Good News, Bad News

The good news is the Yanks clinched home field for as far as they go in the postseason. I'm not at all certain the Yankees play better at home than on the road, but almost everyone else does, the Twins in particular, so it turns out a huge relative advantage. As I noted previously, Santana is an entirely different pitcher at home, and now if the Twins plan on pitching him twice on full rest, both starts will have to come in the stadium.

The bad news is that it looks more and more likely that it will be the Twins rather than the Tigers in round 1. They are still even, but a tie goes to the Tigers and they can't keep losing to KC, can they? The only consolation is that if Johnson's back keeps him out of round 1, better he miss the Twins than the Tigers, whom he totally dominates.

Johnson's herniated disk qualifies as bad news, although its only news in the sense that he had kept his pain a secret through these last 3 horrendous starts. It might turn out good news if the epidural works and he returns to August form. It might also turn out good news if he doesn't pitch at all as a result. Johnson was awful in last year's playoffs, and every spring he starts off badly, everyone says he's a warm weather pitcher and each year he improves, pretty dramatically, in July and August. But of course it's cold in October and so it makes sense that unless he's pitching in a place like Arizona (where all of his success came in the 2001 series) or indoors, he will likely revert to the bad old RJ of April and May. Wright's had a couple of good starts in a row, and Lidle's first start coming off his blister problem was very strong, so we might just be better off with them anyway, despite the luster of Johnson's rep. I mean did any of us feel that confident that he could avoid a playoff meltdown?

The American league generally received good news in the form of Martinez's torn calf, which makes El Duque the Ace of a geriatric Met's staff (Glavine, Trachsel, what was John Franco busy?) The weakness of National league lineups might be such that they can still get to the Series, but unless they face the A's, I think their gonna get torched at that point. Meanwhile, the Cards moved 2 games up in the loss column on the Astros, and while the starting pitching of Houston is such that they can conceivably beat everyone in a 7 game series, the starting pitching of the Cards is such that they can't conceivably beat anyone, at least not anyone in the AL. Between these 2 developments, the chances of the victor coming out of the AL, already pretty high, become much higher.

I'm not sure whether this is good news or bad news, but it's important news. Perhaps the unsung key to the Yankees postseason performance is the play of Johnny Damon. Damon, we shouldn't forget, is a really streaky hitter. In 2004, he was just awful down the stretch and into the playoffs. The story of Boston's historic turnaround is in part the story of his turnaround. He has been slumping quite badly of late. Having pushed his batting average up to an even 300 a couple of weeks back, he has dropped to 286, a really steep decline given the brevity of the span and the number of at-bats a leadoff hitter has banked by this point of the season. I'm not certain what kind of news this is because Damon never of course stays in these sloughs permanently and when he does come out, he's usually red hot. So it remains to be seen when that happens. Has he gotten this nastiness out of the way, and is he now ready to go on a tear, just in time; or will he come out of it next April, after his troubles contribute to a yankees' defeat. Like I said, I don't know the answer, but we should recognize the importance of the question: the story of Damon's postseason might well tell the tale of the Yankees'.

The last bit of bad news is that Melky, whose avg. has been stedily between 285 and 290 all July and August has dropped down to 278 in the past week, i.e. under the conditions of part time play. Some players are effective as subs and regulars in equal measure, many are not, and as it becomes clear that slow Joe is going to start his lumber, it also begins to look as if the effect on Melky will seem, decptively in my view, to justify that decision. Especially since the pundits, like the manager, don't really get the importance of defense.

Last note. I was watching Home Town Heros on ESPN and Seaver was the Mets'. A baseball historian name of Shoulders concluded the segment by saying that he felt Seaver really doesn't get his due, that people don't talk about him as one of the all-timers, as they should. I agree, but that's because people are obsessed with numbers and shows like this one don't bother to trot out that incredible statistic, that Seaver is the only pitcher since the WWI era, the only hurler ever to throw a live ball for 300 wins and an under 3.00 ERA. Give people that stat and they'll praise him as much as you want. After all they put Eddie Murray in the Hall of Fame solely on account of his (far less impressive) numbers laboriously amassed over a 1/4 century. Or, of greater relevance, neither Johnny Bench, perhaps the greatest catcher in basebaall history, nor Frank Robinson, the only man to win an MVP in both leagues and arguably the best right fielder in baseball between 1959-1965, when both Aaron and Clemente were in their prime, was the home town hero for the Reds. You guessed it, Pete Rose won the honor, not because he was nearly as good as either one of them but because 4,100 and something is a really high number.

Damn! Just Missed

Robby Cano saved the Yankees last night from an embarrassment that just might have been the shot they needed as they enter the postseason. The Yankees have always responded well to being no-hit--like hanging, it concentrates the mind. Being one hit just doesn't bring the same shame and so cannot carry the same tonic effect.

The Punditry

has started speaking as if the Yankees are unstoppanle and BGW not unreasonably believes that this probably means we're screwed. Maybe so. Those of us who have followed the Yankees all year know this is a flawed team with significant weaknesses as well as overwhelming strengths. This is a year where that seems to be the rule throughout baseball. There are no really outstanding teams out there. I imagine that luck will be decisive this campaign and fortune, good or bad, begins with the scedule. As the boxing pudits like to say style make matches and if the Yankees can get the right match-ups at the right time, and probably only then, they can win it all. The royal road to number 27 would begin at home against the wild card Detroit tigers, a team I believe the yankees could actually sweep. Meanwhile, Oakland and Minnesota duke it out with Minnesota winning the fifth game with Santana on the mound assuring that he only gets one start in the following series unless it goes 7 or he goes on 3 days. The ALCs begins at the Stadium with a depleted Twins staff against a relatively well-rested Yankees staff. Then it's off to the World Series, where I guess you really want the Mets these days, since Pedro's breakdown and glavine's inevitable tail-off has left them without playoff quality pitching. Frankly I don't see how they get to the World Series at this point, but I'll take the Cardinals if they're available as well. The team you don't want is the Astros--too much pitching, they've been here last year, they play well under pressure. you don't want them. I'd rate the Dodgers and the Padres about a toss-up, but I frankly believe the Yankees at home should be able to take either one. Next time, the nightmare scenario.

Who Is the most underrated pitcher in baseball history?

Three names seem to me to vie for this honr. We all know they were great, but perhaps not how great in the historical scheme of things. All are fairly recent, inn part because I don't think anyone who remembers, or knows something about, the careers of Mathewson, hubbel, Grove, Dean, Johnson and Alexander are underestimating their greatness, and those who do not cannot be helped and are frankly not worth talking to on this subject. So my three are

1. Tom Seaver

Seaver is the only pitcher whose career did not start befire WW I, who has 300 wins and an ERA under 3. Clemens doesn't, Koufax doesn't, Spahn doesn't, Feller doesn't, Hubbel doesn't, Grove doesn't Carlton doesn't, Gibson doesn't etc. The only ptichers who do are Mathewson, Johnson, and Alexander (they didn't keep ERA for Cy Young, he was so long ago). If you combine that remarkable feat with the fact that Seaver pretty much created the NY Mets as a viable franchise, you have one remarkable career on your hands, much greater, I believe, than it is given credit for.

2. Jim Palmer

Palmer didn't win 300 games, but he did win 262, more than anyone else since ?Johnson with a career ERA under 3. And his era is considerably less than Seaver's. What's more his winning percentage, around 650, is considerably higher than SEaver's or Walter Johnson's or almost anyone else. He's not the best of modern pitchers in anyone of these categories, but if there was a calculus combining all three, he'd be right there.

