World Series Musings

Strike Three

We've become accustomed to the strike-zone illustrations demonstrating where each pitch is, but there's one small group of people that will never see this useful tool -- the umpires! The baseball world has gone mad.

Baseball literally has the technology to replace the home plate umpire with perfection. Instead, it chooses the reverse. Umpires not only are imperfect in their calculation of the strike zone, they seem to be free to interpret it any way they like. Any of the variations on the not-uncommon theme that an umpire "has a high strike zone" or is "giving the pitcher the outside corner" is absurd and now illustrated vividly pitch by pitch on your large-screen, high definition TV.

The strike zone is baseball's manifestation of our political culture, where truth is subordinate to volume. I think baseball ought to be focused on ball-and-strike truth, not an arbiter's opinion, particularly when the arbiter seems to be free to devise his own rules as they game progresses.

Juan For the Road

He's bounced through three organizations in 10 years staffing three infield positions and producing a lackluster.256/.300/.431 lifetime line. He's built like a refrigerator and doesn't look like he could steal a base off an Eephus pitch. But the more you watch Juan Uribe, the more impressed you have to be.

Despite his girth, Uribe is a twinkled-toed third baseman who moves to his left as well as anyone. A one-man ERA-deflator, he's saved the Giants several runs on defense this post-season. When he's filling in at short or second, as he did when Mark DeRosa was healthy and Edgar Renteria wasn't, his 24-home-run power is an asset, despite his on-base deficiencies.

I won't deface this post by alluding to Uribe's post-season performance, as if that small sample of games is somehow indicative of some character trait. Besides, Uribe has two walks and 12 strikeouts in his 12 post-season games so far, accompanying a game-breaking three-run blast in Game One of the World Series. The larger point is this -- playoffs magnify performance, in part because players are on national display for multiple games at a time. 

Call it the Derek Jeter effect, although there are probably several of those. Much of Jeter's renown is a product of our familiarity with his talent from the playoffs. We're more personally and viscerally connected to the exploits of guys whose world class abilities are in our living room nightly. Watching Juan Uribe play a couple of games a year, spread over five months, doesn't make much impact on us, but a concentrated sample of his work gives us greater appreciation. Perhaps if the Giants made the playoffs with Uribe in the lineup for the next five years, he'd be a much more heralded player.

The Buck's Gotta Stop

Joe Buck's the most-watched and highest-paid baseball announcer in the world, wouldn't you think? The ability to entertain and inform people extemporaneously via broadcast media is a rare gift that I acknowledge and admire. It's easy to take shots at people who must speak for three hours without a script five nights-a-week.

But it is reasonable to ask those talents to be informed about their subjects. Joe Buck 2010 ought to know something about the game that Jack Buck 1975 didn't. On that point, alas.

On Jeff Francoeur, the over-talented major league bust whom the Rangers over-hopefully picked up in August after the Mets finally cut bait, Buck demonstrated that he has no idea what makes a successful ballplayer.

Buck recounted what a promising rookie campaign Francoeur had, batting .300 with 14 home runs in half a season, how Francoeur had pounded 29 homers in his sophomore season and how he'd knocked in 100+ runs twice for the Braves.

But if there is a consistent theme in Jeff Francoeur's career it's that he has no idea where the strike zone is. For his career -- now more than 3,400 plate appearances -- Francoeur has walked just 168 times, or about 29 times per 600 trips to the plate. He whiffs four times as often, largely because pitchers know he swings at bad pitches. Other great talents have burned up on the same funeral pyre.

The result is a lifetime .310 OBP, which is more important than his batting average, home run total, RBI count or anything else Joe Buck can name. It is the window on Francoeur's under-whelming career, which the highest-paid baseball announcer in the world still doesn't know how to -- or even why to -- open. It's not the only example of Buck's willful ignorance, but it's the most poignant.

Francoeur's at bat was instructive. The now-bearded outfielder flailed at two outside pitches and then took a called strike three. The lesson escaped the most-watched announcer in baseball.

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Not the Hitless Wonders

Well, that was exactly as predicted. I had the Giants scoring 11 runs. All series. It's nice to polish off the to-do list in Game 1. That leaves them the rest of the week to kick back with a beer.

It's fun to trash the Giants for offensive offensiveness, but it overlooks one inconvenient fact: the Giants of October aren't the Lilliputians who opened the season.

Consider the pathetic roster Bruce Bochy put on the field to open the season. The top-paid free agent signing, center fielder Aaron Rowand, had gained renown mostly for dramatic outfield fence collisions in which he usually finished in second place. Rowand limped through half the season before being yanked, hitting a paltry .230/.281/.378.

Starting cornerman Pedro Sandoval was the Giants' big swinger last year, but his decline this season was utterly predictable. For one thing, the guy is made of jello. For another, he's allergic to walks. He's a decent fielder for his size, which is like saying that Charlie Sheen is a good husband for a drug addict.

San Francisco's run scoring juggernaut was capped by backstop Bengie Molina, who couldn't tear a paper bag with his swing from inside it. Molina hung 221 empty plate appearances on the team, making 152 outs and 84 total bases. The word that performance brings to mind is "minors," which is where the team went to find his replacement.

And that's the point. NL Rookie of the Year Should-be Buster Posey replaced Molina -- literally; they brought up Posey and fired Molina, who is now contributing to the Rangers' championship run -- and instantly topped the team's hitting chart. His .305/.357/.505 represented a 32 run upgrade for them.

Instead of Rowand, the good Dr. Jekyll Burrell arrived, pounding 18 homers and a .364 OBP in just 341 plate appearances. Just removing Rowand saved the team two runs; Burrell added another 19. Add waiver claim Cody Ross doing his Shane Victorino imitation and keeping Jose Guillen (.692 OPS) and Nate Schierholtz (.677 OPS) on the bench and the offense is visibly improved.

