home runs. For just these situations God created people like Ed Wade, the general manager who just spent $15 million on a middle reliever, apparently unaware that his roster in Houston boasts a grand total of five, mostly overpaid, Major League position players. It is the Ed Wades of baseball on whom competent GMs like Doug Melvin feast, and it's time for a little Thanksgiving in Milwaukee.

Not that I'm suggesting that Melvin pursue a deal with Houston. Other than Wandy Rodriguez, I don't know what the Astros could offer the Brewers, and I'm not sure they would part with their only above-average, below-35 pitcher. In fact, the Astros' roster probably comprises the worst combination of ability and age in the majors, so I'm not sure they could be anyone's trading partner, though I suspect there's some wool that Theo Epstein or Andrew Friedman (Tampa Bay) could pull over their eyes. Maybe Wade would like another aged star for Hunter Pence or Michael Bourne.

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You haven't heard much about the Metropolitans this off-season and the reason is clear: no one knows what they have. If their three injured superstars return good as new, the Mets are a player in the NL East, not withstanding their pitching woes. But if David Wright's mystical power outage persists, Jose Reyes loses a quarter-of-a-step and Carlos Beltran begins sliding down Father Time's greasy slope, it could be a long and painful decade in Queens.

Assuming some kind of return to normalcy, the Mets can probably win with their current lineup, even if it's not firing on all cylinders. The mound corps needs an overhaul, but it's important that the Mets don't pile more leaden contracts into a team station wagon already in need of a tune-up. The question is whether the help they need for Johan Santana comes in the form of a refurbished Pelfrey and Maine or outside assistance.

If I were Omar Minaya, I'd lay in the weeds this off-season, strategically inking some inexpensive B-level deals to bolster the staff while moving a year closer to sloughing off the more burdensome contracts. That will give the brass a season to assess their team and a better free agent landscape in which to get busy next year. If that means another poor performance in '10, at least it's not a drain on future flexibility.

That's it for now. I'll have more Hot Stove musings between semesters as things develop.

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Major League Lily-Gilding

Just in case you're still munching on that old chestnut about the Yankees not being the only team with  financial advantages, here comes Exhibit Z: Roy Halladay will reportedly approve a one-way ticket to NY despite an ixnay on the adetray in his contract.

If I recall correctly, NY is not shorthand for Cincinnati. Or more pertinently, for Boston or Anaheim. The Yankees don't just flash the most Benjamins; they also offer Broadway, a market of 40 million eyeballs, outfield monuments and 27 shiny rings. It gives them advantages that even free-spending competitors will never have.

That Toronto would dump their ace on their own division just demonstrates how miserably desperate they are. NY is reportedly prepared to trade some prospects before they sign Halladay to another mega-contract, but there is no way the Blue Jays get anything like equal value. Roy Halladay is literally worth more than the entire Yankee farm system, which right now has three serious prospects, one of whom lacks a position.

There is some serious lily-gilding here, and I'm not talking about the pitching staff in the Bronx. We don't actually need any more evidence that the playing field is tilted steeply towards the Yankees. But that's what a Halladay-to-NYY transaction would be. At the rate we're going, why don't they just have the AL All-Star Team play in pinstripes. Imagine how exciting and unexpected it would be if they win the World Series.

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Never The Answer

If being a great baseball player sold short because his team stinks is matter, Allen Iverson was anti-matter.

In baseball, insightful analysts recognize that no one player is responsible for his team's success or failure. The reason is obvious: he occupies one position on the field, one spot in the batting order, one slot in a five-man rotation. In a game that mostly aggregates individual performances, he's not one of the individuals in the match-up 80% of the time. (The same for football: for all the impact a quarterback has, he's got his helmet on the bench next to him most of the game.)

In hoops, one player can be on the court all game. He might have the ball in his hands half the time on offense. He can be the difference between mediocre and great, bad and very good, dismal and promising.

On the other hand, basketball, like football, is a sport of synergistic team performance. Every player's actions affects the team dynamic in a way that no shortstop can on a strikeout, walk, home run, grounder to third, fly ball to right, etc.

Which brings us to the case of Allen Iverson, perhaps the most over-rated player in NBA history. Iverson, who apparently retired today, was unquestionably an entertaining uber-talent. But even at the peak of his nearly-transcendant skills, he was a drain on his teams.

New basketball analysis, fired by the imaginations that gave us sabermetrics in baseball, recognizes that it's not so much about how many points you score, but how efficiently your team scores them when you are contributing. Because Iverson's monopoly of the ball cast a shadow on the rest of his team, it was particularly significant that he sucked up so many possessions to score his 30-points-a-game. If the guy with the rock isn't maximizing the value of his teammates, he's diminishing the team, not enhancing it.

Iverson's supporters would point out that he accumulated assists like they were illegitimate children. That's a valid point, but again, he needed nearly all the teams' possessions to do so. His assist efficiency was low, crowding out the rest of the team's opportunities to create assist situations. On top of that, Iverson treated defense like it was...practice.

I don't believe it's a coincidence that in his one year of "college" -- (from what I understand, he never attended any classes) -- Georgetown flamed out in the playoffs despite a roster of NBA players, or that his Olympic squad's participation was a debacle, or that none of his NBA teams won a title, and only one accomplished much of anything.

All during Iverson's career, I argued that I wouldn't want him on my team. It wasn't the ghetto attitude, the disdain of practice, the ball-hawking, the tatoos, the injuries or the off-court dysfunctions that put me off, per se. Allen Iverson could only function as the center of his team's universe -- as his late career vividly demonstrated -- but building a team around him was a guarantee of failure, or limited success anyway. A mix of hard-working  players who share the ball, know their roles, and play together to score, rebound, get to the stripe and defend is a much more potent formula.

