A Mad Max Contract for Scherzer

"A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money." --Sen. Everett Dirksen

Three years ago, the best pitcher in baseball -- that is, the pitcher with the best performance over the last three-to-five years -- was Roy Halladay. He's now retired, after his arm, and his ERA, blew up.

Two years ago, the best pitcher in baseball was Justin Verlander, who posted a 4.54 ERA last season, 20% worse than average.

Today, you've probably heard that the Washington Nationals have signed Max Scherzer to a seven year deal worth $210 million. We're enured to the numbers at this point, but $210 million is still a boatload.

Because he's not Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer is certainly not the best pitcher in baseball. He's probably not second. But over the last three years he's dominated opposing batters to the tune of 55-15, 3.24 and 723 strikeouts. Any team would like to have the Max Scherzer of the last three seasons.

The problem is, that doesn't guarantee anything about next year, when Scherzer will be 30. And it hardly provides any guide at all to his performance five years from now, when he'll still have two years remaining on the deal.

In a spectacular study at Baseball Prospectus, Sam Miller and Mike Gianella found that 20 high-priced free agent pitchers who performed similar to Scherzer before age 30 pretty much pooped the bed thereafter. Only about half performed at an above average level the following year, and by year four more than half were either out of baseball or below replacement level.

Maybe Scherzer is like the other half. Small consolation. Even the top 50% stopped being Max Scherzer 2014 and became Kyle Gibson 2014. "Who's Kyle Gibson?" you're asking. Yeah, that's the point. (Answer: A rookie Twins starter who went 13-12, 4.47. He's not making $30 million next season.)

Maybe Scherzer's even better than the good half. Maybe there's something unique about him because he's Max. Maybe he's more like Tom Glavine, the only member of the exalted group who maintained consistently high level performance for even five years. (It's worth noting that Glavine signed the big deal with the Braves, the team that knew him best.) Then the Nats have brought aboard 33 WAR and a first ballot Hall of Famer.

That's awesome, but it's not the way to bet. First ballot Hall of Famers are celebrated because they are rare, even among guys who dominated batters from age 27-29. Instead, the Nationals have placed a quarter-billion dollar chip on 37 hoping against the odds that it will cash in.

Roy Hallafame?

By hanging up his cleats at the age of 36, Roy Halladay has set in motion a good, old-fashioned brouhaha over his Cooperstown credentials.

Halladay is credited with winning just 203 games, rarely enough to secure a bust in the august Hall. Bill James established the inadequacy of measuring pitcher wins in 1979, when Jimmy Carter was president, but word hasn't yet reached everyone just 34 years later. Communication is instantaneous in 2013, but only if received.

The shortage of wins are a symptom of a different problem facing Halladay's Hall candidacy. He pitched sporadically for four years until age 25 and threw only 62 innings because of shoulder woes at age 36. In between, he had only 11 years to make his case. That he got close enough to incite debate is a testament to how dominant Roy Halladay was.

Over a 10 year period (2002-2011) the gangly right-hander was the best moundsman in the game. He led the Majors four times in innings pitched, seven times in complete games, twice in wins and five times in K/BB ratio. His .697 winning percentage, for what it's worth, paced the Majors, and his 2.97 ERA trumped league average by a whopping 48%. He captured a Cy Young on merit in each league and finished in the top five of voting seven times.

The obvious comparison for anyone making a short career case for a pitcher is Sandy Koufax. Koufax was far more dominant over his best six years but nowhere near as dominant over 10.

The difference is that Koufax retired at the height of his powers. We mentally extrapolate his career and wonder how long he could have continued frustrating hitters. No need to wonder about Roy Halladay: he was done. His career denouement  of 4-5, 6.82 with more walks and home runs allowed in 62 innings than in all of 2011's 233 frames followed his worst season in a decade. Together, they speak to the trajectory of Halladay's pitching skills. At 37 next season, even a bounce-back wouldn't likely last more than a season or two.

And so, Roy Halladay's final wins against replacement tally comes up 42nd all-time among pitchers, squarely borderline in a Hall of Fame currently comprising 70 hurlers. Were he electing to retire with the same accomplishments at age 34, or coming off another stellar season, we could reasonably grant him three or four more seasons of respectability sufficient to inflate his career numbers to middling Hall of Fame territory. That, unfortunately, is not the case.

