Warm regards to all the crybabies bleating about the unfairness of the new college football playoff system that selects the top four teams for a three-game tournament to determine the 1A champion.
In the words of noted philosopher Aaron Rogers, R-E-L-A-X. It will all sort itself out, just as it always has.
No matter how many slots you have in a tournament, if the last team is chosen, rather than automatically qualifying, there will be anger and recrimination among the hoi polloi. (See: NCAA basketball tournament, where 68 teams qualify, leaving the fans of the 69th best outfit to wail and rend garments over the injustice.) Selecting the fourth-best team, from among a gaggle of similar squads that play completely different schedules in different regions of the country is an exercise in something akin to randomness.
And so we find ourselves reading tea leaves and parsing results as if the BCS was the Kremlin. We attempt to distinguish among teams with identical records, the same number of "good" wins and "bad" losses, blowouts, lucky calls and so on. It leaves the situation ripe for argument, which is at least half the fun.
So this discussion is not one for self-righteousness in the first place. If your team is TCU or Baylor or Ohio State and you're not in the top four right now, you can't credibly argue that you've been robbed. The differences among these teams is so small you couldn't event fit the NCAA's credibility between them.
All that said, R-E-L-A-X. Unimpressive Florida State, which has squeaked by a series of hapless opponents, has an ACC title game to deal with against the bum-rushing Rambling Wreck. Baylor has a tussle with a tough Kansas State team in the Big 12 championship and Ohio State will have to prove itself versus the Wisconsin Melvins to capture the Big 16 crown. If any of these lose, they will certainly not make the championship tournament. If any win, they will leapfrog TCU.
And while we're at it, let's give the selection committee some credit. They have employed their weekly rankings to send messages about what they value, and they have chosen wisely. To wit:
- They are choosing the programs that have had the best season, not the teams that are the best at that moment.
- Head-to-head match-ups will be tie-breakers, not fatal wounds for the losers.
- They will not over-react to last week's result.
- How teams win matters when that's nearly all the best teams do.
Relax, enjoy the games, and have some faith in the system. It hasn't failed us yet.
A few years ago the Milwaukee Brewers espied a division in retreat and a closing window on Prince Fielder's contract, and decided to make a run for it when they could. So they flipped prospects for high-value rentals like Zack Greinke and Randy Wolf, and powered their way to a 96-win division title. That they rolled snake-eyes in the post-season tournament changes nothing about the success of the plan.
The Toronto Blue Jays have taken notice. With the Yankees uncharacteristically pinching pennies, not to mention becoming more decrepit by the day; the Red Sox attempting to climb out of the basement with a fallow rotation; Tampa Bay in retreat with the departure of their GM and manager; and expectations of regression in Baltimore; the AL East is suddenly open for business like it hasn't been in two decades. The Jays, who last tasted success in their '92 and '93 championships, are doubling down.
The trade they just swung with Oakland that brought All Star third baseman Josh Donaldson for infielder Brett Lawrie and two prospects suggests Toronto has not forsaken its all-in philosophy initiated last year when they traded for R.A. Dickey and Jose Reyes, among others. Donaldson brings his 135 OPS+, his fine base running and superb defense to a team already thick with hitters -- Jose Bautista, Reyes, Edwin Encarnacion and Adam Lind, plus recent free agent acquisition Russell Martin.
There's patching still to be done at second and the outfield, but the Jays scored the fourth most runs in the AL last year and figure to be strong again offensively even with bare spots in the lineup. The main flaw in their 83-79 campaign was pitching, ninth in the league in '14, before R.A. Dickey turned 40 and Mark Buehrle turned 36.
So look for GM Alex Anthopoulos to snag a couple of cheap outfield solutions and then offer heaping piles of Canadian dollars -- or trade-bait prospects -- for a top-of-the-rotation starter or two. The time has never been more right, nor the odds so much in Toronto's favor, to make a run at a pennant.
Jacque Brel and others have observed that baseball is life. But when it comes to elections, it's the opposite of life.
In the real world, mediocre candidates rise to the ballot and leave us with too few options to choose even one worthy victor.
We can stuff the Hall of Fame ballot with 10 names but still be forced to exclude deserving honorees.
The ballot has been released to the voting coterie and the latest batch of eligibles includes Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz.
They join Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Craig Biggio, Mike Piazza, Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, Mike Mussina, Curt Schilling and Edgar Martinez awaiting their enshrinement.
That's 12 certain HOFers for only 10 slots. And it doesn't even include the line-straddlers -- Mark McGwire, Alan Trammel, Gary Sheffield, Jeff Kent and Sammy Sosa. Or the dark horses: Fred McGriff and Larry Walker.
