Sunday, September 05, 2010
When Winning a Baseball Game . . .
(Becomes The Hardest Thing in the World)
The baseball season is long. When this baseball season, which is now closing in on its winter years, began, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig was still afloat in the Gulf of Mexico. Yes, it's been that long.
And because of the season's length and because of the amount of games in a given season, winning a singular game is not much of an achievement. Almost every team in baseball has won somewhere between five and seven dozen games. Of course, context changes everything.
A singular game in a post-season will take on a substantial amount of weight and pressure. The enormity of a one-game playoff or a Game 7 speaks for itself.
We've now reached the point in the 2010 season where single games are taking on a weight much bigger than what is felt in April, May, June or July. There are the Cardinals, who are trying to stave off the death of their post-season hopes on a daily basis.
There are the White Sox, who feel like they're on borrowed time a bit, but still only 3.5 games behind Minnesota in the A.L. Central. And those two teams have three games left the middle of this month in Chicago. I'm skeptical of their chances, but there's time.
There are the San Francisco Giants, who have weathered August's tumultuous Storm Lincecum and find themselves in the race for both their division and for the National League's Wild Card. While they're not in do-or-die mode quite yet, a bad stretch of say five days or so could knock them out for good.
And then there are the San Diego Padres, the team I was alluding to in my headline. The Padres. Sidenote: whenever I'm inspired to write by a Joe Posnanski column (which is about three times a week), I feel like I'm picking at his table scraps. Earlier this week, Posnanski wrote about these September Padres and in particular an afternoon game that took place in Arizona on Wednesday. I watched some of the game he wrote about, and had some of the exact same sentiment and reaction to what transpired.
If you're late to the station, the Padres have been a great *baseball story this year. Scratch that, they've been the best story in a season whose final tale will make a nice addendum to any baseball library. Beyond that even, they have the potential to be one of the best baseball stories of the last 20 or 25 years.
*Pulling a Posnanski: Off the top of my head, the best team baseball stories since 1990, in no particular order, would have to include:
• the 2004 Red Sox, specifically the 3-0 comeback against New York . . . I'll be right back (races to the medicine cabinet for some Pepto).
• the 1991 worst-to-first World Series and subsequent Game 7
• the 116-win season by Seattle
• the division-winning dominance of the Braves*
• the post-season run of the 2001 Yankees
*Flabbergasting Tidbit of the Week: as Joe Po pointed out in his column the Braves didn't lose seven games in a row once from 1991-2005. That's 15 seasons.
Of course, something has happened on the way to completing Best Baseball Story of the Decade. There is nothing more palpable in sports than the late season collapse of a baseball team. There is no comparison point.
It happens in a day-by-day manner, little-by-little, one loss at a time. As a fan of the Yankees, my only point of reference is the end of their 2000 campaign when they lost 15 of their last 18 games, including their last seven of the season. However, they had an nine game lead in the division when the stretch started, and the fate of the division never truly came in doubt. They ended up winning the East by 2.5 games.
No, the collapse I'm talking about, the kind that's playing out right now on the west coast are those monumental, gut-wrenching slides. The kind that cost teams their post-season dreams (and dignity), and leave everlasting scars. The '64 Phillies . . . the '95 Angels . . . last year's Tigers . . . the '07 Mets.
For those with morbid curiosity, there's a tidy list right here.
On Wednesday, August 18 the Padres beat the Cubs 5-1 in Wrigley to go up six games in the N.L. West for the first time all year. A week later on the 25th, they beat the D-backs to go up 6.5 games, their high-water mark of the season. They had concluded a stretch in which they had gone 13-3, racking up 4.5 games in the standings. They had scored 90 runs (5.6 R/G) in those 16 games and allowed only 45 (2.8 R/G).
On Thursday the 26th, they lost a who-cares laugher 11-5 to Arizona and lost a 1/2 game in the standings. A weekend series with the defending NL champs loomed in their home park, a three-game set seemingly more vital to the Phillies whose post-season return is anything but certain.
The first two games were excellent, well-pitched, tight baseball games and a good showcase for how the Padres have been winning games this season. The thing is though, they didn't win either, losing 3-2 and 3-1, the former being a 12-inning defeat. By Sunday, they were either gassed or simply flummoxed by Cole Hamels. A sweep at home is always ugly, but this was the Phillies, the lead in the division was still five games, and a series with the lowly D-backs loomed in the desert.
And that's when this thing really started to turn into that boulder at the beginning of Raiders. After scoring three runs in three games vs. Philadelphia, the Padres lost 7-2 then 7-4 in Arizona. Another game chopped off in the standings. Then came the infamous Wednesday afternoon game.