A Hall vote for Halladay five years hence would certainly be defensible. But without any reasonable expectation that he could bolster his resume, he appears to come up short.

The Meaning of "Spring Training"

Spring Training is a Dominican phrase meaning "people being idiots." ("Ring" = thing people wear, +"p" = just the people + "s" = plural, so Spring = many people; "training" = hoping to know something someday, but currently quite stupid.)

This is borne out by a report from the Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues I read yesterday, written by a veteran journalist not heretofore known to be a moron. It said, among other things, the following:

This spring, scouts are raving about how much Bryce Harper has improved. He is hitting .444/.459/.806 with three home runs in 37 plate appearances this spring.

It seemed like the Indians were really reaching when they signed lefthander Scott Kazmir as a minor-league free agent over the winter. Kazmir has not pitched in the major leagues since the first week of the 2011 season, and he posted a 5.34 ERA in 64 innings for the Sugar Land Skeeters in the independent Atlantic League last season.  However, Kazmir has yet to allow a run in eight Cactus League innings this spring and also pitched three scoreless innings in a B game. In his eight official innings, he has given up just five hits and one walk while striking out eight. 

(In the same article, the author refers to a player who couldn't master the game's "basic fundamentals." The writer could use a lesson in mastering the "basic fundamentals" of covering Spring Training.)

There's actually only one "basic fundamental" about Spring Training: it rarely matters. Bryce Harper is hitting .444 in 37 plate appearances against fellow 20-year-olds whose training wheels are being adjusted so they can be successful for the Double-A West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx this year.

Scott Kazmir threw 11 good innings spread over three starts, at least one of which was against ball boys and hot dog vendors. That is supposed to have more weight than two years of evidence that he's no longer among the top 400 best hurlers in the world.

Dear writer, here's how you know when Bryce Harper and Scott Kazmir are ready to break out: when they blow off Spring Training. When they use it to master a mechanical change or experiment with a new grip -- that's when they've really made it.

That theory, however, does not apply to Roy Halladay. Phillie fans should be creasing brows about his first Spring Training start. It's not that Halladay got lit up like doobie at a hipster party; it's that his velocity, which has dipped each of the past two seasons, ebbed again below 90. That is portentious in two ways:

1. There is a point at which a lack of fastball velocity can sap the value of every other pitch. If your heater is 89 and your change is 85, no one's getting fooled, not even Adam Dunn and Mark Reynolds.
2. The Phillies are already little more than three great starters and the cast from Jurassic Park. If Halladay is no longer effective, Philadelphia's quest for a .500 season is in jeopardy.

So okay, Spring Training can mean something. Halladay's next two starts will determine whether the first one was another sign of the apocalypse or just a fissure in Doc's space-time continuum. But before more of those Kazmir stories get written, can we please use a little judgment?

Just One More Good Year

Sandy Koufax's bifurcated Major League career would have made Henry Jekyll proud: the mediocre first half (seven years, 36-40, 4.06, six wins against replacement) and the spectacular second half (six years, 129-47, 2.24, 44 wins against replacement.) 

Considering the totality of his career achievements, Koufax is a pale shadow of the average Hall of Fame hurler. Yet omitting the Left Arm of God from Cooperstown is unthinkable. His peak years, in which he posted ERAs an astonishing 43%, 59%, 86%, 60% and 90% better than league average, were the equal of anyone's, ever.

Where Koufax's career was an avalanche, Don Sutton's was the inexorable drip, drip, drip of a waterfall in drought. Sutton truly excelled in just three seasons, but his reliably good performance across 23 years earned him a bust in the Hall as well.

Thus the premise for the widely used "JAWS" rankings for Hall of Fame contenders: both full career value and peak value are relevant. Whereas some players earn their ceremony for sustained excellence, others get in with bursts of greatness.

This is why 2013 is so important for Robinson Cano's Hall of Fame resume. Cano has not played nearly long enough to accumulate the career numbers for the Hall, but another eight-win season catapults him to average peak WARP for Hall of Fame second basemen. After that, it would just be a matter of accumulating the remaining 30 WARP or so over the second half of his career. That feat is accomplished by playing well, if not spectacularly, for another six-seven years before tailing off in his late 30s.

