Thursday, May 21, 2009
Fables of the Reconstruction of the Fables of the . . .
My kind of day. First pitch in the majors was thrown just after 12:30 this afternoon. The last will be thrown sometime after midnight. "So I can sigh eternally . . ."
Several games are already in the books including an excellent contest between the Tigers and Rangers. Down 3-1 in the 8th, the Rangers staged a rally off starter Edwin Jackson to tie it with two outs. The Tigers promptly took the lead in the bottom of the 8th off a valiant-but-tiring Kevin Millwood. Both starters put in a hard day's work, actually. Edwin Jackson tallied 132 pitches, which I imagine is one of the highest pitch totals in the majors so far this year. And Millwood wasn't far behind at 121.
The excitement lasted until the very last outs. With the tying run on 3rd and one out in the 9th, Rodney got a double-play ball off the bat of Michael Young to end the game. Final score: Tigers 4, Rangers 3
However, before focusing in on some of the action tonight, I want to tie up a few loose ends from my blogging last night.
1. The pitching match-up in L.A. proved to be far less an embarrassment than "Weaver/Hernandez" on the marquee would suggest. Weaver was respectable in a short outing: 5/4/1/1/2/1. The bigger story is that Livan Hernandez spun a gem: 7/7/1/1/1/2. Don't know if this was a case of a blind squirrel finding a nut, or an indictment on the current composition of the Dodgers' line-up.
In any case, neither starter factored in the decision. The Dodgers nicked up J.J. Putz for a run in the bottom of the 8th, and Jonathan Broxton pitched the 9th to preserve the 2-1 victory.
If I'm just reading the tea leaves, this is not a good time for the Mets to be heading into Fenway Park. To start 3-0 on the West Coast and then limp back east dropping the the entire back-end of the trip is unacceptable.
The Metropolitans have the pitching advantage on Friday night, as they'll send Santana to the hill against Daisuke, in his return from the DL. After that? It's Pelfrey/Beckett and Redding/Wakefield. This has a Boston 2-1 series win written all over it. At the minimum.
2. Jose Reyes was in the starting line-up last night, as I noted. But his return was short-lived. From mlbtraderumors.com:
The Mets are going through one of those skids when things appear to be falling apart at the seams. Not much unlike what the Yankees went through in that stretch in which they lost 4 in a row to Boston & Tampa. However, the Mets aren't as good as the Yankees and I don't know how much water they can afford to carry. Without the enigmatic Reyes, they're left with two bona-fide stars in their everyday line-up in Wright & Beltran. The rest of the starting nine? Er . . . I mean eight. A collection of has-beens (Sheffield), guys trying a new position (Murphy) and a mish-mosh of guys who don't seem to be a perfect fit anywhere (Tatis, Church, Pagan, Reed).
If they lose that Friday night game, watch out. A sweep is a-watin'.
3. Kerry Wood did an amazing balancing act in the 9th last night in Kansas City. He took the mound to preserve a 6-5 lead, and pain-stakingly walked the bases loaded, getting one out in the midst of the mayhem. The fact that the Royals would tie the game felt inevitable. It was just a question of whether they were going to end the game right there.
And one pitch - one pitch - changed the game.
On the first offering to Mark Teahen, Wood threw an inside, nasty, hard breaking ball that Teahen swung at awkwardly. With the first pitch strike to his credit, Wood proceeded to throw strike/foul/strike (2 outs) and strike/strike/foul/ball/ball/strike against David DeJesus to end the game.
Talk about being unruffled in the face of the house burning down.
Back to today.
Rob Neyer had an interesting post referencing an article by Allen Barra in the Wall Street Journal today. Barra posits that Johan Santana is the best pitcher in baseball and should already have a third Cy Young to his credit; he actually uses a Neyer as a source to support his view.
What interested me the most was this little tidbit in Neyer's post:
Is he the best pitcher in the game today? Gee, I don't know. When you consider the difference between the leagues, I suspect that the argument comes down to three pitchers: Santana, CC Sabathia, and Roy Halladay. Well, and Lincecum, and maybe Chad Billingsley, too.
