Second-Half Prospectus The AL West is the tightest race in baseball at the break, with just 6 1/2 games separating the four teams. There’s potential here for a great finish, especially since none of the teams is likely to win enough to be a wild-card factor. Texas Rangers (48-39, division leader) Texas hasn’t made a…
Entering the 1999 season, 20-year-old Gil Meche was rated the fourth-best prospect in the Seattle Mariners’ organization by Baseball America, behind Ryan Anderson, Freddy Garcia and Carlos Guillen. Both Garcia and Guillen started the year with the big league squad, and while Anderson is currently laboring at Double-A New Haven, Meche has pitched so well…
Unexpected Results in Oakland The Athletics are in a virtual tie for second place in the AL West with a 30-29 record, while being outscored 296 to 275 (a Pythagorean record of 27-32). What’s strange about this is not that the A’s are outperforming their projection, but just what part of the team is responsible…
Fixing the Ms The Seattle Mariners currently sport a team ERA of 6.23–more than a quarter of a run higher than the next worst team in the American League. Shoulder injuries to Butch Henry (torn labrum) and Mark Leiter (torn rotator cuff) thinned an already anorexic staff and have prompted the ever-reactionary Lou Piniella to…
Edmonds Down, Soon Will Be Out What happened to the bizarre gag order that the Angels’ front office imposed about discussing player injuries? It looks like they temporarily rescinded it after the announcement that Jim Edmonds’ right shoulder would require surgery and that he wouldn’t be back in the lineup for at least four months….
Just over a week into the season and the division has already morphed into its anticipated form, with all the teams bunched within a couple games of .500. Good performances by starting pitchers are as rare as coherent thoughts on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. And the injury bug is biting hard. ANAHEIM ANGELS In Anaheim,…
ANAHEIM ANGELS (1998: 783 runs allowed, 6th in AL) Rotation Chuck Finley, L Tim Belcher, R Steve Sparks, R Ken Hill, R Omar Olivares, R Bullpen Troy Percival, R Rich DeLucia, R Shigetoshi Hasegawa, R Mark Petkovsek, R Mike Magnante, L Mike Holtz, L Alternatives Scott Schoeneweis, L Jarrod Washburn, L The Angels have a…
The use of a four-man starting rotation was firmly established in the major leagues by 1925. In the 1970s, teams started tinkering with five-man rotations, and by about 1980 all clubs had switched over to it. Last year, Mets’ manager Bobby Valentine implemented a six-man rotation in late-July, which he used up until the last…
The Jim Leyland managing today managed very differently from the pre-1997 models. Working for the Pirates, Leyland was comparable to Felipe Alou in his careful handling of starting pitchers, but in 1997 things changed. The first victim was Alex Fernandez, who went down with a torn rotator cuff after being repeatedly overworked late in the…
The American League West, where like the children of Lake Wobegon, all the offenses are above average… ANAHEIM ANGELS (1998: 787 runs, .263 Equivalent Average) Lineup (with projected Equivalent Average) LF Darin Erstad .288 2B Randy Velarde .265 1B Mo Vaughn .316 RF Tim Salmon .308 CF Jim Edmonds .300 DH Garret Anderson .257 /…
ANAHEIM ANGELS While much of the Disney Corporation’s vast empire has been built on the exploitation of children, that will not be the case for the 1999 version of the Anaheim Angels, as it is unlikely that any rookies will leave Tempe with the parent club (Troy Glaus and Jarrod Washburn are no longer rookies)….
ANAHEIM ANGELS DH/C Todd Greene‘s emergence has been delayed due to shoulder surgery following the ’97 season. Early word out of the Angels camp is that he is throwing pain-free. If this is more than just rhetoric from the feel-good Disney Corporation, the Halos’ backstop position suddenly becomes a strength instead of a liability, as…
When half of your team’s schedule is played in a ballpark that increases run production by fifty percent, the manager has to be able to adjust his thinking to account for that distortion. As the Colorado Rockies’ manager since their inception, Don Baylor has been the only man who has had to operate within this…
You might think things would get a little easier for Larry Dierker after his first season when he took over a ill-used Astros’ pitching staff and fashioned it into the best rotation outside of Mazzoneville. That wasn’t going to be the case. The Astros headed into 1998 without three-fifths of the rotation that finished the…
Felipe Alou‘s annual assembly of a solid pitching staff out of kids and retreads is as sure a thing as a crappy Fall lineup on CBS. However, last year may have been the most challenging of any of his seven seasons as manager of the Expos. Five of the eleven pitchers who started games for…
The biggest off-season move prior to the 1998 season was Boston’s acquisition and subsequent signing of Pedro Martinez. He didn’t come cheaply–first costing the Red Sox &oumu;berprospect Carl Pavano, and then a $75 million, six-year contract–but he was absolutely the type of pitcher that Jimy Williams had to have if the Red Sox were to…