Teams: A Critical Guide: AL Season Wrap-Up, Non-Playoff Teams Edition
10/18Alan Trammell did a good job of mixing parts this year, but employed a few too many one-run strategies, more than this team needed. Over 100 years into the modern game and most managers haven't figured out what John McGraw knew in 1920, that the era of inside baseball is dead, no matter how poor your offense is. Other than in a sudden-death, ninth-inning situation, giving away outs just brings the end of the game closer. The average American Leaguer reached base 34% of the time last year, and grounded into a double-play in .022 of all at-bats. When you bunt, both percentages drop to close to zero. It's not a fair trade off.
Teams: A Critical Guide: American League, September 13-19
9/25Feverish and clogged, Steven plays the role of Roy Hobbs, climbing off the deck for a late-season contribution.
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9/22CINCINNATI REDS It's not getting much attention, but Adam Dunn's unwilling quest to shatter Bobby Bonds' single-season record for batter strikeouts of 189 (1970) is going to be close enough that Dave Miley is going to have to think about whether he joins the wussy Jeff Torborgs and Al Pedriques of the world and actively interferes with pursuit of a milestone for no good reason. With 12 games to go, Dunn trails Bonds by 14. It will be tight, but four of the Reds' remaining games come against Cubs flamethrowers. Prior, Wood, do your stuff, lads! GRADE: C-
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9/17HOUSTON ASTROS Played an old-school eight games and went 5-3, though it could have been a bigger week; Pittsburgh gave them more trouble than they should have. In the three losses in Steeltown, the offense couldn't get started, though most of the principles did well on the week. The restaurant scene in Pittsburgh is said to be lacking, that could bring a team down... In a reversal of the usual order of things, Brad Ausmus batted .368/.400/.421, but opponents were safe in five of six stolen base attempts. Happy new year, Brad! Life is (a) a bowl of cherries, (b) a beach, (c) none of the above, (d) a mixed bag at the best of times, (e) all of the above. GRADE: B-
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9/16Since it's the Yankees, let's play six degrees of Casey Stengel. First test: Casey Stengel to "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson. Casey Stengel went to high school with William Powell. William Powell co-starred with Clark Gable in "Manhattan Melodrama," 1934. Gable headlined "Gone with the Wind" with Vivien Leigh. Leigh was married to Sir Laurence Olivier, who was in "War Requiem" with Sean Bean. Bean was "Boromir" in Jackson's trilogy.
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9/09Some teams rage against the dying of the light. Some teams just make you want to rage. Or drink. Steven Goldman covers them all.
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9/07The American League and a classic American songwriter. If it gets better than this, Steven Goldman doesn't want to know.
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8/31Steven Goldman, angry about being lied to, exposes the truth about Baseball Prospectus Groupies. He also takes some shots at the Diamondbacks, just because.
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8/27The Angels and Red Sox had curve-wrecking weeks, balanced out by the latest collapse by the Orioles and a heartbreaking slump by the Indians. Professor Goldman explains his grades inside.
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8/07ATLANTA BRAVES Romping and stomping in the patented Bobby Cox second-half manner. This is no last ride of the Magnificent Seven, because there is no seven. Even the Magic Three (which, I will come right out and tell you, is an entirely relevant reference to Chinese castrati) have been scattered, with Greg Maddux hunting #300 and Tom Glavine burning in the circle of Hell reserved for fools and suicides. What there is, again, is a very successful pitching staff, now tied for the league lead in ERA. Last week the team ERA was 2.18. In seven games, they issued eight free passes and gave up just five home runs. The batters hit all of four home runs. J.D. Drew contributed almost nothing--it didn't matter. Where do they find these people? How do they "adjust" them? It's the Stepford Ballplayers, coming to a post-season near you. GRADE: A
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8/05The Angels, Twins, A's and Devil Rays all earned top marks for their work last week. Which team showed up on the other end of the curve? Hint: they're in the wild-card chase. Steven Goldman explains all this and much more about the week that was in the AL.