Of the 12 I'm touting, every one of them has accumulated 59 or more WAR over his career. Piazza is the greatest-hitting catcher of all time. Edgar is the best DH in history, and for what it's worth, maybe the best gap hitter as well. Schilling and Mussina were consistently superb workhorses. Big Unit and Smoltz hardly require an introduction and Clemens is one of the 10 greatest pitchers in baseball history.
Bonds is on the Mount Rushmore of five-tool players with Mays, Mantle, Aaron and maybe Griffey. Bagwell and Biggio were five-tool infielders and Tim Raines the second-best speed-first player in the annals of the game. These 12 are, in my view, all no-doubters.
There's no point in worrying about the borderline Famers right now; I have to pare my ballot, at least in the make-believe world in which I get a vote. I'd leave off Biggio and Bagwell, still both early in their eligibility, and carve their busts together next year.
Obviously the election process is not just about merits on the diamond. Votes will be withheld because of steroid accusations -- some supported and some mere whispers. I don't know what to do with the issue, and I don't know what I don't know about it, so I've decided to ignore it, particularly with respect to players whose lifetime achievements clear the bar by such a wide margin.
Maybe you'd vote differently; that's the beauty of democracy. Though in this case, you would be challenged to make a credible non-drug case against anyone on my list.
Ask yourself if this sounds like a familiar strategy: Just sign all the best players without much concern for their cost. Figure out where they'll play and how they'll fit together later. Treat the luxury tax like a flea bite. And if the new mates stiffen up, just accumulate more high-priced free agents.
If you're thinking that's the Yankees, you're off by about 300 miles. This appears to be the new strategy of the Sons of New England, stung by their last place finish in 2014.
Pablo Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez were the two most accomplished everyday players on the market this winter. Although the Red Sox' primary need is starting pitching -- Rubby De La Rosa is their #2 starter -- they committed themselves to five years and $205 million for a pair of injury-inclined infielders not likely to age well or deliver much defense going forward.
What Does $205 Million Buy?
Sandoval is a .294 lifetime hitter with 15-20 home run power and a surprisingly facile glove given his spherical shape. The Sox get his age 28-32 years, so the odds are reasonable that his glove will play at third for the length of the contract, as long as his body holds up. The Panda played 157 games this past season, but made extended excursions to the DL in 2011 and 2012 and sports a body type that doesn't necessarily inspire confidence.
Ramirez is an even tougher nut to crack. While he profiles as a superior hitter than Sandoval, HanRam is two years older, rickety (93 games/year since 2011) and sure to be moved, mercifully, from shortstop. Whether he can comfortably handle a corner outfield slot is a matter of conjecture.
Perchance, To Dream
Of course, there's plenty of upside on these signings. Sandoval solidifies the hot corner, Ramirez stays healthier in left than at short and teams up with Yoenis Cespedes and youngster Mookie Betts for a dynamic outer pasture. Both new acquisitions swat more big flies in comfy Fenway.
And then, luxury tax be damned, GM Ben Cherrington nabs Max Sherzer and/or Jon Lester and/or James Shields and/or Hiroki Kuroda to flesh out the rotation and put Boston back in the playoff hunt in 2015.
Underlying these plans is one critical concept: money is just a counting stat. The best strategy for regular-season success is to put the best players on the field. That appears to be the Red Sox' new strategy. Meanwhile, the Yankees are silently racing headlong beneath the salary cap.
As a former Royals fan and a supporter of cities enduring long sports droughts, the conclusion of the World Series was painful for me. But it should have been more painful for Kansas City's hitting coach, Dale Sveum. He should have lost his job.
Madison Bumgarner is an awesome pitcher. He doesn't need help from batters to produce outs. But KC batters gave away strike after strike in Game 7 of the World Series, indicating that they had learned nothing from MadBum's previous outings or from the at-bats before them. That's got to be the hitting coach's fault. Either Sveum isn't seeing what some third-rate blogger in a Charleston bar is seeing, or the two have similar amounts of influence on KC hitters.
Bumgarner is a southpaw who slots from behind lefty batters. Several of the Royals' best hitters -- Gordon, Hosmer, Aoki, Moustakas -- are left-handed. His pitches that look like strikes to lefties end up unhittably near third base. Royal after Royal swung futilely at those offerings. Jarrod Dyson took one hack in Game 7 that had to have missed by the length of two baseball cleats. How many Royal batters have to swing at pitches two feet off the plate before the hitting coach orders them to lay off?
Likewise, Bumgarner used a ladder-climbing approach with his heat against righties. By strike three, several KC batters were whiffing at hardballs nose-high. Again, the hitting coach's job is to instruct his charges to lay off anything that appears to be above the navel.