This stands in stark contrast to the misguided argument that one baseball player (or football or hockey player) is superior to another because of his ring count. There's plenty of information documenting all this, if you care enough to know.

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Right, Right, Right and . . . Hey!

What's going on here? When do the pigs start flying?

First the writers correctly pin the Cy Young medal on Zack Greinke and his 14 wins. Better yet, there's nary a misguided dissenter.

Then, offered up a bevy of delicious NL Cy treats, they choose the tastiest morsel in Tim Lincecum. I could not have blamed them if they had picked the shiny new Chris Carpenter or even the nicely wrapped Adam Wainright. But give them credit for finding the narrow distinction among the three.

The NL MVP will be a coronation. Long Live the King, the former Prince Albert. That one isn't close. Nor is the AL award, and from all I hear, the writers will validate Joe Mauer's season with the official secret MVP decoder ring.

Hey, this isn't supposed to happen. Sportswriters and broadcasters have an unblemished 30-year record of not knowing what they're talking about. This is no time to end the streak.

What are cranks like me going to do if the writers detour from their bouts of lunacy and lustily declare that the earth is round? There's no news or intrigue in that.

Well, for now, there's still enough fodder for a blog. But I'm thinking that I'll hang it up in 2011, maybe spend the extra time making movies with Oprah.

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Congratulations, You're Fired

Jim Tracy and Mike Scioscia were named Managers of the Year yesterday. Which means, of course, that they'll be fired. Nearly every manager is, eventually.

Sportswriters voting for manager of the year is like frequent fliers voting for pilot of the year. They can measure whether landings equals takeoffs, but beyond that, how can they possibly assess the work of the nominees when most of it takes place in private?

The primary job of a team manager is to be a leader, to keep his team productive and on-task over 162 games.(Or as Casey Stengel famously observed, to keep the two guys who hated him from the 23 who weren't sure.) While managers make some strategic decisions, most of them are rote. Over the course of a year, the difference between a good strategist and a bad one is probably two or three games. That means a league's best manager -- whatever "best" means -- could be hiding behind a 60-102 record.

Were Scioscia and Tracy better leaders of men this year than Bobby Cox, Joe Torre, Tony La Russa, Joe Girardi, Jim Leyland and Hugo Chavez? This award suggests that sportswriters know the answer. In fact, what they know is how managers' teams performed compared to expectations, and vote accordingly. But the correlation between managerial skill and performance versus expectation is pretty weak.

In truth, if the award were for great managing, the same guys would win every year. If Tony La Russa is a genius, he's more or less a genius every year and should be Manager of the Year as often as Albert Pujols, the best player, wins the MVP. (Actually, Pujols has 400 competitors, La Russa just 15, so the skipper should pretty much monopolize the trophy.)

There's no question that Jim Tracy made some key moves that transformed the team from rocks to rockets when he inherited the Rockies from Clint Hurdle this summer. He also had to have caught lightning in a bottle, for which he got undue credit and now sports some nifty hardware. Players say they'd run through walls for Scioscia, and he obviously handled the aftermath of Nick Adenhart's death deftly, but it doesn't hurt that Jared Weaver, John Lackey and Joe Saunders can hurl.

Three of the last six Managers of the Year have been fired, so apparently the smartest skippers turned to dolts in two years' time. Either that or sportswriters don't really know what they're voting for.
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Most Valuable Parttimer

I posted this blog...to the wrong site...the day after the World Series. Probably not worth resurrecting, but, well, you're getting your money's worth regardless.

Ultimately, the vote for MVP of the World Series has all the clout of an Afghan election. Seven games -- or two pitching starts -- is not exactly a barometer of anything.

Bestowing the honor on a player who batted in three games and fielded in none takes us from the ridiculous to the...um...really ridiculous. Hideki Matsui basically earned the trophy for getting three hits in the culminating event. Woo!

More to the point, it adds another data point against the wisdom that there are "big game" players, or that one guy is great in the post-season and another guy is not. It's just absurd to assume that a player's batting average or ERA in two playoff series is indicative of anything beyond those games themselves.

Which is why great players sometimes fare poorly in the playoffs and vice versa. It's not a character flaw; it's a small sample. Or maybe it's pitching match-ups, which is what put Ryan Howard on ice this World Series. The Yankees threw four lefties at him, and while Howard is Samson against righties, he swings a stickball bat against southpaws.

I'm sure there is a three game stretch in Horace Clarke's career when he went eight-for-13. And I'd be shocked if Babe Ruth never went one for 22 with nine strikeouts at various junctions in his career. Nonetheless, in case you hadn't heard, Ruth finished several spots ahead of Clarke in Hall of Fame voting.

This case was long ago made and proven, but you'd never know it from baseball writers and sportscasters, who continue to congratulate Alex Rodriguez for "stepping up," loosening up" or "coming up big." It's another example of ignorance being the dominant force in the profession.

Running of the Sports Media Bulls

On Sunday, Bill Belichick eschewed a punt on fourth and two from his 29 yard line with 2:03 on the clock and a six point lead. The tactic failed and the Colts scored the winning touchdown with 13 seconds left. On Monday, not to mention Tuesday through Friday, the recriminations flew.

This is a baseball post: I promise.

