It’s been an unusual postseason in NCAA baseball this year. Until 1998, the postseason tournament began with 48 teams playing in six-team, double-elimination brackets which were played over four days. This created a lot of drama, but it didn’t create great baseball, as you frequently ended up with a freshman waterboy pitching on Sunday afternoon. Under this format, upsets were the norm, and the field that reached the College World Series in Omaha was usually a rather motley crew of survivors.
In 1999, though, the NCAA moved to a 64-team field, adding a week to the postseason and switching from six-team regionals to four-team events in the first round. Under this format, the favorites flourished. Although upsets happened often enough to keep everyone on their toes, the fields in Omaha have been stronger from 1999 to 2003. This year, however, the apple cart has been overturned.
Jimy Williams has gone bunt crazy for the Astros. The Cardinals are on pace to post one of the best road records in history. The Rangers need sustained good pitching to stay in the race. These and other news and notes in today’s Prospectus Triple Play.
As much as it annoyed me, being a Pistons fan, to see that coverage of the NBA Finals was focused far more on the Lakers’ demise (MEDVEDENKO TO TEST FREE AGENT WATERS!) as it was on Detroit’s ascent (blue team wins championship in five games), there’s a lot to be said for the presence of a villain. The Lakers have been so good for so long–so annoyingly, purple-and-goldenly good–for so long, that it was one hell of a story to see them go down to defeat, even if it came at the hands of a largely unfamiliar and anonymous team whose low-scoring style made them the basketball equivalent of the 1906 Cubs.
Lest you accuse me of some sort of Midwestern provincialism, it’s worth noting that the rest of the country agreed–the Finals were the highest-rated in years. David Stern agreed too, and it was refreshing to hear him confess, during a halftime interview, that the presence of a franchise like the Lakers was good for his league, drawing lots of eyeballs and putting lots of butts in the seats.
Now that baseball has the sports stage more or less to itself–the NHL finals concluded two weeks ago, with the Dayton (OH) Green Hornets defeating the Saskatoon Moosecatchers in a thrilling seven-game series–it’s worth considering whether a similar phenomenon manifests itself in our preferred sport.
The state of umpiring today is amazing. While umpires are devoid of the kind of personality that, say, Ron Luciano had, as a group they have improved so markedly since baseball broke their union that it’s amazing to watch old games on ESPN Classic. Umpires today are faster to get into position and more observant. They’re willing to consult other umps who might have a better view of a disputed play. They’re far more professional than their predecessors.
I am more convinced than ever that the umpires have demonstrated the need for better strike zone measurement tools. We haven’t heard much about Questec this year, due in part to Tom Glavine enjoying a bounceback year. But I watch so much baseball it frightens small children, and I see blown balls and strike calls all the time. And I don’t even mean close calls, either, I’m taking about clearly up, down, or off the plate and my favorite, Ye Olde Hit the Target Strike. Like the other parts of the umpire’s game, it’s gotten better, but it’s still not as good as it needs to be.
The Angels’ Disabled List is thinning out. Nomar’s back for the Red Sox. Paul Abbott slides into the fifth starter’s role with the Phillies. And the Practically Perfect Backup Catcher earns his stripes as a starter for the Blue Jays. These and other happenings in today’s Transaction Analysis.
The Angels could find a new sheriff at third base soon, while the Cubs have exceeded all offensive expectations, and Lyle Overbay has been the driving force in the Brewers surprising success. All this and more news from Anaheim, Chicago and Milwaukee in your Wednesday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
Halfway through the month of June, three months are in the books since spring training opened. While nothing has been decided on the field yet, we were supposed to see significant changes off the field, with the switch from survey drug testing to actual drug testing. Not only are we yet to see the first positive test, there’s been no decrease in injuries, power, or any of the expected indications that steroids have been rooted out. Worse, with the callup of Derek Turnbow by the Angels, both players with publicly known positive steroid tests are in the major leagues. While those tests were outside the purview of MLB, it still shows that the public relations around this issue are beyond the people in charge. MLB is sitting on a timebomb with the BALCO trial leaking out the list of positive tests, so I’d like to see something more being done. I can only hope that the negotiations on increased testing are the next step.
