1. THE RAW NUMBERS

Did Gibson leave behind a clearly superior record? Let’s look at the numbers as they appear in the books:

Well, Gibson did strike more people out; in fact, he retired as the second man to strike out 3000. But to match Alexander’s record, Gibson would have had to pitch five more seasons and go 24-7 with a 1.52 ERA each of those five years.

What about their prime years? Surely Gibson, remembered today as an overpowering force, was the greater pitcher in his prime? Let’s look at Gibson’s best five-year run, from age 30 (1966) to 34 (1970):

Brilliant, by any standard. But compare to Alexander from age 28 (1915) to age 33 (1920); I’m combining his 1918 and 1919 totals because Alexander, right at the zenith of his powers, was drafted and went off to fight World War I in 1918, after appearing in only 3 games:

Wow. Alexander’s numbers read like Sandy Koufax on andro. And in between, unlike some baseball players who went to war, Alexander saw real combat on the front lines as an artillery soldier.

2. THE LEADERBOARDS

Who was more dominant? Gibson won two Cy Young awards; Alexander pitched against Cy Young, but had there been an award then he would have easily won at least four (1915-17 and 1920), and possibly a fifth at age 40 in 1927 (or maybe not; Alexander finished behind six other starting pitchers in the MVP voting). Look at the top five pitching categories, Wins, Winning Percentage, ERA, Innings, and Strikeouts. In his 5-year peak, Gibson racked up just 3 league leads in those categories, the sum total for his career; Alexander, between 1915 and 1920, notched 18. In his career? 25, second only to Walter Johnson. And those weren’t close races; Alexander led the league in Wins by margins of 8, 8 and 6 in consecutive years, and in innings by margins of 35, 61, and 46. Five pitchers on the 1915 Phillies threw over 170 innings; the second-lowest ERA was 2.36, but Alexander alone lowered the team ERA to 2.17. Gibson’s calling card, his 1.12 ERA in 1968, doesn’t exactly dwarf Alexander’s 1.22 mark in 72 more innings in his best year, and while Alexander had four other full years in the ones, Gibson only once had an ERA less than double the 1968 mark.

Alexander, of course, was the dominant force in major league baseball in 1915-17, topping even Walter Johnson, and easily the best pitcher in the game in 1920. Had it not been for the war, he would likely have matched teammate Hippo Vaughn as the NL’s best hurler the two years in between. In the National League between 1962 and 1966, there was Koufax and there was everyone else; from 1971 on, it was Seaver and everyone else. And Seaver was probably better than Gibson in 1969-70. And Gibson was hurt in 1967. That really leaves only the one year when Gibson was the undisputed best pitcher in the National League.

3. THE TRANSLATED RECORDS

There being really no way to twist the numbers themselves to make Gibson look better, it becomes necessary to evaluate those numbers in the context each man pitched in. I’ve run translated records before, and I’ll run them here. (I explain the details here). It’s not the most sophisticated measurement, but in short, the method tells us one thing: when external factors are removed, what was a pitcher’s performance relative to others in his league?

Here’s the career numbers I got, after running the translations one season at a time:

As you can see, adjusting for the surroundings hurts both pitchers, Alexander more than Gibson; both men pitched in pitcher’s eras, and both alternated between good and bad run support. Both were probably hurt by their parks overall, although Gibson was helped a great deal in his best years. Here, let’s run the same peak-seasons comparison as before:

Gibson

Alexander

What you see here is that Alexander was a better pitcher, but not by a huge margin in quality; the real difference, even adjusted for the difference in eras, was in their workloads. And he was more consistent. As I discuss in more detail in the link on the method, I used the 1986 NL as the baseline, so these are good approximations of what their performance was equivalent to on an average team in a neutral park in the mid-80s. The fact that Alexander still registers as a 300-320 inning a year guy by mid-80s standards tells you how dominant he was in that category in his era.

The odd thing is Gibson’s 1968 W-L record; although 22-9 is a fine record, common sense tells you that you need some bad luck to lose 9 games with a 1.12 ERA. Gibson threw 13 shutouts that season (second on the all-time list; Alexander threw 16 in 1916), which means that he was 9-9 with an ERA still in the ones when not throwing a shutout. But his team was a pennant winning team in a pitcher’s park; the Translated Record system reduces his winning percentage to reflect an above average offense. Hard to say this is anything but arbitrary bad luck – which tends to mostly even out over a career but can vary a lot from year to year – but it’s awfully hard to reconcile a disappointing record in Gibson’s very best season with the popular image of Gibson as the ultimate "gamer," a guy with an almost mystical ability to win close games.

Baseball Prospectus.com just came out with their own translated pitcher records, using a similar methodology to mine (so far as I can tell) but translating into present-day rather than mid-80s numbers. More on that later; the BP analysis gives the following career totals:

and totals for the five-season peaks:

Same general conclusion. Win Shares, you say? Bill James gives Alexander his due in the new Historical Abstract, ranking him 3d to Gibson's 8th (in the original historical book he had Alexander 9th in peak value to Gibson's 11th, and 5th in career value to Gibson's 9th among righthanded starters). The Win Shares method puts Alexander 4th among pitchers at 476 (behind only Cy Young, Walter Johnson and Kid Nichols), and Gibson 28th at 317 (the book has him tied with Greg Maddux, but that was two years ago).

4. WHAT ABOUT THE POSTSEASON?

The heart of Gibson’s case, and it is an impressive one, is his record in the World Series: 7-2 with a 1.89 ERA and eight complete games in nine starts. Gibson started three games in the 1964 World Series, losing Game Two 8-3 (Gibson allowed 4 runs in 8 innings before his bullpen imploded), but rebounding to win Game Five 5-2 in 10 innings (the two runs were unearned, and Gibson struck out 13), and clinging on to win Game Seven 7-5 despite allowing two runs in the ninth. In 1967, returning to action after a broken leg, he was more impressive: 10 K in a 2-1 complete game victory in Game One, a 6-0 shutout in Game 4, and a complete game 7-2 victory with 10 K as Jim Lonborg got pounded on two days’ rest in Game Seven. Yaz, fresh off the Triple Crown and an incredible stretch run, was held to just 3 for 11 against Gibson; the rest of the “Impossible Dream” Sox were 11 for 80. In 1968, Gibson was utterly dominant in his first two starts -- a 5-hit 4-0 complete game shutout in Game 1, and a 10-1 blowout in Game 4 (Gibson had a 6-run lead when he took the mound in the fourth inning). The series, and the season, came down to one game -- and Gibson looked like the same old Gibson for six innings, but allowed 3 key runs in the seventh and lost 4-1. It wasn't all Gibson's fault -- Jim Northrup's 2-run triple broke the game open, and some sources lay most of the blame for that on poor outfield play by Curt Flood. But the game underlined the fact that Gibson, a great pitcher who was usually good in the clutch, was not invincible.

Alexander’s first two Series visits were nearly as impressive. In 1915, Alexander's Phillies faced off against an incredibly deep 101-win Red Sox team at the height of the Sox dynasty: besides the outfield of Tris Speaker, Harry Hooper and Duffy Lewis, the pitching staff included Babe Ruth, Smokey Joe Wood, Carl Mays and Dutch Leonard, the latter a year removed from setting the ERA record. And those weren't even the aces of the staff; the Sox didn't use Ruth, Wood or Mays (except a pinch hit appearance for Ruth, in which Alexander got the Babe to ground out) the whole series. Alexander went the distance in Game One, allowing just a single run on the way to a 3-1 victory when the Phillies scored two in the bottom of the 8th. In Game Three he went the distance again on two days' rest, allowing just 6 hits but losing a 2-1 heartbreaker to Leonard when Lewis singled home Hooper in the bottom of the 9th; Leonard had retired the last 20 in a row.

The Phillies lost the series in five games, and there was some controversy over whether Alexander was unavailable (i.e., hung over) to start Game Five, when Erskine Mayer and Eppa Rixey combined to blow a 4-run first inning lead. Bill James reviewed the controversy in The Baseball Book 1990 and left the answer unclear (he thought it odd that Alexander told the manager that his arm was stiff). Alexander would have been coming back on one day's rest after a complete game, and even if they'd held the lead, he would have most likely been expected to start either Game Six or Game Seven; even by 1915 standards, that's asking a lot. On the whole, he acquitted himself quite well.

In 1926, well past his prime at age 39, Alexander was the hero of the Series with a performance that entered the annals of baseball legend. Facing the Ruth/Gehrig Yankees, Alex threw a complete game 4-hitter in Game Two, allowing just two early runs in a game the Cards blew open in the 7th for a 6-2 win; he got stronger as the afternoon went on, retiring the last 21 batters he faced. Five days later he did it again, staving off elimination on the road with a 10-2 complete game victory in Game Six (again, the game was close until a 5-run seventh). The next day - hung over or not, although his teammates swore he was sober and just tired - Alexander came out of the bullpen in the bottom of the seventh, with a 1-run lead, the bases loaded and two out, and struck out Tony Lazzeri (on a low and away pitch, of course) to squash the Yankee threat. Alexander then retired the side in the 8th and the first two batters in the ninth before walking Ruth, only to have the Babe foolishly try to steal second with Bob Muesel coming up and Gehrig on deck, leading to the most damaging caught stealing in Series history.

Unfortunately for Alexander, like his contemporary Walter Johnson, he didn’t get as many shots as Gibson at postseason glory in his prime, and Alexander came back for one more turn in 1928 at the age of 41. If you can imagine Bob Gibson, who was bombed to the tune of a 5.04 ERA at age 39, coming out of retirement at age 40 to face the 1976 Reds in the World Series, you get an idea of how well Alexander pitched against the 1928 Yankees: Ruth and Gehrig ate him alive to the tune of 11 earned runs in 5 innings. Those two by themselves went 16 for 26 with 4 doubles, 7 homers, 7 walks, 14 runs and 13 RBI in 4 games in that Series, and Alexander took his share of the abuse (it was Alexander's misfortune to face Babe Ruth's teams in all three of his postseason excursions; Alex had held the Babe to 0-for-8 with 2 walks in 1915 and 1926). This ruined Alexander’s lifetime Series record, but in this particular comparison, I don't see how that can be unduly held against him.

If you count his first two appearances in the Series, Alexander's postseason record is nearly as impressive as Gibson's: 3-1, a 1.42 ERA, complete games in all four starts, a 27-8 strikeout/walk ratio, and just over 6 hits allowed per 9 innings.

So, Alexander was a real good money pitcher, and Gibson a great one. What does that all mean? There have been an awful lot of statistical studies done in attempts to determine whether there is such a thing as clutch hitting. The usual answer is either (1) ain’t no such thing or (2) if there is, there’s no evidence to prove it. The latter is the more sensible answer, since there’s always the chance that we have looked in the wrong place. Bill James did a study in the Baseball Book 1992 (at page 201) in which he determined that veteran players, generally, had just a slight advantage over otherwise similar young players in certain types of clutch situations.

For all the work done in this area, there has been (as far as I've seen) precious little really systematic attention paid to clutch pitching – whether the evidence, broadly speaking, supports the idea that some pitchers are better than others at pitching in big games or tough game situations. Intuitively, it seems possible for pitchers to have a greater ability to "turn it up," since pitchers can vary their arsenal and often have to pace themselves if they are in midseason or midgame, although I understand that some studies have suggested that "pitching to the score" (i.e., changing a pitcher's approach based on the game situation) may be a myth.

Where this relates to Bob Gibson is this: how much credit do we give him for raising his level of performance in big games? Because that's the only way to really toss out the numerical advantages for Alexander. Given that Alexander's postseason performances were outstanding, however, I can't give Gibson enough credit to swing the analysis his way.

5. WHAT ABOUT THE COMPETITION? COULD THESE GUYS SURVIVE TODAY?

Some people would write off the exploits of pre-1947 stars like Alexander, reasoning that competition before the color line was broken must have been watered down; if that's your attitude, then this argument isn't even worth having. I don’t think you can really prove very well how strong the competition in any given era was, or at least it’s nearly impossible to quantify it. The game, in Alexander’s day, drew from a smaller group of potential players due to discrimination, yes – but except for 1914-15 there were fewer big league teams, 16 compared to 20 or 24 for most of Gibson’s career. And in those days, baseball was it; even guys like Jim Thorpe, Greasy Neale, and George Halas tried to make a living in the game because you couldn’t make decent money playing every other sport. If the conditions were like that in Gibson’s day, he would have been pitching against Jim Brown and Wilt Chamberlain.

In any event, Alexander’s teams were trying to do the same thing that Gibson’s were - win the pennant and the World Series – and the big question is how much each guy did to help his team to that goal.

Inter-league levels of competition is another story. Because the available evidence does suggest that Gibson played in the NL at a time when it was the dominant league, featuring many more of the game’s biggest stars, winning the All-Star Game on a regular basis, and winning the World Series 6 times in 9 tries between 1963 and 1971. By contrast, Alexander pitched in the NL at a time when it was decidedly the weak sister of the AL. AL teams won every World Series between 1910 and 1920 but two: the "Miracle" of 1914 and the fix of 1919. (The 1919 Reds, you may remember, had a better regular season record than the White Sox, but the Sox were overwhelming favorites anyway due in large part to the lopsided World Serieses of the previous several years.)

Taking them out of their contexts . . . each pitcher, of course, would face a very different game today. Gibson had the advantage of mammoth ballparks, centerfield bleachers full of white shirts, a high mound, and did his best work in a part of the strike zone that was only just recently resettled after a 30-year occupation by the hitters. As for Alexander, he had his best years before the advent of the lively ball, the breaking of the color line, night baseball, etc. But I have to think that Alexander would be at least as suited to the modern game as Gibson, given that his sinker and pinpoint control would leave him far less vulnerable to today's patience-and-power offenses (think Kevin Brown).

There is, however, the issue of the spitter, which was outlawed after 1920. Alexander was 34 at that point, and maybe he threw it and maybe he didn't; he wasn't one of the veteran pitchers who was allowed to keep throwing it. (Then again, I remember reading that his manager and first baseman Fred Luderus was famous for licking the baseball, such that an opposing team once retaliated by putting a substance on the ball that caused his tongue to swell up). But check out Alexander's strikeout rate, which was first or second in the league six times between 1911 and 1920, and which dropped almost in half immediately thereafter, generally staying below the league average the rest of his career. It's a fair inference that Alexander's devastating sinker was at least partially a phenomenon of the dirty, wet, dinged-up baseballs he used.