Bringing back Edgar Renteria from injury allowed Juan Uribe to slide over to third and sack Sandoval. Sum the parts with Aubrey Huff's (.891 OPS) year-long slugging and you are stuck with a conclusion that's bad for punchlines: the Giants are not the team that started the season. They're a decent hitting squad with some outfield power, representative bats at first, short and third and a budding superstar behind the plate.

Combined with their formidable arms and a Goth closer, it's suddenly not such a surprise that the Giants are in the World Series. They aren't the hitless wonders that began 2010.

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The Mice Who Roar

I'm as thrilled as the next Yankee-basher that Texas has lost its playoff virginity and that either Dallas or San Fran gets its World Series cherry popped in the next two weeks. I'll be watching every whiff. (There'll be lots. The Giants can't hit and the Rangers will be facing great pitching.)

So understand that this isn't a complaint. But anyone who thinks these are the two best teams in baseball doesn't have both oars in the water. It's fair to say that the Rangers couldn't even win a bronze medal in the AL East Olympics.

So after a 162-game season and three rounds of playoffs, we'll have a definitive champion, but no answer to the question "who is the best team?" This works for me in baseball, at least to some extent, because the best team is the same one every year, by artificial means. It does mean that Rent-A-Wrecks like Detroit and St. Louis 2006 will vie for baseball's Daytona 500 now and then.

These contemplations coincide with publication of a new book fashionably calling for a Jihad against the BCS. Like most fans, its authors demand a playoff in college football. Well, I have some bad news for all of you.

We already have a college football playoff. The BCS is a two-team playoff that guarantees that one of the two -- or maybe three or four -- best teams in the land will emerge as champs. If you expand the playoff to eight or 16, some arbitrary method will be employed to choose the contestants, just as it is now. The championship game, though, could pair any of those 16 teams, including the two weakest. Definitive champ; pit in stomach.

If you're sipping at the playoff punch, remember this too: a 16-team playoff would suck the marrow out of the college football season. Oregon, Boise State, TCU, Auburn, Alabama and Ohio State could all cruise to the finish at this point because a loss, or even two in some cases, wouldn't knock them out of the top 16. Under the current system, every game is swollen with import. The result is a fascinating college football season that usually gives us a definitive champion that can also credibly claim to be the best in the land.

Personally, I prefer the chaos, the mayhem and the endless arguments. Sports talk radio would have to fill its hours with even more insipid subjects than it does now were it not for debates about non-BCS schedules, comparative undefeateds without opponent overlap, and objective versus subjective rating systems. Do you really want to hear more rambling, inarticulate quarterback voice mail messages that knock the bronze off their senders' Canton bust? Because that's the kind of mindlessness that would fill the chasm created by eliminating college football debates.

Every sport grapples with this. The NBA and NHL have chosen to steer their regular seasons off a cliff, much to their long-term detriment, I would argue. Pro football, benighted in all it surveys, seems to have successfully played both ends against the middle (and it's collecting the vig too.) College football has the regular season nailed and the post-season is tacked down pretty good too, the righteous uproar not withstanding. Baseball is trying to have it both ways and the result is predictably a little of everything. The season is important, but once you squeak into the playoffs, you're as likely to win as those who roar in. 

And this year, the mice are roaring.

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Dear Cliff Lee

Okay, I can breathe again. I can blog again. Thank you, Texas Rangers.

A quick note to Cliff Lee:

Dear Cliff,

I know that the Yankees are going to throw a spadillion dollars at you to reunite Sabathia & Lee. I understand that, though the difference between a spadillion and 20 million is inconceivable to me, it's a ton of cash to you. And to the union too.

I'm sure you can live comfortably in LA or Cincinnati or Chicago or wherever on $20 million. I'm thinking your wife can probably shop at Whole Foods every week on that salary. If you want that OnStar system in the Lexus, Cliff, I'm thinking Scott Boras would approve. It probably won't prevent you from making those Berkshire-Hathaway investments.

Now let's talk about happiness, Cliff. You're a southern boy. New York and Boston are not like Arkansas. They tahk funny thayah. They're crazy Socialists who want to tax rich people like you. They don't care about SEC football. Heck, they don't care about college sports, period. The extra Benjamins won't change any of that.

Nor will it change the weather. You want your hands to be numb in April and October? I didn't think so, Cliff.

Remember, you won the Cy Young in Cleveland. You went to the World Series with Philly. You're back again with the Rangers. You're a hero in North Texas today. You don't need the damn Yankees. If New York were to get to the championship with you as their #2 starter, you wouldn't get much credit. C'mon, they've got CC and Mo and Jeter and ARod and Teixeira. There's not much room for Cliff. Besides, there would be no novelty in NY or Boston. People don't worship you for delivering title #28, particularly when some of your teammates were around six titles ago.

Spadilllion schmillion. Stay in Dallas, Cliff. They're practically your home team. Or maybe St. Louis or Atlanta is. They're nice places. Go to Anaheim or Seattle or Phoenix. Be the guy who saved baseball, not another sucker who went to NY for the money.

Your friend,

Waldo

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The Inevitable is Still Inevitable

As I write this, CC Sabathia is collecting splinters while the Yankee bullpen mops up his 5-2 mess against the Rangers in Game 1 of the ALCS. If Texas hangs on for six more outs, they guarantee themselves one game in the series.

New York enjoys the largest payroll disparity over Texas in all of playoff history and they avoid an over-abundance of Ranger poison pill, Cliff Lee. The Rangers throw Colby Lewis against the World Champs in Games 2 and 5, and Game 1 starter CJ Wilson returns in Games 4 and 7. They're nice young players, but Jorge Posada has seen 114 others just like them. He's not exactly quaking in his stirrups.

You might recall that the last Lone Star playoff triumph against the Yankees was Game 1 of a series more than a decade ago, which impressively preceded nine straight New York victories.

Pay close attention to how the home team reacts on Saturday. Unless their gaze is laser-locked on Game 2, they are toast. One nanosecond of gloating or bemoaning dooms them against the experienced and immensely-talented Gotham juggernaut.