I'm very surprised to see C.C. Sabathia on a list with Santana and Halladay . . . and Lincecum for that matter. He's good (very good lately), but I just don't see him as dominant in the way I look at Johan or Doc. However, I will say the guy eats innings (among many other things) and the saber-guys put a huge emphasis on inning-eaters. For example, preferring Pitcher B who goes 7+ innings per start with an ERA of 3.75, as opposed to Pitcher A who goes 6 innings per start with a 3.00 ERA. My math might be off there, as I don't know what the exact differentiation point is. That's just intended to be a general example, but it's the main reason why I think a guy like Neyer would be so high on Sabathia.
And a couple of posters on the blog made a good point: if you're going to include Billingsley on that list, where the heck is Zack Greinke? And if you post the question this way: "If you had to pick one pitcher to start one game to win a championship, who would it be?" Well then, the answer has to be Josh Beckett, and doesn't that warrant him being on any list of the "best pitchers in baseball?"
I'm glad to see I'm not the only Yankee fan who tends to have a pessimistic bent. Goldman's headline on his blog from yesterday: "Pitching, bullpen and depth are still problems"
In Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People issue, Bill James in writing about Nate Silver made the point of saying how refreshing it was to have logical, coherent thinking & writing in vogue. I'll second that, because it's given a great platform and increasing popularity for writers like Neyer and Goldman (and the guys at BP and David Pinto, et. al.). Not to mention bringing more knowledge and, by extension, accountability (hopefully) to other fields like politics and policy. I find things like this at least hopeful, if not downright exciting. And baseball in particular allows you to crack it open like a nut, see what's inside, decide what pieces are good for consumption and which ones can be tossed away.
Alas, here's where Goldman & I part ways in terms of reacting to wins & losses. From the same post as above:
Speaking of which, "4everbronx" says, "Whew, it's a good thing they didn't lose those games...What would your reaction have been?"
Almost the same. One-run games are, on the cosmic level, coin flips. This seems especially true when a team's bullpen is as questionable as the Yankees' pen has been to this point. If we were talking about a hypothetical pen with Bruce Sutter handing off to Rollie Fingers handing off to Dennis Eckersley (or maybe even Jeff Nelson to Mike Stanton to Mariano Rivera), I would be more accepting of these games as indicators of a repeatable skill on the part of the club. Perhaps now that Brian Bruney is back they will be. For the most part, though, when you look over the history of the game, one-run decisions aren't something you can extrapolate from.
My reaction to the Yankees winning five, six, seven in a row, whatever is FAR different than if they lose a half-dozen games in a row. It's anything but "almost the same." And I don't care if they've won every game by forfeit, the opposing team decided to hit their pitcher every night or if they've won by 1-run on 9th inning errors for a week. A win is a win is a win is a win.
A perfect weather day, and the Yankees going for 9 in a row. There's been worse days in 2009.
7:50 p.m. correction: I goofed on the example in the paragraph about best pitchers in baseball. Changed text to: For example, preferring Pitcher B who goes 7+ innings per start with an ERA of 3.75, as opposed to Pitcher A who goes 6 innings per start with a 3.00 ERA. I previously wrote the exact opposite.
My kind of day. First pitch in the majors was thrown just after 12:30 this afternoon. The last will be thrown sometime after midnight. "So I can sigh eternally . . ."
Several games are already in the books including an excellent contest between the Tigers and Rangers. Down 3-1 in the 8th, the Rangers staged a rally off starter Edwin Jackson to tie it with two outs. The Tigers promptly took the lead in the bottom of the 8th off a valiant-but-tiring Kevin Millwood. Both starters put in a hard day's work, actually. Edwin Jackson tallied 132 pitches, which I imagine is one of the highest pitch totals in the majors so far this year. And Millwood wasn't far behind at 121.
The excitement lasted until the very last outs. With the tying run on 3rd and one out in the 9th, Rodney got a double-play ball off the bat of Michael Young to end the game. Final score: Tigers 4, Rangers 3
However, before focusing in on some of the action tonight, I want to tie up a few loose ends from my blogging last night.
1. The pitching match-up in L.A. proved to be far less an embarrassment than "Weaver/Hernandez" on the marquee would suggest. Weaver was respectable in a short outing: 5/4/1/1/2/1. The bigger story is that Livan Hernandez spun a gem: 7/7/1/1/1/2. Don't know if this was a case of a blind squirrel finding a nut, or an indictment on the current composition of the Dodgers' line-up.
