Baseball players are finding out what it feels like to be George Harrison this year. In a year with the first Triple Crown contender in 40 years, the most astonishing rookie season of all time and maybe the most breathtaking relief pitching performance ever, being simply great in 2012 is something of an anti-climax.
Pity poor Jim Johnson. The Oriole closer shut the door for the 50th time today in 53 attempts. Yawn. In that amazing Baltimore pen, he doesn't even stand out. There are five Baltimorons with 53+ appearances and sub-2.60 ERAs.
But even if Johnson were the best Oriole hurler, he couldn't carry Aroldis Chapman's glove. In 69 innings, Chapman has fanned 119 batters and allowed just 59 baserunners, en route to a 1.55 ERA.
Too bad for Chapman, he's doing that in 2012. That's the same year that Craig Kimbrel flung fastballs into history. Kimbrel has whiffed more than half the batters he has faced, by far the highest percentage of all time for a pitcher with 50+ innings.
And of the top 15 strikeout artists ever, Kimbrel has the lowest walk rate and by far the highest strand rate.In just 61 innings, Kimbrel been worth more than three wins to the Braves.
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Nice job on the swan song, Ichiro. With his career ebbing to a desultory .260/.288/353, the future Hall of Famer had become a liability for an offensively-challenged Seattle team going nowhere. I wasn't alone in wondering what they Yankees thought they were gaining by trading for the 38-year-old whose on-base ability had evaporated.
Well, this is what they got: .330/.352/.469 with 15 of 18 steals and superb right field defense in 60+ games. Ichiro's continued genius will be a key element if the Yankees make a run at Halloween baseball. In your face, pundithead!
Whether that postpones Ichiro's expected retirement is another story. At 39, he will likely merit little more than defensive replacement/pinch runner duty . . . unless he can keep this up.
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When the Giants took Marco Scutaro off the Rockies' hands in July, they were picking up positional flexibility and some on-base ability. It was not exactly baseball's marquee trade deadline acquisition. What the Giants got was Rogers Hornsby. Scutaro has filled in at second and third, and ripped .361/.382/.469 in 58 games.
The 36-year-old infielder is a free agent in 2013 and someone if the team that signs him has reasonable expectations, he could be an asset to them too. A guy who can play middle infield without making women and children scream or flatlining at the plate has real value.
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Remember Alex Rodriguez? Won the batting title at 20. Hit 40+ home runs eight out of 10 seasons from the shortstop position. Signed the biggest contract ever, until ever ended.
Yeah, well, that guy is over. ARod has hit .272 with 34 HR and 113 RBI this year . . . and last. Combined. Sure, he's been hurt, but that's part of the problem. The other Alex Rodriguez played 154+ games seven consecutive seasons.
If you need evidence that he's not doping, that's it. ARod is aging like a normal person. That why with 647 homers, the conundrum over his breaking the home run record (762) is going to be a moot point.
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Right here is where you read insight into the elevator ride the Pirates have taken down towards the basement. For the 20th consecutive year, the fair people of Pittsburgh have suffered with a below-average MLB team.
This paragraph is where you read the explanation for how an outfit that dominated its opponents, claimed first place and climbed 16 games above .500 after the All Star break got hit by a bus en route to a 17-38 record.
Reading on, you would understand what went wrong. It's all very Suessian: The hitting stopped hitting. The pitching stopped pitching. The relieving stopped relieving. The high-fiving became head-hanging.
There is a silver lining. Faced with a contender in 2012, management was under heavy mid-year pressure to trade future assets for high-priced veterans. The events that followed demonstrated that they correctly assessed their team when they declined. Kudos to team president Frank Coonelly and GM Neal Huntington for sticking with the plan.
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The playoff system is in need of another tweak. The team with the best record in the AL will play the Wild Card survivor, which will have a nearly identical record. The second best team gets the other division winner -- the Tigers -- a bumbling, one-dimensional squad with the seventh-best record in the league. How is that fair?
No wonder the Rangers are stumbling down the stretch. Why do they want to play Baltimore, Oakland or NY in the ALDS, when a little late season slide brings Detroit to town?
Teams ought to be seeded by record in recognition of the fact that a division winner might reach the playoffs as the tallest midget, while a Wild Card could dominate just a little less than its main rival.
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