You can imagine the blowback from a coaching decision that defies conventional wisdom and then backfires. What particularly bemuses me is how the sports media has infused this decision with a moral characteristic. Repeatedly the decision is being called "arrogant."

This is a baseball post: I promise.

The advanced analysis of sabermetrics have been around for 30 years. But in the football universe, this kind of research is new. It'll be 20 years, at least, before the sports media figures it out. But here's what is already known about situations like this: If his goal was to win the game, Belichick's decision was easily defensible.

I won't crunch all the numbers for you, but on average, teams make fourth and two about 60% of the time. They prevent teams from entering the end zone from 30 yards out about 30% of the time. From 70 yards out, that number increases to about 70%. So on average, going for it could be expected to yield success 72% of the time (60% + [30%x40%]), about the same as punting.

It's important here to note that these are facts, not matters of opinion. People will argue against the above with "logic," but they are dueling with spirits. Conventional wisdom has been proven wrong by the experience of thousands of NFL games.

Of course, these are not "average"teams. The Boy Horses had scored touchdowns on their last two possessions and have this special Peyton tool they use to carve up defenses in the final minutes. The Patriots spin fourth and two into gold like Rumpelstiltskin. There was more reward and less risk than usual to going for it. It was a much better decision than "on average."

Aside: In fact, teams punt way too much in general. There should be virtually no punting at all between the 40s, because the real estate gain does little to decrease the odds of the opponent scoring. But giving up the ball reduces the chances of your team scoring nearly to zero. New research has found this to be fact. It's not debatable.

This is a baseball post: I promise.

Not content to be ignorant about football, the sports media feels the need to demonstrate ignorance about psychology. They've decided that because Bill Belichick appears arrogant, his decision must have been borne of arrogance. How else could he knuckle up his head so badly? I don't know how a decision designed to advance your team's interests can be "arrogant" or "humble." I don't know how it could be "generous" or "miserly." Or "weak" or "strong" or "tall" or "short" or "happy" or "sad." Calculations like his are either made with good information or not, either well-considered or not, and turn out either well or poorly. It's just another effort of the sports media to explain away what it doesn't understand by applying tags that are impossible to disprove.

So how is this a baseball post? The running of the football bull is perfectly analogous to the baseball kingdom, where most of the sports media still, 30 years after the proofs were written, doesn't understand that some conventional wisdom is wrong. Bunting is often a bad strategy. RBI are a team event. Pitcher wins are so close to meaningless that no one believes they're just friends. Great players go through cold streaks and hangers-on can get hot.

Adding character overtones doesn't shed any light on the subject. If, for example, Barry Bonds hits under .200 in a couple of playoff series, concluding that he "chokes" or "isn't a big game guy" or "hasn't stepped up" doesn't make you an analyst, it makes you a phony. Barry Bonds hit under .200 over a dozen games hundreds of times in his career, but no one noticed because they hadn't viewed those dozen games distinctly from others. (It's worth noting that Bonds hit like Manny Pacquiao in the Giants' 2005 World Series run.)

So the reaction to Belichick was a microcosm of how sports media covers baseball and explains it to fans. It is, in short, a fraud, a daily series of malpractice cases for which no one has ever been held accountable, and people who commit this malpractice are lauded for their perspicacity and insight regularly. But as maybe the greatest coach in NFL history can tell you, they don't know what they're talking about.

A Love Letter

Dear Junior,

To everything there is a season under heaven. A time to be born, a time to die. A time to reap, a time to sow.

A time to retire. That was last year. I swear it's not too late. Please.

You batted .214/.324/.411 during your swan song in Seattle. That's Gerardo Parra territory. You know Gerardo Parra? Me either.

As an ancient Mariner, you're an albatross. Worse, you're getting worse. You're so limited in the field that your DH defense stinks. So does your attendance. The dog eats your homework, not to mention your hamstring, a lot.

Give yourself a 40th birthday present next week. Trade yourself to your family. Watch Trey play high school ball. Talk old times with dad. Watch games in HD on your home projection sytem. Curse at Joe Morgan.

Please. Don't make us cut you.

Love,
Baseball Fans
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A Word To the Unwise

Have you ever gone shopping for an item that you need and look forward to purchasing, only to discover that the available options at the moment aren't quite what you had in mind? Your two choices are to buy the best option available at the moment to quench your immediate desire, or to wait for what you really want at an advantageous price.

That's what awaits most teams in this year's free agency market. Teams trolling for top talent should pull up their nets and wait to cast next year.

Look at the biggest names on the free agent wire. Matt Holliday, Chone Figgins, Vladimir Guerrero, Jermaine Dye, Pedro Martinez, Bengi Molina, Miguel Tejada, Jasopn Bay. Presumably some combination of Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui will be on the market too.

The natural inclination is to pay top dollar for the best free agent on the market, but that would be a mistake this year. Forking over Yankee-level bucks for Holliday's 263 at bats in a Redbird uniform would be the equivalent of chasing a hot stock. It would be an exercise in wishful thinking to expect him to produce a 1.023 OPS ever again.

Beyond that, who's on the list? Role players and has-beens. Don't get me wrong: Molina and Figgins are really good role players. Pedro and Vlad are really weres. Pick them up for a specific purpose, but don't bust the bank for them.Jason Bay is a delicious treat; winning his hand may require an unwarranted entree price.

The free agent wire hasn't cornered the market on available players, of course. Roy Halladay, just to name one game changer, can be had in a trade. You'd roll out kegs of coin for him, depending on what the Blue Jays demand in return. Halladay and his six or seven wins above a replacement pitcher could be the difference between missing the playoffs and winning a world championship for teams on the cusp.