It's Sunday morning and the crisp air (it's definitely a sweatshirt morning) matches the calendar. September. The football season has begun, the baseball season is nearing its conclusion. And in the baseball world, there is no bigger story right now than the plight of the San Diego Padres. The losing streak is now nine; the lead has been whittled, like Chinese water torture I imagine for Padres fans, to 2. Seven games remain with their closest pursuers the San Francisco Giants. The collar is now unbearably tight.
Courtesy of mlb.com:
"It honestly seems like we're going out there not to lose the division, instead of going out there to win the division," Padres pitcher Jon Garland said. "Because there isn't a single soul in baseball that's going to feel sorry for us.
"Right now, we've hit a bad spell, and it plays tricks on your mind. But this is a game of confidence. If you don't have confidence going out there, it's going to show. It's showed. So, we need to find a way to get that confidence back."
Another one:
"We're sitting back, waiting," Padres third baseman Chase Headley said. "It's almost like we're waiting for something bad to happen. We've got to start playing better."
I wrote above that there is nothing like watching a heretofore successful baseball team's season disintegrate. There is no other example when it seems like the athletes are in a vehicle in which they've totally lost control. The brakes don't work, the steering wheel is moving this way and that . . . and they're just hoping the car careens in a nice, grassy field. Instead of into a brick wall.
"It's almost like we're waiting for something bad to happen."
". . . and it plays tricks on your mind"
Yes, the Padres have found themselves in that place where the ghosts of the 2007 Mets and the 1995 Angels and the 2009 Tigers reside. Will they live to tell a post-season tale? Or will they become another addition to baseball's equivalent of a dead letter office?
I'll close with Geoff from Ducksnorts, the preeminent Padres' blog on the net. From September 1:
This team has overachieved all year. People have doubted the Padres, and with good reason. Coming off 99- and 87-loss seasons, and with the second lowest payroll in baseball, they looked like a lost cause.
Now they are playing like one, and I imagine folks are doubting the team again. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have concerns. There are two good ball clubs chasing the Padres, and if the overachievers from San Diego don’t get back to playing smart baseball soon, they could find themselves looking up before long.
The Padres are not the sort of team that can afford to get runners picked off first base down 6-2 or have a pitcher groove an 0-2 fastball to an elite power hitter. They simply do not have the talent to overcome such critical lapses. If the Padres don’t play smart, as they have been doing much of the year, they are toast.
(Becomes The Hardest Thing in the World)
The baseball season is long. When this baseball season, which is now closing in on its winter years, began, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig was still afloat in the Gulf of Mexico. Yes, it's been that long.
And because of the season's length and because of the amount of games in a given season, winning a singular game is not much of an achievement. Almost every team in baseball has won somewhere between five and seven dozen games. Of course, context changes everything.
A singular game in a post-season will take on a substantial amount of weight and pressure. The enormity of a one-game playoff or a Game 7 speaks for itself.
We've now reached the point in the 2010 season where single games are taking on a weight much bigger than what is felt in April, May, June or July. There are the Cardinals, who are trying to stave off the death of their post-season hopes on a daily basis.
There are the White Sox, who feel like they're on borrowed time a bit, but still only 3.5 games behind Minnesota in the A.L. Central. And those two teams have three games left the middle of this month in Chicago. I'm skeptical of their chances, but there's time.
There are the San Francisco Giants, who have weathered August's tumultuous Storm Lincecum and find themselves in the race for both their division and for the National League's Wild Card. While they're not in do-or-die mode quite yet, a bad stretch of say five days or so could knock them out for good.
And then there are the San Diego Padres, the team I was alluding to in my headline. The Padres. Sidenote: whenever I'm inspired to write by a Joe Posnanski column (which is about three times a week), I feel like I'm picking at his table scraps. Earlier this week, Posnanski wrote about these September Padres and in particular an afternoon game that took place in Arizona on Wednesday. I watched some of the game he wrote about, and had some of the exact same sentiment and reaction to what transpired.
If you're late to the station, the Padres have been a great *baseball story this year. Scratch that, they've been the best story in a season whose final tale will make a nice addendum to any baseball library. Beyond that even, they have the potential to be one of the best baseball stories of the last 20 or 25 years.
*Pulling a Posnanski: Off the top of my head, the best team baseball stories since 1990, in no particular order, would have to include:
• the 2004 Red Sox, specifically the 3-0 comeback against New York . . . I'll be right back (races to the medicine cabinet for some Pepto).
• the 1991 worst-to-first World Series and subsequent Game 7
• the 116-win season by Seattle
• the division-winning dominance of the Braves*
• the post-season run of the 2001 Yankees
*Flabbergasting Tidbit of the Week: as Joe Po pointed out in his column the Braves didn't lose seven games in a row once from 1991-2005. That's 15 seasons.