Bumgarner was on a history-making streak in the Series. His 21 frames, 0.43 ERA and 17-1 K/BB ratio were the best ever. He'd been on a roll throughout the playoffs, allowing just six earned runs in 53 innings. So a light-hitting outfit like the Royals weren't going to tally many runs without outfoxing him. Instead, their deer-in-headlights approach sealed their fate.
In the bottom of the ninth of Game 7, with a one-run Giants lead, two outs and Alex Gordon charitably invited to third by momentarily inept San Francisco defense, Royals catcher Sal Perez stepped to the plate. The game, the series, the World Championship were on the line. We were three strikes from San Francisco victory; 90 feet from advantage Royals.
I observed then to my compadres (because all my observations are audible) that Perez's approach at the plate would determine the outcome. Seeing Perez attack strike one chest high, I began gathering my belongings to head home. "He has no chance," I said. "He's learned nothing." Sure enough, Bumgarner threw pitches ever higher until Perez popped up an offering at eyeball level for the final out.
It took a fat helping of luck and bottled lightning for Kansas City to reach that point. They squandered it all with sheer stupidity.
If you're old enough to recall when the baseball free agent floodgates opened and Catfish Hunter snagged a mammoth five-year. $4.25 million deal from the Yankees, your mind is likely long beyond boggled by the contracts today that sound like they are paid in Lira.
Regardless, a third of a billion dollars seems like a windfall, even for a talent as immense as Giancarlo Stanton. The Marlin rightfielder has, by age 24, already slugged 154 homers and accounted for 18 wins against replacement. But Giancarlo Stanton's talent is a windfall for Miami, as are his electric smile and dedication to the craft.
The fact is, $325 million makes perfect sense for this unique player; indeed, it might prove to be too little. Unlike other recent examples of overpayment, this one does not reward the athlete primarily for his past accomplishments or saddle the team with his salary well into his dotage.
Moreover, while the deal is back-loaded the way others are, it is so for a reason: Stanton isn't afforded free agency for three more years, so his contract value is significantly reduced until after the 2017 season.
In year four of the new deal, Stanton will make $25 million. That's an enormous sum, and an enormous sum less than what he is probably going to be worth to the Marlins. Seriously.
Today, a win above replacement is worth, on average, about $6 million to a team. Even if salaries don't continue to increase at the past decade's rate, a 10% annual hike will catapult a win's annual value to $8 million. Let's suppose Stanton delivers just five wins above replacement that season -- significantly less than 2014's production -- he will cover his salary plus another $15 million for the franchise. If instead he improves, he's a gold mine to the team.
But wait, there's more. Giancarlo Stanton has value beyond the field of play. Inking him to a long-term deal was management's clarion call to the fans and other free agents that it has entered another of its periodic win-now spasms. Buy tickets, consider us in free agency; Miami is relevant again.
Come 2015 and beyond, Stanton will anchor a squad awash in nascent talent. Phenom starter Jose Fernandez will be back from TJ surgery at the ripe age of 23, along with promising 25-year-olds Henderson Alvarez and Jarred Cosart. Talented outfielders Christian Yelich and Marcel Ozuna will be 23 and 24 respectively. Jarrod Saltamalachia will turn 30 -- and so shouldn't be trusted -- but is signed for two years to anchor the backstop position. If the farm continues to produce as expected and Miami can lure a player or two to South Beach -- how hard can that be, especially in an industry loaded with Latinos? -- fat crowds and TV contracts will dwarf Stanton's contract.
The formula is the same into his 30s, when the salaries escalate to $32 million. By then, the Trouts, Harpers, Kershaws and their ilk will make such sums look quaint. And then as Stanton's skills erode, so does his salary, down to $25 million at age 38.
The fact is, rich as this arrangement is for Giancarlo, it is even better for Miami -- the franchise, the people and the city. Even the 2020 player opt-out, seen by many as a fly in the ointment, keeps this mega-talent in the city for six more years at below-market prices. If he leaves then for yet fatter paychecks it will demonstrate that the numbers, now considered by some a vast overpay, weren't big enough.
That Albert Einstein feller was good at physics. The world was aware of this before the Nobel Prize committee tapped him in 1921. Likewise, this Mike Trout dude can play baseball. You probably noticed before the 2014 MVP was bestowed, unanimously, upon him.
Trout is 23. He's three years younger than Jacob deGrom, whose Rookie of the Year trophy still looks nice on his mantle. deGrom's three wins against replacement place him just 25 short of Trout's 28.
Here is a list of Major League Baseball performers with fewer career WAR than Mike Trout:
- Paul Konerko
- Hal McRae
- Billy Wagner
- Alfonso Soriano
- Mo Vaughn
- Clete Boyer
- Prince Fielder
- Chris Chambliss
- Mike Cuellar
- Benito Santiago
Here's the fun part: 2014 was Trout's worst season. In his worst season, he led the league in runs, RBIs and total bases, slugged 36 homers, batted 35 points above league average, ran the bases like a fiend and leaped tall buildings in a single bound.