3. Whitey Ford

At last a Yankee. Two statistics suggest to me that Ford, while recognized as a great pitcher doesn't get his due. Number one, his winning percentage is better than anybody else's, whenever they pitched. What's more nobody is even close to the 690 % he put up. Now this remarkable statistic, a winning percentage 100 points higher than the great Walter Johnson, is typically attributed to the dominance of the Yankees during Ford's tenure (as if Ford didn't have something to do with that). But here's the kicker, the stat which combined with the winning % percentage ctapults Ford into this category of underrated immortals. His ERA is better than every starting pitcher in the Hall of Fame since WW I, better than Seaver, Spahn, Palmer, Marichal, Carl Hubbel, Dizzy Dean, Carlton, Ryan, and yes better than Bob Gibson and better than Sandy Koufax. When you consider that Ford pitched in an era less pinched offensively than the late 60's and when Seaver, Palmer, Carlton and Gibson reigned, his lifetime ERA is a truly remarkable feat. Yes, he only won 236 games (though that doesn't count all those World Series wins), but given how rarely he lost and how stingy he was with runs (his ERA is about half a run better than his great contemporary, Warren Spahn), he, like Seaver and Palmer, should be in the discussion for the greatest pitcher in modern baseball history.

Is a Puzzlement

The Yankees clarified one of their puzzling areas tonight by starting Matsui in left field and sitting Melky Cabrera, for the 2nd time in the last three games. The Melkman will not be starting in the playoffs, at least not with any regularity. I have stated ad nauseum why I believe this decision is misguided and will only add 2 things here. 1) Matsui's performance since his return has supplied as solid evidence as one could find that he can indeed flourish in the DH role, making the optimum platoon of Giambi and Sheffield (neither one of whom is hitting just now) relatively cost free 2) Slow Joe has once again given us the rope to hang him, rhwetorically speaking, if they don't win this thing.

The puzzle facing the Twins is more intriguing and less open to easy solution. Santan is scheduled to pitch Sunday for his 20th, a consummation devoutly to be postponed, since the Twins would like to open the playoffs with him on the mound. But what if the Central Division is still on the line at that point/ What if by pitching Santana on Sunday, they can open a five game set against Oakland at home, pitching Santana once, if necessary, rather than opening against the Yankees on the road, with santana available for 2 starts, but only if both are on the road. Remember Santana's home record is a Koufaxian 12-0; his road recodr is an ordinary 7-5. What makes playing for the division so tempting is that the Twins are such a young team, with virtually no playoff experience. Getting their feet wet in the Metrodome against the lesser opponent rather than in the stadium against the legends could be the difference between an early exit and a World Title. What if they closed the A's out quickly, Garza to Bonzer to Radke? They might at that point be able to risk a 1-4-7 split with Santana in the ALCS (although again, they would only get one game at home). Finally, for now, wouldn't the Twins, who have a miserable postseason record against the Yankees under Gardenhire, like to give the Tigers the opportunity to help them out. A series against the Yankees, in which the Tigers prevailed, but only by using both Verlander and Bonderman twice, would set the Twins up nicely to go to the Series. In sum, the Yanks have good reason not to want to play the Twins at all; I have come to believe that BGW was closer to the mark in his assessment of the Twins offensive potential than I was--the return of Tori Hunter has given them the fourth bat in sequence, a la Thome, Konerko, Dye Crede, that makes a team dangerous. But the Twins have good reason not to want to play the Yankees as well. Whoever Torre starts, if the Yankees are hitting they are the most menacing team out there, certainly more so than the A's, whose low average big men--Swisher, Thomas, Chavez--are a recipe for October disaster. The difference is that at this point the Yankees have no say in who they play; the A's will not make up 5 games with 6 to play, so the Yanks get the wild card and get them at home. Where the Twins play may well be a matter of the strategy they choose, which is itself based on an exquisitely difficult cost-benefit analysis.

Of course the other way to look at all of this is through the lens of how the wild card is next to the DH the most fucked up innovation is baseball, because it gives people reasons not to try to win--not to try and win their "league" and hence not to try to win the particulkar games necessary to do so.

Our next puzzle involves the Sox. Manny wants out, again, and since he went AWOL after the massacre--literally among the walking wounded--the Sox are prepared, they say, to give him what he wants. In other words, we are back to 3 years ago, when Manny being Manny and Manny being a cancer were synonymous and the Sox put him on waivers in the hope, vain as it turned out of offing his salary. Many people, including the Yankees kicked themselves for not taking that opportunity in the years that followed, and while the Yanks will be given no trade option by their rivals, the question about Manny has renewed itself for other teams. Just when you thought he must be worth the drama, just when he seemed not disturbed or self-indulgent, but zany and playful, a holy fool of the diamond, he goes and backs out of September baseball because the road to the playoffs seemed especially rough. So fi you are the Phillies or the Mets, or the Angels, do you take a chance on Manny? Soemthing for the off-season.

For the present, I'm wondering, in our last puzzle, how did the Astros get the Cards' lead down to one and 1/2 with 5 to play? More importantly, Oswalt, Clemens, and a revived Andy Pettite. If the Astros pull off this miracle come back, and I put the odds at just about even, I would argue that they and not the Mets--with a battered and ineffective Pedro, and old Tom Glavine, who was alousy October pitcher even when Young, and Steve Trachsel for Chrissake--the Astros are the favorite to win the NL pennant.

Reasons to Worry?

Yes, but not the ones the pundits have proposed. I have heard the yankees will be golden provided Mo can go. Well not necessarily. A healthy Mo has not spelled World Championship for the last 5 years, and he won't this year either, unless other recent trends reverse themselves. I have also heard some wondering about how the AROD disclosures will affect him or the team. Well, I can't believe the team will be much hampered by what they've long known, and as for AROD, he doesn't need any special reason to fall inot a slump. He had already started a new one before the article came out.

The worrisome developments are a) the fact that neither Johnson nor Mussina has had a good start in quite a while. Given how dramatically overworked the Yankees main middle relief men are, continued struggles by their no. 2 and 3 starters spells trouble if not doom; b) Sheffield has given some indication that he can play first, but he hasn't started hitting yet and, probably owing to his wrist problems, Giambi hasn't hit a homer and has managed but a few ribbies since the Boston massacre. During the Yankees' run back into first place, Giambi was their version of David Ortiz, even as AROD stunk out the borough. There is still no reason to believe they can win without a productive Giambi, particularly if the alternative is an even less productive Sheffield. If you take those two out of the equation, you are left with AROD as your only real slugger and if that does say postseason debacle to you, well either you are possessed of a faith almost religious in its implicitness or you just haven't been paying attention. The worst of all possible worlds, and one I can see on the horizon, has neither Giambi and Sheffield hitting but status quo Joe playing both of them anyway, with Matsui in left. The result will be a full-fledged return to the defensively weak, offensively passive team of the early season: a line-up stacked with big name sluggers, all of whom are striking out too often and leaving men on base.

While I don't think the Tigers are much of a threat, the Twins, even without Loriano, can pose problems. The real danger though lies in Oakland. The Yankees have always handled Zito, but they've been awful against Haren and now the A's have Hardin, who is often unhittable. With Blanton a decent option as well, the A's have starting pitching that is both better and deeper than the Yankees and a closer, Huston Street, that you don't want to face down a run.

While the worst has been avoided, now that the Sox have been not only vanquished but humiliated, the best, which is to say the acceptable, is not just a long way off, but, I fear, receding as we speak.

So Far So Good

Sheffield looks at first galnce to be a defensive upgrade on Giambi at first and given how bad G has been with that sore wrist (185 and no homers in forever), it becomes easy to imagine Sheffield taking over at first, Matsui remaining primarily a DH and Cabrera hanging on to his job in left. If as Torre always says, parroting the conventional wisdom, pitching wins in the postseason, the correlary is that defense is inddispensable in the postseason. And with hitting like the Yankees promise to have (providing Sheffield gets his timing back over the next week)defense should not be sacrificed. Surely we can score enough runs with the following line-up, while limiting the number we give away.