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A moment now to rebut my own statement about the Yankees owning the largest payroll disparity over Texas in all of playoff history, roughly $150 million. Jeter and ARod cash larger checks than the entire roster in Arlington.

At the risk of defending the evil scourge that is the Yankees, much of payroll disparity is really experience disparity. In their first six years of MLB service, players cannot seek market-based compensation. So Josh Hamilton’s salary could bring the entire Kardashian family and still not get into Curtis Granderson’s party. Had Hamilton forgone four years of nostril-toasting, he’d be making enough to buy Cleveland, not counting anything still owned by LeBron.

Of course, the Yankees would be paying that salary, having gorged on the best available free-agent outfielder, so that does undermine my argument. Hamilton may be a crackhead, but as long as he hits 30 homers and scrapes the hair off his face regularly, he’s Yankee material.* I haven't a piercing, a tatoo or a felony conviction on my person, but even if I could slug .600, the Yankees would be put off by my hirsuteness. Just another reason to despise the the franchise, just behind Kim Jong Il and ahead of Mussolini.

*That was just a rhetorical flourish: I admire Josh’s fortitude and wish him good luck, especially the next seven games. But that’s not the way to bet.

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Wake Me Up for Spring Training

And there you go. It's already evident why the baseball playoffs have become a giant anti-climax to a thrilling 162-game marathon.

If you find yourself yawning and checking your fantasy football roster, it's because the Yankees are already booking their rooms in Philadelphia. Having humiliated the Twins, they now face the prospect of a match-up with the pitching depleted Rays or Rangers. A series versus Texas without the services of Cliff Lee until Game 3 is as compelling as a hammer-nail competition. Texas is more likely to secede from the Union (again) than beat New York in a seven-game ALCS. Tampa might prolong the dance, but three Sabathia starts weighs more heavily -- literally and figuratively -- than anything the Rays can pull from their $70 million roster.

In fact, it was only two games into the playoffs before we already knew that the franchise with advantages at every level -- in the draft, in international signings, in payroll, in recruiting players; in everything -- will yet again compete in the championship series. Ho hum. Fans in Seattle and Chicago and Houston and Toronto and Kansas City must again be filled with glee.

And if the Yankees face the favored Phillies, we will once again witness the sorry spectacle of outdoor baseball on frigid November nights in the Northeast. That's just how Abner Doubleday drew it up, don't you think? The sting of the bat, the clattering of teeth, the pristine white of snow flurries sprinkling the brown grass. The Boys of Winter.

ZZZZzzzzzz.

NL MVP: Gotta Have A Votto Love

That the prime candidates for 2010 NL MVP all toiled for contenders should not lull you into the cognitive weakness of assuming that “leading his team to the pennant” is a credible skill.

The four legitimate contenders clubbed their way to stardom for the Rockies, Cardinals, Padres and Reds. They deserve consideration not because their teams won bunches of games but because they personally contributed at the highest levels.  But first, a word about a young outfielder who is not a viable candidate.

If batting average, steals and outfield versatility float your boat, Carlos Gonzalez is your coxswain. The Venezuelan lefty hit .336 to pace the league, swiped 26 bases and deployed variously to all three outfield positions. But Cargo didn’t work the count at an MVP level, leaving his more relevant on base percentage at .376, 37^th best in baseball, six spots behind Chipper Jones and his .265 BA.

Moreover, Cargo was a thin air demon, managing just a .289/.322/.453 line with a mere eight of his 34 dingers away from Denver. Most batters perform better when there’s no hotel involved, but those splits suggest that Cargo’s a good hitter exploiting a very favorable condition. Nix!

Anyway, there’s a superior candidate from Colorado: shortstop Troy Tulowitzki. Tulo hit .315/.381/.568 with more normal platoon splits. While those numbers don’t match Cargo’s they tower over the average shortstop’s. Whereas Gonzalez cooled just as the Rockies ran out of steam at season’s end, Tulo kept the engine stoked, accumulating a 1.127 OPS in the last month and banging 12 of his 27 homers.

In fact, Tulowitzki’s greater MVP competition is another Gonzalez, Masochist of the Year Adrian Gonzalez. San Diego’s first baseman has the dubious distinction of playing his home games in the Grand Canyon, surrounded by a lineup of replacement-level hitters. That he was able to produce a .298/.393/.511 line and 31 homers while carrying the entire Padre offense on his back is remarkable. His road record -- .315 .402 .578 with 20 homers – suggests that Petco seriously kiboshes his power. 

That's all very nice, but now let's talk about the National League's Most Valuable Player.

There is a pair of first baseman whose performances require no explanations. Albert Pujols and Joey Votto delivered seasons superior in nearly every way to the above-named. Pujols (.312/.414/.596 with 14 steals in 18 attempts) and Votto (.324/.424/.600 with 16 steals in 21 attempts) sufficiently outpaced Tulowitzki to overwhelm his added value as a shortstop, and simply overwhelm the accomplishments of the Messers Gonzalez.

While Votto is a perfectly perfunctory first baseman, Pujols’s defensive acumen shaves off Votto’s offensive edge. Both players lit it up in August and early September, when Cincinnati pulled away from St. Louis, and both play in parks that don’t much favor offense or defense. Pujols stayed healthy for all but two games and delivered his excellence in 52 more plate appearances.

So why is Joey Votto my MVP? You can divine meaning from the sixth decimal place if you like, but basically the two are even. Votto, though, carried the Reds’ offense. Whereas Pujols had a trusty sidekick in Matt Holliday (.922 OPS) with support from Colby Rasmus and Ryan Ludwick for two-thirds of the season, Votto’s supporting cast was a revitalized Scott Rolen (.855 OPS) and the likes of Jay Bruce and Drew Stubbs.

Votto gets my vote by a split hair over the best player in the game. If the baseball writers split the hair differently, that’s fine. Any other vote is a Ricky Riccardo – they got a lot a ‘splainin’ to do.