6. SO WHY DOES EVERYBODY LIKE GIBSON BETTER?

Well, the postseason is a huge part of it; the whole nation was watching those games on television, and they became a critical part of the game’s lore. The idea that Gibson was unbeatable is big games led people naturally to assume that he was just unbeatable, at least when he needed to be. The fact that he had his best serieses against teams from New York and Boston just underlined that. Then there’s the 1.12 ERA; having a single, impressive "record" or a signature skill does a lot for a player after he retires, and can make the difference between being Hank Aaron or Roger Maris and being Stan Musial or Frank Robinson, who are far less well-remembered than they should be even though Robinson's still managing. That one ERA gives some statistical ammo to the people who use Gibson’s postseason performance as the platform for arguing that he was an absolutely unbeatable pitcher, capable of raising his game as far as the situation demanded.

There's also the fact that Gibson pitched more recently – there are scores of fans out there, as well as writers and broadcasters, who saw him pitch; Alexander’s been dead for 50 years, so his image is vague at best even in the minds of people who think about baseball all day. Then there’s Tim McCarver, Gibson’s catcher in his best years, who has a huge megaphone as a New York and national broadcaster. McCarver may have once been identified with Steve Carlton, but he obviously thought of Carlton as his student; Gibson he treats with reverence. If I hear him tell that story about how Johnny Keane wouldn’t take Gibson out of the seventh game of the 1964 World Series because he "had a commitment to his heart" one more time, I’m gonna gag.

Gibson also scared people; as my older brother likes to point out, Alexander was like Greg Maddux in that he could shut you out, shut you out again and still leave you feeling like you didn't hit him just because you were having an off day, not because Alex was pitching. Gibson retired as the #2 man all time in strikeouts. Alexander's reputation has also been sullied by his alcoholism, epilepsy and "shell shock" (what's known today as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), the combination of which rendered him a pathetic figure by the end of his life.

Finally . . . well, it’s partially Ronald Reagan’s fault. You may remember that shortly after Alexander died, Hollywood rushed out a movie of his life called "The Winning Team," starring Reagan as Alexander and Doris Day as his wife. It was just awful. The movie had a few dramatic high points, but they made little enough attempt to capture the real Alexander. And Reagan – put aside your politics for a minute and just think acting – gave what had to be the worst performance of his acting career: adept at playing the genial Everyman and the B-movie hero, Reagan was completely out of his league trying to portray a morose, moody alcoholic. Only Reagan’s political career kept the movie from disappearing into complete obscurity, but the butchering of Alexander’s life story left him less well known today than Crash Davis and Moonlight Graham.

CONCLUSION: WHO WAS BETTER?

Well, if you’ve read this far, you can tell that I’m partial to Alexander in this debate; I think he’s really gotten shafted in the discussion of the all-time great pitchers, not least because his service to his country cost him his shot at 400 wins. Gibson was really a great one, and my in-depth look at his numbers definitely left me more impressed than before. Things like the color line and other factors relating to the strength of competition also speak in Gibsion's favor. But at the end of the day, Alexander was more dominant in his prime, and more durable over the course of his career. Based on the evidence I've laid out above, yes, reasonable people could disagree. But I'd put my money on Old Pete.

After a two-year collapse following the 1966 retirement of Sandy Koufax, the Dodgers of the late 60s and early 70s were mostly a good team; although perennially stuck behind the Big Red Machine, they finished second five times and third once between 1970 and 1976. The Dodgers tried a lot of different things -- for example, importing veteran sluggers Dick Allen and Frank Robinson. But at the core was the rebuilding of the infield. Garvey broke in as a third baseman, playing semiregularly after 1971, and moved to first base to make room for Cey (after Wes Parker's sudden retirement in 1972) in 1973. Russell replaced Maury Wills at short in 1972. In 1974, Garvey became an everyday fixture at first, moving Bill Buckner to the outfield and relegating Manny Mota to pinch hitting duties. The 1973 team was already a good one, winning 95 games. Garvey began a series of nearly identical productive seasons in 1974 -- .312 average, 21 HR, 111 RBI, 200 hits. He was named the NL MVP.

In addition, two acquisitions radically changed the face of the Dodgers in 1974, albeit only for a year. They traded long-time centerfielder Willie Davis to the Expos for workhorse reliever Mike Marshall, and brought in Jimmy Wynn from Houston to play center. The two acquisitions could hardly have worked better; in fact, they were probably the Dodgers' two best players, the MVP voters notwithstanding.

Marshall's season, netting him the Cy Young Award, was historic, and the records he set are among baseball's most impressive. I separate "impressive" records from "unbreakable" ones, since all the most unbreakable records are ones that were set under different playing conditions. Cy Young threw 751 complete games in his career, which at the modern league leader's pace would take 100 years; single-season records for starting pitchers, set by underhand throwers in the 1880s (when the mound was 50 feet and anywhere from 5 to 9 balls were needed for a walk) will never be approached. Marshall's records of throwing 106 games and 208.1 innings in relief in a season are likewise the product of vanished conditions, although we may will see a lefthanded specialist challenge the 100-games mark in the next decade or so, 1 or 2 batters at a time. But what makes the records impressive is how far they stand out even from his own time. There have been only seven 90-game seasons -- three by Marshall and three by Kent Tekulve -- and the nearest is 12 games off Marshall's pace. The innings record is more impressive - like Babe Ruth in 1920, Marshall not only shattered the previous record (179 innings), it was a record he himself had set the prior year. And he pitched well: a 2.42 ERA, just 9 home runs allowed in over 200 IP, an almost 3-to-1 K/BB ratio. (For good measure, Marshall added 12 appearances in the postseason, including 9 innings of relief in appearing in all 5 World Series games).

The impact of a quality reliever taking over such a gigantic workload -- the work of three men, really, at least by the standards of today's game -- is hard to measure comprehensively, given the number of ways this affects the pitching staff. But between Marshall and Charlie Hough (who tossed 96 innings in 49 relief appearances), the Dodgers were able to paper over some weak links in the rotation, notably Doug Rau, who posted a 3.72 ERA (a subpar performance in that pitcher's era and park) and completed just 3 of his 35 starts, averaging less than 6 innings a start -- an unheard-of ratio in those days. Sore-armed Tommy John also staggered to a 13-3 record in 22 starts before his season ended early, while finishing just 5 of them; John pitched well, but probably benefited from not finishing his own games. John's injury, of course, would make baseball history with the famous surgery; staff ace Andy Messersmith (20-6, 2.59 ERA in 1974) would make another kind of history when an arbitrator awarded him free agency following the 1975 season, and fifth starter Al Downing (later replaced in the rotation by Geoff Zahn) would enter the history books in April of 1974 when he surrendered Hank Aaron's 715th home run (if you look at the footage of the homer, you can see Dodger left fielder Bill Buckner, in one of the two most memorable moments of his career, scaling the fence to try to take it away).

As for Wynn, finally free of the Astrodome only to land in yet another pitcher's paradise, he proved to be the critical element of a truly fearsome offense. Looking at the numbers, they may not look like much by modern standards, but consider that the Dodgers outscored the average team in the league by 18%, and then factor in the fact that 25% fewer runs were scored in Dodger home games than Dodger road games in 1974; on the road, the Dodgers scored 5.47 runs/game, 31.8% above the league average. A typical league leading offense will outscore the league average by 15% or so; the 1927 Yankees outscored the average AL team by 28% (the 1976 Reds were over 30%). I don't really think the park was quite that hostile, but comparing this offense to some of the all-time great offensive teams is perfectly fair.

Wynn was the best of the bunch, hitting 32 homers and drawing 108 walks, leading to a .271/.497/.387 batting line and 108 RBI. Everyone in the lineup had an on base percentage of .334 or better (the league average was .325), including right fielder Willie Crawford at .376 and backup catcher Joe Ferguson at .380. Everyone but Russell also bested the league slugging average. Buckner, then young (24) and fleet-footed (his ankles hadn't given out yet) batted .314 and stole 31 bases in 44 tries; Lopes also added 59 steals.

The pennant race wasn't close for the season's first half; the Dodgers blasted out of the gate at a 37-14 (.725) clip, and led by 8 games on June 1. The Reds cut the margin to 2.5 games in mid-August, going 35-15 from July 7 to August 28, but dropped back a bit with an early September slump, including the Dodgers taking 2 of 3 in a series in Cincinnati in which Garvey went 6 for 13 with a double, homer and 3 RBI and Sutton pitched a key 3-1 victory. The Reds then won 7 of 8 to cut the lead to 1.5 games on September 14, including consecutive victories in LA, but Sutton pitched a six-hitter the next day, Garvey doubled and homered, and Wynn hit a grand slam off Pedro Borbon in the 7th (followed by Garvey's homer) to put the game away 7-1. A week later the Dodger lead was 4.5 games and the race was over.

The postseason started well enough, as the Dodgers rolled over the Pirates 3 games to 1, the sole loss the result of a 5-run first inning against Rau. Garvey batted .389 in the LCS, kicking off a career of spectacular postseason batting. But the World Series, with four 3-2 games and a 5-2 game in five matchups, just didn't break the Dodgers' way (except for the famous pickoff of A's pinch runner Herb Washington by Marshall). In the deciding Game 5, Joe Rudi homered off Marshall in the bottom of the 7th, and the series was effectively put to bed when Buckner, in a baserunning blunder that was much celebrated at the time, was thrown out at third base leading off the top of the 8th (the ball got past Bill North but was corralled by Reggie Jackson, who threw a strike to cutoff man Dick Green, who threw Buckner out at third). The Dodgers would be back a few years later after Walter Alston retired and Wynn and Marshall broke down, but this team never got the ultimate glory it deserved.

The 1980s: 1988 New York Mets
100-60 (.625), 1st place (by 15 games), lost NLCS to Dodgers 4-3, 4.39 R/G, 3.33 RA/G (Avg 3.88)

Like the 1974 Dodgers, these Mets are hardly forgotten, but rather have been persistently overshadowed -- overshadowed by the 1986 team, overshadowed in the regular season by the A's, overshadowed in the postseason and in the award voting by Hershiser's Dodgers. But this was a distinct team from the 1986 team, and a powerful one.

The Mets' rise from the obscurity of the 1977-83 period to the dominating force of the 1986 team needs no introduction. This was followed by 1987 . . . there's probably no season of baseball I remember better than the 1987 Mets; I was 15 and hanging on every single pitch. It was agony watching such a superior team have the same things continually unravel. To make a long story short, the Mets in 1987 had seven very good starting pitchers (Gooden, Darling, Fernandez, Ojeda, Aguilera, Cone and Leach), and it wasn't enough; they still wound up giving nearly 30 starts to pitchers who were ineffective, sometimes spectacularly so, and even tried to coax Tom Seaver out of retirement. The team scored a league-leading 5.08 R/G, a staggering figure for a team playing in Shea Stadium, and still they fell 3 games short of the division title.

The 1988 roster had turned over a good deal from 1986. World Series MVP Ray Knight was let go after 1986, giving Howard Johnson the full time third base job. The aging Jesse Orosco (so we thought at the time) was dealt to the Dodgers for prospects after 1987, handing over the lefthanded closer job to young fireballer Randy Myers. Kevin Mitchell was shipped to San Diego after 1986 for Kevin McReynolds. Weak-hitting shortstop Rafael Santana was let go, to be replaced in 1988 by rookie Kevin Elster. And in April 1987, the Mets traded two minor players -- backup catcher Ed Hearn and minor league veteran pitcher Rick Anderson -- to the Royals for a seven-year minor league vet named David Cone.

For the Mets, Cone's emergence was the biggest story of 1988. In 1987, Cone started 13 times, which included a visibly nervous Cone getting pounded in his first two outings (Davey Johnson then settled him down by starting Cone in the Jimmy Fund in-season exhibition against the Red Sox) and getting hammered again in his first start off the DL after getting his right pinky finger crushed against the bat by a pitch while bunting. In his other ten starts, Cone's ERA was below 3.00. In 1988, he lived up to that promise after sliding into the rotation when an April injury finished Rick Aguilera's season (the Mets would move Aguilera to the bullpen the following year before dealing him to Minnesota in the Frank Viola deal). At the time, I thought Cone had been robbed in the Cy Young voting by Hershiser, since Cone had a better W-L record (20-3 vs. 23-8) and a lower ERA (2.22 to 2.26), but Hershiser did throw 36 extra innings, had a lot less offensive support, and unlike Cone (who was tagged for 8 unearned runs in one inning that summer), and unlike Cone, Hershiser wasn't tagged for an unusual number of unearned runs (Cone allowed 10, including 5 in his last 3 starts while Hershiser was rolling up his consecutive shutout streak). It's still a close call, but the voters got it right.

Myers was another revelation, putting permanently aside his minor league reputation as a guy who couldn't find the plate. Myers' numbers look impressive enough -- 1.72 ERA, 69K and 62 baserunners in 68 IP. But during the season they looked even better; at the end of September, Myers' ERA was 1.35 and he had been taken deep only twice all year, but he got tagged for a pair of home runs in the next to last game of the season. Randall K would go on to an illustrious career in places like Cincinnati, Chicago and Baltimore, saving 347 major league games, although ironically enough, the two older pitchers he replaced in his first two stops -- Orosco and John Franco -- are still pitching five years after Myers threw his last pitch. Beyond Myers, the bullpen was as solid as the rotation, with Roger McDowell and Terry Leach combining with Myers to carry nearly the entire relief load and posting ERAs below 2.70. Leach, a 34-year-old minor league veteran submariner who'd been known to throw complete game shutouts for the Mets in games started on a half hour's notice, went 7-2 (all in relief this time), raising his record to 18-3 over a two year period and 24-9 for his career.

On offense, 1988 saw a changing of the guard. Gary Carter had cracked 20 home runs and driven in 83 runs in 1987, but it was his first real off year in a decade; in 1988, at age 34, Carter started hot in April to get to 299 career homers, then went homerless for three months waiting for number 300. He finished at .242/.358/301, a non-factor in the offense, and was mercifully removed from the cleanup slot as the season progressed. Keith Hernandez, also 34, also began an abrupt decline, missing almost 70 games with hamstring problems and dropping him to .276 with a .333 OBP. Like Carter, Hernandez would never regain the form that made him an MVP candidate just two years earlier. 25-year-old Lenny Dykstra had an off year, and 29-year-old platoon second baseman Tim Teufel came back to earth after slugging .545 in the lively ball air of 1987. Elster hit no better than Santana, batting .214. Pinch hitter Lee Mazzilli hit .147.