It's not quite fair to say Cano's age-30 season is a make-or-break campaign for his Hall of Fame resume. He's young enough, after all, to slip for a year or two before rebounding in another season. The Hall is filled with gentlemen who were absent from the discussion at age 30 but sprang into it thereafter. Paul Molitor jumps to mind: although he was a seriously fine player in his first nine seasons, he'd never cracked .842 in OPS before his age-30 campaign. In his 30s, he perenially batted above .300, crossing .850 OPS six times, including three seasons above .900. Molitor also contributed value to the Brewers - and then Toronto and Minnesota -- every year through his age-40 season.

More numerous are the meteors who start their career on fire but flame out just when this discussion might have begun. Dwight Gooden found his cliff at age 25, but Fred Lynn posted five 4+-win seasons in his first seven years, then starting after age-30 never reached that height again.

So it's premature to place the burden of Robby Cano's Hall of Fame case on the shoulders of 2013. But another performance like last year's, or the year before or the year before that, begins to put him in the rarefied air that is breathed only along Otsego Lake.

Injuries limited Roy Halladay to 156 innings and a 4.49 ERA in 2012, adding almost nothing to his Hall pass. A bounce-back 2013 would really solidify the case for old Harry Leroy, because he's right at the standards on both career and peak. He owes some of his voluminous value to durability -- 220 innings or more in each of the six years previous to last -- which Hall voters and the general public seem to esteem less than actual greatness. Another top-five pitching performance this year would make it difficult to deny Halladay entrance in 2020, or whenever. The question is whether at 36 he possesses the might to once again throw 230 frames of sub-3.00 ERA. (There is this hope: it's a contract year for Halladay.)

The noodle just began wrapping around this question and these two names emerged from the goo. If you are thinking of a player whose ticket might be one more good year from getting punched, put his name in the comment section and we'll dig in.

Meet the New Best Pitcher. Same As the Old Best Pitcher

In season previews, I've heard/read several allusions to either Justin Verlander or Clayton Kershaw as the best pitcher in baseball.

Please. If a Cy Young makes a pitcher the best in the game, someone explain Randy Jones and Pete Vukovich.

The world's best hurler is not a flamethrower who combusted to a 4.84 ERA three years back.

He's not a hot young southpaw with three years of service in a hitting suppressant park.

The best pitcher in the game doesn't change from year to year. He was the best in the game five years ago and three years ago and still today at 34.

The Majors' best hurler is the essence of consistency who, since 2002, has gone 169-74, 3.19 with a 4-1 K/BB ratio, most of it in the toughest division in baseball.

It's Roy Halladay, and it will be until he relinquishes the crown.  

Now that's no knock on Verlander or Kershaw, either of whom could be ordering a bronze sculpture by the time he hangs up his spikes. Since his faceplant in '08, Verlander has delivered 53-23, 3.07, leading the AL in innings twice and strikeouts twice. He's an inner-orbit star on the mound and certainly one of the five best in his field right now. But a longer resume is required to be king, or Dexy's Midnight Runners would be in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.

Kershaw's 2.88 ERA over his first 116 starts is head-turning even in Dodger Stadium, but it's no guarantee of future greatness. Let's see him wear the crown awhile before we starting warming up the anointing oil.

By the way, of the five Hall of Fame projection models, Halladay wins election right now in two of them and he's one good year away in the other three. And that doesn't include his season-openging gem against the Pirates of eight-inning, two-hit shutout ball.

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Early Season Fun

Small Sample Fun

Jorge Posada has nine hits this year. Six of them are homers. He's fanned 20 times while batting .130. He's crossed the plate seven times, which means he's scored once in 23 games on someone else's hit.

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Whew!

Imagine the Mets' glee yesterday when they discovered that none of the Phillies' vaunted starters would be on the mound against them. Not the best pitcher in baseball, Roy Halladay. Not the amazing Cliff Lee. Not Roy Oswalt or Cole Hamels or even Joe Blanton. Instead, they would have the opportunity to take their licks against rookie place-holder Vance Worley.

The 24-year-old righty recorded 113 innings of Double-A work last year and 45 frames at Triple-A, with ERAs of .320 and .377 respectively. He got in 13 innings with the big club, even notching a win. 