Despite some happy reports from the Bronx, the Yankees made the decision to give Kevin Brown more time to heal. With Mike Mussina also likely to miss a start, the team decided that they would need another pitcher, so Alex Graman is likely to be called up. Brown’s back didn’t get worse, but the Yanks are erring on the side of caution, hoping that the rest will keep Brown more effective down the stretch. While Brown will miss two starts, there’s no indication that this will go longer than the fifteen days.
It’s hard to beat minor league baseball for a low-cost, low-hassle evening at the ballpark. I’ve been spending quite a few of my evenings lately in California League parks, mostly checking out teams in that league’s Northern division. Today and Friday I’ll run down some of the prospects on the five teams in that division, covering the High-A affiliates for the Giants, Rangers, A’s, Rockies, and Devil Rays.
There’s no rigorous method for choosing prospects listed here. In particular, the omission of certain players (like Vince Sinisi and John Hudgins in today’s piece) shouldn’t be read as a dismissal of them as prospects.
You’ll recall that last week I took a gander at the top five most underrated hitting prospects in the game. This time, it’s the pitchers. I believe I amply qualified myself last week, but I’ll say again that calling anything “overrated” or “underrated” is horribly, terribly, awfully subjective and assumes I have some sort of internal, ruthlessly accurate method of reading the hype tea leaves. I don’t, but I can juggle.
Once again, the criteria are that a player didn’t appear anywhere on BP’s Top 50 Prospect List and has reached at least the High-A level this season. If nothing else, you can dance to it…
Closest Matchup (Teams with records most resembling one another): Texas @ Cincinnati
Anyway you smack the numbers around, the Reds are riding for a fall. As we all know, teams that get outscored the way they have don’t fare well in the long run. Going into last night’s game against Philadelphia, the Reds had been outpolled by 24 runs. This put them five or six games ahead of where they should be, depending on which version of the Pythagorean you want to use. Having said that, you can find that entire 24-run differential in their meltdown against the A’s last week. If you toss that series away, they’d actually be 284-284 in runs scored and runs against. This still means they’re playing over their heads, but not by as much. Are we letting one disastrous series get in the way of assessing them honestly? On the other hand, that disastrous series helped call attention to the fact that this was a team riding a little too high.
Do you miss the time when a 34-28 record was a 34-28 record? You know, back in the good old days, when they didn’t used to clog the mind by putting the number of runs a team scored and allowed right there so you could make your own value judgments. Actually, newspapers still don’t do that. Instead, they give us streak info and interleague play records. What is interesting is that the NFL standings have had the points for and against since…well, ever since I can remember. When you think about it, with a smaller schedule, NFL PF/PA can get skew a lot worse than a baseball record can. I’d like to see newspaper sport sections leap into the 21st Century and start including runs scored and runs against, wouldn’t you?
As the Reds engage in a Cubs-like June swoon, the injuries keep kicking them down. D’Angelo Jimenez was once considered the equal of Alfonso Soriano, and at times this season he’s shown why. The Reds have him benched, hoping a slight oblique strain won’t turn into anything more. With Barry Larkin slowed and Brandon Larson being…well, Brandon Larson, the Reds are shorthanded up the middle. Austin Kearns is expected back on Thursday. His return won’t stop the team’s decline or the inevitable trade of some Reds players.
I’ve heard everything from a rib injury to a groin strain, but something is clearly not right with Roy Oswalt. One e-mailer said that Oswalt appeared to strain his groin in his last start, but the Astros deny that Oswalt has had any problems since his off-season surgery. Last night Rick Sutcliffe picked up the “rib injury” baton and ran with it. I’m not sure exactly what it means, but I’ll guess it’s an oblique strain. If so, with Oswalt’s delivery, he’d be cringing on every pitch, which isn’t the case. I’m not sure what the problem is, but until we get better evidence, it’s best to just note the result and watch the performances.
In the ongoing debate about pitch counts, there’s some interesting questions that just aren’t making it into the debate. Is it about a macho attitude or risk management? Do you want an honest pitcher or a “bulldog”? At what point is your ace fatigued enough that even the worst reliever in a major league bullpen becomes a better option? Jake Peavy is one of the young players quickly developing a bulldog reputation. After missing only a couple weeks with a forearm injury, Peavy is back out throwing. His first bullpen session went 30 pitches, reporting no problems and no pain. He’ll have two more bullpen sessions this week, but Friday’s session is the most important. That’s where he’ll first try breaking balls. His slider is the pitch that causes pain. If all goes well, Peavy is about two weeks away, and will have one rehab start before rejoining the Pads rotation.