None of it mattered. The unquestioned star of this team was Darryl Strawberry, and Darryl had probably his best season in 1988 at age 26, scoring and driving in 101 runs apiece, slamming 39 homers, and finishing at .269/.545/.366, stealing 29 bases while grounding into just 6 double plays for good measure. The Straw Man led the league in homers by 9 and was one of just three NL players (along with Will Clark and Andy Van Slyke) to both drive in and score 100 runs. In Strawberry's case, it's obvious that he was robbed in the MVP voting; Kirk Gibson's 25 homers and 76 RBI don't stack up. Granted, Gibson was a better percentage base thief (4 CS to Straw's 14) and had a slightly higher OBP (.377 to .369), but Strawberry's 62-point advantage in slugging easily overcomes that, and if Strawberry was an underachieving fielder, at least he could throw, which Gibson couldn't.

Instead, the MVP voters focused on Gibson's intense emotional leadership -- notably a celebrated spring training incident when he blew up at Orosco for playing the kind of practical joke that had been common in the looser Mets clubhouse -- and probably held against Strawberry the perception that the Mets had sleepwalked through the summer, since Darryl was always the poster boy for sleepy ballplayers. The Mets buried the competition early, and then coasted for much of the summer. The Mets started 30-11 (.731); Gooden was 8-0 already, Cone was 6-0. By June 6, they stood 38-17 (.690), 7 games ahead of the revived Pirates and 8.5 ahead of the defending champion Cardinals. But from May 23 to August 21, this was a .500 team, 41-41. The Cardinals fell by the wayside, but the Pirates closed to just 3.5 games back. The Mets had backed their way into a close pennant race. Gooden had gone 6-6 in the interim, and Cone had also won just 6 games in the intervening 82. The two lefthanders, Ojeda and Fernandez, stood 15-22 through August 22.

Then they woke up, and proceeded to tear the division to ribbons with a 29-8 surge in which they allowed just 2.78 runs/game (while scoring 5 a game). Cone won his last 8 starts to improbably finish 20-3. Fernandez went 5-0 down the stretch, and Gooden won 4 straight decisions before dropping his last two starts (at the time I was indignant that Davey Johnson started a lineup full of scrubs behind Gooden on September 23, with Dr. K needing 2 wins in 2 starts for his second 20-win season; Johnson benched Strawberry, McReynolds, Hernandez and Carter and let Gooden lose a 2-1 complete game defeat).

Besides Darryl, the Mets got a big year from McReynolds, who set a record (since broken) by stealing 21 bases without being caught once, and slugged .496 on the way to 99 RBI; McReynolds (like Hernandez and Carter in 1986 and Gooden and Carter in 1985) split much of the MVP vote with Strawberry (there's a reason no Met has ever won the award). 25-year-old Dave Magadan stepped in seamlessly for Hernandez, posting his customary .393 on base percentage. And 32-year-old Mookie Wilson, the last holdover (other than the returning Mazzilli) from the dark days of the Joe Torre years, had his best season, batting .296/.431/.345 in a part-time role. Wally Backman also played well, to the tune of a .388 OBP.

Two events of September overshadowed the rest of the team. One was Bob Ojeda's accident. Ojeda has had an incredible array of freak accidents and injuries, ranging from a rare blood disease in his Red Sox years that caused fainting spells to head injuries suffered in the fatal 1993 boat crash that claimed the lives of Indians teammates Steve Olin and Tim Crews. In 1988, it was a gardening mishap; through September 11, Ojeda was pitching exceptionally well -- a 2.88 ERA and a 133-33 K/BB ratio, allowing about a baserunner an inning while surrendering just 6 home runs in nearly 200 innings, and having thrown shutouts in two of his last three starts -- when he cut the tip off the middle finger of his pitching hand with a hedge trimmer. Ojeda had recovered from arm trouble that limited him to 10 appearances in 1987, but the hedge trimming accident finished his season, and while he would pitch effectively again he never regained his pinpoint control.

The other September sensation was 20-year-old Gregg Jefferies. Jefferies had been Baseball America's Minor League Player of the Year -- a highly prestigious award that usually led to major league stardom -- two years running as a teenager in 1986 and 1987, batting around .360 with power as a switch-hitting, base-stealing shortstop blessed with a compact, textbook-perfect swing from both sides of the plate. He was known for his father's extensive grooming efforts -- Jefferies had his own training regimen, which famously included swinging a bat underwater -- and his arrogance, such as his boast that he would break Pete Rose's hit record (he ultimately fell some 2,500 hits short).

Jefferies hit Shea in late August like a bomb going off. Arriving August 28, a week into the hot streak that would put paid to the division, Jefferies was immediately inserted in the starting lineup, batting second and playing third base (which forced Howard Johnson, now an established star after his 30/30 season in 1987, to play out of position at shortstop) with Dwight Gooden on the mound. Jefferies singled and doubled as the Mets lost 7-4. The next day, Davey Johnson asked Cone to take the mound with an appalling defensive infield of Jefferies at second, HoJo at short and Magadan at third; Cone somehow managed to toss a 1-hit shutout, and Jefferies doubled, tripled and homered. (Johnson wasn't totally oblivious to defense; two days later he pulled Jefferies for a defensive sub after Leach replaced no-ground-balls Sid Fernandez in the second inning). After a 4-hit game on September 12, Jefferies' line for his first 13 games on the roster looked like this: 12 games, 48 at bats, 24 hits, 7 doubles, 2 triples, 5 home runs, 13 runs, 10 RBI, one steal, .500 batting average, 1.042 slugging, .520 OBP. Jefferies cooled off after that, but finished at .321/.596/.364 in over 100 at bats.

Given the threat Jefferies posed to the team's incumbent infielders, particularly Backman, Teufel and Johnson, Jefferies' veteran teammates decided to alternately torture and ignore him, including repeatedly sawing his custom-made bats in half; the result was not good for team 'chemistry,' whatever the importance of that may be. Jefferies, like Jeff Kent after him, was uptight and humorless, and responded poorly to these slights and gags, and unlike Kirk Gibson, nobody gave him an award for the response. I do hold the Mets organization partly responsible for Jefferies' ultimate failure to develop as a hitter, though less due to the hazing than due to the failure to fix a position for him.

In the short run, sticking a 20-year-old rookie with a gigantic ego into the lineup had other problems. Davey asked him to bunt in one LCS game, only to discover -- on national television -- that a guy who had been his team's best hitter his entire life had no idea how to lay a bunt down (Johnson had made the same mistake with Strawberry in the heat of the pennant race three years earlier and gave up on asking him to bunt after that). Still, the Mets had manhandled the Dodgers in the regular season, winning 10 of 11 matchups, and after Carter broke Hershiser's scoreless innings streak in Game One of the LCS -- leading to a 3-run ninth and a thrilling 3-2 victory reminiscent of where the team had left off in the postseason two years earlier -- it looked like it would be easy.

Unfortunately, the Mets couldn't keep their mouths shut. Cone wrote a boastful piece in the NY papers and promptly got shelled in Game Two; Strawberry started griping about his contract; McReynolds said that if the Mets won, he'd go to the World Series and if they lost, he'd be back in Arkansas in time for duck hunting season, so as far as he was concerned he would win either way. The Mets won a rain-soaked Game Three 8-4; as in Game One, they'd bested Hershiser by tearing up Dodgers' closer Jay Howell. Gibson pulled up lame, and was hobbled for the rest of the LCS, although he'd hit two more home runs in the series.

Then, two things happened to turn the series. One was that Gooden, leading 4-2 in the ninth inning of Game 4 at home -- a situation where no manager, today, would have his starter on the mound, but it was a different era then -- was tagged by Mike Scioscia for a game-tying two-run homer. Second, Howell got suspended for putting pine tar on the brim of his cap, leading to suspicions of doctoring the ball. The Mets had been torturing Howell, but Tommy Lasorda now went to Hershiser to close out Game 4 (his third appearance in five days). The Dodgers won Game Five, Cone rebounded to shut them down in Game 6, and then in Game Seven the wheels came off: Ron Darling, the team's money pitcher the prior three years, came out with nothing, and errors by Backman and Jefferies contributed to a 6-0 hole after two. Gooden, Leach and Aguilera held the line valiantly after that -- both Leach and Myers were unscored-upon in that series -- but with Hershiser staked to a 6 run lead, it was over.

The Mets' fall, like their rise, is too long a tale for this column, but 1988 was the last time that a championship was this close for this team, and the promised showdown with the 104-win A's never materialized. (Oakland found the first of its own postseason nightmares against those Dodgers). You can pick a number of dates when the worm turned against the Mets, but most fans would pick 1988 NLCS Game Four and Scioscia's home run.

The 1990s: 1998 Houston Astros
102-60 (.630), 1st place (by 12.5 games), lost NLDS to Padres 3-1, 5.40 R/G, 3.83 RA/G (Avg 4.60)

It's hard for any team from five years ago to be forgotten yet -- the two biggest stars of this Astros team are still in Houston, as are the team's ace pitcher and its closer -- but the 1998 Astros are certainly not likely to be mentioned in any history books.

A consistently solid also-ran under Art Howe and Terry Collins, the Astros won their first division title in more than a decade when Larry Dierker took over the helm in 1997, led by a spectacular breakout season by Darryl Kile. Kile left as a free agent for an ill-fated tour in Colorado after the season, but the 1998 Astros would be the best of Dierker's four division champs in Houston.

Like the two teams above, this team was an offensive monster stuck in a pitcher's park. One of the oddities, for the slow-moving 1990s, was that everybody in the starting lineup had double figures in stolen bases, highlighted by 50 steals for Craig Biggio. Jeff Bagwell, then 30 and the team's best hitter, had his usual Bagwell season, .304/.557/.424, scoring 124 runs and driving in 111. Biggio, age 32, had one of his best years, batting .325/.503/.403; with 50 steals and 51 doubles, Biggio was constantly in scoring position (to day nothing of 20 home runs). Yet, with all that baserunning and over 740 plate appearances, Biggio grounded into just 10 double plays and was caught stealing only 8 times. The third of the "Killer Bs" had his third and final star-quality season at age 29; Derrek Bell scored 111 runs and drove in 108, loading a .314 batting average with 41 doubles and 22 home runs. All up and down the lineup, this team hit gobs and gobs of doubles, with 5 players hitting 33 or more, plus the Bill Spiers/Sean Berry platoon at third combining for 44 and fourth outfielder Richard Hidalgo -- a deadly hitter crowded out of the lineup -- chipping in 15. Besides Bell, Hidalgo was blocked by Moises Alou, fresh from the fire sales in Montreal and Florida, who had a career year, .312/.582/.399, with 38 homers and 124 RBI; and newly-arrived Carl Everett, taking a brief break from controversy to hit .296 with power. Of the ten Astros to bat more than 200 times, only shortstop Ricky Guitierrez (.337) had an on base percentage below .355. Besides Hidalgo, mashers like Mitch Meluskey and Daryle Ward were likewise unable to crack this lineup.

The pitching staff, until late July, was solid; with the departure of Kile, Shane Reynolds was surrounded with a maturing Mike Hampton, 25, and new arrivals Jose Lima (25) and Sean Bergman (28). Only fifth starter Pete Schourek, at 29 still trying to recapture his 18-7 season of three years earlier (the one time he lived up to his minor league promise), was a weak link. Billy Wagner and Doug Henry anchored a dependable (until the postseason) bullpen.

So the Astros went for broke at the trading deadline, dealing blue-chip prospects Freddy Garcia, John Halama and Carlos Guillen for a few months' rental of a struggling Randy Johnson, 9-10 with a 4.33 ERA while brooding over his contract in Seattle. It was a classic now-or-never move; the price was steep, as became clear when Garcia emerged as a star and the others became productive contributors in Seattle. And the benefit was short-lived, as Johnson packed his bags for Arizona after the season.

In one sense, the move paid off: Johnson pitched as well as a human being can pitch, 10-1 with a 1.28 ERA in 11 starts, striking out 116 while allowing just 57 hits and 4 home runs. In another sense, it didn't: the Astros were never really threatened in the regular season anyway, and Johnson lost both his starts (albeit well-pitched ones) in the NLDS against the Padres, in which nearly everything possible went wrong: Kevin Brown started a hot streak that carried into the World Series, Bagwell, Biggio and Billy Wagner continued their career-long futility in the postseason . . . it all fell apart.

But if there's one common theme in the history of all the teams I've looked at, it's this: those shots at the brass ring can fade awfully fast. I'd make the Johnson deal again.

The White Sox of the late 1940s were a weak team, losing 101 games in 1948 and 94 in 1950. But 1951, under rookie manager Paul Richards, saw the Sox vault to their first pennant contention in years; the team went 26-4 from May 4 through June 7, and stood 53-35 (.602) as late as July 19, just percentage points from a tie with the first-place Red Sox and a game and a half ahead of the Indians and the 2-time defending World Champion Yankees. Two young players blossoming overnight were key: Nellie Fox (age 23) and pitching ace Billy Pierce, age 24. The team also had 30-year-old first baseman Eddie Robinson - productive in part of the 1950 season after coming from the Senators - for a full season, and Richards managed to squeeze an ERA title out of 27-year-old journeyman Saul Rogovin, who posted a 2.48 mark after coming from the Tigers in late May. But the biggest impact of all was the arrival of the 28-year-old Minoso a few weeks into the season.

Until I read the Bill James New Historical Baseball Abstract in 2001, I'd never thought of Minoso as a Hall of Fame candidate, but James' argument on this score was very persuasive. Minoso's career in the majors basically starts in 1951, by which time he was already 28, and his production the rest of the way is equal to or better than many, many Hall of Famers; what kept his numbers low was the color line (Minoso played in the Negro Leagues until 1950). In his prime years, Minoso did it all: hit well over .300, draw walks, get hit by a ton of pitches (leading the league 10 times in 11 years), hit for power and rarely strike out . . . Minoso drove in 100 runs 4 times, scored 100 runs 4 times, led the league in steals his first three years in the league, led in doubles once and triples three times, and averaged 16 home runs a year from 1951 to 1961. Late in his career they started giving Gold Gloves, and he won 3 of them. He was an All-Star 7 times. In 1951, he was already in his prime, and had perhaps his best season in the majors as a rookie, batting .326/.500/.422, stealing 31 bases (Dom DiMaggio had led the league the year before with 15) and scoring 112 runs in 146 games.