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AL MVP: Him or Him or Him

The American League MVP race is nearly as wide open as Dick Vitale’s mouth. Unlike the Cy Young races, where there really is only one right answer in each league, reasonable people can disagree on who was the best performer this year.

First, the preliminaries:

1. The Most Valuable Player is the player who added the most wins to his team by hitting, base running and defense. Period.
2. The MVP’s credentials are largely unconnected to his team’s place in the standings. A player whose performance adds eight wins to his team’s total has eight wins of value, irrespective of whether they are wins 63-70 or wins 87-94.
3. Context matters. A lot. Hitting home runs at The Ballpark in Arlington is roughly 13% easier than in Safeco Field. Competing in the AL East is harder than in the AL West. There are homeless men in the NYC subway who can hit .300 with power and play first base. Catchers who do so are even rarer than a n African democracy.
4. Stats that don’t matter, don’t matter. If we can agree that runs scored and batted in are team events, then they have no place in the discussion. When we use stats, let’s stick to those that illuminate the issue, not confuse it.

At first glance, the race for MVP is between the batting champ, Ranger left-fielder Josh Hamilton and RBI king, Tigers first-baseman Miguel Cabrera. Hamilton was magnificent all year, hitting .360/.412/.636 and leading the league in OPS in a hitter-friendly park. Cabrera was no less impressive, swatting .328/.420/.622 in the more neutral Comerica. Hamilton contributed nothing during the 30 games he missed. Cabrera contributed in all but the final 12.

Cabrera has a small hitting edge, but Hamilton has a significant fielding advantage. He dazzles sufficiently in left to do stand-in work in center and he runs the bases well, swiping eight of nine. Cabrera carries an over-packed suitcase in his uniform, slowing him on the base paths and at first. Not for nothing, Cabrera grounded into 17 double plays, to 10 for Hamilton.

Before you choose from between these luminaries, Robinson Cano would like to make his case. While he only hit .320/.382/.535 in Fly Ball Heaven Stadium, Cano turns the double-play. He didn’t light it up like either Cabrera or Hamilton, but relative to a replacement player, he was the best in the league. Baseball Prospectus estimates he was worth 9.5 wins above a replacement second-sacker, compared to Hamilton’s 8.5 versus left-fielders and Cabrera’s 7.6 over first basemen.

All three, in my view, have their charms. If given a vote, I’d cast it for Cabrera. I don’t think Cano has hit enough to overtake the other two. The defensive zone rating metrics, of which I’m admittedly wary, don’t like Hamilton, casting a light shadow of doubt on his “value.” Moreover, Hamilton’s accomplishments are dependent on more than a fair share of grounders sneaking through holes. Ten fewer of them and his slash stats can’t compete with Cabrera’s. But I won’t knock anyone who casts their ballot for Cano or Hamilton. I like chocolate; perhaps they like vanilla or strawberry.

A note about three other players. Meteorite Blue Jay outfielder Jose Bautista slammed 54 homers and laid down a .262/.380/.621 line. Zounds. For the MVP though, he’s basically Hamilton/Cabrera lite. Red Sox third baseman Adrian Beltre (.321/.365/.553) and Rays’ third basemen Evan Longoria (.294/.372/.507) have high replacement value as hot-cornermen, but not enough to cover 100 fewer points of OPS, in my view. Believing the defensive hype about Longoria puts him squarely in the discussion, but I’m dubious about both defensive reputation and defensive metrics.

So who’s the AL MVP? No definitive answer. If the writers pick one of Hamilton, Cabrera and Cano, no complaints will be warranted.

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Meandering Through the Bronx

So if the stars are lining up for the Phillies in the NL; what about the AL? It's not so cut-and-dried, but baseball fans disregard the Yankees at their own peril.

If you pay attention to the past, you realize three things:

1. How a team finishes the regular season is absolutely no guide to how they will perform in the playoffs.

2. Most theories about who has the edge (e.g., they have more playoff experience) are crap.

3. The past is only occasionally prologue to the present.

The Yankees cruised to a runner-up finish with starting pitchers like Somebody Nova and Somebody-else Moseley while they bottle-fed Andy Pettitte back into the rotation. This is a franchise that has in past years gotten bored of the regular season once the post-season became a fait accompli. They will be at maximum strike force for the Twins, even if, as Wild Card, they're made to suffer on the road, in frigid weather, against a superior foe (relative to Texas.)

The Rangers are in much-improved position to win with their MVP-candidate left-fielder back in the fold, but they suffer the curse of the egalitarian staff, which doesn't seem to correlate with playoff success. Though Texas will suit up an 11-man pitching contingent that includes just two hurlers whose ERAs top 4.00 (Dustin Nippert, 4.20 and Matt Harrison, 4.71), no one after Cliff Lee raises any eyebrows from opposing sluggers. A deep staff with no clear star gets a team to the post-season, but doesn't have a history of keeping them there long.

Not that their first opponent, the Rays, are riding any great wave. The starters, Tampa's iron fist most of the season, tailed off badly in the last month, in several cases reaching well past their Verducci levels. Wade Davis pitched 100 more innings than he ever had before; David Price 80 more. Jeff Niemann and James Shields showed repeatedly that they had nothing left in the second half. While Yankee hurlers have been coasting, their Ray counterparts may be sucking wind.

There are plenty of good arguments for the Rays, Twins and Rangers to win trips to the World Series. Short playoff series are notoriously fickle and the four contestants are relatively evenly matched. Still, New York is unique among them in not yet considering their season a success. The AL championship goes through the Bronx, even if no clinching game ever does.

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Payback Could Be A Bitch

If you're the Philadelphia Phillies, you have to be feeling that what went around has come around on the 2010 season. Buffeted by a rash of early- and mid-season injuries that turned them into newts, the horsies got better and now find themselves uniquely positioned to march through the playoffs.

Payback could be a bitch for the other contenders.

