The Giants deserved to lose.
I haven’t written that kind of condemnation more than a couple of times in my life, but I have also never meant it more. The Giants played brutal baseball Friday afternoon, making poor decisions, executing routine plays poorly, and showing a complete inability to have good at-bats in game-critical situations.
In the wake of the loss, the focus is on Jose Cruz Jr., whose Little League drop of a fly ball in the 11th inning started the Marlins’ game-winning rally. When I think of Cruz, though, I think of his at-bat in the top of the inning. The Marlins intentionally walked Neifi Perez to load the bases–no, I couldn’t believe it, myself–and bring up Cruz down with the Marlins down 3-2 with one out. Cruz’s mandate in that situation was clear: find a way to bring in an insurance run. He was facing Braden Looper, whose command had been shaky from the first batter he faced, and whose only out had been recorded on a sacrifice. Given the matchups and the skills of the players involved, it seemed certain that the Giants would add to their lead.
Cruz hacked away at the first pitch and missed, then took a 1-1 cookie–the Giants took more hanging breaking balls in this game than I thought imaginable–to fall behind before chopping a grounder to Derrek Lee, who calmly got the force at home. J.T. Snow then grounded to second, ending the rally. Twenty minutes later, bedlam ensured when a winning run that perhaps should have been a tying run crossed home plate.
“What are the best and worst things about the broadcasts so far?” – M.T. So far, it’s been pretty grisly from a fan’s perspective, I think. The 10 p.m. EDT start for the Hudson/Martinez matchup was unconscionable. Then, to add unbelievable insult to injury, ESPN adds David Justice to the broadcast booth in violation of the Geneva Convention. I know that everyone watching the game has probably done something during their lives that warrants strict and painful punishment, but inflicting Justice and his commentary on an unsuspecting public was beyond the pale. It’s also possible, if the game was broadcast outside the U.S., that ESPN may have committed an act of war against a number of sovereign nations. But now that they’ve done that, they might as well finish us off with a healthy dose of Chris Berman and his old-10-years-ago nicknames. Should Justice return to the booth, I will personally make an appeal to Amnesty International to begin a letter-writing campaign. I’m pretty sure that if we work together, we can get Bono to make a mission of conscience to Bristol.
The Braves get a PECOTA mini-evaluation. Shannon Stewart is somehow getting support as AL MVP. And Aubrey Huff gets recognition for a job well done. All this and much more news from Atlanta, Minnesota, and Tampa Bay in your Friday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
Ever watch a particular at-bat early in the game and know you’re seeing the pivotal moment? That’s how I felt in the third inning of yesterday’s A’s/Red Sox game. Down 5-0 after gift-wrapping four runs in the bottom of the second, the Sox picked up back-to-back doubles and a walk to cut the lead to 5-1 and place two runners aboard with one out. Todd Walker grounded to first, setting up a Barry Zito/Manny Ramirez battle. This was going to be it. Either the Sox were going to cut the lead to a manageable 5-3, with Ramirez atoning for his brutal misplay of Eric Byrnes’ second-inning fly ball and Zito displaying the inconsistency that had dogged him throughout the year, or the A’s were going to escape with a four-run lead and having turned back the Sox’s attempt to recover from the second inning. When Ramirez flied out to left, the game felt over. It was. The Sox picked up just four singles the rest of the way, with Zito abusing every hitter in the lineup by changing speeds and wielding a Shelley Long-after-"Cheers" curveball.
Sox fans, how’s that 10 p.m. start working out for you?
I had no problem with MLB giving the A’s a postseason home game at night for the first time since, well, maybe ever. That said, I do think the AL playoff structure as a whole is pretty ridiculous. The Yankees and Twins ended up with about 52 hours between the end of their first game and the beginning of their second. The A’s and Sox will have about 13 hours. That’s not fair, and it’s the direct result of letting TV considerations override common sense. You can give the A’s a night game or you can give the Yankees and Twins the off day; you can’t do both.
As so often happens with things Selig, whatever could go wrong, did. The A’s and Sox played 12 innings in a shade under five hours, ending just before 3 a.m. EDT. Worse still for Sox fans, the game ended in defeat, as Ramon Hernandez laid down a perfect two-out, bases-loaded bunt to drive home the winning run, this after the Sox had blown a ninth-inning lead.
Those who stuck it out saw an exciting ballgame. It wasn’t the much-anticipated pitchers’ duel, and it wasn’t exactly a great game, but it was exciting. Todd Walker and Erubiel Durazo traded roundhouse punches for most of the night, with each player coming up a hero against a southpaw. The two starting pitchers were off their game, combining to allow six runs on 16 hits in 13 2/3 innings of work. Pedro Martinez wasn’t himself, striking out just three batters and allowing four walks.
Jerry Manuel gets his fond farewell. The Cardinals get a PECOTA mini-evaluation. And the Rangers get to look forward to seeing Ramon Nivar and Juan Ramon Dominguez in the future. All this and much more news from Chicago, St. Louis, and Texas in your Thursday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
The games so far have gone according to form, not in the sense that they’ve been predictable, but in the sense that each series has its strengths. Want slugging? Got it. Want great pitching? Got it. Want strategy? Got it. Want to second-guess managers? We’ve got that too. Want to see the best players that baseball has to offer? We might not have all of ’em, but there’s certainly plenty. (Even the announcing has been pretty good, but more on that later.) All in all, it’s a great time to be both a baseball fan and a medhead. The only negative so far? The fact that I’m up at nearly 2 a.m. watching the Red Sox play a phenomenal game in Oakland. Oh well… there are worse fates, I suppose.