Anyway, the 1951 team collapsed down the stretch - the offense cratered (dropping from 5.16 runs/game to 3.86) and, besides Pierce and Rogovin, the rest of the pitching staff went in the tank. They ended with just 81 victories. This would set a pattern for Paul Richards' teams in Chicago. Two years later, in 1953, the Sox stood 75-48 (.609) on August 23, still 8 1/2 games behind the Yankees but on their way to a very strong second-place finish. They went 14-17 down the stretch, dropping off to third place. This time the offense and defense were about equally at fault.

1954 was the best of these teams, although the outcome would be more of the same. The Yankees started the season looking for their sixth consecutive World Championship (please tell me you wouldn't call this a "sex-peat"), but staggered to a 6-7 record in April; the White Sox grabbed the early lead, which they would hold into mid-June. The pennant race would slip away from both teams as the Indians went into overdrive, eventually winning 111 games, still the record for an AL team in a non-expansion year [ed. - d'oh! forgot the 2001 Mariners!], and the Yankees' 103 wins - the best by a Casey Stengel team - would net them second place. As late as August 28, the White Sox were in the same league with those two titans, with a record of 85-46 (.648), scoring 4.77 R/G and allowing 3.22, both figures better than the Indians to that point (the Yanks were a higher-scoring team with less impressive pitching that season). Once again, though, September would bring misery: the offense went into a deep freeze (3.24 R/G), the team went 11-14, and Richards didn't even stick around for the finale, quitting in mid-September to take over the Orioles. For the fourth year in a row, the White Sox would underachieve; from 1951-54, they won 9 fewer games than they should have, given their runs scored and allowed. Richards, a brilliant manager in some ways, had never managed to build a team that could win the close ones or hold up down the stretch run.

The other weakness of this team was an ill-timed off-year from Pierce, one of the top starting pitchers of the Fifties. Excluding the 1954 season, Pierce's average record from 1951 to 1962 was 16-11, but he picked 1954 to go 9-10 with a 3.48 ERA. In a year when 111 wins were needed to take the pennant, that was bad timing (ironically, Pierce would go 14-15 when the Sox finally won the pennant in 1959). Ferris Fain also appears to have been injured, although veteran Phil Cavarretta filled his place nicely.

Still, this was a powerful team. Minoso batted .320, cracked 66 extra base hits, scored 119 runs and drove in 116. Fox batted .319, struck out only 12 times all year and formed a top double play combination with Carrasquel. Sandy Consuegra, another journeyman who'd had little success before arriving in Chicago in 1953 and would have less after leaving town following 1955, went 16-3 and finished second in the ERA race. 37-year-old Virgil Trucks headed a staff of little-known pitchers (including a deep bullpen) on the way to a 3.05 team ERA.

Neither Richards nor Minoso would ever win a pennant; both were gone when the White Sox took advantage of the Yankees' off-year to win the 1959 AL flag.

The 1960s: 1964 Chicago White Sox
98-64 (.605), second place (1 game out of first), 3.96 R/G, 3.09 RA/G (Avg:
4.06)
1964 Baltimore Orioles
97-65 (.599), third place (2 games out of first), 4.17 R/G, 3.48 RA/G (Avg:
4.06)

The obvious candidate from the 1960s would be the 1961 Tigers, who won 101 games and scored more runs than the Maris-Mantle Yankees, when Norm Cash turned into Lou Gehrig for a year. But others have written about those Tigers. There's also the 1962 Reds, a team that won 98 games behind Frank Robinson's best season (he hit .342). One of the great pennant races of the 1960s was the 1964 AL race, which unfortunately was won by the Hated Yankees behind spectacular performances by Mickey and Whitey and rookie manager Yogi, thus burying the season in the long march of Yankee pennants that would come to an abrupt halt after this one, to say nothing of the spectacular and more notorious end to the NL race that season. Indeed, the Yankees got the glory then, too -- five Yankees were selected to the All-Star Game in 1964, as many as the Orioles and White Sox sent put together.

It was a race of spurts. Few games were played in April in 1964; the season didn't open until April 13. I'm not sure why, but this may have had something to do with the availability of the new ballparks in Houston and Flushing (the World's Fair opened on April 22). Anyway, the Indians, of all teams, battered their way to the early lead, scoring 4.8 runs/game to start off 11-5, while everyone else but the White Sox languished around .500 or worse. Cleveland's hitters were mostly good players about to reach a premature end to their productive years (Leon Wagner, Dick Howser, Tito Francona), and the Indians would wind up with a losing record for the season, but that team was memorable for another reason: young (or at least unproven) pitching. 21-year-old "Sudden Sam" McDowell, ineffective in a limited role for 2 years, went 11-6 with a 2.70 ERA, and rookies Luis Tiant, Tommy John and Sonny Seibert all established themselves. Few, if any, teams have come up with four new pitchers that good in one year.

Anyway, the White Sox had some youngsters of their own, notably third baseman Pete Ward (.282, 23 HR, 94 RBI in a run-starved environment -- a better year with the bat, under the circumstances, than your average Derek Jeter season) and 27-year-old rookie second baseman Don Buford, who would go on to be the left fielder for the Orioles juggernaut of the early 1970s. And they got hot, and then hotter, with the bats in May, scoring 4.7 runs/game through May 31, at which point the Sox were 24-11 (.685), a 111-win pace but just a half game ahead of the Orioles, who had played 7 more games already.

Then, it was Baltimore's turn. The O's had the race by the horns after a 37-16 surge from May 8 to June 29 that put them 4.5 games ahead of the surging Yankees and 6 ahead of Chicago. Seven Baltimore pitchers had won between 4 and 7 games to this point, including 9 wins from two relievers, Dick Hall and Stu Miller; the team was playing at a 104-win pace. Then, the Yankees: a 42-20 run from June 3 to August 2. Jim Bouton won 7 games between June 30 and August 2, three of them shutouts; opposing teams scored just 16 runs in his 8 starts in that stretch. After Bouton's second victory in four games (both shutouts) on August 2, the Yankees had the lead by percentage points:

Yankees (63-38) .623
Orioles (65-40) .619
White Sox (64-40) .615 0.5 back

Unfortunately for the Yanks, they then dropped 2 of 3 to the lowly Kansas City A's going into a stretch of 15 games with Baltimore and Chicago in 14 days. It went badly, a 5-10 record, followed by consecutive losses to the Red Sox. The Yankees lost 6 of 7 games started by veterans Whitey Ford and Ralph Terry during this 20-game swoon, and 3 of 4 started by Bouton. Plus, the back end of the rotation was in dire shape: through August 14, they'd lost their last 5 games started by Rollie Sheldon and Stan Williams. At the close of play on August 22 (the Yanks won the nightcap against the Red Sox in the 13th of 14 doubleheaders between June 10 and August 29), the standings looked like this:

Orioles (76-47) .617
White Sox (75-49) .604 1.5 back
Yankees (70-52) .573 5.5 back

Each of the three teams had now played 124 games (Baltimore tied one). Check out their runs scored and allowed through August 22:

Orioles: 4.20 R/G--3.48 RA/G
White Sox: 4.10 R/G--3.12 RA/G
Yankees: 4.32 R/G--3.60 RA/G

And the rest of the way:

Orioles: 4.05 R/G--3.46 RA/G
White Sox: 3.53 R/G--3.00 RA/G
Yankees: 5.11 R/G--3.37 RA/G

All three teams' pitchers stepped up down the stretch run, the Yankees most of all, thanks to the gutsy decision to throw 22-year-old rookie Mel Stottlemyre out to face the White Sox on August 12; Stottlemyre went 9-3 with a 2.06 ERA the rest of the way. But the real story was that the Yankee hitters went to town in September, while the regulars on the other two teams ran out of gas. Why? Well, they had 7 games head-to-head in late August (Baltimore won 5), and Baltimore's best hitter, Boog Powell, fractured his wrist August 20 and missed 14 games. I'm also guessing here that Mantle and Maris were finally healthy in September; Mantle had been injured at the All-Star break. Mantle and Powell were by far the two most productive hitters in the AL that season. Otherwise, there's no obvious explanation other than the fact that the Yankees had more pennant race experience; none of the three teams had an unusual number of guys who didn't take any days off. The Yankees put the race away by going 22-6 in September, holding a 4-game lead on the White Sox in the loss column (and five on Baltimore) with 4 to play at the end of September. The final standings narrowed after that, but it was over.

Books aplenty have been written about those Yankee teams; let's look at their worthy adversaries. The 1964-65 White Sox (the Sox won 95 games the following year) were the pinnacle of another generation of "Hitless Wonder" Chisox, although they may have been a better offensive team than they looked; Comiskey was fairly pitcher-friendly in those years. I asked in my latest Hall of Fame column who the best American League pitcher of the 1960s was, and I thought I'd check what Bill James' Win Shares system said. The answer: Hoyt Wilhelm, who by the mid-60s was past 40 and regularly pitching over 100 innings a year with an ERA in the ones. In 1964, the 40-year-old Wilhelm threw 131.1 innings (while allowing just 94 hits) over 73 games, posting a 1.99 ERA; he finished 12-9 with 27 saves, and was clearly the team's most valuable player.

The rest of the staff was impressive as well: Gary Peters and Joe Horlen, both of whom emerged in 1963, would anchor the White Sox staff throughout the Sixties. In 1964, Peters, age 27, went 20-8 with a 2.50 ERA, while Horlen, age 26, was 13-9 with a 1.88 ERA. 27-year-old Juan Pizarro was also effective, 19-9 with a 2.56 ERA, although this would be Pizarro's last full, healthy year as a rotation starter. The bullpen was deep, with Eddie Fisher and veteran Don Mossi; Fisher would be pressed into the rotation the following year.

The offense is less memorable, and some of the starters -- like JC Martin, Al Weis and Don Buford -- are better known for their roles on other teams (Martin and Weis were among the unlikeliest heroes of the 1969 Miracle Mets). The batting stars, as I mentioned above, were Ward, 26-year-old shortstop Ron Hansen (.261/.419/.347; Hansen would later win renown for turning an unassisted triple play), 28-year-old outfielder Floyd Robinson (.301/.408/.388 and two years removed from a 109-RBI fluke season), and midseason acquisition Moose Skowron (.293/.399/.337), who took over at first base. Al Lopez, the team's manager from 1957 to 1965, was retooling on the fly; Robinson had to be moved to left field when Dave Nicholson, who had swatted 22 homers the prior year while setting what was then the single season strikeout record (175 whiffs) proved completely incapable of making contact, striking out a staggering 126 times in 294 at bats. 41-year-old Minnie Minoso was also back for a return trip, but was basically out of gas; Minoso hit .226 as a pinch hitter, albeit with a .351 on base percentage. This was also a staggeringly effective defensive team. By my rough calculation -- (H-HR)/((IP)*3)+H-HR-K) -- the average of balls in play that became hits in the AL in 1964 was .263. The Yankees and Orioles were both very good defensive teams, with averages of .251 and .253, respectively. The White Sox? .241. Hoyt Wilhelm had something to do with that; traditionally, knuckleballers are the one group that has a pronounced tendency to buck the usual trend by which most pitchers allow a similar percentage of balls in play to become hits (the average against Wilhelm was .225). But the defense was solid and deep; center fielder Jim Landis won his fourth consecutive Gold Glove, keeping defensive wiz Ken Berry on the bench.

The 1964 Orioles, skippered by another ex-Yankee (Hank Bauer, in his first year on the job after two seasons "managing" the Kansas City A's) must have been a fun team to watch. The team featured an acrobatic left side of the infield, with Brooks Robinson at third base and Luis Aparicio at short. Aparicio, age 30, had a fairly typical season, combining league-average hitting with 57 stolen bases and spectacular defense, while Robinson, at 27, had the best year of his career with the bat and won the MVP award. Robinson hit .317/.521/.368 and drove in 118 runs, which would be about the equivalent, in 2002 terms, of batting .343/.578/.386, with 140 RBI while being Brooks Robinson with the glove. First baseman Norm Siebern -- yet another ex-Yankee -- arrived from Kansas City with his ex-teammate Bauer, and while he came down fairly far from his outstanding 1962 season, Siebern's league-leading 106 walks gave him a .379 OBP, good for sixth in the league. In right field was a promising youngster, 25-year-old rookie Sam Bowens, who hit .263 with 22 homers and slugged .453 (unfortunately, Bowens would crash to .163 the next year and hit above .200 only once again in his career).

The team's real hitting sensation was Boog Powell. Boog, only 22, was already in his third season, although by 1965 he would already have to be moved from left field to first base. You think Robinson's offensive numbers were impressive? Powell's .290/.606/.399, very big numbers even today, would translate into .310/.673/.418 -- Jim Thome numbers. Powell's injury may have cost the Orioles the pennant. And more young talent debuted for this team as well - a pair of 20-year-olds named Paul Blair and Lou Piniella each got a cup of coffee in 1964. Also on the bench was a future hitting guru, Charlie Lau.

The pitching staff was a study in contrasts. Robin Roberts, at 37, was the resident veteran in the rotation; Roberts had been baseball's dominant pitcher from 1950-55, with an average season of 23-13 with a 2.93 ERA in 323 innings. While those numbers sound impressive enough, remember that he was pitching in a fairly good hitter's era, for teams that finished higher than fourth only once in that span, and that only three other major league pitchers -- Vern Bickford in 1950, Warren Spahn in 1951, and Bob Lemon in 1952 -- threw as many as 300 innings in a season over the six-year span when Roberts did it every year from age 23 to 28. From 1952-55 he led the league in innings, usually over Spahn, by 40, 81 (!), 53.1 and 48 innings, one of the most dominating workhorse performances in the game's history. And by baseball-reference.com's league/park adjusted "ERA+" measure, his ERAs, if translated into, say, the conditions Catfish Hunter pitched in at his peak, would be 2.12, 2.25, 2.02, 1.87, 2.10, and 2.36.

But even Roberts, unsurprisingly, crashed and burned after 1955, posting an ERA below 4.00 only once between 1956 and 1961, culminating in a humiliating 1-10, 5.85 performance in 1961 that finally persuaded the Phillies to cut him (Roberts quipped at the time that NL hitters wept when they heard the news). The Orioles took a chance on him, though, and he returned to form, with ERAs of 2.78, 3.33 and 2.91 from '62-'64, by featuring his legendary control while cutting back on his penchant for the longball. There were other veterans in the bullpen: 38-year-old Harvey Haddix had been rescued from the Pirates after breaking down as a starting pitcher; relief ace Stu Miller, 36, was coming off a great 1963 season; and 33-year-old Dick Hall, a failed starter in Pittsburgh and Kansas City, had found his calling in the Baltimore bullpen in 1962 (Hall would also feature in Earl Weaver's pens in later years). All three had good years in 1964.

