Two of baseball’s best front offices have once again done their jobs well, and Oakland and Boston will face off in the five-game ALDS. It’s really a classic matchup, with a tremendously vicious offense against a team built primarily on pitching and defense. The thing that would surprise many in the mainstream media is that the team built on pitching and defense is wearing Green and Gold.
The Astros came up short to the Cubs. Barry Zito had another good year, despite what many people in the media think. And the Brewers are looking to keep building their farm system for the future. All this and much more offseason news from Houston, Oakland, and Milwaukee in your Wednesday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
Gardenhire handled an awful situation well and got good performance from pitchers he probably doesn’t want to be leaning too heavily on. Now, he has a one-game lead and the certainty that he can bring back Santana in Game Four. It helped that Bernie Williams’ Corpse was on display. While much of the post-mortem seems to be focusing on Alfonso Soriano’s throw to the Fulton Fish Market on the same play, it was Corpse’s brutal misplay of a Torii Hunter single that changed the game. We go through this every year with the Yankees. Maybe it’s time to issue a public challenge of some sort, because the naked-emperor thing is getting out of hand. To hear Joe Morgan and Jon Miller–a combination I enjoy–go all Claude Rains when the Yankees display the defensive ability of Kuwait is ridiculous. It’s as if they expect service time or postseason appearances to make plays, disregarding the fact that Williams hasn’t been even an adequate center fielder in two years. He can’t throw–as evidenced on the first run of the game, when he just missed gunning down Cristian Guzman at the pitcher’s mound–and his diminished lateral range no longer makes up for a first step measured in geologic time.
Marcus Giles left Game One after brushing Eric Karros and injuring his ankle. He landed awkwardly, stretching the achilles tendon while landing with nearly his full body weight on a dorsiflexed foot. Giles will undergo treatment, and at deadline, the Braves expect him to be a gametime decision. Mark DeRosa would be his replacement if necessary, though Jesse Garcia replaced him when he left the game.
Mike Lowell stayed on the bench for Game One. That fact tells us a lot about his health, as Lowell has had some measure of success against Jason Schmidt (708 OPS). With Lowell’s small sample size lack of success against Kirk Rueter and Sidney Ponson, it’s unlikely he will see the plate unless it’s almost an emergency situation. Perhaps I was wrong, and this is a situation like the Scott Rolen fiasco last year.
The Red Sox have no injury concerns, I’m told. More than one source told me that Trot Nixon is as close to full-go as he could be this late in the season. As well, the same sources told me independently that they thought Pedro Martinez would be allowed to go as deep into the game as he can go with no pitch or inning limits. The Red Sox go into the playoffs as the healthiest team, and as I’ve said roughly four thousand times, that could be just the difference they need.