Damon
Jeter
Abreu
AROD
Cano
Sheffield
Matsui
Posada
Cabrera

Notice too that this line-up gives you perfect right left alternation all the way down to the switchhitters at the bottom of the order; it gives you a wrap around with Cabrera, lots of OBP and lots of pop. If Giambi is healthy and has his stroke back, you definitely want him in the line-up: he's the best clutch slugger we have. But if not, this is a batting order more than scary enough. If they are eliminated at any point in the playoffs, it will likely be owing to bullpen blow-ups and/or defensive lapses.

The Other Sox II

Two days ago when the White Sox came out with quotes indicating that they had thrown in the towel, they were 5 1/2 back. Since then the Twins have dropped 2, and if the Sox had been able to win behind Vazquez and Contreras, they'd be just 3 1/2 behind the Twions for the wild card with 6 games to play before a final 3 gan=me series with those same Twins. They'd be right in it for the Wild Card. Just like the Red Sox would be if they hadn't traded Wells and packed it in with a bunch of "gray area" injuries (Francona's phrase, not mine). I just can't understand giving up like that for no reason. It disgusts me. Conversely, I salute the Phillies, who were way behind, playing like shit, totally done for when their front office gave up on them and gave Abreu and Lidle away to the Yanks. The Phils lived up to their "fighting" sobriquet, refused to give in and are now just 1/2 game behind the Dodgers for the wild card. I hope they get it, if only to teach the smelly AL Sox of either pigmentation a lesson.

He's Not Serious

about securing home field advantage. That's the only conclusion you can come to perusing tonight's line-up card. In addition to Giambi, whose resting his wrist, Abreu, AROD, Matsui and Damon all are on thte bench. Sheffield starts, but so do Williams, Gueil, Green and Cairo. Whenyou're only one ahead of Detroit, two ahead of Minnesota, and three ahead of Oakland, this looks like hubris.

The Other Sox

are also losers, and I refer not to a record that will doubtless exclude the southsiders from the playoffs, but to their attitude toward that unpleasant and entirely unexpected state of affairs. Their captain and soi-disant Derek Jeter, Paul Konerko, explained their September swan-dive by noting that to win it all last year they had to play extra games (i.e. the postseason), which left them exhausted this year. "We just didn't have enough in the tank physically." Huh? The White Sox only played one game more than the minimum to win it all last year and anyway, this is baseball, the five months from Nov. to April are more than enoough rest to recover from the 10-15 minutes of actual physical exertion per game required of each regular. The Yankees have been to the playoffs 11 times in a row, including 6 World Series. Not once have I heard anyone in that perpetually aging organization worry that all that extra effort in October would come back to tire them out a year later. What a crock!

Then there's Bobby Jenk's the John Kruk shaped closer for the White Sox (seriously someone should do a study on baseball and obesity, but I digress). Jenks told a radioman that the Sox were fine with the premature end to their season. We feel okay he said, we're fine. We know we had a great year, we just came up a little bit short. I don't know, first of all, how missing the playoffs when you are favored to repeat as champions can be defined as a great year. Secondly, I've been to Comiskey a half dozen times or so and to the Sox fans' credit they are an intense lot (they are also twice as obnoxious as Boston and NY fans put together). I'm certain they are not fine with the Sox disappointing finish and are doubtless irritated beyond words by the fact that Jenks and his teammates are taking it so well. The Sox by the way are no small payroll enterprise. The collapse they have undergone, like that of Boston, illustrates how difficult it is to stay in the championship hunt year after year. Their acceptance of failure, like Theo's grand plan to win 90 games each season, illustrates that you cannot stay in the hunt if doing so, instead of winning it all, is your standard of acceptability.

As Yankee fans, we should be happy that we enter each postseason with a passionate rooting interest still alive. The price we pay for this privelege, however, is that we can no more be happy with that state of affairs in and by itself than the organization we support.

Show me a team, show me fans, that are just happy to be there every year and I will show something worse than mere losers, I will show you glorified losers. In other words, the Atlanta Braves.

Here's Kyle!

Michael once again comes up with the goods, for which we are deeply appreciative. Reading another Yankee blog (a Torre-cult blog as far as I could tell), he found a great quote from Kyle Farnsworth in the midst of last night's celebration. Realizing the Sox would occupy the same champagne drenched lockeroom the following day, he said they should smell this; it's the smell of victory" (a nice allusion to my all-time favorite movie)and then he added, "you can print that." Perfect.

A retrospective of the Yankees' season on Sportscenter lasst night noted that they were going down the schute in June and then turned things around in July when "they started playing the kind of ball Torre loves, slashing conmtact hitting and less reliance on the home run." Yeah well we were calling for just that style of play since April, we were pointing out that the big injuries could and should be the opportunity to return to that style of play in May, and we were pleading for somebody to get with the small ball program for all of June and into July, and all the while slow Joe Torre was gfiving very little sign that he still understood, let alone loves that style of play. The Yankees won this division in spite of Torre not because of him. Let's hope, slow as he is, he's finally caught up with what a bunch of amateurs knew from the beginning, so that he can actually abet rather than impede the Yankees' march through the playoffs.

Why Me? Why Meeeeeee?

Not since Nancy Kerrigan got kneecapped by Tonya Harding's goons (the only high point in the history of figure skating), has a self-pitying wail of athletic grievance like that disgorged by our man AROD on the pages of SI echoed through the halls of public consciousness. He really doesn't understand. Indeed, I suspect Ms. Kerrigan had a much clearer idea of why she was writhing in pain on the floor of a Detroit lockerroom than AROD does about why he is so generally disrespected. Certainly his speculations--"is it because I'm good looking (yeah that always inspires detestation) is it because I'm smart ( as someone who actually is smart, let me assure you AROD, that's not it), is it because I'm biracial (have you ever heard of Tiger Woods? does the name Derek Jeter ring a bell) is it because of my salary (I think BGW has put that one to rest: a Yankee fan envious of stupidly exorbitant salaries would go mental in pretty short order), "is it because I play on the most popular team" (well, it's also the most hated team, and by the way I think Derek Jeter plays on that team as well, just in case you still haven't noticed).

No, we know why it is, it's that clutch thing, which, properly understood, is closely related to that being a true Yankee thing. Really, I think I figured out how this works. It wouldn't do AROD any good to quote his RISP numbers even if they were a little better, even if they were a little better in the late innings, even if they were a little better than other major leaguers of note, or other Yankees. What's at stake in our perception of AROD, which is to say WHY HIM, is what I will call the Differential. The Differential is the gap, up or down, between how good a given player, or a given Yankee, is all the time and how good he is in the clutch. The measure of a true Yankee is not some absolute percentage of clutch performance, but the ratio between how he typically performs during a particular period and how he performs in the clutch over that same span. Reggie Jackson was a 260 something hitter, but not in the clutch; Scott Brosius was a 240 hitter but in the clutch he was good and compared to his own benchmark he was a monster. Why was Lou Piniella one of the great Yankees? Because you simply didn't care a lick if he'd struck out three times earlier in the game (and he probably had), you knew his clutch potential was an entirely separate matter. Did Paul O'Neill, could Paul O'Neill have a game so bad that you didn't want to see him come up in the 9th. I would submit, no, his differential quotient was too high for that. So by the way was Chuck Knoblach's: until his last season, you couldn't get him out when you had to get him out, but you sure could otherwise. And that's the fuility of the sportswriter's argument about how great AROD is "really," which is to say statistically. The better he is and claims to be and is seen as being everyday, the higher the threshold for his clutch performance and the more dismal his Differential becomes when he goes 2-15 against the Angels in the ALDS.