Alongside Roberts, the rotation was young and younger: Steve Barber and Milt Pappas were veterans at 25; Barber had a poor year in 1964 and would be effectively finished after 1966, while Pappas, 16-7 with a 2.97 ERA, was the rotation's anchor. Dave McNally, in his second season at age 21, was a year away from stardom. But stardom was at hand -- fleetingly -- for 19-year-old Wally Bunker, who finished 19-5 with a 2.69 ERA. Of course, Bunker, like Barber, burned out swiftly; McNally, a major star until age 28, would do little thereafter; Jim Palmer would throw a shutout in the World Series at 20, hurt his arm and go unclaimed in the expansion draft three years later. It took the Orioles a while to learn not to overwork very young pitchers.

The moment of glory arrived for Hank Bauer's Orioles in 1966, when Frank Robinson and Palmer would join the team and go all the way.

COMING UP IN PART 3: THE 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

But if the game was in transition, there was still some darn good baseball being played. The Hall of Fame recognized this a few years back when it inducted one of the biggest stars of the era, George Davis. The dominant team, led by the game's biggest star in the 1898-1904 era, was the Pirates, and perhaps their best team was the 1902 squad that finished 103-36, winning their second of three straight pennants by 27.5 games, the largest margin of victory in baseball history. They buried the competition early and never let up: the Pirates roared out of the gate to the tune of a 25-4 record and an 8 game lead on May 20. They were trashing their opponents, scoring 6.69 runs/game while allowing just 2.79 runs/game, a ridiculous margin; an 1890s offense with 1900s pitching. By June 13 they were 11 games out in front. They kept at it as well, adding 12 games to their lead after August 1, and outscoring their opponents 5.58 runs/game to 3.17 runs/game on the season. Nearly the entire roster was players in their prime, ages 24-30, with players heavily concentrated in the 27-29 bracket; the only exceptions were two grizzled veterans among the team's three catchers.

The Pirates had three Hall of Famers -- Honus Wagner, age 28, who hit .330 and led the league in (among other things) slugging, runs scored, RBI, steals and doubles; outfielder and manager Fred Clarke, age 29, who hit .316 and finished second to Wagner in runs and third in slugging; and pitcher Jack Chesbro, age 28, a bogus Hall of Famer but a great pitcher at his peak (he would jump to the AL the following year and go on to win an AL-record 41 games for the Yankees in 1904), who went 28-6 with a 2.17 ERA. The Pirates' rotation featured four pitchers who won between 189 and 198 games and won at least 60% of their decisions in their careers (Chesbro, Sam Leever, Deacon Phillippe and Jesse Tannehill), all between the ages of 27 and 30 and with ERAs between 1.95 and 2.39, plus a spot starter who went 16-4. Pinpoint control artists Leever, Phillippe and Tannehill walked just 82 batters in 725 innings; the Pirates didn't lose a game Leever started until July 5. The lineup added outfielder Ginger Beaumont, age 25, a lifetime .311 hitter who had a career year, winning the batting title (.357) and finished third in the league in runs scored, and 24-year-old third baseman Tommy Leach, a versatile star who would play 19 years in the majors; Leach finished fourth in the league in runs, second in RBI, and led the league in triples and home runs.

The really interesting and important development on this team was Fred Clarke's decision, at some point in 1902 or the beginning of 1903, to make Wagner -- now 28, a 6-year veteran and already the best player in the league -- into a shortstop. To this point in his career, Wagner had been a sort of everyday utility player, playing anywhere from 25 to 75 games a year at first, third, shortstop and the outfield. The exception was in 1900, his first on arriving in Pittsburgh with Clarke, Leach and Phillippe when the Louisville franchise was contracted; that season, he played almost exclusively in the outfield, hit a career-high .381, and led the league in nearly everything. I don't have the box scores, and Wagner's 44 games at short in 1902 may well have been scattered throughout the season. But when 1903 opened, Wagner was Pittsburgh's regular shortstop, appearing in 111 games at a position he would not relinquish until he was 43 years old. Wagner would go on to have his best seasons as a shortstop, including his best year at age 34. For many years, in fact, Wagner held the career record for games played at short.

Wagner is what would have made this team so interesting to watch - he was then at the peak of his powers, the best hitter for average in baseball, the best hitter for power in baseball, the game's best base thief, tough as nails and unafraid of anyone, and the nicest guy in the game to boot. The decision to take this superstar and enhance his value even further by planting him at the game's key defensive position was a visionary move, and Wagner's willingness to make the move speaks well of his own character.

Rob Neyer and Eddie Epstein, in their book Baseball Dynasties, discount the 1902 Pirates for the fact that the American League had apparently made a deliberate strategic decision to wreck the National League pennant race by raiding all the teams other than the Pirates. That may be true -- though, as I have noted, the team's winningest pitcher jumped to the AL after the season -- but the collection of talented players in the prime of long and successful careers on this team make it truly memorable as one of the monumental teams of the 20th century.

The 1910s: The 1918 Chicago Cubs
84-45 (.651), First place by 10.5 games, lost World Series 4-2 to Red Sox,
4.17 R/G, 3.05 RA/G (Avg: 3.62)

Baseball in the teens had a lot of problems, one of which was the imbalance of talent between the two leagues. Young players who reached stardom in the AL between 1910 and 1915 included Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson, Tris Speaker, Eddie Collins, Frank Baker, Smokey Joe Wood, and Shoeless Joe Jackson. A's, Red Sox and White Sox dynasties combined to make the World Series a joke; with the exception of a shocking sweep by the "Miracle Braves" in 1914, the overmatched NL representatives won just 13 World Series games between 1910 and 1918. With the collapse of the Giants in 1914, the NL pennant rotated among a series of 1-year wonders from six different franchises between 1914 and 1919, which didn't earn them a lot of respect at the time -- there's a reason the 1919 Reds were such underdogs in the World Series despite having a great regular season record -- and hasn't helped their memory since then. On top of that, the decade was riven by a third major league (the 1914-15 Federal League), a world war that intruded on the game in 1918, and of course the eventual fixing of the World Series in 1919.

I've already written about the 1916-17 Giants (see here and here), and much more could be said about the contestants in the 1915 World Series, which matched a "changing of the guard" Red Sox team featuring Speaker, Wood and Ruth (among many other famous and talented players) against a Phillies team that mixed a hitter (Gavvy Cravath) who swatted 24 home runs with a pitcher (Grover Alexander) who allowed just 3 longballs in 376 innings. But I'd like to add a few words here about one of the most obscure pennant winning teams of all time, the 1918 Cubs.

The Cubs of 1917 were not an impressive team; they finished 24 games out of first place and six games under .500. They even had a losing record at home, and finished the season in an 18-27 funk. The team's only star was Jim "Hippo" Vaughn, one of the NL's best pitchers at 23-13 with a 2.01 ERA. So you can imagine the excitement when the team announced, in the spring, the acquisition of Alexander, by far and away the dominant player in the National League the prior three seasons, in which he'd won more than 30 games with an ERA in the ones each year, leading the league in numerous key categories, usually by large margins. But there was a catch: although the Phillies, contenders in each of those three seasons, were in the midst of a fire sale that would leave the team with a losing record each of the next 13 straight seasons and 29 of the next 30 seasons, Alexander was available on the cheap only because he had a high number in the draft, and was likely to be sent to war. And so he was: Alexander was 2-1 with a 1.73 ERA in three complete game starts for the Cubs when he was shipped out to the front lines in France.

Yet, while the Alexander acquisition got them nowhere, other offseason moves paid off better. 30-year-old Larry Doyle, the team's RBI leader in 1917 (with 61) but a leaden glove at second base, was dealt to the Braves with 31-year-old catcher Art Wilson, who had hit .213 the previous year (the Braves then moved Doyle back to the Giants, where he'd starred earlier) in exchange for 28-year-old starter Lefty Tyler, one of the heroes of the 1914 Miracle; Tyler responded with his best season, going 19-8 with a 2.00 ERA.

In 1917, the Cubs had scored 3.58 runs/game and allowed 3.68 against a league average of 3.53, so as you can see, their improvement was substantial on both offense and defense, although more heavily in the pitching department. The 1918 team lead the NL in both runs scored and runs allowed. How? Partly, they just got good years from incumbent veterans like Vaughn (at 22-10, 1.74 ERA the NL's best pitcher), Fred Merkle (still just 29 a decade after his famous flub, Merkle batted .297 on the way to his fifth pennant with three franchises), and 28-year-old right fielder Max Flack, who improved from .248 to .257 and cut his strikeouts in half. Veteran acquisitions also helped: besides Tyler, the Cubs brought in 36-year-old center fielder Dode Paskert from the Phillies, and Paskert's .362 OBP was second on the team. Near season's end, 30-year-old Charlie Pick replaced light-hitting Charlie Deal as the everyday third baseman; Pick batted .326 with a .417 OBP in 29 games

The crucial element, however, was the maturation of two young hitters, 24-year-old left fielder Les Mann, who finally lived up to his Federal League form of four years earlier by hitting .288, boosting his on base percentage by 30 points and staying healthy all year, and most critically, 22-year-old rookie shortstop Charlie Hollocher, who batted .316, good for second in the league in OBP and first in total bases. Hollocher had a 20-game hitting streak as the Cubs stretched their lead from 3 games to 8 in late July and early August; they clinched the pennant a week later.

Hollocher was an error-prone fielder even by the standards of the day - 53 errors - and despite being ideally suited to the high-average 1920s, his career would fall apart when he abruptly left the Cubs on his way to his second straight .340 season in 1923 at age 27, complaining of a recurrent illness. (Hollocher killed himself with a shotgun at age 44; read his obituary here).

In the World Series, of course, the Cubs would be throttled by the brilliant pitching of Babe Ruth and Carl Mays, despite some equally brilliant work by Vaughn and Tyler. Pick (.389), Merkle and Flack continued to hit well in the Series, but Hollocher and Paskert both batted .190, and the Red Sox added yet another championship banner to what looked, at the time, like an endless succession.

Of course, the war-shortened 1918 schedule helped the Cubs - they played 74 home games and just 57 road games, although they were 35-20 (2 ties) on the road. And they may have benefited as well from some depletion of talent around the league. The following season, Paskert and Pick hit the wall, Tyler missed most of the season, Mann spent half the year in a .227 funk and was traded, and Hollocher and Merkle fell off; even with Vaughn repeating his success and Alexander winning the ERA title, the Cubs wouldn't finish within 12 games of first place again until 1926, when the last link to the 1918 team - Alexander - was released in mid-season. Still, in 1918 the Cubs had by far the best team in the National League, and if the best player in the league (Alexander) had been available to them, who knows how many more games they would have won -- assuming they would have acquired him at all, that is. Another example of a team for which, despite a big loss early on, almost everything went right for just one season.

The 1920s: The 1925 Pittsburgh Pirates
95-58 (.621), First place by 8.5 games, won World Series 4-3 over Senators, 5.96 R/G, 4.67 RA/G (Avg: 5.06)

The baseball history books of my youth, when they discussed the Pirates of the 1920s, focused on the Waner brothers and the 1927 team they anchored, which was squashed in the World Series by the legendary Ruth/Gehrig Yankees. But before the Waners hit town, there was the mercurial Hazen Shirley "Kiki" Cuyler. This was his team, and a fearsome team it was.

I'm tempted to say that the Pirates of 1925 -- team batting average .307, a starting lineup featuring five .320 hitters, two other .300 hitters and a .298 hitter -- prove that, at least in the high-average, low-walk, low-strikeout, relatively low-HR 1920s National League, you can, too, win championships by building around high-average hitters. But the fact is, except for the home run ball, this team -- in the image of Cuyler, its biggest star -- did it all. The Pirates led the league in batting average, slugging, OBP, doubles, triples, walks, steals, and stolen base percentage, in many cases by huge margins (the Pirates were fifth in the league in homers, with only Cuyler and shortstop Glenn Wright in double figures at 18 apiece, but homers were rare; Gabby Hartnett was second in the league with 24). For good measure, the Pirates allowed the league's third-fewest runs on the second-best team ERA.

Cuyler is sometimes thought of as a borderline Hall of Famer, and maybe given the brevity and inconsistency of his career (he was benched for half of the 1927 season for not hustling) that's a fair characterization. But at his best, he was a major impact player, Ichiro with twice the power. Inserted in the Pittsburgh lineup partway through the 1924 season at age 25, he batted .354 with speed and power; he finished 8th in the NL MVP voting while playing in just 117 games, on the way to the Pirates' third straight third place finish behind the dominant Giants. In 1925, Cuyler had a real MVP-type season, although he (justly) finished second in the balloting to Rogers Hornsby, who batted .403, led the league in HR by 15, and drove in 152 runs. Cuyler just did it all: hit .357, slugged .598, a .423 OBP, 18 homers, 43 doubles, 26 triples (!!), a more-than-respectable 58 walks (remember, walks were scarce; the league leader had 86, and 66 was good for fourth place), and 41 steals in just 54 attempts (a 75.9% success rate compared to 56.5% for the league). He was even hit by 13 pitches, and had 21 assists in right field. By the end of the year, Cuyler's career averages were a .352 average, .562 slugging and .410 OBP.

Around Cuyler were a battery of other hard-hitting athletic types. The two Hall of Famers in the lineup had fine years: 25 year old Pie Traynor, at third, had emerged as a star in 1923; in 1925 he batted .320 with 39 doubles and 14 triples. 35 year old center fielder Max Carey batted .343, was fourth in the league in walks, and stole 46 bases in 57 tries. Wright drove in 121 runs and added 60 more extra base hits of his own. Many of the hitters were young (6 regulars between 24 and 26); the only over-30 hitters were Carey and backup first baseman Stuffy McInnis, who hit .368.

The pitching staff was older and less glamorous, even for a team with a five-man rotation in a hitters' park in a hitters' era. Vic Aldridge was a power pitcher -- top 5 in the league in most walks, most strikeouts, and fewest hits/IP -- but his numbers look like those you would expect today from a 40-year-old finesse pitcher: 213.1 IP, 218 hits, 74 walks, 88 K. Ray Kremer had a brilliant career, 143-85 record including averaging a 19-8 record and 2.99 ERA from 1924 to 1927, but at age 32 he was only in his second season. The best-known pitcher on the staff was Babe Adams, the hero of the 1909 World Series, but Adams was 43 and finished, to the tune of a 5.42 ERA in mostly long relief work.