But teams should be wary of that too. The case of the Yankees is instructive. New York passed -- the Yankees can have almost any player they want, so nearly anytime they fail to woo a free agent or consummate a trade they can be said to be passing on the deal -- on a swap with the Twins for Johan Santana. No doubt, the best pitcher in baseball would have gotten the Bombers into the playoffs last year, but the price of Phil Hughes and other young players might have cost New York its title this year and beyond.

Instead, the team horded its cash and got the wider, less delicate version of Santana in CC Sabathia. It just required a little patience. Imagine that -- the Yankees winning with patience.

The corollary to all this is that some great parts will be on the market this year, potentially at reasonable prices if teams are deft. Nick Johnson, for example,  could be a nice complementary player shuttled between first and DH, a defensive replacement and pinch hitter who can take a walk when you need it. But paying him as if he'll ever play a full season is folly. Joel Pineiro might be a nice #4 starter if a team can get him at #4 starter cost, but last year's 3.49 ERA is more likely fluke than trend.

The smart teams know all this and are preparing to sign no one if the market goes bonkers again. But someone will go all Alex Rios/VernonWells/Gary Matthews Jr. and empty the club's pockets for a mediocre player following one anamolous year. Hope it's not your team.

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Whoop-de-Doo

So what have we learned? The team with advantages at every level and in every aspect of development wins. What could be more anti-climatic than that? It's as if we put a marble on a three-legged table and got excited about it rolling off the lowest side.

I'm not the first, last or loudest to bemoan this year's World Series purchase. I'm just amused by the response. Don't blame the Yankees; they're playing by the rules and doing everything they can to win. You'd want your team to do the same thing.

That's precisely the point. By the rules of Major League Baseball, it's the Yankees' league and everyone else gets to play in it. Allowing the team in the largest market with the deepest tradition and the most money to exploit its position to the exclusion of almost everyone else is uninteresting, unfair, and detrimental to the long-term interest of the sport. The Yankees have played in 40 of the 86 World Series since 1923. Even Yankee fans should be sick of them.

Listen to Yankee fans themselves. They reminisce about the last championship, as if it were eons ago. They wail about the long drought. It's been eight years, during which time they reached the World Series twice and the playoffs seven times. Good god, even Moses waited 40 years, and he didn't have a DH.

Baseball desperately needs a mechanism to level the playing field -- at all levels of the game -- or risk losing fans in all those cities that haven't sniffed the championship for a generation.
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Hanging Chad

For all the chatter about Joe Girardi's "mistake" in sending out AJ Burnett on three days' rest, let me say this: unless you were decrying the "mistake" before the game, shut up.

I'd love to hear the case for pitching Chad Gaudin instead of Burnett before Game Five. Before knowing how the game turned out. But just after you found out what exactly a Chad Gaudin is. Should a guy with 75 career starts, a lifetime 4.50 ERA (5.50 in the NL) and a 1.6 K/BB ratio start ahead of a guy with 244 career starts, a 3.84 ERA (3.64 in the NL) and a 2.2 K/BB ratio who had already slammed the door once on the opponent?

Joe Girardi had to weigh the potential effectiveness of the former on two weeks' rest against the latter on three days rest. He lives and works with these guys, and knows their physical and emotional makeup. It's a manager's job to make exactly these kinds of judgments, and Girardi has shown a facility for considering the right information before casting his votes.

You don't know Gaudin and Burnett, don't work with them and aren't paid to make such judgments. So unless you argued prospectively that Gaudin was the man, you haven't earned the right to criticize what didn't work.
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Time for the Mercy Rule?

So has Rudy Giuliani thrown himself off a bridge yet? Anybody check old man Steinbrenner's pulse recently? Because in case you haven't heard, the Yankees are now doomed like the Gosselin kids. People who picked Yankees in five, as I did, are now switching to Phillies in three.

New York fell in Game One. In the Bronx. So all is lost. Just as it was against the Braves in '96, when they were the underdogs and they came up on the short end in the first two games at home.

Okay, maybe last night was a solitary game, but the trend lines don't look good. After all, over their last three contests, the Yankees are playing .333 ball -- worst in the Majors. ARod's made four consecutive outs. If he keeps that up, he'll go 0-28 in a seven-game series.

And tonight it's AJ Burnett against Pedro Martinez. Had NY won Game One, the analysis of Game Two would look like this: Pedro is old. He's not the same pitcher he was when Britney Spears was a virgin. Burnett has electric stuff. Then Pettitte and Sabathia and lights out.

In the shadow of one defeat, here's the conventional wisdom: Pedro has found new life. Burnett is inconsistent. He's never been a big game pitcher. Philadelphia has wrested away home field advantage.

Even people with severe bi-polar disorder don't skip from euphoria to depression every day. It's got to make you dizzy.

Far be it for me to break up a good dose of mental illness, but might I mention that the Phillies won because a single pitcher threw a great game, and he'll be starting only once more in the Series?

Haha, silly logical guy! That doesn't fill up a three-hour radio show! You don't need a Baseball Analyst to tell you that it's just one game. Baseball Analysts make their money revealing things that have no basis in fact, and so can't be disproved. Things like, ARod is tightening up. (Apparently Kate Hudson's spell has worn off.) Things like, you'd rather have Ryan Howard (batting average this year vs. lefties: .204) than Mark Teixeira at first base in the playoffs because Tex lacks post-season experience. (This nugget came from Rob Dibble, a veritable font of non-sequiturs.)