You want the profile of a true Yankee? Let's follow the path of Aristotle, who came to define tragedy for the ages not by setting out rules deductively but by starting with the best tragedy he knew, Oedipus Rex, and then pronouncing its various qualities and excellences to be the qualities and excellences proper to the tragic mode. So we start with Derek Jeter because we all know that whatever else might be true of the category true Yankee, Jeter has been one. Now Jeter is hitting about 340, but his batting average with RISP is about 390. That's what I mean by a true Yankee, even in the midst of a monster year day to day, he cranks it up in the clutch, he gets that improbable hit off Papelbon in game 4 of the massacre, otherwise known as the coup de grace. His Differential, even when he is going well, remains tremendously high. Let's take the other sterling example of true Yankeedom, Paulie. As 2000 was wearing down and even into the playoffs he was going from bad to worse, but a true Yankee is not finally stymied by his own struggles. Its the World Series, its the Mets, it's the no.7, its Yankeetime, and Paulie delivers, producing out of and in part because of his recent scuffles a huge upside Differential. That is the link between the true Yankee and the tradition of winning. Over the course of the 20th century, it was the Differential--enacted not only by Mantle, who owned the world series, or Dimaggio, who owned the stretch drive, or Jackson, Mr. October, but also by Joe Gordon and Gil MacDougal, Yogi Berra, Thurman Munson and yes Phil Rizzoto--it was that surplus-value expectation, the expectation that as a Yankee you will exceed under pressure the quotidian expectations you have set, that has produced the 26 championships and 39 pennants. If AROD is ever to become a true Yankee and be delivered from the question of why me, he is going to have to do more than perform acceptably or even well. He is going have to surpass himself, play with a greater or a different brand of excellence than he ordinarily displays. He is going to have to imbibe pressure, in true Yankee fashion, as a peformance enhancing drug. Think about Jeter, a glorified Punch and Judy hitter to be sure, delivering that key homer against the Mets and then winning Game 6 2001 with another home run at the stroke of November.

The Yankees got AROD for Soriano, a trade that perhaps looked more lopsided then than it does now. But leaving aside Soriano's amazing 2006, as a rookie he got Curt Schilling for the stunning late inning homer in the desert that should have carried the Yanks to a fourth straight title. A raw,untried if talented rookie, on baseball's biggest stage, pulling a Mazeroski: the Differential. In his years in New York, AROD has not, for all his rep as baseball's greatest player, with his MVP, his homers and ribbies, done anything to approach what Soriano did before he left, before his career even began. Once again, but in a negative sense, the Differential. Which is why to this day and even toiling in the barren vinyard of RFK stadium, Alfonso Soriano retains a memory of true Yankeedom that AROD has yet to experience.

R and R (and R?)

After a nice win last night, the Yanks plan to throw their gloves on the field in a concession to Halladay's dominance and their own aches and pains. Jeter, Giambi, and Damon are all dinged and won't play and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Abreu or Posada or Melky join them on the pine. It does make sense for Torre to get some rest for a veteran, read aging, team like the Yanks, especially one so ridiculously fragile. this season Giambi, Jeter, Damon, Matsui, Sheffield, Cano, AROD, Cairo have all missed stretches of at least 4-5 games due to injury or, in AROD's case, illness. Sending this team off to a Swiss sanitarium for a week would make sense. But there is just one little problem. The Tigers are only 2 games back of the Yanks and, more to the point, the Twins are just 2 and 1/2 back and poised to overtake the Tigers. Does one worry about ceding home field advantage for the ALCS? Does one worry about ceding it to the Twins, when Santana is virtually unbeatable there and mortal elsewhere? If you have home field, they can only maximize their silver bullet by pitching him exclusively on the road. If you let them get the advantage then you are 2 games back to start with. Interesting conundrum.

Well the article Michael put me onto and I mentioned yesterday has certainly created huge buzz among the scribes, who have done everything from re-psychoanalyzing AROD (I'm not certain he's all that deep), to re-psychoanalyzing the our reaction to him, to invoking the ghost of Bronx Zoo past in wondering how his teammates scarcely concealed antipathy for this fellow will affect their playoff run. One thing the scribbler community has signally failed to do is apologize for their now obvious sin of treating Yankee fans as, in BGW's phrase, besotted yahoos who somehow invented, out of their own mean-spiritedness and unreasonable expectations, Arod's proclivity to gag. We fans, treated as lemmings with a bad case of empty nestegg syndrome, closely approximated in our estimate of how AROD has performed all of the jocks whose straps these same scribes find so intoxicating. We were the clear-eyed judges of performance and the so-called experts, all of them, were the besotted ones.

As for how this will affect everyone, I suspect the publication of AROD's unpopularity will free him up to play for himself rather than for the team, which was never really in his DNA anyway. He would have to play better if his performance on the field were purely an extension of his self-love, which, as the article reveals, is considerable. If Freud were writing his classic article "On Narcissism" today, he would add AROD to cats and beautiful women in his list of creatures made fascinating to others by the depths of their self-absorption.

Carl, We Hardly Knew Ye

as anything other than a slacker fuckwad who disgraced himself and the pinstripes. Now that they've decided to shut this malingering bozo down for the season (again), and since they have the 40 man limit, they ought to require him, on pain of voiding his contract, to report for work at Yankee stadium before remaining home games. Upon his appearance, they should suspend the rule against projectiles being hurled onto the field, provided said projectiles evidence a good faith effort to ascertain, in the most painful way imaginable, the truth of the rumors that that this jackass hasn't a backbone, any heart, or a brain in his head.

AROD the POD

New Article in SI, available on the web, about AROD's troubles as a Yankee. Makes it clear that his teammates have roughly the same opinion of him as has been so vitriolically expressed, by a number of us, on this blog. we have nothing on Giambi Jeter, Damon and a cast of anonymous others.

Where's Kyle?

With Rivera out and the Jays mounting a comeback in the 9th that took the Yanks through 4 of their worst pitchers (Villone, whom torre has ruined, Dotel, who is not ready for prime time, Meyer, who is ready for the glue factory, and Veras, who is a perfectly respectable minor leaguer), one has to wonder, where was the Yankees set up man and surrogate closer? The offense really did its job against a tough pitcher, Rasner was stout, Procter and Bruney were great, so why were the Yanks sweating this one out. Conventional wisdom points to the absence of Rivera, but isn't Farnsworth being paid a lot of money to do this job? Why does Torre let him sit while relying on the old (Meyer), the weak (Dotel), the exhausted (Villone) and the green (Veras, there's a pun in there)? Am I missing something?

You Can't Win

if you don't try. With a double day/night dip, slow Joe had to rest his aging team, but when you have a 4-2 lead late, you should at least manage your bullpen as if you'd like to win. You owe that much to the position players like Abreu and Posada who put forth a great effort and you owe that much to the fams who are still filling the stadium. First, don't bring Proctor back after his effective first inning. Scott don't do encores--at least not well. Then after Meyers throws four straight balls to Ortiz, take him out. After all, he only has a spot in te major leagues to pitch to one hitter, Ortiz. If he can't do that a) it's not his night b) he's useless to you. So then Lowell gets a basehit off Meyers that is turned into a force out by Papi's egregious baserunning (MVP!MVP!). Now you surely take him out. No? How about after Varitek's single that shrinks the lead to 1. At that point even the other slow Joe, slow joe Morgan was speculating that people might wonder why Meyers was still pitching. His answer was that eric hinske still loomed on the bench ready to pounce on any wayward righty who might venture nto his lair. Eric Hinske? Mr..258? We're crafting our bullpen decisions to keep that mook from batting? Please. No, Joe knows he should make the switch, but he's become Bartleby the Manager. With his eyes vaguely on October, he'd just prefer not to pull out the stops.

