Why is an account required to vote in the Internet Baseball Awards? Where did the write-ins go? And why isn’t Rafael Soriano on the AL Rookie of the Year Ballot? Your IBA questions answered in this edition of From The Mailbag.
The Yanks took far more balls per plate appearance than any other playoff team, but relatively few strikes. That’s a sign of a mature, disciplined team. Taking bad pitches could be especially beneficial against the Red Sox: Boston’s two best starters, Pedro Martinez and Derek Lowe, are not known for their stamina, and the bullpen is in tatters between Byung-Hyun Kim’s breakdown and their heavy use in the Oakland series. Knocking Pedro out an inning earlier because of higher pitch counts could well be a game-winning strategy. Despite their refined approach at the plate, the Yankees don’t have a better offense than the Red Sox, who outscored them by nearly 100 runs during the regular season. The Sox remain the best offense in baseball, with a lineup that has absolutely no weaknesses in it. Both of these teams have the capability to knock a starter out early and put up crooked numbers in multiple innings. Even if you don’t want to get into the numbers, think only about the two main criticisms of these offenses over the course of the year: Yankees: “Alfonso Soriano isn’t suited to hit leadoff.” Red Sox: “Walker, Ortiz, and Nixon can’t hit lefties.” Think about that. The problem for the Yankees is that the leadoff guy has too many extra-base hits, and too few walks. The Red Sox somehow have to work around the issue that their three worst hitters, who average about a .950 OPS against righties, don’t hit lefties particularly well. Think the Tiger front office would like those problems?
When the season begins each spring, the ivy on the outfield wall at Wrigley Field is not a lush green, but a vine-bare patch of brick and brown. Botany is not among my hobbies, and I do not know whether this condition results from some half-intentional negligence, or the natural distaste of Parthenocissus tricuspidata for the cool Midwestern spring. But in either event, the effect is unsettling: that feeling you get in a dream when you see a place familiar but vaguely and profoundly incomplete. That was the feeling I had on Friday night when I walked through Gate F at Clark and Addison Streets and into the nation’s most beloved ballpark. Though the architecture of Wrigley Field is the same as always–an array of ascending ramps, chain-linked fences, city vistas, and dank inner concourses pierced by streaks of evening sunlight–the atmosphere is palpably different. Gone are the rowdies, the drunks, the tourists; present instead is the eerie timbre of quiet before battle. It is the playoffs, the third game of the first series against the Atlanta Braves, and whether owning to the somber, rainy weather, the melancholy brought on by raised expectations, or, more likely, the Trans-Atlantic airline fares that have passed as market rates for scalped tickets, these fans were here to win.
For Game Five of the ALDS, the Red Sox, despite facing one of the toughest portsiders in the game, trotted out Trot Nixon, Todd Walker and David Ortiz–all of whom have notable platoon weaknesses. (Also hammering home similar division-of-labor lessons was that pin factory in “Wealth of Nations,” and the annual faulty deployment of Gil Gerard and Loretta Swit in “Battle of the Network Stars.”)
That the Red Sox, one of the headiest, most progressive organizations in all of baseball, playing in a game of critical importance, didn’t tap into their well-stocked bench in this situation reinforced something for me: the failure to platoon players with notable weaknesses against one side is one of the last great organizational blind spots. And every organization is guilty of it–even those we associate with high levels of efficiency, like the Red Sox, A’s, Yankees, Mariners, and Braves.
Mark Grudzielanek made an early run at being this series’ Jose Cruz Jr. with two poor efforts in the ninth inning, one mental, one physical. On the first, when he bobbled a Luis Castillo ground ball and never did tag Juan Pierre, I don’t understand why he didn’t throw to second base for the force play. He had to know he’d blown the tag–great call by Fieldin Culbreth–and in that situation you must get one out. Not doing so was critical, because there’s a huge difference between two outs and two on, and one out and three on. The next play didn’t get the attention, but it highlighted the Cubs’ main problem coming into this series. Ivan Rodriguez hit a line drive past Grudzielanek that, had he just fallen down from where he stood, he might have caught and at least would have kept in the infield. The Cubs don’t play defense well. It hurt them last night, and it’s going to haunt them in every game of this series. Speaking of Rodriguez, when do you think word will get out that he can hit fastballs up and on the outside edge? Someone, somewhere, may wish to try a different approach. That, or kryptonite.
If anyone ever asks me why I love baseball, I can just replay them the inevitable playoff highlights from this postseason. We’re barely into the LCS and there are already more great moments than I can remember. Sure, as a Cubs fan, maybe I’m a bit more into it than normal, but not by much. With the Yankees/Sox starting up tonight, we can count on that always heated rivalry giving us something more to remember and likely someone earning a reputation as something… another Bill Buckner, another Bucky F. Dent, another Reggie Jackson. We’re never sure what, but we always know we’re going to see something amazing. This is why we love baseball and why it seems no one can make the game go wrong, no matter how much they try. I’m just glad I have FX and a split-screen.
On to the injuries…
There may be no glory in winning with a $100 million payroll, as Michael Lewis said last week on BPR, but I don’t think anyone in Red Sox Nation cares as much about glory as they do about beating the Yankees. The Yankees were hoping the A’s would pull things out with half their rotation on the shelf, while the Sox head into the ALCS with momentum, energy, and a wrath-of-God offense that Gary Huckabay so richly evoked in his ALDS preview.