Lucky Mets! He shut them down on two hits in six innings, fanning five. So that makes Met ace Mike Pelfrey -- four runs, eight hits in four innings -- what, the seventh starter in Philadelphia? Or is that an unfair comparison because Pelfrey got pummeled by the league-leading Phils while Worley merely faced a Mets lineup with more holes than a mole farm?

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Bunts, Bloops & Seeing-eyes

Back on April 3, the Pirates and Cubs combined for 16 hits -- all singles. The Pirates won 5-4. It's the most hits without an XBH in a nine-inning game in seven years. On August 31 of 2004, the Royals topped the Tigers 9-8 on a combined 17 singles. (Three walks joined in.)

The record for hits without an XBH in a nine-inning game is 22, achieved by LA and Cincinnati on June 3, 1988. The Dodgers pounded the Reds 13-5 on a combined 22 singles, three walks and a HBP.  Dave Concepcion pitched his only inning of Major League ball in that game, relinquishing two of the singles.

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An Important Goal

For all I bash the NHL, is there anything more thrilling than playoff hockey? Sudden-death overtime in game seven of a series? Wow.

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Hall of A Day
At the risk of harping on the Mets and Phils, Roy Halladay stymied the Mets today 2-1. He threw 27 balls all game to 33 batters. Somehow he walked David Wright, which means he missed the plate 23 times against the other 32 batters.

By way of comparison, NY starter Jon Niese, who acquitted himself favorably in six innings of two-run ball while walking just two, threw 39 balls to 27 batters.

I've always assumed there was a minimum number of times a pitcher must miss the plate to keep batters honest -- something like one-third of his offerings. Short of that, batters can simply come to the plate hacking. For some reason, this doesn't work against Halladay.

At what point is Halladay a Hall of Famer? At 172-87, 3.31, with a 3.5-1 K-BB ratio, he's been the best pitcher in the game over the last seven years, and he has two bronze statues of Cy Young to prove it. (He also came in second once.) He's led the league in innings four times and won 20+ three times. His lifetime ERA is 37% better than league average and that includes an injury-plagued 2000 campaign when he got lit up for a 10.64 ERA. He's first among active pitchers in complete games by a wide -- and growing -- margin.

Halladay has produced 56 wins above replacement, most among active pitchers and more than Whitey Ford, Red Ruffing, Joe McGinnity, Sandy Koufax and Rube Waddell, HOFers all. (He's also well behind Kevin Brown and Luis Tiant.) If Doc traded himself to his family as a 34th birthday present in a fortnight, would he get the nod?

I think there's probably some consensus that such a move would leave us in a pickle. He's certainly HOF quality, but perhaps not quantity. Two more seasons of his current magic gets him in the top 30 for Wins Above Replacement and in the exclusive company of HOFers, and not for nothing, puts him over 200 wins.

So Roy, stay upright, spend less time with your kids, and see you in Cooperstown in no less than seven years.
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Mercy Rule in Cy Young Votes

We're coming down to the wire on a couple of races. Doubt has left the building in the American League and is making a token appearance in the NL. The Phils and Reds are in and a more balanced Atlanta squad has a much easier row to hoe than one-dimensional San Diego and San Fransisco. Odds are that the loser in the West gets the autumn off.

As for the seasonal hardware, there's still plenty to be settled. Prince Albert, who has lain mostly dormant lately, pounded two homers last night to re-state his NL MVP case, while CC Sabathia last night wrote his AL Cy Young concession speech.

In my view, Cy has already, with nine games left, gone around the circle calling "duck" and landed on his goose in each league.

First, a definition. The Cy Young Award recognizes each league's best pitcher. Period. There is no award for the pitcher who had the best offense behind him or relief pitching to support him. There is no award for the pitcher whose team won most when he was on the mound. There's no award for the best lifetime narrative. If you want to invent an award for those, go ahead. Bestow the Ron Davis Award, named for the reliever who, in his 1979 rookie campaign, posted a 14-2 record in the Bronx that vastly overstated his performance. His 1.5 K/BB ratio and 10 blown saves lurked in the shadows of an amazing W-L mark that mostly demonstrated his uncanny ability to walk off the mound just before the Yankees took their final lead of the game.