So now Meyers, who looks like he's enjoying all of this about as much as a man being oiled up for the electric chair, faces Mireabelli. This is a beautiful face-off between two bottomfeeding specialists, Meyers who exists only to pitch to one man in the entire league (whom he's already walked) and Mirabelli, who exists only to catch one pitcher in the entire league (who's probably not even on site). Having gotten Mirabelli in the hole, thanks to a 340 foot foul ball, Meyers plunks him, plunks a 183 hitter on a pitch that was nowhere near Posada's target. Now the bases are loaded and I'm thinking well you've done it this time Joe, you've been so slow you're going to have to confront your next guy with a bases loaded situation, but (and I swear to God I thought this), you can't leave him out there as wild as he is (the four pitch walk, the plunk and all) he might walk in the tying run or even throw a wild pitch! In the meantime, Terry Francona sends out Hinske to pinchrun (well at least he values the guy appropriately), taking away even slow Joe Morgan's last rationale for leaving Meyers out there. Where are Beam and Henn, I wonder, they were warming up a couple of innings ago? Did they get lost out there? Then Meyers who looks briefly toward the dugout in one last plea to the warden for clemency, goes ahead and kills himself and the entire team with that wild pitch.

Bring in Fahrnsworth after Ortiz, get out of the inning, have a lead in the top of the ninth, and I doubt Coco is inspired enough to make that crazy play on Posada, and then you've got a big lead and anyone can finish. In the last innings of the game Crisp, Varitek et al were still trying to win, all the more so because it had become clear that Torre was not.

I think slow Joe did a great disservice to his players in this game. They wanted to win and, even with the depleted line-up, I thought they played pretty well: a nice catch by Abreu and he ripped the ball twice, Bernie hit the ball well, Giambi played well at first and that slap through the shift was great situational hitting. Posada was a monster. You should reward effort like that, in a less than meaningful game, by managing to win, or at least managing as if you had some care of victory. Jeter's saying, "If you're going to compete, you want to win," applies here. The Yankees did want to win last night and played well enough to do so. Slow Joe let them down. He became No Joe. He crossed a line between the kind of bumbling I take him to task for regularly, and the kind of tanking I have been excoriating the Sox for. I honest to God thought he was above that sort of thing, that his problem was a lack of brains, a lack of judgement, a tactical tin ear, but never a lack of competitive fire. Even his sentimentalization of "old boys" like Bernie stemmed, I thought, from a tribalism closely kin to competitiveness. This was for me his lowest point of the year and maybe of his tenure. It won't be perceived that way because the stakes are comparatively low. But hey, this is baseball, it's a game, in the larger sense the stakes are always low; it's baseball, it's a competition, in the larger sense the stakes are always as high as they can possibly be, you want to win. But evidently Bartleby the Manager preferred not to.

Let it Be Recorded

that on September 15, Derek Jeter finally overtook Joe Mauer as batting leader. Ironically this occurred the day before Jeter faces his toughest stretch, two consecutive day/night doubleheaders, in which he'll probably want to play every game. If he should still be in the lead after Sunday night, I expect he'll win it, barring Cano becoming both hot and eligible.

How About Them Sox

and former Sox. What is going on with these guys? First Petty Papi expresses greater concern that all this spoiled chowder might hand Jeter the Mvp than with the fact that, you know, the chowder is spoiled...rotten. Now comes word that Ramirez won't play at all in the Bronx and probably not for the remainder of the season. In boston, that is known as Manny just sitting on his fanny, or if you prefer, Manny just being fanny, i.e. an ass.

Today Jonathan Papelbon announced that he was no longer pitching this year and that when he returned in 2007, it would be as a starter. Don't these kind of statements usually come from someone with greater managerial authority than a rookie player?

Finally, Pedro was yanked after 3 innings of stuffless pitching tonight, and while he claimed he almost lost it in the dugout, my view of the tape showed that he did actually break into tears as Willie Randolph tried to comfort him. Although a great pitcher, Pedro was always a punk, and isn't that the way it is with punks: one day they are breaking baseball's unwritten rule against unprovoked beanballs, the next they are humiliating themselves by breaking that still more fundamental dictum so effectively articulated by Tom Hanks/Jimmy Foxx: THERE'S NO CRYING IN BASEBALL.
Between Papi crying to the press, Manny crying to the trainer and Pedro crying on the bench, the Sox, past and present have become, I don't know, just so fucking abject. They are now too pathetic to hate; but they are also too self-indulgent to pity. So what is it I'm feeling? As feelings about them go, it seems a little bit distant and yet powerfully familiar....ah, yes, that's right, it's contempt.

Interesting Stat

with which to continue our discussion about the Yanks post-season line-up (see Cruise Control comments box). Over all of last year and this Shefield's batting average is considerably lower than Melky's against righties; his OBP is lower and his OPS is about the same. The same cannot be said of Hideki. His BA, OBP and OPS over last year and his entire time with the yankees is onsiderably higher than Melky's is against lefties and than either Sheffield or Melky's is against righties. All of this is important because if you are considering who to play and when, it's not who is a better hitter but when they are a better hittier and against whom. If you throw in Giambi's current 196 avg. against lefties, I think the solution to the overcrowded Yankee OF becomes clear. Melky must play, for his defense, his speed, and because offensively he's as good an option as Sheff against righties and a better option than giambi against lefties. hideki must DH becasue he's better than anyone except Giambi against righties and better than anyone except Sheffield against lefties. giambi and Sheff must platoon, because everybody hits lefties better than Giambi and everyone hits righties as well or better than Sheffield, as well as playing better in the other aspects of the game. The beauty part of all of this is the kind of pinchitting threat you'd have when they switch arms out of the bullpen.

All that is left to consider is whether Sheffield will make it more trouble than its worht to platoon him, by going all diva as only he can. I'd rather he be in than out of the line-up, but I'd rather he be out of the roster than poisoning the team from within.

Who's Next

Not the classic Who's album, which begins with Baba O'Reilly, official theme song of Paul O'Neill, and ends with Won't Get Fooled Again, unofficial theme song of AROD (who is really tearing it up now that the race is over). But who's next for the Yankees? Who will they play in round 1, who is the likely opponet, who is the most favorable.

Loriano went down for the season yesterday, turning the Twins from the team you most wanted to avoid in a five game set to a team that has Santana and nothing else. What's more, if the Yankees were to play the Twins (and unless the finish behind the A's or Angels they definitely play the wild card team), they would have home field advantage, which means, and this is huge, santan would only get to pitch 2 games in the series if he pitched them both at Yankee Stadium. Santan is unbeatable in the dome, but he is little better than 500 on the road. ow that the Twins have no backup in the form of Loriano, with Radke still hurt, and with some kind of collective block about winning at the Stadium, I think they are highly beatable.

Maybe not as beatable as the Tigers, however, whose young arms are fading and who just don't score enough runs. The tigers are homer-happy, like the Yankees at their worst, which makes them particularly vulnerable to pitchers like Mussina and Wang. and for whatever reason, Johnson has always done well against them. They are still my favorite first round opponent.

My least favorite, barring the unlikely scenario that the Angels get it,, would be the White Sox. They play the Yankees pretty tough; Contreras is inconsistent, but he can be brilliant, Garland is consistent, if never lights out, and while both Garcia and Beurle arer highly beatable, the Sox have what the Twins and Tigers don't, a potent offense. the run from Thome to Konerko to Dyer to Crede is tough. they don't have to win with their pitching.

My dream scenario is the Twins somehow struggle through and win the division. We get the Tigers first. The Twins beat Oakland in 5, which is possible since they don't hit that well and have recently been shutdown by Silva, whom the Yankees torched, and then we get the Twins in a seven game series, where the absence of Loriano would kill them, particularly since Santana couldn't pitch until game three. Any thing but the Angels. I don't understand how a team that bad can prove so difficult but there you are.

Later I'll talk about the National League and try to figure out how the Mets can be eliminate so we don't have another subway series so soon.