Although they were forced to rely on their pitching while the team was twice handcuffed by a 37-year-old Walter Johnson in the World Series, the Pirates' knack for hitting the ball with authority finally paid off handsomely in one of the wildest Game 7s in World Series history, played in a torrential downpour at Forbes Field without the benefit of lights. The Pirates mauled Johnson, battering out 15 hits, including 8 doubles and two triples (the 25 total bases absorbed by Johnson in going the distance is a World Series record unlikely to be broken), including the game-winner, a 2-run ground rule double by Cuyler into the darkness in right field with two outs in the bottom of the eighth (Goose Goslin said later that he never even saw where the ball went).

The 1930s: The 1934 Detroit Tigers
101-53 (.656), First place by 7 games, lost World Series 4-3 to Cardinals,
6.22 R/G, 4.60 RA/G (Avg: 5.13)

The media story of the 1934 season - the one passed down in the books - was the "Gashouse Gang" Cardinals, a voluble and mischievous group led by a brash 24-year-old 30-game winner, Dizzy Dean, and a feisty veteran player-manager, Frankie Frisch. The Gashouse Gang had just everything that media darlings would want: Dean, the lovable hick and pitching superstar; a brother act (Dean and brother 'Daffy'); Frisch, a veteran New Yorker who had been in many World Serieses; goofy nicknames (Ripper, Pepper, Ducky Wucky). You name it. Several members of the team stayed in baseball forever (Frisch hung on as a manager, broadcaster and the dominant force on the Hall of Fame Veterans committee; Dean became a broadcaster; shortstop Leo Durocher managed into the 1970s). And, they won the Series.

But the Gashouse Gang was just a very good team, not a great one and not the beginning, nor really the end, of a dynasty. Their opponents in the World Series were another story. Because the 1934 Detroit Tigers were a juggernaut, and when they came back to win the World Series the next year, they looked for all the world like the coming power in the American League. The fact that many of the Tigers' stars were quiet men like Charlie Gehringer and Hank Greenberg -- and the team's unraveling in a disastrous Game 7 rout in the World Series -- shouldn't let the team's memory slip from view.

Like the 1918 Cubs and the 1925 Pirates, these Tigers arose rapidly from a team that had not been a serious contender the pervious year; the 1933 team finished 25 games behind the first place Senators, with a losing record and a subpar offense. With the exception of the emergence of 23-year-old submariner Eldon Auker, who stepped up to replace fading star Firpo Marberry, the pitching staff didn't change much from the prior year; the team's other second year pitcher, 24-year-old Schoolboy Rowe, went 24-8, but he wasn't markedly more effective than in 1933, just in more innings. The other star, curveball specialist Tommy Bridges, had a better year in 1933. The Tigers improved from third in the league to second in ERA.

Offensively, though, they became a monster overnight, scoring 235 more runs than in 1933 and posting one of the highest run totals of the 20th century. Fiery catcher Mickey Cochrane, as good in his prime as any catcher in major league history, arrived from Connie Mack's fire sale in Philadelphia, took over as manager, and posted his usual .428 on base percentage; he was named the league's MVP. Hank Greenberg, a 22-year-old rookie who played 117 games in 1933, became a fixture at first, cracking 63 doubles, 7 triples and 26 home runs. The Tigers learned an important lesson from the prior year's champs: get Goose Goslin. Over Goslin's 18-year career in the American League, the Yankees won 10 pennants and Mack's A's won three; the other five were won by teams with Goose Goslin in the outfield. Arriving from Washington in exchange for John Stone, six years his junior (the Senators had overloaded themselves with veterans the prior year), Goslin churned out his usual 100-RBI season, whacking 38 doubles along the way. In fact, 7 Tigers hit more than 30 doubles in 1934, and the two outfielders who spilt playing time in center field hit 38 between them. Charlie Gehringer, a star second baseman in his twenties, took his game to a new level in 1934 at age 31, batting .356 with 50 doubles, 99 walks, 134 runs and 127 RBI; he would continue to improve throughout his thirties. Gehringer was the one real surprise; the rest of the lineup was either the newly arrived veteran stars or young players coming into their own.

As was much heralded at the time, the Tigers' starting infield drove in 462 runs in 1934; they also scored 445 runs. Even near the pinnacle of a hitters' era, these were eye-popping numbers. The team had more good young players on the way in 20-year-old masher Rudy York and Luke "Hot Potato" Hamlin, who would later win 20 games for Durocher's Dodgers. But a few things went wrong. First, after a bitter and hard-fought World Series featuring some surprisingly low-scoring games, the Tigers unraveled in Game 7, as 3 errors contributed to an 11-0 thrashing highlighted by a 7-run Cardinals third inning and Dean tossing a 6-hit shutout. Auker, Bridges and Rowe were among the six Tiger pitchers that day, the first five of them horribly ineffective. The team basically reprised its dominance in 1935, with nearly everyone having another good year (Greenberg started pulling those doubles over the fence and wound up driving in 170 runs), and this time they finished off the Cubs in October.

The Tigers couldn't stay longer than that, though. Greenberg went down for the season after driving in 16 runs in 12 games. Cochrane was beaned in early 1936, nearly dying and effectively ending his playing and managing career while at the top of his game. Auker and Rowe had bad years, and the entire rest of the staff beyond them and Bridges went to pieces. Joe DiMaggio arrived in the Bronx, and the Yankees started a run of 409 wins in 4 seasons. In 1937, Goslin got old pretty much overnight and Rowe blew his arm out, although he would recover by 1940. Besides York, who made only a token appearance in 1934, the 1940 pennant winners featured only Greenberg, Gehringer, Bridges, Rowe, and outfielder Pete Fox from the 1934 team.

But for two years, this was one of the all-time great teams.

The 1940s: The 1948 Cleveland Indians
97-58 (.626), First place by a 1-game playoff, won World Series 4-2 over Braves, 5.42 R/G, 3.66 RA/G (Avg: 4.73).

Few teams have been more storied, at the time, than the 1948 Indians, baseball's first integrated World Champions and the last Cleveland team to win it all, and their memory was bandied about again in 2001 when shortstop and manager Lou Boudreau, the man completely identified with this team, died at age 84. But Boudreau was only one part of a most memorable team, and if you don't hear about these guys as much anymore, you should.

The Indians won just 80 games in 1947, 17 behind the first place Yankees, with an apparently mediocre offense (actually, Cleveland Stadium in those days was a pretty severe pitchers' park) and only one pitcher (Bob Feller) winning more than 11 games or throwing more than 200 innings, and only second baseman Joe Gordon driving in or scoring more than 79 runs. Partly they were just unlucky, winning 8 fewer games than you would project (by Bill James' Pythagorean theory) for a team with their runs scored and allowed.

The Indians' great leap forward in 1948 was a combination of new arrivals and career years. The returning veterans first (and in 1948, the veterans were also Veterans, with the exception of Boudreau, who'd managed the Indians without interruption since he was 24 in 1942). The Indians, like the 1934 Tigers, had a great infield; some said the greatest ever, although Bill James, ranking the best infields with his Win Shares system, found the Indians' to be far off the pace of the best ever because Eddie Robinson was a weak link at first base. Boudreau had a career year at age 30, hitting .355; he drew 98 walks and struck out just 9 times all season and went 4-4 with a pair of home runs in the 1-game playoff that sent Cleveland to the World Series for the first time in 28 years. Third baseman Ken Keltner, 31, best known for two diving stops that ended Joe D's 1941 hitting streak, had a year even further out of line with his career, smacking 31 homers (compared to 11 in 1947) and driving in 119 runs. Second baseman Joe Gordon, had his best year since he stole Ted Williams' MVP award in 1942; Gordon hit 32 homers and drove in 124 runs. All three were fine defensive players as well. 26-year-old left fielder Dale Mitchell was Boudreau's equal in making contact (17 whiffs that season and a career high of 21 in 7 seasons as a regular, although he is most famous for striking out looking in his last major league at bat to end Don Larsen's perfect game in 1956); Mitchell hit .336. On the pitching side, Feller had his first real off-year -- just 28, he was never the same pitcher after 1948, having given nearly half his prime years to the war -- but Bob Lemon, age 27, entered the rotation full-time for the first time and responded with a 2.82 ERA and the first of seven 20-win seasons in 9 years on his way to Cooperstown. Veteran Steve Gromek also stepped forward to lead a deep bullpen.

Then there were the new arrivals. One of those signaled the new era: 24-year-old centerfielder and future Hall of Famer Larry Doby, who'd played briefly the previous year to become the American League's first black player. Doby was an instant star, hitting .301 with patience and line-drive power. One was a living reminder of the old era: Satchel Paige. Satchel Paige was, I have no doubt, one of the handful of the greatest pitchers ever; we'll never know, but he may have been the best. Paige may have been 41 or 43 in 1948, nobody seems to know for sure. He certainly had many miles on his legs and many innings on his arm, but Paige could still pitch; not only did he post a 2.48 ERA in 72.2 innings and throw two shutouts in 7 starts, but Paige even struck out 5.57 batters per 9 innings compared to a league average of 3.53. However old he was, in other words, Paige entered major league baseball as a power pitcher. (His strikeout rate would go even higher as he approached 50). The other sensational newcomer was the ERA champ (at 2.43), 27-year-old rookie knuckleballer Gene Bearden. Bearden finished 8th in the MVP voting, although behind teammates Boudreau (the MVP), Lemon and Gordon; he went 20-7, including a complete game victory over Denny Galehouse and the Red Sox in the decisive playoff game. Other acquisitions also contributed: left field was an effective platoon of Allie Clark and Thurman Tucker, newly arrived from the Yankees and White Sox, and relief ace Russ Christopher was picked up from the A's.

The pennant race that season was scalding; on August 1, the Indians, Red Sox (the 1946 pennant winners) and Hated Yankees were all tied. For second place. In first, a game ahead, was the surprising Philadelphia A's, skippered by 85-year-old Connie Mack. The Mackmen were 65-43 (.601) and tied for first place as late as August 11 before collapsing down the stretch. The Indians' pitching was the hottest when it counted, 44-20 after the first of August, allowing just 3.03 R/G in that stretch. They leaned even more heavily on their staff as they moved to the other side of Boston in October, as the team batted .199 against the "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain" Braves and Feller got clocked in two starts. Bearden and Lemon came through in the clutch, though, 3-0 with a 1.00 ERA and a seventh game save (Bearden relieving Lemon) between them.

Bearden and Keltner never had another good year; Gordon and Boudreau were done after 1949 (Boudreau stepped down as manager after 1950), and Paige left town after that season as well, and the Indians wound up finishing second to the Yankees nearly every year for the next decade, with the exception of another magical year in 1954.

Glory, on a team level, is fleeting.

2. GARY CARTER (78%)

Name ten better catchers than Gary Carter, and we've got an argument. But unless you count the Negro Leagues (Josh Gibson), you've really got to stretch to get there. I'll give you Bench, Berra, Cochrane, Campanella, and Dickey, and you can make a pretty convincing argument on Piazza (despite his defense) and Hartnett. That's 7. Fisk gets you 8, although the two are awfully close, and as I'll explain in more detail another day, I'd take Carter in their primes. To get 9 you need Pudge Rodriguez, and that's a big stretch give his durability and Carter's longer career in a much lower-scoring era, or Ted Simmons, who was a similar hitter to Carter but an inferior glove man. After that, you're left with short careers (Buck Ewing, Roger Bresnahan), guys who never got on base (Lance Parrish), guys who made Carter look like Vince Coleman (Ernie Lombardi, also no model of durability) . . . the next best guy is probably Bill Freehan.

From 1977 to 1986, Carter was the best or second-best catcher in baseball every year, catching 140 or more games 7 times (plus 100 of 108 games in 1981), and churning out outstanding offensive numbers (for the era) every year while playing in pitchers' parks. He's one of very few catchers to lead the league in RBI, and drove in 97 or more runs 5 times in 7 seasons. As Bill James pointed out several years ago, only Yogi can match Carter's offensive and defensive consistency at the position; guys like Bench and Campanella had a habit of hitting .207 every couple of years. Carter was a tremendous defensive catcher in his prime.

The main knock on Carter is that his career percentage stats aren't pretty, in large part because he stank for the last six seasons of his career, including the four-month drought between his 299th and 300th homers in 1988 and his .183 season in 1989 (although he did rouse himself at the end of the 1988 season to hit a game-winning RBI single in Game 1 of the NLCS, snapping Orel Hershiser's scoreless innings streak in the process). If Carter had retired after the 1987 season, he would have been a first-ballot selection; because he hung around years after he was any good, everyone forgot how he was among the best players in the league every year for a decade. I still maintain that the main test of immortality is how good a player is in the stretch of seasons where he plays at or near his peak level - if a man plays himself into the Hall of Fame, he can't play himself out later on when he's just hanging on for a paycheck. Making Carter wait six years for this was an injustice.

3. BRUCE SUTTER (53.6%)

Sutter's case, I've addressed before; he wouldn't be a terrible selection, given his awe-inspiring performances from 1976-82 and 1984 and his revolutionary use of the split-finger fastball. But I remain skeptical; those 8 years were the only effective seasons of Sutter's career, and it's hard to put a relief pitcher in the Hall for such a short career, when relievers already appear for such a small portion of their team's innings (this was true of workhorses like Sutter and is doubly so today).

4. JIM RICE (52.2%)
5. ANDRE DAWSON (50%)

Rice, whom I've addressed in several prior columns, is the classic guy on the bubble - I used to think of him as an obvious Hall of Famer given his 12-year string of averaging around .300-30-100, but there are too many "buts" - but he didn't field well, but he benefited hugely from Fenway, but he hit into a ton of double plays.

A good starting off point for Dawson is to compare him with his contemporaries Rice, Dave Parker, Dwight Evans, and Dale Murphy. I'll throw in Murray for comparison, since Murray's a similar offensive player to this group and is obviously over the threshold. Rice, Parker and Murphy are still on the ballot; Evans got no support and fell off it. Last season, Rice got 55.08% of the vote, Dawson 45.34%, Murphy 14.83% and Parker 13.98%, so Dawson's stock is rising while Rice, Murphy (11.7%) and Parker (10.3%) are dropping. Start with the raw career totals and Avg/Slg/OBP:

XO=GIDP+CS

Dawson has a superficial advantage in HR and RBI over everyone but Murray, but some of that just consists of sticking around longer; Rice could have matched Dawson if he'd played 5 more years and averaged 28 RBI a year. Rey Ordonez drives in more runs than that in a season. Both Rice and Parker get the nod in that category. All six players are about even in slugging, with much of Rice's advantage coming mostly because he didn't stick around those extra 5 years.