2014 lagged offensively. Teams averaged a meager 4.18 runs per game. In 2007, teams averaged 4.95 runs. According to Grant Bisbee of SB Nation, converting Trout's season to 2007 terms gives us the following:
- Trout pounds out a 42-143-.321 Triple Crown line.
- He smacks 46 doubles and 11 triples.
- He scores 148 times.
- He posts a 1.044 OPS.
- In the worst year of his career.
- Wait 'til he improves.
This concludes this test of the Mike Trout broadcasting system. If Mike Trout had actually improved in 2014, you would have been instructed where to tune in your area for news and official information. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming...
The post-season awards in baseball have served as an occasion to highlight the chasm between advanced baseball analytics and the sports' hidebound writers, broadcasters and self-proclaimed cognoscenti.
This year, however, there's not much opportunity for that. For one thing, the gap is narrowing. Sports media have adopted, to a greater or lesser degree, OPS and WAR, and while they continue to cling to pitching wins, seem to understand better the need to examine the larger picture when examining player performance.
In addition, several of the big awards seemed predestined, as if Martin Luther himself had cast a ballot. For example, Clayton Kershaw, already the best pitcher on the planet, turned it up a notch in '14. Even statheads can't argue with 21-3, 1.77 and 11 strikeouts per nine innings, particularly when he posts a league-leadoing 7.5 WAR despite missing the first month of the season.
And Mike Trout, the MVP-in-waiting, led his league in runs, RBIs and total bases while clubbing 36 home runs and playing a premier defensive position. He, too, paced the circuit in WAR with 7.9. Setting aside the argument whether pitchers should compete for a second award, these two were the clear MVP champs.
Likewise Rookie of the Year, where Jose Abreu and Jacob deGrom ran away with the hardware, or Kershaw at Cy Young, a conclusion so obvious it could less be said to be foregone than fifteengone. Only AL Cy Young was up for discussion, with Cory Kluber squeaking by Felix Hernandez.
Parsing the two was an academic exercise -- they posted similar won-loss records, innings pitched and runs allowed. King Felix allowed fewer baserunners; Kluber fanned more. Hernandez suffered from King Felix fatigue among the voters, and also from the legitimate belief that Cleveland is a tougher place to pitch than Seattle. If that was the finger on the scale provided Kluber's margin of victory, bully for the voters.
That there is a manager of the year award is a testament to writers' overblown self-importance; they can't possibly know which managers are best. That said, Buck Showalter seems a reasonable choice given his previous performance and his team's unexpected accomplishments. Matt Williams seems like an odd choice in the NL both because the Nats were generally considered the best team and because many observers view him as a work in progress. Perhaps most damning of all is Ned Yost's third place finish in the AL: his play-calling has come under withering criticism from knowledgeable analysts.
But that's the point about managers, isn't it? In-game strategy is much less important than in-clubhouse moral-building, and that's the part of the game even sportswriters generally don't see. Which is why the award is nonsense no matter who votes on it.
My friends and I used to play a game that went like this: If they retired today, which current Major Leaguers would be in the Hall of Fame. In the previous decade, the number ran towards 20 -- Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz, Randy Johnson, Bonds, McGwire, Pedro, Manny, Pudge, ARod, Clemens, Frank Thomas and so on.
Try that game today. With Jeter retired, the sure picks left are ARod, Ichiro, Miggy and Prince Albert. (I'm ignoring the steroids conundrum.) Robby Cano's getting close but he probably has work to do. The Trouts and Kershaws of the world may be destined, but patience, grasshopper.
You could make a case, albeit a losing one, for Adrian Beltre, Carlos Beltran and David Ortiz. Beltran's case requires appreciation for sustained very good play over a long time. Ortiz needs help from the "clutch leader" narrative because his greatness, dramatic though it's been, started too late to craft a Hall resume.
As for pitchers, there aren't any far along the pipeline. The top hurlers by wins against replacement are Tim Hudson, Mark Buehrle, CC Sabathia and Johan Santana. None of them is close to the standards set for Cooperstown.
We can certainly dream on a clutch of players. Posey, Mauer, King Felix, Evan Longoria, Joey Votto, Tulo, Verlander, 'Cutch, Bryce Harper, Giancarlo, MadBum, etc. But we remember Dwight Gooden, Nomar Garciaparra and their ilk, who exploded like meteors and burned out quickly well short of enshrinement.
In case you're wondering, the dearth of greats is indicative of nothing. These things come in waves and the most recent wave has passed. Fear not: the next one is already gathering.