Watching the brutal collision between Johnny Damon and Damian Jackson has me wondering why neither player could use the low-tech solution of calling for the ball, or why something more high-tech like headset communicators aren’t being implemented (think how fast the game could move if we could eliminate mound conferences). The collision clearly knocked Damon out for perhaps as long as two minutes, much more than what Marcus Giles suffered in his run-in with Mark Prior. Damon’s availability is in serious question, making Theo Epstein work hard as he readies his ALCS roster. Damon is likely to be available, but likely will miss at least the first two games in New York, giving the Sox a short bench. I’m also closely watching Jackson. I have absolutely no idea why the Sox sent him back out after clearly being concussed. Post-concussion syndrome is still a possibility for both players.
You contend that rundowns should never require more than one throw. A properly executed rundown requires two throws. One to place the ball ahead of the runner and then another to finish the runner off. You want to run the runner back towards the base he came from rather than forward. This is so that in case of a dropped throw the runner will not obtain the next base but only get back to the previous base he had before the rundown.
— JT
Say a pitcher fields a ball and has a runner caught between third and home. He should close the gap, sprinting directly at the runner. Actually, he should run a little towards the home plate side to encourage him back toward third, as you point out. Pitcher sprints, makes runner sprint, third baseman steps up, receives ball, tag is made, one throw.
Things get complicated when other runners are involved such as a rundown between first and second and then another runner takes off from third. But, in a single rundown, it should take one throw. Also, say a runner gets caught up due to a throw from the outfield. That is not the first throw of the rundown. Once the runner is between two players, one with the ball, he is in a rundown and it should take one throw.
What you mean, though, is that it was Chavez’s imperative to get the ball in the hands of the catcher so that they could then run Varitek from home towards third in case of an errant throw. This can be defended, but I contend that a proper rundown requires two fielders and a single throw. Getting the ball ahead of the runner simply for the sake of it adds an extra fielder, an extra throw and more time. Why complicate things and increase the chance of an error?
It’s the all-underdog series, where virtually everyone outside of the greater St. Louis and Miami metropolitan areas seem to be entertaining fuzzy Cubby thoughts. After all, the Cubs are supremely telegenic, feature a healthy dose of celebrity, and some of the best pitching on the planet. But there’s another organization in this series, one with a recent World Series win a couple of owners ago to its credit, something achieved with almost galling ease compared to the decades of North Side misery. Moreover, these latest Marlins are an interesting collection of homegrown talents, other people’s prospects, a rented superstar, and the definitive retreaded manager.
Much will be made of the fact that this is the fourth straight season in which the A’s lost in the Division Series, all of them in the final game. They’ve lost nine straight games in which they had a chance to eliminate their opponent, the kind of fact that can become an epitaph. I’m reluctant to make the leap from that fact to an indictment of the players’ character, however, because these are successful people who, like all of us, are more than our work. The rush to brand the A’s with all kinds of labels that assail their collective character is wrong. As you read what will be an avalanche of stories that glorify the Red Sox players and make the A’s out to be chokers, remember that it’s all media nonsense. The outcome of a baseball game, a series, or even multiple trips to the playoffs don’t define a man’s character, good or bad. The A’s lost because they played baseball poorly at the wrong times. Is their baserunning a problem? It would seem so, but remember that this A’s team allowed the fewest runs in the league and scored the sixth-fewest. They played a lot of close games, and if their baserunning was such a problem, it would stand to reason that it would have shown up in their record. The A’s didn’t just do this to themselves, however. They also lost because the Red Sox played good baseball.
As I’ve previously written, a good way to judge the efficiency of a team’s front office is to compare the amount it spends on players to the number of wins it registers beyond that which could be attained by fielding a replacement-level club on which everyone earned the major league minimum salary. To compute this, I’ve assumed that a replacement-level club would play .300 ball, which translates to 48.6 wins in a 162-game season. A club’s “marginal wins” thus equals ((winning percentage -.300) x 162). For marginal payroll, the baseline assumes a 25-man active roster and three-man DL with everyone earning the major league minimum of $300,000, which would produce a payroll of $8,400,000. As several people have reminded me, the 2003 Tigers broke the formula. Their 43-119 record is worse than I had thought possible–the first team in 40 years to finish with a sub-.300 winning percentage. How bad were the Tigers? Compare them to the last two clubs to lose as many as 110 games: the Montreal Expos and San Diego Padres, who both finished 52-110 (.321) in their inaugural season of 1969.
Jason Schmidt took a lot of, well, rhymes with “Schmidt” on Saturday when he didn’t take the ball for Game Four. We soon learned why: Schmidt has pitched since early August with a torn flexor tendon. Surgery will be necessary to correct this, and the procedure was actually recommended back in August. After consultations with several orthopedists, Schmidt elected to continue pitching after being advised he could not exacerbate the injury. This injury is very similar to one suffered by Robb Nen at the end of the 1999 season. After having surgery on Oct. 7, 1999, Nen was able to return for Spring Training with minor limitations and went on to have a phenomenal 2000 season. The outlook is good for Schmidt’s 2004, a season one hopes will come without the questions about his fortitude. Tim Hudson left Game Four of the Sox-A’s series after only one inning with an injury, alternately described as a hip flexor and as a strained oblique. Hudson will have an MRI on Monday to determine the extent of the injury, which sources tell me is a strained oblique. Hudson will not be available for Game Five, but the MRI will determine when–or if–Hudson would be available, assuming there are games he’d need to be available for.