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7/29ARIZONA DIAMONDBACKS Winless on the week, including a three-game series against the Rockies in which they scored a grand total of six runs. The only two players who actually reported to work were the two most likely to be exiled, Randy Johnson (15 IP, 13 H, 2 R, 1 BB 20 K), and Steve Finley (.934 OPS). The rest of them played as if they were Charlie Bucket's dad, screwing the caps onto toothpaste tubes for a living... One thing that many observers miss about the Yankees is that they are not the only team that can afford to take on salary at the deadline, but may be the only team willing. The difference is that the Yankees' owner, answerable only to himself, may decide in a given year to take home less money by cutting into his own profit margin (and that of the junior partners, who may take home relatively little as a result). Other teams, particularly those that are components of larger corporations, may fix a profit goal for the year and stick to it at the expense of winning. Most execs of public companies are uncomfortable telling the shareholders that they lost money on the sports operation this year because they decided to gamble on winning a World Series. Thus, if the DBs chose to dump salary and other objects of refuse in New York's general direction, there's nothing unfair about it at all. GRADE: F
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7/29CLEVELAND INDIANS Not far over .500, if at all by the time you read this, but suddenly looking like contenders in a division that's aimlessly drifting down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico--any day now the Detroit Tigers will be the New Orleans Beignets. Travis Hafner (.423/.467/1.077) and Victor Martinez (.379/.419/.517) make a heck of a one-two punch, and they are now joined by young Grady Sizemore, who will be the best Grady since Grady Little (not hard) and Whitman Mayo, the Grady from "Sanford & Son" (tall order). If he takes some plate appearances away from Coco Crisp and Jody Gerut, neither of whom have been the life of the party, so much the better... The bullpen is still the stuff of nightmares, with an ERA that can flirt with 6.00 if you put a couple of drinks in it. You hate to say that a team is one reliever away, because Lord knows we watched Steve Phillips and the Mets chase that chimera for enough years, but the Indians might legitimately claim that to be the case. GRADE: A
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7/20CHICAGO WHITE SOX We got some middling pitching and a pretty good offense, albeit one that's going to last as long as you're impression that Jose Uribe is really a good hitter after all. We've also got Minnesota's underwear, not that they've noticed, because if you've got Doug Mientkiewicz, who needs a G-string? Friends, no matter what Mr. Ryan says, second place chafes, as Mr. Kenny Williams can attest after two straight years of raw inner thighs. Gird your loins with Frank Thomas and his .334 EQA and you need never say, “Not tonight, Josephine, I left my epidermis at the office because I was afraid to let a DH be a DH, a first baseman be a first baseman, I keep trying to get blood from a stone, and no matter how many elephants I interview, none of them can do calculus.” Even Sharon and Arafat agree that Garcia wasn't quite worth the freight, but credit the Sox with having a pulse. Late note: Thomas is gone, Carl Everett is here, which is kind of like replacing a dinosaur with a guy who doesn't believe in dinosaurs. Ironically, it's neither of them that faces extinction, but Joe Borchard. GRADE: A-
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7/09SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS The Giants page at ESPN.com currently features the headline, "Alou Still Believes in Tomko." Alou also believes in the lone gunman theory, that the Beatles reunited to record "My Sharona," and that "Joe Sheehan" is just another one of Joyce Carol Oates' pen names. He may even be right about one or two of these things but not about Tomko, who has pitched in 212 career games and has seen more balls get whacked than the kid who got held back twice at the boys' school. At this point, waiting for a turnaround is an act of blind faith equivalent to eating McSushi. Despite (or perhaps because of) the name on the label, you know that things can't turn out well. Tomko is symbolic of the problems with the Alou/Giants approach this year: on both sides of the ball they've wasted precious resources on automatic non-contributors. Perhaps at times they didn't have any other options, but that's the whole point of team-building: what you don't have, you try to find, as opposed to pretending that your Tomkos will somehow learn to be Marichals. GRADE: C+ COLORADO ROCKIES The Rockies are going nowhere fast, but it's hard to get very upset about it because my town is finally getting a Papa John's. Consuming a Domino's pizza is akin to chewing a very salty tire, so we've stuck with the local product for years, most of it of variable quality. "Variable quality" also describes the CRockies, who in the first half have gotten Matt Holiday and Aaron Milesoff to major league careers--for what that's worth given the former's lack of real production and the latter's age and lack of plate discipline--as well as salvaged Joe Kennedy, probably the most impressive stroke of all. As for the second half, perhaps Ian Stewart will get a shot at Visalia, or--dare we hope!--double-A. For the mnemonically impaired: Ian Stewart is the Rockies' third base prospect. Ian Anderson was the singer-flautist in Jethro Tull, while Dave Stewart was the male half of the Eurythmics. Golly, why didn't those two guys ever record together? GRADE: D
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6/26NATIONAL LEAGUE EAST FLORIDA MARLINS Currently sporting a run differential of just +5, using Lenny Harris as DH in interleague games, and that isn't helping. 9-13 in June, and if you survey pennant races, it's just one bad month that sinks many a strong team. Ate Billy Koch's contract, which was just charity, tied for the league lead in caught stealing, pinch hitters batting .177, one of the worst benches in baseball... These scattershot muttering add up to a strong club being undone by inattention to detail. Reminiscent of some Braves teams of the past which had the pitching and select offensive parts but couldn't buy a hit off the bench in about 800 post-season series. GRADE: D+
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