Most likely, Philly will square off with Cincinnati in the division series. The Reds have feasted on the dregs of the league for most of their 89 victories. That is not the formula for ousting Halladay, Oswalt and Hamels (H2O). Las Vegas will be falling all over itself to court wagers against the double defending NL champs.

The Giants and Braves must eliminate San Diego before tussling in the first round. Depending on how long it takes, both teams could use up their best starters. Matt Cain, on the hill tonight, is already out for Game One. The Braves' Jair Jurrjens is hobbled and questionable for the playoffs. Tim Hudson is scheduled to go Sunday if the Braves still need to win, which would push his first start to Game 3. 

Anything can happen in a five-game series, of course, but it's easy to imagine Rollins, Utley, Howard and Werth plowing through the Redleg pitching and giving the rotation time to reset against the Giants or Braves. With the home field advantage and a late-season pedigree, Philly would be prohibitive favorites against whichever side wins the other series. The Giants have the mound horses to match, but if they've chewed through them in the NLDS, they might not be quite the asset. Citizens Bank is a homer total's best friend, but San Fran doesn't have the punch to take advantage.

As for the Braves, they are largely a Turner Field phenomenon, and that doesn't play well in Philly, particularly on autumn nights. The Phils made up eight games on Atlanta in September for a reason. Rolling out H2O for six of seven games exaggerates the advantage and ameliorates Philly's bullpen weakness.

None of that accounts for injuries, anomalies, rain delays/postponements and simple luck. The race isn't always to the swift nor the battle to the strong. But that's the way to bet.

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Anomalies of Another Great Season

Some amazing notes from another amazing baseball season as it drips into its annual anti-climax.

1. Phlegmatic Arizona slugger Mark Reynolds is the Greg House of baseball. The Diamondback slugger is either a genius or colossal failure, depending on what aspect of the job you esteem. Reynolds is batting .198 and has 208 strikeouts. He is three games away from becoming the first player in history with more strikeouts than his batting average. And yet, Reynolds has 13 runs of value over a replacement cornerman. How is that? Thirty-two homers, 83 walks and decent fielding at a tough defensive position mean he's worth abiding the futility while enjoying the patience and power.

2. How good is Jason Heyward? Adonis hit .278/.394/.457 in his rookie year, with great plate savvy, speed and defense. Most notably: he's 21. It's hard to overstate how significant that is. He should be a junior in college, ready to be drafted and begin next season in Double-A. Instead, he's among the 100 best ballplayers on the planet.

In Sammy Sosa's first year, a few months younger than Heyward is now, his Major League education scored out at .257/.303/.366. I remember reading a reflection by Bill James that I can't find, in which he noted that Sosa's rookie performance projected to a magnificent career, and gave him a one-third chance of achieving Hall of Fame status. Sammy was a replacement-level player that year. Heyward is worth 32 runs more than a replacement player. If he continues to grow (in baseball terms, that is. At 6'4" 220, growing his frame would be scary) he's an A-Rodian cinch for Cooperstown. (ARod's age 21 rookie season: .358/.414/.631.)

3. Albert Pujols had a disappointing year, don't you think? He faded when the Cardinals swooned and fell out of the race. He binged and purged on NL pitching. He only hit .315, 18 points below his career mean. Consider in his place, this guy: he had a .416 OBP and led the league in slugging with a .602 mark. He pounded 42 homers, most in the circuit and 39 doubles, drove in a league-leading 118 runs and scored a league-pacing 115. His 83 runs of VORP (value over replacement player) was tops and that doesn't include his sensational defense.

That is the margin by which Prince Albert is the king of baseball. His off-year is MVP quality, even if he's not the guy you'd actually select. (More on that in a subsequent post.) Earning the best player mantle in your career year is difficult enough; Pujols is worthy of the crown when he struggles.

4. How about that John Axford, huh? "Who?" you said. Fair enough. The Brewers' new closer posted an 8-2 2.53 line with 23 saves in 26 chances while yielding but a lonely home run. Why is Axford a mystery to you? Because last year he toiled for the Single-A Brevard County Manatees. He thrived as a cumbersome sea-faring mammal in '09 and thrived as a hops mixer in '10. Go figure.

5. In his first four full seasons, Jose Bautista hit 59 homers combined. This year he's at 54 and counting. He posted slugging averages of .420, .404, .411 and .408. This year, .625. He stole 13 bases but was nailed eight times. This year, 8 of 10. In his first four seasons, he was worth two wins over replacement -- total. This year 6.6.

I'll leave the steroid speculation to others. The question that most interests me is, what should we expect next year? We know that, on average, anomalies like him regress to the mean. That is, on average, a player with a career of .415 slugging averages who slugs .625 will fall halfway back, slugging .520. On average, he'll club 35 out and steal six of nine. But Jose Bautista isn't the average player; he's Jose Bautista, just as you're not the average family, with 2.3 children. While that's the midpoint of his range, he could also quite conceivably repeat 2010. That would be fun.

6. The Toronto Blue Jays have the fourth worst team batting average in baseball, the second fewest singles and the eighth-fewest walks. So naturally, they're second in total bases and ninth in runs scored. Led by a Bautista-infused 253 long balls, (Boston's second at 207) the Jays have posted the largest difference between slugging average and batting average...in history. At .207, it's double the level of the Mariners (.104), who stand at the precipice of historical run-scoring futility. It's a great game.

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Now Pitching, Wild Thing

While you're eyeballing Aroldis Chapman's supersonic pitches next season, my gaze will fall on Braves rookie Craig Kimbrel. A third-round pick in '08, the 22-year-old Alabaman has bedazzled major league hitters since his September call-up this year.

Kimbrel is Nook Laloosh without the girlfriend. He faced 80 batters in his first 19 relief appearances and walked 14 of them. Eight of them touched him up for hits. And 37 of them struck out. 

He had an 0.47 ERA. That's good, you know.

In Triple-A Gwinnett this year, he walked 35 in 55 innings. And struck out 83. Those minor leaguers managed a hit every other inning off him. What do they know that major leaguers don't?