In any case, neither starter factored in the decision. The Dodgers nicked up J.J. Putz for a run in the bottom of the 8th, and Jonathan Broxton pitched the 9th to preserve the 2-1 victory.
If I'm just reading the tea leaves, this is not a good time for the Mets to be heading into Fenway Park. To start 3-0 on the West Coast and then limp back east dropping the the entire back-end of the trip is unacceptable.
The Metropolitans have the pitching advantage on Friday night, as they'll send Santana to the hill against Daisuke, in his return from the DL. After that? It's Pelfrey/Beckett and Redding/Wakefield. This has a Boston 2-1 series win written all over it. At the minimum.
2. Jose Reyes was in the starting line-up last night, as I noted. But his return was short-lived. From mlbtraderumors.com:
But what the Mets may really need is a shortstop. Jose Reyes left Wednesday night's game against the Dodgers with what looked to be an aggravation of the calf injury that kept him out for five games. With backup Alex Cora out indefinitely with a thumb injury, the Mets are now left with a pair of shortstops: Ramon Martinez, who had two errors in his start on Monday night, and Fernando Tatis, who is a "break glass in case of emergency" kind of shortstop.
Even if Reyes returns quickly, the Mets need a credible backup. In house, the Mets have last season's backup middle infielder Argenis Reyes at shortstop, a decent glove who simply cannot hit. Jose Coranado is struggling so much with the bat, a .141 average at Triple-A, that he is an unlikely recall.
As previously reported, the Indians are fielding offers for Mark DeRosa. But DeRosa hasn't played more than 20 games at shortstop in a season since 2001-and over his last three seasons, he played a total of nine games there.
Even if Reyes returns quickly, the Mets need a credible backup. In house, the Mets have last season's backup middle infielder Argenis Reyes at shortstop, a decent glove who simply cannot hit. Jose Coranado is struggling so much with the bat, a .141 average at Triple-A, that he is an unlikely recall.
As previously reported, the Indians are fielding offers for Mark DeRosa. But DeRosa hasn't played more than 20 games at shortstop in a season since 2001-and over his last three seasons, he played a total of nine games there.
The Mets are going through one of those skids when things appear to be falling apart at the seams. Not much unlike what the Yankees went through in that stretch in which they lost 4 in a row to Boston & Tampa. However, the Mets aren't as good as the Yankees and I don't know how much water they can afford to carry. Without the enigmatic Reyes, they're left with two bona-fide stars in their everyday line-up in Wright & Beltran. The rest of the starting nine? Er . . . I mean eight. A collection of has-beens (Sheffield), guys trying a new position (Murphy) and a mish-mosh of guys who don't seem to be a perfect fit anywhere (Tatis, Church, Pagan, Reed).
If they lose that Friday night game, watch out. A sweep is a-watin'.
3. Kerry Wood did an amazing balancing act in the 9th last night in Kansas City. He took the mound to preserve a 6-5 lead, and pain-stakingly walked the bases loaded, getting one out in the midst of the mayhem. The fact that the Royals would tie the game felt inevitable. It was just a question of whether they were going to end the game right there.
And one pitch - one pitch - changed the game.
On the first offering to Mark Teahen, Wood threw an inside, nasty, hard breaking ball that Teahen swung at awkwardly. With the first pitch strike to his credit, Wood proceeded to throw strike/foul/strike (2 outs) and strike/strike/foul/ball/ball/strike against David DeJesus to end the game.
Talk about being unruffled in the face of the house burning down.
Back to today.
Rob Neyer had an interesting post referencing an article by Allen Barra in the Wall Street Journal today. Barra posits that Johan Santana is the best pitcher in baseball and should already have a third Cy Young to his credit; he actually uses a Neyer as a source to support his view.
What interested me the most was this little tidbit in Neyer's post:
Is he the best pitcher in the game today? Gee, I don't know. When you consider the difference between the leagues, I suspect that the argument comes down to three pitchers: Santana, CC Sabathia, and Roy Halladay. Well, and Lincecum, and maybe Chad Billingsley, too.