It is at least worth mentioning that every eligible player with 1500 RBI is in the Hall besides Dawson, but also that there are some guys ahead of him (ahem, Harold Baines) who are not going to come close to the Hall.

But look at the OBP and Runs columns, and you will see why Dawson and Parker just don't stack up; Dawson's career OBP of .323 isn't just unspectacular, it's poor. In fact, only one Hall of Fame outfielder has a career on base percentage below .353, and that's Lou Brock (.343), who played in the
offense-starved 1960s, as did the only two other non-shortstops in the Hall with a career OBP below .340, Brooks Robinson (.322) and Bill Mazeroski (.299), both of whom were also legendary glovemen. (The only two until Gary Carter, that is; Carter's was dragged down at the end to .335). The only Hall of Famers below .350 who got in without playing a key defensive position and playing it well are first basemen Tony Perez (.344) and George Kelly (.342); I've argued before that Perez was a mistake, and Kelly is the Hall's single most indefensible selection.

The low OBP means a lack of runs; Dawson played 21 years at a slugger's position and wound up 78th on the career runs scored list, and 100 runs behind Dwight Evans. Parker is another 100 runs behind Dawson. Together with the high RBI count, we come to a basic fact: there's only one other player really like Andre Dawson. Only one other player with an OBP below .330 had driven in within 200 runs of Dawson (Joe Carter); only two others are within 50 homers (Carter and Dave Kingman). Looked at the other way, only 1 other player with 300 homers and 1500 RBI has a career OBP within 17 points of Dawson's, and that's a shortstop (Ernie Banks). It's simply unprecedented, outside of Joe Carter, to see a guy who was such a big slugger for so long but never got on base. Dawson's OBP was above the league average only six times.

(If you are guessing, by this point, that I think Dwight Evans -- the best defensive player of this group by a fair margin -- got shafted, you're right, but that's another day's argument as well).

Then there's the external factors: The AL in the 80s was higher-scoring than the NL. Murray and Dawson benefited by lasting into the high-flying scoring years that kicked off in 1994, while Rice, Evans and Parker all cut their teeth in the low-scoring pre-1977 era. Rice and Evans played in Fenway, which was at its peak then as a hitters' haven; Murphy benefited tremendously from Fulton County Stadium, while Parker and Murray were largely unaffected by their home fields (Murray played mostly in Baltimore, a neutral park, but also in pitchers' parks in Shea and Dodger Stadium and a few years at the Jake, a good place to hit). Dawson is an odd case: he was a much better player as a fleet-footed center fielder in his Montreal years than as a creaky right fielder with a good arm in his Cubs years, but he was hurt tremendously by Montreal and helped a lot by Wrigley, so the numbers in his later years look better.

How about the peak years? I've long argued that the core of the real Hall of Fame test should be to take the good part of a player's career, and ask two questions: how good was he, and how long did he stay that good? Let's compare Dawson just to Rice, Murphy and Parker, to save time:

* - Rice's numbers are for 1975-86, Murphy for 1980-87, Parker for 1975-80, and Dawson for 1980-91. 1981 counts as 2/3 of a season, since most teams played approximately 108 games that year. I included Parker's less than stellar
1980 campaign here; his numbers are even more staggering if you cut that season out, but by either measure his peak is just too short to stack up to the others, and after 1979 he really only had one outstanding season, in 1985, by which point he was a lumbering slugger with little plate patience and no defensive value whatsoever.

Anyway, you can easily see that Dawson's productivity, even taking account of the park and differences between the AL and NL, is nowhere near Murphy and Parker and doesn't stack up to Rice, the one guy with a peak of similar duration. Even hitting behind Tim Raines for half his prime, he wasn't the RBI force that Rice was, and his runs scored and on base percentages just aren't characteristic of a great player.

Let's look at the rest of Dawson's record. A major feather in Dawson's cap is his MVP award. I can't hope to replicate here Bill James' detailed demolition of this absurd award, but a few points are in order. Dawson's on base percentage that season was .328; the National League's OBP (including pitchers) was .327. Dawson scored 14 fewer runs in 1987 than Ozzie Smith did, and Ozzie didn't hit a home run all year. I guess Dawson beat out Ozzie for the award based on his defense and leadership (Ozzie's team won the pennant). Dawson in 1987 hit almost 90 points higher at Wrigley than on the road, and hit 27 of his 49 homers at home. It was a hot, hot summer in Chicago; Cub rookies Greg Maddux and Jamie Moyer had ERAs of 5.61 and 5.10, respectively, while Jerry Mumphery, Manny Trillo and Bob Dernier posted slugging percentages of .534, .444 and .497, respectively. Mumphery and Trillo were out of baseball by the middle of the following year. (Fun fact: the last place Cubs of that year had five players who will get serious Hall of Fame attention in Dawson, Ryne Sandberg, Lee Smith, Maddux and Rafael Palmiero, plus they had long-time stars Moyer and Rick Sutcliffe).

In fact, Dawson's Cubs teams never won much in part because they got few baserunners and the young players on the team (except Mark Grace) followed Dawson's lead in swinging at anything. Coincidence?

Dawson's Expos teams consistently missed the playoffs despite the presence of an outstanding cast around him, including Gary Carter, Tim Raines and Steve Rogers. Coincidence?

The Cubs finished last with Dawson winning the MVP in the middle of their order. Coincidence?

The year the Cubs did win the division, 1989, Dawson missed 44 games. Coincidence?

The last two franchises Dawson played for were a combined 9 games under .500 in his last season on the roster, and each won the division the next year. Coincidence?

There are a lot of great players who have not been blessed with winning teams. But all that losing, all those close calls - it doesn't exactly give the man an entitlement to the benefit of the doubt for "leadership" and the like where the numbers themselves come up short in making the case for his accomplishments.

What about Dawson's record in the postseason? The postseason should be a big thing for a guy thought of as an inspirational leader. But Andre Dawson in October was hideous, .128 with no homers in two losing efforts in the NLCS. (Dawson hit .300 in the divisional series in 1981, but with no homers and no RBI). In 1981, when Dawson was at his peak - runner-up for the MVP award - the Expos lost an NLCS decided by one run in the last inning of the deciding game. Where was Andre? He didn't drive in a single run the whole series.

Dawson was a good player, for a long time, but not an immortal.

6. RYNE SANDBERG (49.2%)

Sandberg is yet another agonizing choice, and I'll admit that, at this stage, my view is still somewhat impressionistic; I've looked hard at the numbers, but haven't really stacked them up every possible way. Let's start with a few points:

Ten best second basemen of all time? In no particular order, the list has to include Hornsby, Eddie Collins, Joe Morgan, Gehringer, Jackie Robinson, Frisch, and Lajoie (that's 7; I don't count Carew, who's sort of a 2-position guy, while I include Robinson because I give him credit for the fact that the war and the color line kept him from breaking into the majors until he was 28). It'll also have to include Roberto Alomar (I'm not even sure I count Alomar as "active" anymore - I saw a lot of Met games last summer and hardly noticed he was there). That leaves two spots, and a handful of contenders; you could argue for Billy Herman or Bobby Doerr, and I've even had the argument about how Sandberg stacks up to Jeff Kent (answer: Sandberg played about 600 more games than Kent has, and scored 500 more runs under much tougher offensive conditions, plus he never hit behind a guy with a .570 on base percentage, plus he was Ryne Sandberg with the glove, not Jeff Kent), but to me those two spots belong to three players: Craig Biggio, Ryne Sandberg, and Lou Whitaker. Even if you leave Sandberg on the short end of that crowd - as I think I would - that still leaves him just a hair shy of the top ten ever at his position. In most cases, this is a sign of a sure Hall of Famer, although it wasn't even enough to keep Whitaker on the ballot.

Here's another yardstick: I generally assume that each decade will produce at least one player at each position in each league who goes to the Hall of Fame. It's hardly an ironclad rule. Sometimes a position has a wealth of talent, like when 3 of the AL's 8 first basemen were Gehrig, Foxx and Greenberg; sometimes a position is short, as with the NL's best shortstop in the 70s (Dave Concepcion; a team with Concepcion as its best player would finish fifth), or even AL starting pitchers in the 60s (you've got Whitey Ford, really a 50s guy, and Jim Palmer, a 70s guy, but quick, name who was the best AL starter of the 60s? Denny McLain? Sam McDowell? Jim Kaat?). Still, it's a useful way from separating borderline candidates who have a plausible claim (Bid McPhee is the Hall's only 19th century second baseman, for example) and those who don't (you could easily name a first and second team of NL outfielders in the 20s and 30s without mentioning Lloyd Waner or Chick Hafey, and probably without Edd Roush). Who was the second baseman of the 80s? It's gotta be Whitaker in the AL, Sandberg in the NL. Nobody else is close. The scent of Cooperstown grows stronger.

Sandberg has some of the same drawbacks as Jim Rice (benefited from his park, didn't walk much) and Dave Parker and Dale Murphy (a shortage of great seasons - he was really only clearly a Hall of Fame caliber player in six seasons, 1984-85 and 1989-92, and didn't compensate, as Whitaker did, by fantastical consistency and durability). The latter point is my biggest doubt - I always like to ask how many years a guy was a great player, and Sandberg's short on that count. But the standard at his position is not so demanding; counting Carew and Red Schoendienst, there are 16 second basemen in the Hall (from more than 120 years of Major League Baseball), and that group includes 5 guys who didn't play 2100 games in the major leagues (Robinson, Doerr, Johnny Evers, Tony Lazzeri, and Bill Mazeroski), and five who were, at best, barely above-average hitters, with career slugging averages below .400 and on base percentages below .360 (Evers, Mazeroski, Schoendienst, McPhee and Nellie Fox). Sandberg was a wonderful defensive player, and won two division titles as a Cub; he was clearly more than just a bat, and he was a better bat than about half of the players at his position who are now in the Hall. Sure, some of those are lousy selections, but they can't all be that bad. I'd put in Ryno now, and use him to argue in Whitaker later.

7. LEE SMITH (42.3%)
8. RICH GOSSAGE (42.1%)

Do you want to see John Franco in the Hall of Fame? I sure don't, not after watching him on a regular basis for more than a decade. That's enough to make anyone skeptical of career saves as a window to the Hall. Of course, Lee Smith owns the saves record by a mile; he was a remarkably consistent and durable closer, so I'm not ready to say 100% certain that he doesn't belong. But face it: if someone else breaks the record, Smith's credentials don't have much left to them. He just wasn't a huge workhorse (100+ innings three times, one of which produced a 3.65 ERA), and was never unhittable. Given the size of the closer's role, that's not enough.

Goose, I'd elect. In his heyday, he was a totally dominating figure, throwing between 133 and 141.2 innings with an ERA between 1.62 and 2.01 in 1975, 1977 and 1978. Leaving aside his disastrous 1976 foray into starting, when you combine 1975 with 1977-85 he threw at least 79 innings with an ERA below 2.30 seven times in 10 years, and with an ERA below 3.00 eight times. Gossage threw in an 0.77 ERA in 46.2 innings in 1981; the only off year was 1979, when he was his usual self but pitched just 58.1 innings because he broke his hand in a clubhouse fight with Cliff Johnson. And he was better than his ERAs indicate because he was so unhittable entering games with men on base.

The Goose was a classic "fireman" rather than a modern "closer," sometimes riding the bench during easy "save situations" but often entering close games in the seventh or eighth innings with men on base. Twice he averaged more than two innings per game for an entire season (1975 and 1978), and he averaged over 1.5 innings per game in nine of his ten "peak" seasons. He made nine All-Star teams. True, Gossage stuck around too long, but even after 1985 he had ERAs below 3.00 twice plus a 3.12 mark in hitter-happy 1987; he also pitched well in 1993 (at age 41) but had his season ERA ruined (from 3.45 to 4.53) by one horrific outing where LaRussa left him in during a blowout to give up 6 runs in 2/3 of an inning to save the younger arms in the pen.

In short, while Gossage's declining years and early struggles as a starter don't help his reputation, they certainly don't detract from his towering peak. For example, he had a 3.01 ERA in 1809.1 innings, but it was 2.55 in 1366.1 innings if you throw out those four early seasons where they screwed around with him as a starter and 2.93 in 1714.1 innings if you remove his last two seasons.

One little useful fact: from 1977 to 1984, an 8-year span, the Goose's teams exceeded their "Pythagorean Projections" - the number of games they'd be expected to win based on their runs scored and allowed - by 21 games, almost 3 full games a year. The biggest effects came, generally, in some of the seasons when the Goose pitched the most - 1977, 1980, 1984. (Dan Quisenberry has a similar, even more impressive record: for the six seasons of his prime, from 1980 to 1985, the Royals exceeded their Pythagorean record by 20 games.) Bruce Sutter's teams exceeded their Pythagorean records by 19 games over 9 years (1976-84), although the biggest damage (+7) was done when he was a rookie setup man; the numbers break down to +16 for his first three seasons and +3 for the next 6 years when he was mostly used in save situations, albeit with a much heavier workload than the modern closer. Does this prove anything? Logically, you expect teams with great bullpens to win the close ones. It's noteworthy in Gossage's case that the biggest seasons were the ones when he was paired with other good relievers (Kent Tekulve, Ron Davis). I think some studies have shown a slight overall effect for teams with good bullpens (witness the Braves this year), but at a minimum, it's an extra feather in a guy's cap if his team won an unusual number of close games when he owned the 8th and 9th innings.

Lee Smith? -8 games from 1982 to 1995. I don't hold Smith responsible for that, but it's another fact suggesting that his impact on his teams was less significant than guys like Gossage and the Quiz who threw 100-135 IP a year with ERAs in the low 2s and the 1s.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I'm stopping here; next on the list was Bert Blyleven, but with just 29% of the vote he's going to wind up waiting on the Veterans Committee (well, except that his numbers look better every year and in a few more years, Tommy John and Jim Kaat will be gone from the ballot; this was Kaat's last year). (See here for my take on Blyleven, Kaat and John). What you see above is the serious candidates. By my count, I'd have voted in four of them: Eddie Murray, Gary Carter, Ryne Sandberg and Rich Gossage.