The Braves are talking about making him a starter, so there's a lot more to the story to be written. In the meantime, enjoy the fireworks.

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My God, How Did We Get Here?

And so here we are, two series remain in the season and there is just one race. The Padres, Giants and Braves competing for two spots.

What a long, strange trip it's been. (Later note: I wrote this sentence and yesterday's post just before Baseball Prospectus unveiled its new Pecota system designed specifically to eliminate projections like the Matt Wieters over-reach to which I referred. The first sentence of this paragraph is the title of theirs. The Grateful Dead lives.) The Phillies, clearly the cream of the NL, suffered through a broken lineup until September when they caught fire and torched the Braves. Atlanta in turn played like Ted Williams at home (52-23) and Esther Williams (35-46) on the road (credit: Schnitz) to earn their invitation to the Wild Card gala.

In the Central, St. Louis spanked this year's playoff contenders but went all masochist when taking on the league's basement dwellers. (12-6 vs. the Reds; 21-26 against the detritus that comprises the rest of the division.) Surprising Cincinnati rode Joey Votto, a resurgent Scott Rolen and positive contributions from 16 pitchers to capture the Central. Out west, midnight seemed to strike for the improbable Hitless Wonders from San Diego, but now it's morning in SoCal and the Padres are back on the pulpit. The pitching Giants and their teammates, the hitting Midgets, are in the driver's seat after relinquishing three or fewer runs in 21 of 24 September games, yet managing to win just 15 of them.

The final six-pack of contests finds the Braves mercifully finishing at the Ted to school the Fightin' Fish and the second string from Philadelphia. The Pads and Giants tussle with each other to wrap the season, so Atlanta has an edge on the Wild Card.

The beauty of this race is that it approaches reductionist perfection. Win, you're in. Lose, go home. Of course, they could all muddle to the finish line, which would mean settling it in overtime. With these three they should just play until someone scores. That'll keep it at nine innings.

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Statheads on Crack

Sabermetrics have transformed baseball analysis and helped regular fans like us understand the game differently and better. Computer-fueled statistical analysis has punched holes in old shibboleths and established new, research-supported truths. Often, they tell us that our eyes deceive us.

The stat geeks, spreadsheet-munchers and number nerds responsible for this revolution deserve our appreciation not just for devising new ways to measure things, but to continue to devise better ways. Ten years ago, when seamheads were gestating the concept of dissociating pitching from defense, the results were often best left ignored. They have improved steadily, thanks to MLB's ability to catalog every single pitch, to the point where we could, in broad strokes, predict the decline of Ubaldo Jimenez in the second half of the season.

Sometimes, however, seamheads forget that their work is a journey and not a destination.They are beguiled by half-conceived statistical formulae whose rough edges have yet been smoothed by years of inquiry, testing and polishing. They treat the results as gospel, rather than as suggestions tempered by the adolescent state of the art.

Two years ago, Oriole farmhand Matt Wieters was touted by Baseball Prospectus as the greatest catching prospect since Zeus. (Lightning bolt for an arm, immense two-strike power.) Using their proprietary projection system to examine Wieters' minor league and college careers, it projected him to hit .311/.395/.544 with 31 home runs in 2009 and be worth 60 runs more than a replacement-level catcher. Their system, called PECOTA, compares player performance to similar players of the past and sets upper and lower boundaries on expected future results. What I've listed is the weighted mean -- or most likely -- projected rookie numbers for Wieters.

What seemed obvious to me at the time, and what you've no doubt realized, is that such expectations for any rookie are patently absurd. They fail the smell test. While we should all be open to revealed truths, we must trust our eyes until the contradictory facts congeal into a proof.

In fact, Wieters showed great promise as a 23-year-old in 2009 with a .288/.340/.412 line and nine home runs in half a season. That's still above average for a receiver, but a far cry from the projection that BP writers defended as if it were the 11th commandment. (Honor they PECOTA projection and have no other conjurings before me.) Wieters has sagged even further from that unwarranted esteem this year to .253/.326/.385 and 11 home runs in full-time duty.

I love Baseball Prospectus enough to pay good money for it and read it everyday. But they treat PECOTA as destiny and use it to project team performance -- via a Monte Carlo simulation of a million permutations -- at the start of each season. Then they update their projections as the season unfolds.

The opening season projections amount to on-screen enlightenment. Often, BP sees things I don't. They correctly projected declines for the Dodgers, White Sox, Tigers and Angels. They're a good guide to the upcoming season.

It's when Dr. Jekyll starts reading his own press releases that he becomes Mr. Hyde. Entering the 2010 campaign, BP projected that the Cardinals had something like an 80% chance of making the playoffs. My reaction then was, how could that possibly be? I understand that the Redbirds were favorites, but no non-Yankee contingent can ever be an 80% lock before a pitch is thrown. Imagine a season in which Albert Pujols and Chris Carpenter are cut down by injuries and you can see that such a projection is patent nonsense. But the BP brain trust wrote as if October in St. Louis was a fait accompli.

Two weeks ago, BP had the Braves as an 89.6% lock to play in mid-October, despite a three-game deficit to the surging Phils and just a two game cushion over San Francisco for the Wild Card. Once again my olfactory nerves shuddered. Atlanta took three pops to the chin from their division rival and fell into a flat-footed tie for the Wild Card with nine or 10 games left. BP was still offering nearly 3-1 that the Braves would take the fourth playoff spot. (Their remaining schedule is weaker than San Diego's and San Francisco's.)

I understand why BP thinks the Braves should be favored, but I doubt Atlanta residents are booking their playoff tickets quite yet. As I write this, Chief Nakahoma's nine is a game back of San Diego in the loss column with six to play, having just lost two of three to execrable Washington. How is it possible for a team to be a 90% lock for the playoffs if a 4-6 stretch puts them on the outside looking in?

