Fresh from a Memorial Day breather, Prospectus Triple Play returns with a double edition. BP looks at the happenings and trends for six big-league teams: the White Sox, Astros, Brewers, A’s, Cardinals, and Rangers.
It’s a little funny that on one of the distinctly American summer holidays, two of the best stories in baseball come from a place where Monday was just another day. The Montreal Expos took five of six on a brief homestand to come into Memorial Day at 32-18, just two games behind the Braves in the NL East. The Toronto Blue Jays? All they did was sweep a four-game series at Yankee Stadium for the first time ever, moving to 27-24 and closing within four games of first place in the suddenly very competitive AL East.
I admit going into this piece that it’s a “write it while you can” job. While the Expos and Jays are currently among the hottest teams in baseball, and right there in their divisional races, I don’t think either will be in such a lofty place in two months. For now, though, each is making noise, and doing so in completely different ways.
This has been one heck of a month of May. Between injury news and the Indy
500, I’ve been a busy man. Thanks to ESPN 950 for allowing me access to the
one of the coolest events of my life.
With the race behind me, I am ready to return my full focus to baseball, and
have a couple of features coming up, including one on Dr. Tim Kremchek of the
Cincinnati Reds that will run this week.
I looked at the standings page of my local sports section for the first time this weekend, having watched games with only a general sense of team success. I was looking to see the Cubs under Baker, the reloaded Phillies, and a couple of other easy stories. My how things have changed.
One of the stathead tenets is that there’s a ton of freely available talent floating arouns out there: guys you can pick up for minimal cost who will do a servicable job. Granted, these aren’t All-Stars or anything–they’re replacement level, or just good enough to be on a major-league roster. This fact is expressed in all the good player valuation stats, and it’s generally applied as “If you can field the Tigers for $5 million, any money spent over that should make you better than the Tigers.”
That said, the Pirates this season are providing an interesting study in stathead application. Faced with a bad team and declining attendance at PNC Park, the Pirates front office decided to make playing .500 ball an organizational priority to try and attract fans. They brought in free agents on one-year deals fix their worst problems–like Kenny Lofton to play center field–but in the process they’ve pushing back their best young hitter, Craig Wilson, to the point where he’s now fighting for playing time.