On Sunday, I was watching the Long Beach State/Arizona game, eventually won by
the Wildcats in 11 innings. There were a couple of things that popped up in
the 11th, during Arizona’s game-winning rally, that I wanted to examine.
The bottom of the inning began with Long Beach third baseman Danny Mocny
making a terrible throw on a ground ball by UA’s Moises Duran. The error put
Duran on second base with no one out. Wildcats’ shortstop Jason Donald came up
and immediately showed bunt.
Now, this is a situation we see all the time in MLB. A team gets the
game-winning run to second base with no one out, and tries to bunt him over to
third. I’m not questioning that tactic; as James Click’s recent series on sacrificing showed,
that’s a viable use of the bunt, even if everyone east of Belmont Shore knew
it was coming. My problem is with what Long Beach State didn’t do.
I don’t get along with my team. We’ve disagreed over how the team’s been run, from who’s been put in the lineup to who’s being drafting. Since the ownership group bought the team to save it from possibly moving, they’ve seemed eager to support Bud Selig and MLB in whatever crazy scheme they come up with. I would bet there are many baseball fans with similarly strained relationships with the teams they support.
The Mariners have made it clear in the past that they’re interested in acquiring only character guys who are good in the clubhouse, even at the expense of the on-field product. Someone ran some numbers and said “Lovable sells.” So the clubhouse troublemakers, the lawyers and the quiet smart guys are all purged once the team takes a dislike to them.
The problem is that the M’s are willing to do almost anything to get rid of players that fans perceive as having negative qualities or being a problem, while at the same time they’re willing to pick up good clubhouse guys with baggage if they think they can get away with it. The Mariners will pick up a guy like Al Martin, who got into a nasty tussle with his backup wife in Arizona, resulting in a lot of counseling and a pinch of jail time. Martin, for his potential legal and character issues, was and remains known for having a great work ethic, an easy guy to get along with on a team, and a good clubhouse presence. The Mariners brought in a bigamist who’d bust up a much smaller secondary wife while running their “Refuse to Abuse” campaign against domestic violence…because they wanted a left-handed bat.
My hardest battle as an injury analyst is dealing with inexact information from the past. Right now, I have enough sources and advisors that it’s tough (but not impossible) to keep secrets. Things in the past seem to have a haze of history across them, but occasionally something will pop into the light that changes things. In some recent articles, I’ve discussed the difficulty pitchers have had returning from labrum injuries. One of my data points was that only one of thirty-six people have returned from labrum surgery. In fact, if I expand things a bit, there’s another. New information, uncovered by John Tomase for an upcoming article, confirms that Curt Schilling had labrum surgery in 1995. While this has been widely reported, it was not the diagnosis on his Standard Form. Without confirmation, I can’t use the data. Now, there’s a two-in-37 chance. It’s not much better, but it’s much more hopeful.
The Red Sox are hoping that rest and treatment will keep Curt Schilling on the mound. If the bone bruise that’s been bothering him fails to get any better, they will use the DL. His next start will be something of a test; if he can make it out of the start without increased pain, they’ll continue to let him pitch. However, he could end up on the DL just after the start, giving him a rest until after the ASB. While he could continue to pitch with the injury, the Red Sox are more concerned with having him at full strength for the second half of the season.
How prominent of a player is Rafael Palmeiro, now that he’s passed The Mick on the all-time home run list? The Rockies could reap serious benefits if Chin-hui Tsao pitches for his native Taiwan in the summer Olympics. And the Mets’ David Wright is absolutely tearing up double-A, and will most likely surface at the major-league level by the end of the year…assuming he’s not dealt for a few months of Carlos Beltran. All this and much more news from Baltimore, Colorado, and New York in your Monday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
Kevin Towers doesn’t believe that there are any guarantees in the draft. Dusty Baker believes that pitchers just get hurt, and there’s little you can do to prevent it. Barry Bonds doesn’t believe the game should change for just one man. Ken Griffey Jr. just wants to hit No. 500 and move on. And Terry Ryan thinks the Shannon Stewart is the missing piece of the puzzle. All this and many more quips from around the league in your Monday edition of The Week In Quotes.