While wondering if seeing high-speed film of Chad Bradford might make a biomechanist’s head explode, here are the injuries from today’s games…
Lots of mail pursuant to the Game Scores 2.0 piece…
Dayn,
Yesterday Kerry Wood shutout the Mets who fielded a lineup that was major league only because the players were allowed to wear Mets uniforms. Shouldn’t the game scores somehow represent the lineup a pitcher faces. A Pedro or Mulder shutout of the Yanks full-strength lineup simply can’t have the same game score as Wood’s “masterpiece” yesterday. BTW, the PCL champion Sacramento Rivercats (Crosby, Koonce, Grabowski, German, Edwards, et. al.) fielded a better lineup than the Mets yesterday. Check the Cats’ MEQs.
Regards,
H.W.
Ideally, H.W., there would such a variable, but that would just about 86 any ease-of-calculation appeal game scores might have. But the idea is certainly correct: not all outings, be they gems or disaster starts, are created equal. (For instance, take a gander at the cast of forgettables Eric Milton mowed down in his 1999 no-hitter.) It’s not quite germane to game scores, but Keith Woolner’s Pitcher’s Quality of Batters Faced reports are highly instructive in this regard.
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.
Even as we enter October, it’s strange to think of the Braves as a club that’s led by their offense. Then again, I’m one of those people that was still writing “2002” on his checks until just a couple of weeks ago.
But there’s little doubt that Atlanta is a deep, superior offensive club. All eight Braves regulars have EqAs better than the league average (Fick and Castilla making it just under the wire). Nitpick away if you like: Lopez, as horribly as PECOTA mangled his projection, was almost certainly playing over his head a little bit. Fick had a an awful second half and has been flipped with Lopez in the batting order. Vinny Castilla is still Vinny Castilla. It doesn’t matter: the Braves simply mash the ball (235 home runs), a skill that holds up perfectly well in high- and low-scoring games, against soft-tossers and power arms. Hell, even their pitchers can hit a little bit.
What could matter more is that the Braves are overwhelmingly right-handed, and will be facing an overwhelmingly right-handed pitching staff. Too much can be made of the platoon advantage; Sheffield, for example, has never had a huge split; and Giles actually hit righties better this year. But as a team, the Braves were about 25 points worth of OPS better against lefties this year, and we’re at the stage where those little things can make a difference.
The Cubs’ offense, to borrow the old line, runs a lot like CTA buses: nothing at all for a long time, and then a bunch all at once. Well, that’s not quite right; the Cubs didn’t exhibit any particularly unusual patterns in their run scoring. But theirs is an offense that has its holes, especially in the bottom four slots in the order.
Barry Bonds, best player of his generation and maybe ever, vs. Jeff Conine, as average a player as you’ll find. Peter Magowan, hands-on owner, vs. Jeffrey Loria, carpetbagger extraordinaire. Pac Bell Park, jewel of the Bay Area, vs. Pro Player Stadium, football stadium of the turnpike. The Giants and Marlins look like a mismatch in all these areas. But delve a little deeper and you’ll find an intriguing first-round matchup that could yield its share of surprises.
The line you can’t stop reading in advance of this series is that the Yankees have dominated the Twins over the past couple of seasons, winning all 13 games between the two teams. Never mind that the Twins were winning back-to-back division titles, never mind that the Yankees didn’t get as deep into last October as the boys from the Twin Cities did: that 13-0 is the statistic on everyone’s mind right now.
Here’s the problem: it’s meaningless information. In fact, it’s actively deceptive, and using that data to form an opinion on the Division Series matchup is wrongheaded.
First of all, forget about 2002. While baseball teams have more year-to-year continuity than teams in other sports–and these two rosters have been particularly stable–the idea that games played nearly 18 months ago will somehow provide insight into ones played this week is silly.
Moreover, the last time the Yankees and Twins faced each other was on April 21, 2003. How long ago was that? Shannon Stewart was a Blue Jay. Johan Santana was imprisoned in middle relief. Matt LeCroy was a benchwarmer. Four of the seven games were started by Joe Mays and Rick Reed, neither of whom will be anywhere near the mound in this series.
The Twins who take the field tomorrow will bear little resemblance to the ones who went 0-7 against the Yankees nearly a season ago. They’re better at the plate and on the mound, and judging them as if they were that hapless bunch isn’t analysis, it’s laziness.
Green and Yellow. That probably works pretty well for most A’s fans, especially when, like the uniforms, they see more green than gold. It’s that red light on the players’ section that doesn’t fit in with the official color scheme, and probably has Billy Beane hurling a chair my way. The starters have some issues, starting with their outfield. Jermaine Dye is still not 100% and may never be the player he was before he shattered his leg. Jose Guillen is playing through pain, and while he’s been moderately effective in the short term, there’s also nothing stopping a small change that would increase his pain or decrease his effectiveness. Chris Singleton has some back issues, Billy McMillon has some leg issues, and Eric Byrnes is still trying to figure out what happened to his bat after the All-Star break.
The pitching staff is yellow on some whispers about Tim Hudson’s back and the missing presence of Mark Mulder. Peter Gammons broke the story about the use of Forteo, a recombinant form of parathyroid hormone manufactured by Eli Lilly, on Mark Mulder. The use of Forteo in men is poorly tested, and in fact, an “off-label” usage of the drug. Mulder remains a possibility, but neither myself nor anyone who I spoke to regarding this would even venture a guess on Mulder’s availability. The A’s haven’t officially given any comment on Hudson’s back, but this is nothing unusual. It could be nothing, but then again, I’d rather warn you of unconfirmed talk and let you make your own decision.
The rest of the team is relatively healthy, and the roster is both deep and flexible. Now, it’s time to watch two of the smartest teams in baseball take each other on in what can only be called the Moneyball Series.