I'm very surprised to see C.C. Sabathia on a list with Santana and Halladay . . . and Lincecum for that matter. He's good (very good lately), but I just don't see him as dominant in the way I look at Johan or Doc. However, I will say the guy eats innings (among many other things) and the saber-guys put a huge emphasis on inning-eaters. For example, preferring Pitcher B who goes 7+ innings per start with an ERA of 3.75, as opposed to Pitcher A who goes 6 innings per start with a 3.00 ERA. My math might be off there, as I don't know what the exact differentiation point is. That's just intended to be a general example, but it's the main reason why I think a guy like Neyer would be so high on Sabathia.
And a couple of posters on the blog made a good point: if you're going to include Billingsley on that list, where the heck is Zack Greinke? And if you post the question this way: "If you had to pick one pitcher to start one game to win a championship, who would it be?" Well then, the answer has to be Josh Beckett, and doesn't that warrant him being on any list of the "best pitchers in baseball?"
I'm glad to see I'm not the only Yankee fan who tends to have a pessimistic bent. Goldman's headline on his blog from yesterday: "Pitching, bullpen and depth are still problems"
Now, since I wrote those words, the Yankees have tacked on another two wins to make it seven straight victories, and those doubts can be eased a bit. And yet, yet, yet, the walks by the pitching staff, the bullpen, the lack of depth are all problems that the team will have to overcome in more than seven games, but over the rest of the season.
Pointing this out isn't negativity, it isn't pessimism, it's your humble old commentator trying to do more than cast runes and read chicken entrails. I'm all for feeling good and going with the flow and enjoying it while it lasts, but I don't like being taken by surprise, particularly when it's my job not to be taken by surprise. As such, my method has to be to take theories like, "The Yankees have won seven in a row, so it's a straight line from here to the next championship" and test them looking for strengths and weaknesses. I figure out what I can, then report back to you so you can test your judgment against mine.
Pointing this out isn't negativity, it isn't pessimism, it's your humble old commentator trying to do more than cast runes and read chicken entrails. I'm all for feeling good and going with the flow and enjoying it while it lasts, but I don't like being taken by surprise, particularly when it's my job not to be taken by surprise. As such, my method has to be to take theories like, "The Yankees have won seven in a row, so it's a straight line from here to the next championship" and test them looking for strengths and weaknesses. I figure out what I can, then report back to you so you can test your judgment against mine.
In Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People issue, Bill James in writing about Nate Silver made the point of saying how refreshing it was to have logical, coherent thinking & writing in vogue. I'll second that, because it's given a great platform and increasing popularity for writers like Neyer and Goldman (and the guys at BP and David Pinto, et. al.). Not to mention bringing more knowledge and, by extension, accountability (hopefully) to other fields like politics and policy. I find things like this at least hopeful, if not downright exciting. And baseball in particular allows you to crack it open like a nut, see what's inside, decide what pieces are good for consumption and which ones can be tossed away.
Alas, here's where Goldman & I part ways in terms of reacting to wins & losses. From the same post as above:
Speaking of which, "4everbronx" says, "Whew, it's a good thing they didn't lose those games...What would your reaction have been?"
Almost the same. One-run games are, on the cosmic level, coin flips. This seems especially true when a team's bullpen is as questionable as the Yankees' pen has been to this point. If we were talking about a hypothetical pen with Bruce Sutter handing off to Rollie Fingers handing off to Dennis Eckersley (or maybe even Jeff Nelson to Mike Stanton to Mariano Rivera), I would be more accepting of these games as indicators of a repeatable skill on the part of the club. Perhaps now that Brian Bruney is back they will be. For the most part, though, when you look over the history of the game, one-run decisions aren't something you can extrapolate from.
My reaction to the Yankees winning five, six, seven in a row, whatever is FAR different than if they lose a half-dozen games in a row. It's anything but "almost the same." And I don't care if they've won every game by forfeit, the opposing team decided to hit their pitcher every night or if they've won by 1-run on 9th inning errors for a week. A win is a win is a win is a win.
A perfect weather day, and the Yankees going for 9 in a row. There's been worse days in 2009.
7:50 p.m. correction: I goofed on the example in the paragraph about best pitchers in baseball. Changed text to: For example, preferring Pitcher B who goes 7+ innings per start with an ERA of 3.75, as opposed to Pitcher A who goes 6 innings per start with a 3.00 ERA. I previously wrote the exact opposite.