It's a Melk-down

Slow Joe says Melky must go! Left field is Matsui's position and as soon as he's cleared to play there he will resume his status as OF regular. Joe's reasoning seems to rely on squatter's rights and proprietorship. Surely Melky's 11 assists make it clear Matsui does not reclaim the position because he plays it better. Quite the contrary. In the comments box to "Cruise Control" I lay out my argument, an impeccable one I think, as to why you play to everyone's strength if Melky plays left (speed, defense, contact hitting arm), Matsui is the every day DH (clutch hitting, power, ability to hit righties and lefties with equal proficiency) and Giambi anbd Sheffield platoon at first (Giambi can't hit lefties anymore--.196 avg.--Sheffield has for the last couple of years been just average against righties while being close to superhuman against lefties. But status quo Joe says no, partly because he likes established players, partly because he sentimentalizes Matsui, and partly becasue it's the by the book play, and never let it be said he didn't go by the book.

Interestingly though, it doesn't appear that Sheffield has established propriety in right. Even as Stat quo openly speaks of sitting the Melk-man, in yet another indication that Torre just doesn't do defense, there is no talk of sitting Abreu. In fact Sheffield has been saying he's ready to return to the team and mangement has been saying, no you are not, presumably meaning, we'd rather you didn't. Now this I get. If Sheffield doesn't get to play everyday, he will likely be a clubhouse toxin. They know it; I know it; you know it; and sheff knows it. So they are putting off the day of reckoning until they are certain that Matsui can play left everyday and that they really want to sacrifice Melky to the impossibility of living with Shef if you're not playing him. What they correctly envision as a Sheff meltdown must in the end, when they can delay it no longer, result in a Melk (sit)Down. And that's too bad.

Remember I said so when Matsui unaccountably overruns a ball when Mussina is pitching, sending our high strung quasi-ace into a pet that winds up costing three runs and a playoff game. Remember I said so when Sheffield does not score from first on a double and winds up not scoring at all to cost us another one. Remember most of all that I said so when runners resume taking extra bases at will now that they know tha noone to the left of Abreu will be able to throw them out. Remember I said so, finally, when sentimental Joe starts using Bernie as his fourth outfielder and first pinchhitter instead of Melky, and we are all screaming at the mincing circuitous paths he takes to let certain outs drop in or the double plays he's hitting into at crucial times.
OOOH, OOOH
He's status quo Joe
That we all know
He likes his players old
And impossibly slow
He thinks you can't win
If you've any get up and go
And deems youth a failing
Out of which you must grow.
He's status quo Joe
That we all know
And must count ourselves lucky
He plays Robby Cano.

Cruise Control

Now they're ending games in the bottom of the first. Matsui goes 4-4 in his comeback game, Abreu ties an American League record for most RBI's in the first (6) and the Yankees set a stadium record for most runs in the first (9). Oh and Jeter continues his hit streak without actually getting a hit, but getting on base 4 consecutive times. Right now, and it is only September granted, the Yankees look like the offensive juggernat they seemed on paper (but not on the field) at the outset of the year. The playoffs will tell, but for right now, even the supporters of the Abreu-Lidle deal, like myself, never dreamed it would work out so well. Abreu seems like one of those players about whom noone evewr asks, can he play in NY; they say, he plays so much better in pinstripes. Oh and Mussina finally returned to the form of the first half, pitching into the seventh without allowing a run, and throwing mostly hard stuff.

You knew Matsui could only improve things. but given where the Yanks are now, would you let Sheffield back into the line-up? I'm just asking.

One last note. after a flawless inning of mop-up by Beam, Dotel gave up 4 runs in the 9th to raise his ERA to over 11 runs per game. I don't see how you can put him on the post-season roster.

A Classless Act

One does not need to share my self-evident bias to understand that winning has made the yankees a far classier organization than losing has made the red sox, the chowderheads' pretentions to moral superiority notwithstanding. you'll remember when the sox finally broke the curse, Steinbrenner sent them champagne. Now that the sox have fallen out of contention this year, Petty Papi has decided to return the favor. The sports outlets reported yesterday that Ortiz is going around making a case that he should still be considered for MVP, even though the sox have totally disgraced themselves, not by losing but by quitting. Ortiz's own phantom heart symptoms should be considered part and parcel of this tanking strategy, but even so, I have no objection to the claim that he might still win baseball's highest individual award. If you look at what Ortiz actually said, however, ncluding his support for Dye and Morneau, it is clear he was not so much lobbying for himself, as lobbying against Derek Jeter, ostensibly on the grounds that he didn't have enough homers and RBI's to be MVP. I have already pointed out on this blog that the award is to the most valuable player, not the biggest bopper, and that as far as I'm concerned Ortiz is not really a baseball player at all in any meaningful sense. Moreover, if MVP's typically have better slugging numbers than Jeter, they also have typically hit for a better average than Ortiz's 285.

But the main point is that you would never, and I mean never, hear Jeter come out to the press witrh the idea that Ortiz is an undeserving MVP candidate because there is no value in losing (though I'm sure Jeter, of all people, believes exactly that), nor would he slam Papi's chances because Ortiz entirely neglects half the game. Hell, if Papi suddenly started striking out in clutch situations, you still wouldn't here Jeter downgrading his candidacy, for the simple reason that it's a classless thing to do. Indeed in his rather contemptible exercise in jealous venom, Ortiz even disparaged Jeter's candidacy on the grounds that he bats in a deeper line-up than Boston. "He should try and come over here and hit in this line-up," Petty Papi said, explicitly slamming his own teammates in the effort to take Jeter down a peg. When your gracelessness toward an adversary is so marked that it turns into didain for your own comrades, it should be the subject at least of some scathing criticism on the part of a sports media obsessed with team chemistry (see T.O and donovan or even Jeter and AROD). There was nary a peep from the boys in Bristol. Just one classless organization facilitating another.


Post=Post:

Twenty-four hours later, ESPN has weighed in. The Duke called Ortiz's rant "sad" and reported Jeter's "effective" response: "My teammates and I are not focused on individual awards." (I think Derek just called Ortiz a loser in the nicest possible way. Dan Patrick meanwhile has reported Johnny Damon's doubts that Ortiz would ever dis his own team in that fashion. You know it's classless when people are refusing to believe you said something you haven't denied.

9/11

List, list, listing

Trailing the Royals, of all teams, by an 8-3 score at Fenway, the Sox stormed back with a 6 run eighth, capped by a 2 run single from the bat of Big Papi. The Timlin gave up 2 in the ninth, the Sox failed to answer, and they stumbled 10-9, in the ugliest fashion imaginable. This team isn't just dead, it's undead. It knows it has no life, doesn't particularly care to live anymore, but is Doomed for a certain term to walk the night(games).

What An Oversight

My one Bostonian friend (who has the good grace to be enraged with the Lucchino-Epstein administration for giving up Wells and giving up on the season while they were still in the Wild Card race) pointed out to me that in my long bill of indictment against the Sox managemnt, I had actually forgotten the worst Theoprop of all, one that I have heartily criticized in the past: the trading of young number 3 starter for Willy Mo Pena, a number 4 outfielder. In addition to misprizing pitching, the deal showed no respect for nor awareness of Red Sox team chemistry. Arroyo was a true Idiot, a clown and yet a clutch performer; Willy Mo Pena is Manny Ramirez without the talent or the joie de vivre. He's more of a lower case idiot, unable to hit the breaking stuff, unable to lay off it, and unable to rethink his approach for the next at bat. Arroyo has predictably been a part of the Reds' unlikely playoff run; Pena has just as predictably been a part of the Red Sox unlikely collapse.

The Flip Side

If Theo Einstein not only made certain that his ballclub would not be plaguing one of NY's baseball teams, he also made it likely that his favorite trading partner, Kevin Towers' Padres, would be giving NY's other team some problems. If you look at the National League right now, the Padres may be the one team that can compete in the playoffs with the Mets, largely because of Epstein's's largesse. The Padres now have perhaps the best big game number 2 in that league in Wells (he's certainly better than Glavine, Lowe, or Suppan) and the best one two combo coming out of the bullpen in Meredith (thanks Theo!) and Hoffman. And winners in five game series are made from the top of the rotation and the top of the bullpen. they also have a badly needed defensive supplement to Piazza in Bard.

