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June 26, 2007

Prospectus Today

The Meaning of the Milestone

by Joe Sheehan

Last night, the Astros started Chris Burke at second base, batting him sixth and using Mark Loretta as their leadoff man in their 6-1 loss to the Brewers. It is likely that Burke or Loretta will play second base in Wednesday’s game as well. Phil Garner hasn’t had a sudden change of heart about the best alignment of his available talent; no, he’s sitting Craig Biggio in two of these three games to prevent Biggio from notching his 3,000th career hit on the road.

Set aside for the moment the issue of whether the Astros are better with Burke at second base and Loretta batting leadoff, which is certainly the case. That was also the case on Opening Day, but Garner has pencilled Biggio’s name into the lineup 62 times, including 59 times in the leadoff spot. He decided at the beginning of the season that Biggio was his starting second baseman, and no amount of out-making was going to change that. Biggio's .279 OBP wasn’t the reason he was on the bench last night.

Consider the context as well. The Astros, in no small part because of that .279 OBP from their leadoff hitter, were 32-43 heading into last night's game, 11 games behind the Brewers. I don't think the Astros are serious contenders any more than the next guy does, but if they were going to make a push, it would certainly help to go into Miller Park and win three games. Doing so would seem to require playing your starters. Garner elected to not do so last night. Consider that the Astros were dead and buried in both 2004 and 2005 before making runs to the NLCS and World Series, respectively. If any team can take itself seriously from 11 games out with nearly 90 to play, it’s these Astros.

Pull that all together for a second. Astros manager Phil Garner went into a do-or-die series with a division leader and benched his starting second baseman not for any reason related to merit, but so that an individual achievement can be celebrated in a certain manner. He put a statistic, a person and a show ahead of the team’s goals. He and the Astros have been doing this all year of course just by playing Biggio, but the naked manipulation of playing time in what should be a key series is galling.

Individual records in any form of competition only matter in that they are achieved in the pursuit of the goal of winning. We keep individual statistics, but even the most hardcore stathead will explain that the statistics themselves are only meaningful because they serve to measure an individual’s contribution to winning. We rate players by the runs they produce and save, because those runs are the building blocks of wins, and wins matter. That a player might accumulate a significant number of hits, doubles, walks, stolen bases is something to be noted, and even perhaps celebrated, but only if that accumulation comes in the natural course of events. The pursuit of a championship is primary; there should be no pursuit of numbers.