Perhaps some day the statxperts at Baseball Prospectus will improve their tools and better project playoff odds. Or (more likely, in my view) predicting the future will continue to fall outside the purview of mere humans, regardless of their statistical acumen. In any case, I'll continue to treat sabermetrics as a toolbox necessary to understanding the game I love, not as perfection itself.

So I'll be watching the games this last week and ignoring the predictions.
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Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

Four out of five people -- nearly half! -- are innumerate. It's online, so it must be true.

When I was a reporter, the local county executive of one political stripe was battling over budgetary matters with the rival-dominated legislature. The legislative leader claimed that the rate of increase in the budget had spiked 200%. The number-addled media duly reported it.

The next day, the county executive responded that he had hog-tied spending 25% below inflation. The media, without any effort or ability to analyze the apparent paradox, simply passed that along too.

Of course, the few reporters like me who could count to 11 without removing their footwear knew that they were both spinning absurdly the same information. The county had increased spending in year one by 1% and in year two by 3%. That's a tripling in the rate of increase, which is 200%. Since the cost of living was rising at four percent, the rate of county spending had risen three-quarters of that, or 25% less. As Mark Twain noted, there are three types of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.

In baseball, statistics are like fire: a wonderful servant and terrible master. People facile with statistics can use them to illuminate and enrich. Most people have a weak grip on stats and instead use them, often unknowingly, to obfuscate and confuse.

Two example jumped to mind this week. I'll address the second one in an upcoming post.

First, Ichiro Suzuki reached 200 hits for a record 10th straight year. This is noteworthy, and even somewhat significant, but not terribly so. If it were, it's hard to imagine that the DH-aided Mariners would be on pace to score the fewest runs in a season in 39 years. (Aside: "DH-aided" might be hyperbole. Seattle DHs are swimming underwater as a group in the Mendoza pool. Then again, so are their catchers. Their backstops, second-basemen and shortstops are slugging less than .300. Felix Hernandez deserves the Purple Heart for going 12-12.)

Collecting bunches of hits is always a good thing. To accrue 200, a batter must hit for average (.331 lifetime) and demonstrate durability over a six month regular season (he's averaging 158 games). Achieving that 10 straight years is a testament to consistency, reliability and hitting prowess. It doesn't hurt, of course, that Ichiro has led-off in nearly every game he's played.

Accumulating lots of hits is also a mark of one giant inability: getting on base by free pass. Albert Pujols has tallied 200 hits just once in his all-world career, yet he's batted safely more often than Ichiro in many fewer plate appearances. (They're both completing their 10th MLB season.) The Babe reached that level just three times.

Ichiro is a two-trick pony offensively. He gets hits and steals bases (an average of 38 SB/9 CS per campaign) but is almost a total power outage. For all his hits, he's reached 30 doubles just twice in his career and double-digits in homers twice.

Ichiro is a very extreme example of the hollowness of batting average. At .315 with just 37 extra base hits, Ichiro is 62nd in the majors in value over a replacement level player (VORP), just behind Carlos Ruiz and ahead of Austin Jackson. Failing to walk leaves him just 63rd in MLB in on-base percentage (among players with 300 PA) just behind Kelly Johnson and ahead of Jeff Keppinger. In short, Ichiro needs to bat about .330 to be a great hitter and at least .300 to be a good one.

Ichiro has been a great player mostly because his glove work, his dependability and his basepath prowess complement a sturdy OBP (.376 lifetime) fueled mostly by batting average. There's a certain level of novelty act to his career.  After all, Travis Hafner has a higher lifetime OBP than Ichiro with a bucket-load more power, but no one's bronzing his likeness. It's all the other things that make Ichiro a sublime player.

As the third best lead-off hitter of all time, Ichiro's a lock for the Hall of Fame. (Rickey & Rock both had higher OBP, higher SLG and more net steals; neither was Ichiro's equal in the field.) But he'll be on the low end in the Hall when considering actual value to his team.

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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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My Day At Spitball Stadium

I went to a Major League game at the Ballpark last week. The home nine was taking on the team in dark uniforms for first place in the North. It was quite a tilt.

The opposition's lead-off hitter, facing a 3-1 count, tried to cop a walk by ducking away from a slider on the inside edge. The wily veteran had nothing on the experienced arbiter that day, who called strike two.

He squared on the next delivery and laid a roller along the third base line, which the hot cornerman could only watch roll to a stop. He really exploited the defense. Man on first.

The next batsman smacked a one-hopper to the shortstop who flipped to second. The base runner came barreling in six feet from the bag, cleats exposed. He reached back his hand in a token effort to suggest that second base was his intended destination while he upended the sprawling keystoner, disrupting the relay to first. A hustling team player, he saved the hated opposition an out.

Next up, the dangerous #3 hitter. An inside curve ball bounced beside the plate and skidded into the dugout while the batter insisted to the umpire that he'd been struck. His manager, a cagey baseball man, surreptitiously scuffed the ball against his shoe and raced onto the field with the marked ball aloft. The ump, over-ruled by the evidence, awarded the hitter first base.

First and second, one out. Our hurler was born on a day, but it wasn't yesterday. He worked over the newly-supplied ball meticulously while the next batter took his warm-up swings. Hidden between his ring and middle fingers was a tiny emery board, which he applied to the ball in order to destabilize its path to the plate.

Sure enough, his next three pitches fluttered home in thoroughly frustrating patters, sending the burly cleanup hitter to an early seat back in the dugout. He always has something up his sleeve to keep hitters off-balance! A crucial second out to douse the rally.

The inning ended without incident and our side got its licks.

The first offering from the visiting club's ace made a beeline for our speedy table-setter as he began his swing. He spun out of the way as the ball caromed off him, shaking his aching hand something fierce. He jogged to first while the replays showed the ball had, in fact, ricocheted off his bat. What a great actor! Those are the kinds of intangibles that make him an All Star.

Our number two hitter worked the count to 3-1. A slider fizzed wide of the strike zone, but the catcher had set up wider yet and framed the pitch a few inches lean. "Strike two!" bellowed the flummoxed umpire. It's sublime receiving skills like that that make our backstop one of the best in the game.