Of course, something has happened on the way to completing Best Baseball Story of the Decade. There is nothing more palpable in sports than the late season collapse of a baseball team. There is no comparison point.
It happens in a day-by-day manner, little-by-little, one loss at a time. As a fan of the Yankees, my only point of reference is the end of their 2000 campaign when they lost 15 of their last 18 games, including their last seven of the season. However, they had an nine game lead in the division when the stretch started, and the fate of the division never truly came in doubt. They ended up winning the East by 2.5 games.
No, the collapse I'm talking about, the kind that's playing out right now on the west coast are those monumental, gut-wrenching slides. The kind that cost teams their post-season dreams (and dignity), and leave everlasting scars. The '64 Phillies . . . the '95 Angels . . . last year's Tigers . . . the '07 Mets.
For those with morbid curiosity, there's a tidy list right here.
On Wednesday, August 18 the Padres beat the Cubs 5-1 in Wrigley to go up six games in the N.L. West for the first time all year. A week later on the 25th, they beat the D-backs to go up 6.5 games, their high-water mark of the season. They had concluded a stretch in which they had gone 13-3, racking up 4.5 games in the standings. They had scored 90 runs (5.6 R/G) in those 16 games and allowed only 45 (2.8 R/G).
On Thursday the 26th, they lost a who-cares laugher 11-5 to Arizona and lost a 1/2 game in the standings. A weekend series with the defending NL champs loomed in their home park, a three-game set seemingly more vital to the Phillies whose post-season return is anything but certain.
The first two games were excellent, well-pitched, tight baseball games and a good showcase for how the Padres have been winning games this season. The thing is though, they didn't win either, losing 3-2 and 3-1, the former being a 12-inning defeat. By Sunday, they were either gassed or simply flummoxed by Cole Hamels. A sweep at home is always ugly, but this was the Phillies, the lead in the division was still five games, and a series with the lowly D-backs loomed in the desert.
And that's when this thing really started to turn into that boulder at the beginning of Raiders. After scoring three runs in three games vs. Philadelphia, the Padres lost 7-2 then 7-4 in Arizona. Another game chopped off in the standings. Then came the infamous Wednesday afternoon game.
It's Sunday morning and the crisp air (it's definitely a sweatshirt morning) matches the calendar. September. The football season has begun, the baseball season is nearing its conclusion. And in the baseball world, there is no bigger story right now than the plight of the San Diego Padres. The losing streak is now nine; the lead has been whittled, like Chinese water torture I imagine for Padres fans, to 2. Seven games remain with their closest pursuers the San Francisco Giants. The collar is now unbearably tight.
Courtesy of mlb.com:
"It honestly seems like we're going out there not to lose the division, instead of going out there to win the division," Padres pitcher Jon Garland said. "Because there isn't a single soul in baseball that's going to feel sorry for us.
"Right now, we've hit a bad spell, and it plays tricks on your mind. But this is a game of confidence. If you don't have confidence going out there, it's going to show. It's showed. So, we need to find a way to get that confidence back."
Another one:
"We're sitting back, waiting," Padres third baseman Chase Headley said. "It's almost like we're waiting for something bad to happen. We've got to start playing better."
I wrote above that there is nothing like watching a heretofore successful baseball team's season disintegrate. There is no other example when it seems like the athletes are in a vehicle in which they've totally lost control. The brakes don't work, the steering wheel is moving this way and that . . . and they're just hoping the car careens in a nice, grassy field. Instead of into a brick wall.
"It's almost like we're waiting for something bad to happen."
". . . and it plays tricks on your mind"
Yes, the Padres have found themselves in that place where the ghosts of the 2007 Mets and the 1995 Angels and the 2009 Tigers reside. Will they live to tell a post-season tale? Or will they become another addition to baseball's equivalent of a dead letter office?
I'll close with Geoff from Ducksnorts, the preeminent Padres' blog on the net. From September 1:
This team has overachieved all year. People have doubted the Padres, and with good reason. Coming off 99- and 87-loss seasons, and with the second lowest payroll in baseball, they looked like a lost cause.
Now they are playing like one, and I imagine folks are doubting the team again. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have concerns. There are two good ball clubs chasing the Padres, and if the overachievers from San Diego don’t get back to playing smart baseball soon, they could find themselves looking up before long.
The Padres are not the sort of team that can afford to get runners picked off first base down 6-2 or have a pitcher groove an 0-2 fastball to an elite power hitter. They simply do not have the talent to overcome such critical lapses. If the Padres don’t play smart, as they have been doing much of the year, they are toast.