You know it's interesting. Many of us feared slow Joe would get off the hook for all those bad decisions he made (OK still makes) because his benighted cultists (calling Ms. Waldman) would blame the Yanks' fate on the injuries. But it's the boy-genius in Boston who has in fact benefitted from that misbegotten analysis, even though the Sox went into the hamper before their major rash of injuries, some of which (Manny, Pena, Gonzalez, Crisp, Mirabelli,) were clearly losing-induced.

Hideki rehabbed last night at Trenton, 1-3, a BB, and a RBI. He sounds ready!

Alwright It's the Royals

but you still gotta like Johnson's 7 inning 1 hit performance, with 8 strikeouts, especially since of the last few winning teams to go into KC--the Twins, Chicago, Boston, the Tigers--the Yankees are the only ones to win the series. Johnson's been gradually getting better, sometimes with dominant stuff, sometimes winning without it. Either way, without pumping up anyone's hopes, you can't say it augurs ill for the post-season.

Even playing relatively well, the Yankees can't seem to tear off a winning streak, but at least they are now winning series--against both good teams (Twins, Tigers) and bad (Royals)--with regularity.

On BT, Buster Olney pointed out that Boston's trades have not worked out well this year. I would say that's an understatement. Actually, I think there's a case to be made that right now Theo Epstein is the worst GM in baseball. For someone who claims to protect his prospects, he obviously gave away too much in the Beckett-Lowell deal. Lowell is near done I expect and Beckett, 5 years on, looks like he'll never become what Peter Gammons fervently and unreasonably believed--a perennial CY Young winner. Meanwhile Anabell Sanchez, of tonight's no-hitter, has been great in Florida, certainly much better than all the arms Theo chose to keep--Lester, DelCarmen, Hansen--and Hanley Ramirez is a perennial all-star SS of the future, certainly head and shoulders above Padriok or whatever his name that Boston decided to retain instead.

Then there is the mediated Renterria for Crisp deal, which dispensed with a bat the Red Sox badly needed for a player to replace Johnny Damon, whom they never should have let go in the first place.

But if Damon was Theo's highest profile blunder, the worst blunder came as a result of his one good deal, the Mirabelli for Loretta trade. After they decided Josh Bard couldn't catch Wakefield's knuckleball, they sent him with Cla Meredith to SD to retrieve the mediocre Mirabelli, whom they flew in with great fanfare just in time for a Wakefield start. Of course, generally speaking Bard is better, I mean much better, as well as much younger than Mirabelli and Meredith has proven to be a bullpen ace--he's been nearly Papelbon good. Meanwhile of course the ancient and decrepit Wakefield has spent most of the season on the shelf, robbing Mirabelli of his already meager raison d'etre. Bard was supposed to be their catcher of the future, after they gave up Shoppack in the ill-fated Crisp deal (that's Renterria and Shoppack sacrificed to their unwillingness to pay Damon about 10M more over 4 years). Instead they wound up with a catcher without any real purpose in the present. And Meredith would have made all the difference in their bullpen, easing their overreliance on the elderly Timlin and obviating their continued fantasies about Keith Foulke's imminent effectiveness.

If one considers these disasters in aggregate, perhaps the worst move Boston made was begging the boy-wonder to return from self-imposed exile. Perhaps they should have considered that the core of their 2004 championship team--Damon, Ramirez, Martinez, Timlin, Varitek, Nixon, Lowe--all predated Theo's arrival, and that the man he calls his mentor, Billy Beane (who also let Damon go), has never, for all the hype surrounding him, ever won anything at all in Oakland, no pennants, no world championships, no trips to the ALCS, while his rivals in Anaheim or LA or Capistrano have done all of the above.

As far as I can tell, you can win spending money--Yankees, Sox, Angels, Braves--you can win not spending money--Marlins, Padres, Twins--but you probably aren't going to win just talking about money--Oakland.

Sox White and Red

I watched the game last night and am eager to hear BGW's report. For my part, I thought Chicago looked just horrible. I don't know how they failed to score on Gabbard, who came in with a 6.75 ERA and looked to have just that level stuff. But even more surprising was their failure to hit Timlin. His sinker was repeatedly up in the zone and they just kept swinging through it. Santana had another monster game last night and if Loriano does indeed come back, as advertised, the Twins will be the wild card, if they don't manage to win the Central outright. The latter would be a much better outcome for the Yankees, who cannot relish the idea of a 5 game series against Minnesota. Just think, they'd have Santana and Loriano in the first 2 and then they'd go back to the Metrodome, which is hell to play in during the postseason. Say you split in NY, losing to Santana, and manage a split in Minnesota. You still have to come back in game 5 and beat Santana (who is Santa to the Twins and Satan to everyone else).

For their part the Red Sox still look incredibly weak offensively, in their bullpen and their rotation. I don't see how they keep getting these results over the medium term.

Unfortunately

this also is Yankees baseball. Lots of men left on base (5 by Jeter alone), lots of strikeouts (3 by Jeter alone), lots of sloppy playin the field, and making a couple of mooks who don't belong in the majors look like the second coming of Koufax and Gossage respectively. I did like Damon's p[ost-game quote though: "Eight Games is a lot of games. But anything can happen, and we definitely don't want to lose any more ground." Exactly the right attitude.

Ryan Howard Redux

I was interested to discover, appropos of yesterday's discussion, that ESPN ran a poll asking whether one should regard Ryan Howard as the all-time single season Home Run King if he hit 62 this year. By a count of 52-49%, the repondents said yes, in what I take to be a heartening rebuke to the whole Steroids generation.

A Ten Run Eighth Against the Royals

is nothing to pooh-pooh. The Royals have won series recently against the Red Sox (before the sick-out), against the Twins and against the White Sox. To be down 5-1 late and turn it on like that can onlky mean that the Yankees are finally beginnining to play with a focus and an intensity that does justice to their talent. To be sure they made another young no-name, no-future hurler look like Cy Young again (to echo BGW's entirely justified complaint), but they didn't shrink back into their shell, even though this game was probably as close to meaningless as you can get before anything is clinched. I think you have to give them credit for this explosion, particularly coming off the successful home stand. And Giambi isn't even nhitting at the moment! If you think of DH Hideki Matsui hitting seventh, just behind future batting champion Robby Cano and before Posada and Cabrera, this lineup could be the scariest the Yankees have possessed since DiMaggio, Gehrig, Bill Dickey, Tony Lazzeri and Frank Crosetti shared the same field. If only they could pitch, field and execute better.

A New Champ?

If you are like me, you believe the legitimate reigning single season home run champ is Roger Maris, the only man to hit more than 60 homers in a single season without the benefit of illegal performance enhancing drugs. There is a chance, reasonable if not strong, that the legitimate record will finally change hands this year, some 45 after Maris set it (onle 34 years elapsed between Ruth's 60 and Roger's 61). The new legitimate champ will be, may be, Ryan Howard of the Philadelphia Phillies. howard needs 9 to tie the record, 10 to break it, and it certainly won't be easy. But he could do it, and it would be kind of nice for perhaps the most dismal baseball tradition of long-standing to finally have somethin extraordinary to its credit, other than the best third baseman ever to play the game, and one of the 2 or 3 best left-handed pitchers.

As Good As It Gets

In an earlier post, BGW correctly asserted that outside of the Massacre, the Yanks hadn't really shown any dominance of late. The past 2 series at the Stadium have changed this reality somewhat. Four and two, two series wins, against 2 of the best teams in baseball may not instance total dominance, but it is as close as this team is capable of, especially when you consider that if Bumbles had just elected to play to win in the 2nd Tigers game, they would have likely gone 5-1. Beating a hot pitching prospect that they'd never faced today was certainly an unexpected and positive sign of continued improvement, as are the back to back performances they got from the rookies, Karstens and Rasner. If these guys are the real thing, the Yankees pitching rotation of the future (Wang, Hughes, Cliffors, Rasner, Karstens) can be descried.