I can't wait until tomorrow's analysis if the Yankees win Game Two.
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Are You (World) Serious?

Could baseball have it any more wrong in the playoffs? It's as if Bud Selig were working for the NFL.

They play 2430 games during the regular season, almost all of them in pristine conditions. If it's freezing or raining, they postpone the game.

In the playoffs, when the World Championship is on the line, they play in rain and cold together. They play in insect infestations. What's next, slaying of the first born? Game One of the World Series this year, and Game Three last year, were both mockeries, with fans huddling and players squinting through the elements in their long sleeves. You think steroids corrupted the great history of baseball? How about outfielders running through ponds during the World Series?

In the regular season, teams play six days out of seven. They need at least a four starters, and often five. In the playoffs, when the mettle of the finest clubs are being tested, they alter the game. Scheduling contests every other day -- as if it were yoga class -- creates an advantage for teams with thin staffs. Scheduling four-five-six-day breaks between series simulates -- what? The All-Star break, perhaps. Think how many showers Manny could take.

The one change MLB should make to the playoffs -- schedule East Coast games at 7:00 p.m. -- is the one overlooked. The result is that only the unemployed -- admittedly a growing cohort -- can watch to the end. When fans can't see the conclusions of the most consequential contests of the season, they lose ownership and interest in the sport.

Maybe it's a coincidence that the last good World Series was eight years ago. Maybe it's not. But let's not argue about it in the freezing rain.
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Coupla Quick Notes

Vlad Guerrero just keeps getting more embarrassing. I just watched him hit a slow roller up the middle that Derek Jeter ran down on the outfield grass facing the wrong way, twist his body sideways and snap off a half-speed throw that Guerrero beat by the width of Joe Buck's objectivity. The play took four minutes and forty-eight seconds; an overweight ant running uphill through molasses could have beaten that one out by two strides.

Then Guerrero removes his batting helmet and puts on his bonehead, getting himself doubled off first when Nick Swisher caught a lollipop in shallow right and found the baserunner languidly trespassing in the second base hole. If Bobby Cox were the manager of the Angels he'd have walked to first base to yank his DH from the game.

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Remember that choker, Alex Rodriguez? He's batting .419 with five homers as I write this, including several key hits. How has he turned it around?

It's obvious: Kate Hudson. No wait, it's that he finally unburdened himself about steroid use. No, no, it's Derek Jeter's leadership. No wait...

No, wait. ARod is one of the 20 greatest players of all time. A guy like that is going to endure cold spells, as he has in other playoff appearances, but he's inevitably going to get hot for nine games (so far). This performance isn't surprising; in fact, it was inevitable.

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I'm not put off much by umpires blowing judgment calls. Law enforcement professionals know that eye witnesses are extraordinarily poor at correctly identifying crime scene details and that their testimony is almost completely unreliable. (That doesn't stop them from using eye witnesses when it's advantageous to them.) Any of us would blow our share of safe/out, fair/foul, ball/strike plays that are measured in millimeters at full speed.

But umpires not knowing the rules is unconscionable.

It's now happened twice in the ALCS -- and I can't help but notice that both times the break went to the Yankees. The Who's On Third routine in Game 5 wasn't ultimately determinative, but the Game 2 goof on a wild pitch that went into the stands cost LA the game and altered the series.

I don't think it's anything but a coincidence; still, how can I be sure?

Ultimately, we can talk all we want about replays, but before we do, how about employing umps who know the rules?

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The Fox crew has made a point of reminding us that the Yankees haven't been to the World Series since way back in 2003. Oh, the suffering!

I'm sure all the fans in Pittsburgh and Kansas City are sobbing in sympathy and reaching for their checkbooks to send a donation. The same in Seattle. And in Dallas. And Toronto, Baltimore, Minnesota, Oakland, Anaheim, Atlanta, Washington, Cincinnati, San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Queens and Chicago's North Side.
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A Brief Digression

When I was in college, there was no Division 1A college football league (or FCS, god helps us). The Ivy League was a Division 1 football league just like the Big 12. (Except that there was no Big 12 then; there was a Big Eight featuring Oklahoma and Nebraska and a Southwest Conference featuring Arkansas and Texas and the two merged, spilling non-complaint programs into other conferences like the Southeast and yet-to-be-formed Mountain West and Conference USA. But I digress from my digression.)

One year, one or another collection of student-athletes representing an Ivy League school got off to a 4-0 start and was ranked in the Top 25, or at least that's how I vaguely remember it. For certain, they got a significant number of votes (not amount of votes, for you sports reporters who don't know grammar from your Gramma) for defeating the likes of Brown, Army and Lafayette.

Today, of course, the division distinction makes it obvious to us that even an undefeated Ivy League team probably couldn't beat the worst Big Ten team on its worst day, and certainly couldn't compete with a middle-of-the-pack BCS program, much less merit a Top 25 ranking. It's absurd. But absent any guides, some voters saw the record and put Yale or Penn or whoever it was on their big board.

All of which I've been reminded of lately as the radio and TV sports talkers bandy about hypothetical runs of the table for some teams -- notably Cincinnati, TCU and Boise State -- and, in many cases, bemoan the injustice of keeping them out of a championship game despite their unblemished won-loss record. The argument that an undefeated team should get some automatic bonus reward is just as absurd as voting an Ivy League team into the Top 25.

The truth is that as long as we don't have a playoff system or an objective way of comparing teams in far-flung conferences, we have to rely on subjective measures, like watching them play. If all we're examining is a team's record, we can have monkeys vote for the national champion, which is what we did in 1984, when a BYU squad that wasn't one of the 10 best teams in America was awarded the championship based on a zero in the loss column in a third-rate league and a signature win in the last quarter against a 6-6 Michigan contingent that finished sixth in the Big Ten.