I'm looking for a pitcher who takes the ball every five days and goes deep into the game without giving up a lot of runs. I'm taking into effect context, most notably the ballpark he pitches in and the defense behind him. You can garnish with other considerations, like his own fielding ability and the strength of his competition, but these tend to have minimal impact. 

In the NL, the Cy Young Award clearly needs a Halladay. The Phillies' right-hander leads the circuit in innings pitched, strikeouts, fewest walks per game, K/BB ratio, complete games, shutouts and quality starts. His home office is Armageddon for pitchers, yet he's yielded just 2.76 runs (not just earned runs) per game, fourth in the league and just a quarter run per nine behind league leader Josh Johnson.The only knock against Halladay is that he can be taken deep -- 24 homers off him this year -- but that's picking at nits, particularly off a guy who does everything else well. 

In short, Roy Halladay is the best pitcher in the NL this year by the length of KRod's rap sheet. Johnson, Adam Wainwright, Tim Hudson, Chris Carpenter, Cole Hamels, Brett Meyers, Johan Santana and Ubaldo Jimenez (remember him?) all deserve recognition for fine 2010 campaigns. But they're all racing for the lower box on the podium. 

In the Junior Circuit, the choice is stark. CC Sabathia has compiled a lot of wins pitching for the best team in baseball. Felix Hernandez has a .500 record for a team that scores less often than my high school friends (me included). Hernandez has pitched more innings than Sabathia and relinquished fewer hits, fewer home runs and fewer walks. He has more strikeouts and a better K/BB ratio. His ERA is a run lower.

In fact, the 24-year-old Venezuelan has so out-performed Carsten Charles this year, you might be wondering whether it's the wrong comparison. You might be thinking that Jon Lester, David Price and Jered Weaver are the more apt competitors for the award. Ah, you are wise grasshopper, but you are not a baseball writer. Sabathia's gaudy 20-7 record is like a shiny bauble to the baseball writers and they will compare it favorably to the 12-12 mark that the Ms have dangled around the neck of King Felix.

Before dismissing Sabathia, let's acknowledge that Yankee Stadium is a breeding ground for home runs and run scoring. The effect, however, is smaller than it appears because the Bombers are so loaded offensively. And while Safeco is a run suppressant, the difference is not nearly enough to balance the scales between Felix and CC.

Lester and Price both deserve notice for their accomplishments this season, but neither is the equal of the Seattle righty and both are being considered, again, mostly because of tasty W-L records. Weaver is an under-heralded annual aspirant to Cy's mantle, but Hernandez is a big hill to climb. In fact, King Felix is their superior in basically every category that matters (K/BB excepted).

Clay Bucholz, Cliff Lee and Brian Duensing have all authored masterful 2010 half-seasons. Had any of these pitched a full season (Bucholz because of injuries, Lee because of trade and Duensing because he pitched from the pen until July) they might now be a contender.

Many things can happen in the last nine games of the 2010 season. Carlos Gonzalez could homer twice a day and propel the Rockies into the playoffs on his MVP wings. The Red Sox could sweep the Yankees and plow into the playoffs ahead of NY. The Mets could decide not to fire Jerry Manuel and not to rue their Jason Bay signing. But many things can't happen. The Pirates cannot win out and end their sub-.500 streak. Prince Fielder cannot earn a Gold Glove. And Roy Halladay and Felix Hernandez are out of opportunities to relinquish their unassailable claims on the Cy Young Awards.

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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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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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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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Coupla Quick Hits

How good is Roy Halladay? The box score in my newspaper says the accomplished Texas offense "roughed him up" last night by scoring five times. Okay, but Halladay pitched eight innings, surrendered eight hits, walked nobody and struck out nine. If that's roughing him up, your team is doomed if he has a mediocre start against you.

The same paper celebrates the "surging" Pirates following its win over Florida...its second in a row. If that's a surge, I can leave my computer plugged in during a lightning storm. In case you're wondering, Pittsburgh is 6-4 in its last 10. Look out respectability!

There's a larger point here: there are no trends in the first 15 games of the season, so you can stop looking for them. They haven't even played one-tenth of the season. Today's team looks very different than the one that ends the campaign, whether because of injuries, performance, trades, call-ups or some combination of all of them.

More importantly, it's way too early for conclusions. If a team wins 22 of 30, okay, that's a trend. A couple in a row -- against the same team? C'mon.

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