With the count full and the runner alight, the lefty-swinger pulled a two hopper to second. The second-baseman scooped the ball and backhanded it towards the bag in one motion, allowing the shortstop to slide his foot across second base, catch the ball six feet into the baseline and rifle a twin-killer to first in the nick of time. It's tough to avoid the double play when Timkers and Evers are out there in middle infield.

Our best man with the stick stepped to the plate and worked the count full before taking a fastball knee high. As the man in blue contemplated whether the pitch had cleared his kneecap, he began trotting to first. That evident confidence convinced the ump to let him go.

That brought up our slugging clean-up hitter. He dug in in the right hand batter's box while the hurler straddled the rubber and looked in for a sign. The runner took his lead as the first baseman awaited a pick-off throw. The outfielders played deep and around to left. The stadium lights twinkled and the...hey, what's that? The first baseman pulled the oldest trick in the book, tagging our runner with the ball hidden in his glove. We were all so deflated as he led his team trotting off the field. End of inning.

It continued in that manner for eight innings. Our crafty closer, who has beguiled the media with winked half-admissions about a Vaseline-aided knuckler -- the wascally wabbit! -- fired BBs past the first two batters and then faced that barrel-chested all-or-nothing pinch hitter who's been dogged by allegations of chemical use. Our fireman bewildered him with a diving slider and an infuriating change-up before leaving a 96-mph two-seamer up in the zone. The masher plastered it into the upper deck in right for the lead.

Cheater! User! The run shouldn't even count! He's bulking up illegally. He should be banned from the Hall of Fame, no matter how many games he's won for this team. It's a blight on the game. It's ruining tradition.

The home uniforms succumbed in the ninth and we dropped to second place. Our manager should protest the game. We can't have cheating in baseball.

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Hair, The Comedy

News item: White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf wants Manny Ramirez to trim his flowing dreads.  Chicago has a hair length policy. The team believes that trimmed locks look more "professional."

Isn't that rich? They traded for Manny Ramirez, a guy who tanked on two different teams and they're concerned that his hair looks unprofessional. They employ a manager whose mouth is directly connected to his thoughts without any intervention from his brain, and they're worried about the length of their second baseman's sideburns.

Perhaps Reindsdork was gazing upon the profound complexities of his navel when his general manager voluntarily executed a trade for Manny Ramirez and his trademark hairstyle. Perhaps he was so awed by Ramirez's ability to singe a 95-mph fastball that he failed to notice the player's flowing braids. In any event, the team welcomed Ramirez to the roster. Reinsdorf's next outreach to Ramirez ought to be something in the area of shut the hell up.

The White Sox trail the first place Twins by six games. You want to talk about cutting something, Jerry Reinsdorf? Trim that!

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Scoring Without A Hit

If you ever wonder why this blog bangs on mainstream sports media, here's an example.

ESPN is a multi-billion-dollar entity that ostensibly hires the most expert sports analysts. They have access to the best information. I'm guessing that somewhere at the Worldwide Leader lay Bill James' Baseball Abstracts dating back to 1979.

And yet, they manage to produce logic like this from Steve Berthiume, who I'm told hosts a baseball show. He is dubious about Tampa Bay's post-season chances.

As the postseason draws near...there are also pressing reasons not to believe in the Rays. They don't hit very much. Yes, they've scored 57 runs in their past 10 games, but Tampa Bay is 23rd in the majors in batting average and 25th in hits.

These are facts. The Rays are 23rd in BA and 25th in hits. This is also a fact: Pluto's equatorial diameter is 2,274 km. But that doesn't make it a planet.

Being 23rd in the majors in batting average and 25th in hits doesn't make Tampa a bad hitting team. Bill James demonstrated that batting average and hits are only weakly associated with run scoring 31 years ago. How can an ostensible expert not be aware of new information in his field that dates back to the Carter Administration?

In fact, the Rays are third in the majors in runs scored, which is the only relevant measure of offense. The Rays score by some combination of walking, getting hit by pitches, hitting for power, stealing bases effectively and avoiding double plays. (Teams can also score by stringing their hits together and hitting well with runners on, but those two are mostly a matter of chance and don't tend to be repeatable.) 

It could hardly be less relevant how many hits the Rays have accumulated. Kansas City is third in the majors in hits and fourth worst in runs scored. Does Steve Berthiume believe the Royals are a good hitting team?

I don't mean to pick on this particular reporter or network. Not understanding these distinctions makes them incompetent in my view, but they are representative of the vast majority. And that's why this blog bangs on mainstream sports media.

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Like Kissing Someone Else's Sister

How many times have you heard this season that the Yankees and Rays are battling for first place in the AL East. They are doing no such thing.

It doesn't make a nose hair's worth of difference whether the Yanks win the division and the Rays take the wild card or vice versa. As the team in the Bronx demonstrated a decade ago, they shake the Etch-A-Sketch after the season and start all over.

For practical purposes, one team will draw Texas and the other Minnesota. We still today don't know which team the AL East champ will play. Does it really matter? A World Series appearance requires victory in two playoff series, regardless of the opponent.

The division winner gets an extra home game, while the Wild Card squad has an added road challenge in the unlikely event that the series goes the distance. (Most series end before game seven.) It changes the odds of winning the series by about two percentage points.

That's more than a bucket of warm spit, but a whole lot less than getting your team healthy and your rotation set. In fact, if the teams are tied on the last day of the season, both managers would be well-advised (and don't worry, they both are) to sacrifice the division and send a scrub to the mound so the rotation is correctly rotated for the playoffs.

Ask the '06 Tigers, the '05 Astros, the '04 Red Sox, '03 Marlins, '02 Giants, '00 Mets and the '97 Marlins about conquering their division. Each of them leapfrogged the team that outpaced them in the regular season to reach the World Series. They know that coming in second is like kissing someone else's sister...if the Wild Card's involved.

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