Another truth is that your schedule matters. Playing as a championship contender in the SEC means that you're going to play four teams that can beat you even if you play well, and four more that can beat you if you don't. Going 10-1 in that crucible is mighty impressive. Playing as a national championship contender in the Big East this year means that there are only one or two games that you could lose without falling on your face.

It's not just that Florida or Alabama or Texas has more tough games than Cincinnati, it's the compounding effects those battles have. Cincinnati can rest a star player during the Syracuse game so he's at full speed against [insert whoever might be any good besides them in the Big East this year] the following week. (Try this argument on Boise State: they can rest regulars against Nevada, Louisiana Tech, Idaho, New Mexico State, Hawaii...indeed their entire league schedule in order to be fresh for the one game that will make or break their season. Plus, they can save their trick plays and surprise strategies for that one game.) Alabama can't rest anyone against Georgia and Tennessee in order to prepare for LSU. Boise State can hope for the breaks to go their way in their one tossup game against Oregon, but Texas can't expect to have luck on their side against Oklahoma, Texas Tech, Missouri and Kansas. They have to outplay most of those teams to go undefeated.

All that said, there's something to be learned by just watching teams play and observing that Cincinnati lacks Florida's team speed or size or tackling ability or whatever (probably all of these.) The reason you and I don't vote in the AP poll is that we're not experts; the voters are supposed to be. (Whether they are or not is another argument; I lack the expertise even to determine that.)

Besides, it's not as if Cincinnati slinks off back to chemistry class after earning the Big East crown. They would win a lovely BCS trip to Dallas or Tempe or Miami on New Year's week and an opportunity to show that, for one game at least, they belong.

As non-BCS schools, Boise State and TCU are different cases. Their first argument is for an invitation to a New Year's bowl game -- maybe against Cincinnati -- and that seems like a much more reasonable demand. We've seen repeatedly how an undermanned non-BCS team can turn a Bowl upside-down thrillingly and spill an elite 0pponent all over the grass.

Despite their impressive win over Oregon, Boise State has no case for the Championship Game this year even if they slay vaunted Idaho. Let's face it, if poll participants ranked teams based solely on how good they think the teams are, the Broncos wouldn't be in the Top 10, and maybe not in the Top 20. They would be a significant underdog on a neutral field against three-loss Oklahoma or two-loss Virginia Tech.

Now TCU, they're another story. First, the Mountain West is superior to the Big East this year, and the argument could be made versus the ACC as well. Certainly the Horned Frogs have significant challenges at BYU and at home against Utah, in addition to their modest win over Clemson. Should everyone else lose, they will get significant support for the title clash, and I'd be rooting for them. But I'd have a hard time justifying how 12-0 in the Mountain West is a greater accomplishment, or requires a better team, than 12-1 in the SEC or PAC 10. Slaying two dragons, two alligators and seven puppies is hardly the equal -- in my eyes -- of fighting off the Visigoths and sustaining one stab wound.

The bottom line is that if you want to play with the big boys, you're going to have to play the big boys as often as possible and be really impressive against the little ones. And I haven't seen too much of that.
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Blecch!

The NBA and NHL have ruined their sports with meaningless seasons and endless playoffs that have no connection with each other. The NFL has struck the perfect balance, with a regular slate that culls all but the best teams and significantly disadvantages the stragglers among them in the post-season.

Now, if you were baseball, which road would you head down? It appears the game has chosen the road less thought out.

Last night's Yankees-Angels contest was a microcosm of the problem. Two teams that played nearly all of their 162 games in summer conditions met on a mid-October night in New York in conditions more suitable for the Packers. This abomination is made necessary by three rounds of playoffs that push the end of the World Series into November.

And then it got worse. When players are wearing earflaps, sweatshirts and neoprene hoods under their uniforms, that's a sign the game shouldn't be played. Last night, that wasn't even enough: freezing rain fell during innings eight through twelve.

Here's the bitter irony: such horrible conditions would have led to immediate postponement during a meaningless regular season tilt. But when it really counts, MLB lacks the flexibility to wait until another day. So the players and fans are subjected to discomfort, added potential for injury, and the dramatically increased likelihood that the game will be decided by something unrelated to skill, strategy and desire.

We saw this last year, when the Rays and Phillies played two hours of a world championship game in a freezing downpour. If MLB doesn't care about its most important games, it's no wonder that most fans are watching football.

As long as they are powerless to change the calender, MLB mucky-mucks should consider moving all playoff games to the daytime in cool climates. Better yet, reintroduce doubleheaders to shorten the season, eliminate the wild card and one playoff series, and wrap up the World Series by the Ides of October. Because the way things are going now, we're going to have a Rockies-Twins World Series that gets postponed by snow until the following May.
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When Is A Wild Pitch a Mild Pitch?

I don't usually comment on in-game events, but the umpire interpreted a rule in a way that I think cost the Angels a run, and possibly the game (they're in extra innings as I write), and I want the electrons arranged before tomorrow's write-ups.

Here's the deal: first and second for the Angels and AJ Burnett walks Torii Hunter. The ball caroms off Jose Molina's foot and into the stands. It's a wild pitch and -- it seems to me -- the runner on second scores. After all, as soon as the walk is recorded, that runner takes third. The WP sends him home. Likewise, the other two runners advance to second and third.