As for AROd, the rampage continues. But you know his season long risp stats, late inning stats, 2 out stats etc. cannot be substantially altered in a few games, and they remain fare more important than whether he reached 30 hr's and 100 rbi's. After all if you get five homers in two games, you still have only helped to win 2 games. If you strike out with men on in the 8th in five games, that's five games you helped to lose. But at the end of the day, after all, it's the post-season that counts. I didn't give a shit about AROD's MVP season last yeear once he kicked away that bouncer against the Angels, and certainly not after he hit into that fatal DP. And if he excels in the playoffs this year, I'm not going to care about that 0-23 streak against righthanders or the time he went 0-10 with 7 ko's. If he excels...and that remains for me a very big if.

On the other side, the Sox continue to mystify me. Consider that having won the first 2 games of the series against Toronto, with the Yanks taking 2 from the Twins and, more improbably KC taking two from Chicago, and with the White Sox coming to Fenway next, Boston had to be considered in the thick of the wild card race this weekend. Certainly they were in much better shape there than the Angels in the West and the angels still fully expect to win. But having traded Wells they continued to sit Varitek and Nixon, both of whom are off the DL, Manny, who never went on the DL, presumably because he's not in any way disabled, and Ortiz, who was openly lobbying to play. They also yanked Beckett after 77 pitches and 3 runs, with the game still very much up fopr grabs, in order to turn things over to their latest no-name reliever, who promptly gave up 2 runs in an inning, sealing their fate. My point is this team, now 6 1/2 back and in trouble could easily have been 5 or even 4 1/2 back, with 6 games to come against their rivals for the last playoff spot. Win 2 of 3 against the Sox, 2 of three against the Twins, let Detroit Cleveland and each of them help you out, and pretty soon your 1 1/2 back against one of them, maybe 1 back against the other with 5 to play. And you're playing Baltimore and Tampa to finish. How can you give up on that? How can you trade David Wells, how can you blow off the chowderheads like that, a fan base as loyal as they are provincial and annoying? If you are a chowderhead, how can you not call for the heads of everyone from Lucchino on down to Francona? What is the official line here, we're not allowed to compete because Papi had a scare and Lester has lymphoma? Can one excuse not just giving up in the middle of a pennant race, but refusing to play at all, as Manny being Manny?

Is this, finally, the return of the Curse, which as we all know, was a series of self-inflicted wounds reinterpreted as inescapable destiny. Has the Babe's curse been replaced not by Damon's, as some have said, but by Boomer's, the Babe's reincarnated alter-ego, whose latest transfer was the move, which, like the funding of No,No, Nanette, made no baseball sense whatsoever? I must admit I did sympathize with Bostonians who longed to witness just one Sox championship before they died. Now I dare hope to die, after a long long life without ever having to witness another.

Oddities Blue and Red

The blue or Yankee oddity involves their batting line-up, which has scored more runs than any team in the league, boasts several hitting superstars, and yet regularly finds itself dominated by the real bottomfeeders on American league pitching staffs. Today it was Baker, who has a nearly 7 run ERA, and only recently returned from well-deserved exile in AAA. And yet having beaten the Yankees 5-1 earlier in the season, for his best effort, he did so again today holding the Yankees to just 2 hits. The term Bronx Bombers takes on a whole new meaning. Jeter smacked an RBI double to continue a really sick streak that he's been on, but the rest of them laid the worst kind of egg. They'd have hit Santana better, I'd wager.

Karsten deserved better, and certainly he deserves to move into the rotation. He's given them solid to excellent efforts each time out.

The Red (Sox) oddity comes from their front office. After last night's game they sat 5 1/2 out of the wild card and had a series against both Chicago and the Twins at Fenway coming up. For those series, Ortiz will be back, Varitek will be back, Pena, will be back, Nixon will be back, and of course Manny can come back anytime he wants because having the sulks is not the same thing as having an injury. Beckett has had 2 good outings in a row, Wakefield will be back in the rotation for the Twins and perhaps for the White Sox. Well you get my point. Boston actually had a shot, not great perhaps but certainly not terrible, at taking the wild card. And if they managed to do so, they certainly had a much better chance, with all of their injuries resolved save poor Jon Lester, of attaining and even winning the Series.

So why in the world under these circumstances does the boy-genius trade David Wells, who has had 4 very good starts in a row, for a minor league prospect. Without Wells and Lester, they have essentially a 3 man rotation once Wakefield returns. But with Wells, and provided Wakefield is really healthy and Beckett has righted the ship, they would have a very good 4 man rotation, and with an offense and defense back at full strength (Gonzalez v. Cora who cares), they would be dangerous once again. If I'm a Boston fan the way I'm a Yankee fan, I'm looking at the ship go down and thinking how can we launch that wild card lifeboat. Two wins over Toronto and the return of the first team would have given me hope if the pitching staff was left reasonably intact. The Wells trade accordingly would piss me off worse than any bonehead move that Torre has made all year, would piss me off worse than any bonehead move that Cashman has made in the past, including the Jeff Weaver trade, would piss me off as bad as the thought of Carl Pavano spending the 19 mill he's already made for trying to sabotage the team he's supposed to be helping. What Theo did, or rather didn't do, at the deadline was misjudgment and mismangement. What he did with Wells is, form the chowderhead perspective, malfeasance. And yet so besotted with his image of youthful acuity are the wankers at ESPN that they continue to treat the move as not only tolerarable, reasonable, even inevitable.

Strangely, as much as I hate Boston, and as glad as I am to see their last big game hope drifting off to the other coast, I find myself bothered by the sheer stupidity and, worse, the calculated defeatism of the decision of Theo (not Einstein) Epstein.

Meet the New AROD

Same as the Old AROD? After tonight's breakout against the Twins (2 good games in a row!), one wonders was this a darkest before the dawn phenomenon? AROD did really pile up the errors right before he resumed a more reasonable pace. Perhaps he similarly piled up the strike outs and missed opportunities before resuming his status as a regular season (and I emphasize regular season) superstar at the plate. Just when he became indelible E-Rod, he turned it around. Now that he became K-Rod, did he turn it around on offense as well? Or perhaps his hitting had become so humiliatingly awful that it absorbed all of his anxious attention, freeing him of all thoughts about fielding and throwing, which of course allowed him to succeed better in that area? Now that he's hitting homers again and driving in runs, will his throws start shooting off in all directions like rabid sugargliders, or now that he has returned to the fans' temporary good graces, with the teanm itself ensconced beyond worry in first, will he be able to play more comfortably in his own skin.

Something happened during the Boston massacre and in its aftermath. While AROD's struggles continued to frustrate all Yankee fans, they became less relevant to the fortunes of the team, which is to say they became less relevant. This happenstance offered AROD the opportunity to worry less about his individual performance and identify with the team's unexpectedly abrupt ascendancy. Working toward and identifying with the team's ascendancy is of course the mark of a "true Yankee." (Joe DiMaggio said he thanked God for making him a Yankee, not he thanked God for making him the finest all-around player of his generation). In AROD's case, this path to true Yankeedom might also prove the key to relieving egocentric obsessions and anxieties which torment him with and into failure. It is probably too much to hope that AROD has undergone some sort of Kafkaeseque (or is it Samsaesque) metamorphosis in reverse: from self-absorbed bug to family-directed mealticket.
And I for one Won't Get Fooled Again into believing it. But I won't be able to stop hoping either, just as I still find myself nursing the hope of a 15 strikeout shutout everytime Johnson takes the mound, even though I soooo know better.