Instead, the umps ruled the ball dead and sent the runners back to their after-walk stations. HOw can that be? Does the extreme wildness of the pitch really erase its wild pitch properties? Doesn't this work the same way a wild throw would? Were the umpires making the mistake of thinking that since Erick Aybar hadn't yet reached third that the WP gave him that base? That would obviously be an error, since Aybar earned third by dint of the walk.

Surprisingly to me, neither the runners nor Mike Scioscia questioned the call. Maybe I've forgotten my rulebook, but common sense certainly dictates that everyone gets an extra base if the pitcher throws the ball into the stands.

Burnett uncorked another wildie one batter late, moving up all the runners as I described, but it should have brought in the second run and given the Halos the lead. It was a determinative call and should be addressed. Anyone got any ideas?
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Vlad the Impaled

Watching the playoffs, the saddest thing to see -- after the seeming inevitability of another purchased World Championship for the Yankees -- is the dramatic decline of Vladimir Guerrero. Hitless in his first two games and having whiffed in his previous at-bat on a pitch half a light-year from the strike zone, Guerrero was the last guy the Angels wanted at the plate with the bases juiced and two down in the seventh inning of a tie Game 2.

Guerrero is a lesson in the importance of plate discipline. For 12 years, Vlad the Impaler made mincemeat of Major League pitching by swinging at everything in the same zip code as home plate. From his first full season in 1998 to 2007, Guerrero's lowest OPS was .943 despite Stevie Wonder's batting eye.

There is only way to bat .300 with power while swinging at everything but the pick-off move: possess mad skills. Vlad was so endowed. However...

Starting last year, his 33rd on Planet Earth, Guerrero's skills began to erode. His OPS the last two seasons slumped to .886 and .794, and he's failed to hit 30 home runs each of the last three years. His value, as compared to a replacement-level player at his position dropped from a high of seven wins, accomplished several times, to about one-and-a-half win in 2009.

To be fair, Vlad missed a third of the season this year. On the other hand, he DH'd almost exclusively. Counter-intuitively, the replacement level hitter at DH is actually weaker than at right-fielder.

Guerrero's problem is that he can no longer compensate for his miserable plate discipline with an uncanny ability to hit everything. Pitchers know they can make bad pitches, and as long as they're not hugging the plate, they can get him out.

That's what was on display when he batted against a suspect Joba Chamberlain in Game 2. In 45-degree temperatures, Joba had come into the game one batter earlier and issued a free pass to the previous batter. But Guerrero swung at all four pitches he saw -- two of them balls -- and struck out, leaving three runners aboard.

The prognosis for Vladimir Guerrero in 2010 is pretty poor. Time waits for no one, and it doesn't appear that he's learned anything about how to hit. It's a shame too, becuse he was on a Hall of Fame trajectory had he only improved on the one glaring weakness in his game.

Plus, he could have helped beat the Yankees.
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Now THAT Is Baseball Analysis

For eight minutes and 19 seconds this afternoon, I listened to former Major Leaguer Eric Karros explain the baseball playoffs.

On how the Angels could beat the Yankees: "The Angels are not in awe of the Yankees. No one else can say that."

On why the Yankees might win it all: "The Yankees are more real this year. More relaxed. Expectations are the one thing that will slow them down. There's something to be said for that."

On how the Dodgers might overcome their weak finish to the season and make the World Series: "The Dodgers are like the infantry: they keep coming. Each guy plays like he's the 25th man. They're grinders, but they're superstars."

You see, it's this kind of insight that makes world class athletes the best analysts. They know more about the game than other people because they played it.

I'm not an athlete. That's why I have less informed ideas about these questions.

On how the Angels might beat the Yankees: Score more runs than NY. Win four games out of seven. Get good pitching and timely hitting. It'll help if the breaks go the Angels' way. They're more or less equally matched, so the biggest factor will be luck. No one can predict whom that will favor.

On why the Yankees might win it all: Well, they're the best team.

On how the Dodgers might beat the Phillies: Score more runs than Philadelphia. Win four games out of seven. Get good pitching and timely hitting. It'll help if the breaks go L.A.'s way. They're more or less equally matched, so the biggest factor will be luck. No one can predict whom that will favor. Oh, and throw lefties at that lineup. Howard and Utley are death on righthanders.

Look, these series are best-of-seven. Two hot pitchers can win it for you. One bad closer can lose it. The best team has an edge, but the best teams haven't even made the World Series in at least three years. So let's just sit back and enjoy the pennant races and leave the meaningless cliches for highly-compensated former athletes.
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The NL Cy Young

The yawning chasms that exist in the MVP races and the AL Cy Young are not present in the NL Cy race this year. A couple of quarks separate Tim Lincecum and Chris Carpenter in the inner Cy orbit, with Adam Wainwright, Matt Cain and Dan Haren in the outer ring.


You can crunch the digits 'til Niagara falls and still not see a red pubic hair of difference between the two. Lincecum pitched 33 more innings and struck out lots more batters. Carpenter surrendered fewer hits and walks per inning and posted an RA a half run superior. Lincecum pitches in a stingier stadium; Carpenter throws in front of a more deft defensive unit.

There's no question that Lincecum's total body of work is worth more than Carpenter's. Thirty-three frames of Cy-level hurling is a big bowl of ice cream. Even if Carpenter's season were a half slice of pizza superior to Lincecum's, it wouldn't close the gap.

The thing is, it wasn't. Even on a per-game basis, the ghost of Cy clings to the Giant. No doubt Carpenter was magnificent in '09, but it seems like there was an extra dollop of luck involved. Opponents batted an almost-impossible .272 on balls put into play against the Cardinals' comeback kid, and stranded an impressive 80% of runners. These numbers don't really compute and tend to be the result of pure kismet.

Carpenter's a better story, what with his two-year vanishing act, and he's close enough that I can't blame anyone for casting their ballot his way. But last year's best pitcher was this year's best pitcher, and don't bet against him being next year's best pitcher in the National League.
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Snoozing Through Elimination

For the second year in a row, it's coming down to the last day of the season for the Twins...and no one outside of Minnesota and Michigan much cares.

Last year, the Twins and and White Sox needed a 163rd game to settle the AL Central, which the Sox captured in a thrilling 1-0 game, only to be obliterated by Tampa in the first round of the playoffs.

This year, it's the Twins and Tigers knotted after 161 games and possibly headed for seasonal overtime. This should be high drama, but even the one tight race is failing to capture our imagination. The reason is obvious: the victor simply earns the right to become Yankee cannon fodder.

The squad that prevails in this race will stand alone among playoff teams without 90 wins. Moreover, they will sport just the fifth best record in the American League, and arguably occupy just sixth place in team quality, behind Texas, Tampa and the contenders.

Just look at the pitching options facing Jim Leyland and Ron Gardenhire in the critical last days of the season. Gardenhire has sent to the mound Jeff Manship, a rookie with a 5.68 ERA, and Francisco Liriano, who is still recovering from TJ surgery and sporting a 5-13, 5.84 line. Leyland was forced to counter with the likes of rookie Alfredo Figaro, a rookie with 17 inings of experience and a 6.35 ERA, and Eddie Bonine, whose 61 lifetime innings and 4.81 ERA make him the star of the group. You think the Yankees are even scouting these two teams?

On the other hand, the rest of the playoffs could be a doozy. The Rockies won the right to avoid the Cardinals by virtue of their loss to the Dodgers last night. That leaves two first-round NL series -- LA-St. Louis and Colorado-Philly -- that are as wide open as Ozzie Guillen's mouth. The remaining AL series -- Boston-L.A. -- also promises fireworks. It's shaping up to be a fabulous post-season, which, as I've mentioned before, seems to vary inversely with the quality of the regular season.

The Yankees and, to a lesser degree, Cardinals have to be viewed as the favorites, particularly considering the special importance of the top three starters, the closer and experience in the postseason. As someone who finds nothing intriguing about one team dominating the sport by signing all the best free agents, I can think of much more compelling matchups, including any Phillies redux and a freeway series in LA. First though, we have to find out who survives that last elimination game.
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The Wild, Wild, Wild, Wild Card

Woe is us. Peter Gammons has spoken, and when he speaketh, the Lords of Baseball doth listen.

Let's stipulate that Gammons is a great reporter, respected and beloved across the sport and the media. But he has proposed such a terrifically bad idea it has got to be killed, bludgeoned to death with logic. I volunteer with the club.

Gammons, like the rest of Baseball Nation, is underwhelmed by this year's playoff races and disheartened by the way football has shoved the national pastime into the shadows. The result is a jerking of the knee that will expedite the sport's path to irrelevance, not forestall it. He suggests that baseball add yet another playoff round just for the Wild Cards.

Oy. Caramba. Yeesh. Take your pick.

Here's the fundamental misconception people have about playoff races. They think that making more teams eligible for the playoffs increases the number of playoff races. It categorically does not. The race is only around the last qualifying spot, regardless of whether two teams qualify, or 20 teams do.

The real difference is that when only the two best teams qualify, the battle is fierce and the consequences momentous. When 20 teams qualify, the contestants are feeble and the prize is simply a short postponement of their ignominy.

Take this year as an example. There's one wild card race -- in the NL, among Colorado, SF, Atlanta and Florida. Adding another wild card would do nothing in the AL, where Texas is the clear next best team, and nothing in the NL, where Colorado would be a lock and the three teams chasing them would be vying for the next spot. It's a wash.

That doesn't account for the additional downside of the extra playoff round -- putting aside the scheduling headaches involved. A team like the Red Sox, the second or third best team in the league, would be severely disadvantaged, particularly with respect to the significantly inferior Tigers/Twins.

Suppose instead, we returned to the old way -- two divisions, one playoff round per league. The Yankees-Red Sox tilt this weekend would matter (a little). Better yet, the Phillies and Cardinals would be waging holy war for the Eastern Division title, with everything at stake. The victor would be four wins from the World Series; the loser is done. What we have instead is each team, a month before season's end, arranging its playoff roster and hotel room assignments.

There is a direct and inverse relationship between the importance of the regular season and the number of teams in the playoffs. Certainly more playoff slots allows more teams to feel that they can contend, particularly in a sport like baseball where any team can take three of five against another. But when the fifth best team is given a nearly equal chance to claim the title in a handful of games over the first and second best, what was the point of the 162 contests that preceded them?

Does baseball really want to be like the NBA and NHL, where they play 80-game seasons for no apparent reason? In the NBA, 16 teams -- many of them godawful -- make the playoffs, but only four of them have any realistic hope of raising the trophy. In hockey the regular season is so utterly irrelevant that the top regular season team HAS NEVER won the Stanley Cup since they went to the 16-team format.

The Wild Card has added a degree of hope to half the teams in baseball and has detracted a little from the playoffs and World Series. We can live with the tradeoff. Adding lesser teams to the mix adds no more hope, but further cheapens the championship. Bud, this time, don't listen to Gammons.
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