I could explain why at length, but I don't really have the time. Here are a few highlights from the numbers:

+Rodriguez led the league in total bases; only one player (Alfonso Soriano) was within 35.

+He led the league in homers and RBI (20 more RBI than Giambi) and was second to Soriano in runs scored (24 more than Thome, 17 more than Miguel Tejada).

OK, some of this is credit for just showing up, since his totals were huge, but then if your shorstop slugs .623, I think you'd like him to be in the lineup every day, and the falloff to using a backup shortstop is fairly steep when he doesn't.

+On the percentage side, he was third in slugging (behind Thome and Ramirez but more than 100 points ahead of Tejada), 8th in OBP (Tejada was 30th, Soriano 48th), fourth in on base plus slugging, and fifth in Runs Created/27 outs (1st in total Runs Created, by the formula).

+He was caught stealing just 4 times and hit into 14 double plays (Giambi hit into 18, Tejada 21, but the fly-ball-or-whiff Thome hit into just 5).

The usual argument, then, erupts over whether you can give the award to Rodriguez, who played for a last place team, as opposed to Thome - no, scratch that, as opposed to Giambi or Miguel Tejada, both of whose teams made the playoffs, despite the obvious fact that neither of them was the best player in the league at his position. Some people have also mentioned Soriano as a candidate, but while Soriano was clearly among the top 10 players in the league, he wasn't on the same elite level as the others offensively (because he was just a point above the league on base percentage) and didn't compensate with especially dazzling glove work (Soriano is no better than, at his best, an average defensive second baseman, and probably less than that).

(Ironically, as Mel Antonen of USAToday notes, it's often the players who prefer to look at the numbers and the writers who go with the argument that "intangibles" that make "winners" are an important factor.)

I've been around the block with this argument before, but it seems like the argument of "most valuable" vs. "best player" is two sides talking past each other; what we really need to start with is asking: most valuable to what? What, exactly, is a baseball team trying to accomplish?

The simple answers are, "win championships," "win baseball games," and "make
money." I'm not in favor, and I don't think most people are in favor, of seeing the award become "most cost-effective player," so we'll stick to performance on the field. To me, the basic goal of any baseball team is to provide entertaining baseball to the fans. Fans pay the bills; fans buy the newspapers full of columns arguing about postseason awards; if the fans don't care about your team, the team is doomed. So, look at it from a fan's perspective: what matters? Well, we're back to "win championships" and "win baseball games," but now we can prioritize the two. Most of us would agree that winning championships, and building towards winning championships, is the more important goal, far more important than the difference between winning 76 games and 83 games. On the other hand, every single season, millions of tickets are sold to fans who come to the park knowing that their team's chances of winning a championship is slim to none, and they'd still like to see some winning baseball. And, it's also true that every year, some teams gear up for a wild card berth even though their odds of a championship might be better, over all, if they stood pat and kept building for the future. We can give some credit there, too, to efforts made to make the postseason generally (and, after all, we saw another example this year where the wild card teams actually had the strongest combination of runs scored and allowed in the regular season, and wound up meeting in the World Series).

So in a close race, it's entirely valid for the number one question to be, which player did the most to push his team towards a championship? Which player played the most games in pennant race conditions, the most close games, and did the best? Not because it's harder to play well under pressure - you could just as easily argue that it's harder to concentrate in blowouts, or harder to hit without adequate protection in your lineup - but because those players were most often in a position to do something that would have value to their teams. On the other hand, the same logic would count out some of the contributions of a player whose team walks off with the pennant, like the Twins; how much did Torii Hunter's contributions in the second half really matter to the AL Central race?

On the other hand, it's silly to just write entirely out of the picture a guy who plays for a bad team. People are still paying to come to the park, and they still want to root, root root for the home team. Baseball doesn't work if we don't ask the cellar-dwellers to keep fighting the good fight; indeed, the integrity of the pennant races depends upon that fact. Even a player on a bad team can have an impact on the pennant race.

If we look at it that way, we have to ask the two questions:

1. Who did the most to help his team win a championship?

This is actually a tough question, because the best player in the league on a competitive team was probably Giambi, who was far and away the better hitter than Tejada. On the other hand, the Yankees also pulled away from the race in the season's last six weeks, while Tejada was still pushing the A's towards the postseason until the very end. I think I'd have to say Giambi, since he was so superior with the bat, but it's close.

2. Who did the most to help his team win baseball games?

Like I said before, this has to be A-Rod. This isn't the 1899 Cleveland Spiders (20-134) we're talking about here; the Rangers won 72 games, including 20 victories against their division rivals, each of whom fought to the finish for a playoff spot. Rodriguez was instrumental in the victories the Rangers did have, and he hit well against the contenders: .290/.650/.412 against the rest of the AL West, including 21 homers, 50 runs and 50 RBI in 58 games, and .291/.663/.378 against the Yankees, Red Sox and Twins.

Where do I come out? Regular readers won't be surprised that, on this one, I still come out for Rodriguez, who's been repeatedly shafted in the MVP voting in years past. Yes, he spent his season just trying to win games, not pennants. But I just don't see the race for "best player" as even close enough to swing the balance to Giambi or Tejada on the basis of having played in more meaningful games. It's not even remotely plausible, for example, to argue that the A's were better with Tejada than they would have been with Rodriguez, and if the MVP can't pass that laugh test at his own position, you really can't get carried away with the extra credit he gets for playing in more situations where he can push his team towards a championship.

My ballot would be:

1. Alex Rodriguez
2. Jason Giambi
3. Jim Thome
4. Miguel Tejada
5. Magglio Ordonez
6. Bernie Williams
7. Alfonso Soriano
8. John Olerud
9. Mike Sweeney
10. Nomar Garciaparra

(No starting pitchers this year - nobody stood out far enough or worked enough innings).

Hernandez wasn't the Giants' best pitcher this season; in fact, he was the worst, just the fourth pitcher with a losing record to start a deciding Game 7 (after Hal Gregg in 1947, John Matlack in 1973, and most famously Johnny Podres in 1955 - only Podres won). Reuter, meanwhile, posted a 3.23 ERA this season, best on the team and 9th in the National League (actually, neither pitcher was as good as his ERA, but Reuter was clearly the better of the two in the regular season). Why did Dusty Baker do this? The answer is obvious: because Hernandez had a great career postseason record, 6-0 with a 2.84 ERA entering the series. (Reuter has a good postseason record too, but not nearly as long). The problem, as Joe Buck pointed out after the wheels came off in Game 7, was that Hernandez compiled the bulk of that record in 1997. Hernandez has carried an appallingly heavy workload in the 5 years since then, and unlike his brother, he hasn't exactly stayed in the greatest of physical condition. As a result, his effectiveness has diminished steadily since he entered the league.

I haven't studied this scientifically, but even before 2002, the history of postseason baseball was just littered with examples of great postseason pitchers who were asked to go out and recapture the magic, and found out that it was gone. Some were just guys who couldn't stay unbeaten, but others, like Hernandez, were guys who were asked to take the hill, in place of better pitchers, and failed misreably:

1911-13: Christy Mathewson established himself as the first World Series legend in 1905, throwing three complete-game shutouts in six days. He pitched very well in the 1911-13 World Serieses as well -- a 1.44 ERA -- but just didn't get the run support, and wound up 2-5 for the rest of his World Series career.

1914: Chief Bender was the great clutch pitcher of Connie Mack's "$100,000 infield" A's in the early teens, 6-3 with a 1.92 ERA in four Serieses. In 1914, Bender got bombed for six runs (a ton in those dead-ball era days) on the way to a shocking sweep by the "Miracle" Boston Braves.

1925: Stan Coveleski dominated the 1920 World Series, winning three starts with an 0.67 ERA. He couldn't repeat the trick in 1925, losing both of his starts.

1928: Grover Alexander made one of the World Series' most enduring memories when, after throwing a masterful complete game victory in Game 6, he came out of the bullpen the next day to strike out Tony Lazzeri in a key situation in the seventh inning of Game 7, and went on to finish off the game. Two years later, the 41-year-old Alexander got hammered by the Yankees in a Game Two start and Game Four relief appearance, to the tune of 10 hits and 11 earned runs in 5 innings of work.

1932: Burleigh Grimes was 17-9 at age 37 in 1931, and capped the season by throwing a pair of well-pitched victories to help the Cardinals upset the mighty A's in the World Series. The following year, Grimes suffered through a dismal regular season - 6-11, 4.78 ERA - but was the first man out of the bullpen in Game One of the series, while it was still close. Grimes got pulverized by the Yankees in Game One and to finish off the deciding Game 5, tagged for 7 runs in 2.2 innings.

1938: Dizzy Dean was THE story of the 1934 season, winning 30 games, and in the World Series he was masterful, winning Games One and Seven and posting a 1.73 ERA. Four years later, the Cubs asked a sore-armed Dean (who had been spectacular when healthy that season) to start Game Two and relieve in Game Four. The Yankees reached him for 6 runs in 8.1 innings; like Alexander and Grimes, he was all but finished after that.

1940: Schoolboy Rowe was no Series legend, but he pitched well in the Tigers' 1934 and 1935 World Series appearances, posting a 2.79 ERA and completing all four of his starts. In 1940, he was effective in the regular season, but horrendous in the World Series, gatting chased after 3 innings in Game Two and not even lasting the first inning in Game Six. The damage: 3.2 IP, 12 hits, 7 earned runs.

1947: Dodgers manager Burt Shotton gives the Game 7 ball to Gregg, 4-5 with a 5.87 ERA that season, almost entirely because he was the only Dodger pitcher (other than relief ace Hugh Casey) to pitch effectively in the 1947 Series. Gregg is chased in the fourth inning.

1948: Not a postseason moment, but one of the most controversial pitching selections in the game's history came when Red Sox manager Joe McCarthy asked journeyman Denny Galehouse (8-8, 4.00 ERA that season, counting the final start) to start a one-game playoff against the Indians with the season on the line, in preference to the younger, less experienced but more talented Mel Parnell (15-8, 3.14 ERA; Parnell would win 25 games the next season). McCarthy may have been influenced by Galehouse's heroics in the 1944 World Series against the vaunted Cardinals, baseball's only real intact team during the war years. Galehouse threw a complete game 2-1 victory in Game 1 and lost a 2-0 squeaker (going the distance again) in Game 5 that fall, striking out 15.

1957-58: Casey Stengel gives the Game Seven ball to Don Larsen, hardly the Yankees' ace, two years running, no doubt in part due to Larsen's 1956 perfect game. In 1957, Larsen gets chased in the third inning. He also doesn't make the fourth inning in 1958, although I don't have the box score handy, and it appears he was pitching well and Casey pinch hit for him. Lew Burdette, the hero of the 1957 series, starts three times in 1958, and walks away with 7-0 and 6-2 losses in Games Five and Seven.

1959: The Dogers start Podres in Games One and Six; he doesn't lose, but is roughed up for 5 runs and 13 baserunners in 9.1 innings (Podres would pitch well again in 1963).

1963-64: 0-3 and a 5.71 ERA in three starts for Whitey Ford, who had pitched brilliantly in numerous prior World Serieses, winning 10 games.

1968: Hardly a blowout, but Bob Gibson, after dominating opponents in seven straight World Series victories, loses 4-1 in the deciding Game 7.

1977-78: Catfish Hunter goes 1-2 with a 5.40 ERA in the postseason, including surrendering 3 homers in one game to George Brett.

1988: Ron Darling pitched wonderfully in many big pennant race games for the Mets in 1984, 1985 and 1987, and in the 1986 World Series. Given the ball in Game 7 of the 1988 NLCS, Darling gets chased in the second inning.

1990, 1992, 1993, 1996: Danny Jackson was one of the heroes of the 1985 Royals, winning Game Five of the ALCS with the team down 3-1, and again winning Game Five of the World Series with the team down 3-1. Jackson's postseason record was ugly after that, including thrashings in the 1990 and 1993 World Series and in Game Two of the 1992 NLCS. In several of those cases, he was picked to start over pitchers with better regular season records. Dave Stewart, who recovered from the nightmare of losing the first two games of the NLDS in 1981 to become a big-time "money pitcher," also gets shelled in the 1993 World Series.

1992: Was there a better big-game pitcher than Jack Morris in 1984 and 1991? Only the fourth-best starter on the Blue Jays in the regular season, Morris is nonetheless picked by Cito Gaston as Game One starter in both the ALCS and the World Series, and walks away 0-3 with a 7.43 ERA.

1996-97: Orel Hershiser dominated the postseason as he had dominated the regular season in 1988, and after his sterling performance in the 1995 postseason, Hershiser's reputation as a big-game ace was cemented. But Hershiser was ineffective in the 1996 ALDS, and then on the big stage of the 1997 World Series, he was terrible, pounded for 13 earned runs in 10 innings in starts in Games One and Five (Hershiser would pitch better in 1999 for the Mets out of the bullpen).

There are plenty of more recent examples of guys who had their highs and their lows in the postseason - Kevin Brown, Al Leiter, Randy Johnson, David Wells, John Smoltz. Postseason success can be a fleeting thing. In the end, your best pitcher is usually your best bet.

Look back at the statistics from Fernando Valenzuela's rookie season, when he won both the Rookie of the Year and Cy Young Awards and was fifth in the MVP voting, and you'll see a very good pitcher in a strike-shortened season; but if you're not old enough to remember 1981, you may wonder what the fuss was about. In 25 starts, Valenzuela went 13-7 with a 2.48 ERA, good for second in the league in wins and seventh in ERA, although he did lead the league in innings (192.1) and strikeouts (180).

But one number hints at the real story: 8 complete-game shutouts. In 25 starts.

In 1980, Fernando, then "19" years old (my mom thought he was 40 when she first saw him), came up at the end of a season when the Dodgers were in an insanely tight pennant race, one that ended with a 1-game playoff, which the Dodgers lost to the Astros. He made his debut on September 15, and pitched so well that Tommy Lasorda used him 10 times in relief down the stretch, 6 of them for 2 innings or more. Over the season's last nine games, including the playoff, Fernando pitched 6 times, throwing 10 scoreless innings, finishing four games - including two wins and a save - striking out 9 while allowing four hits. He pitched 2 innings in the last scheduled game of the season against the Astros (the Dodgers won to force the playoff, with Don Sutton making one of just 4 relief appearances he would make between 1969 and 1988 to get the save), and 2 more in the playoff. The final numbers: 10 games, 0.00 ERA, 17.2 IP, 8 hits, 5 walks, 16 K. 16 straight scoreless innings after allowing 2 unearned runs in his debut.

In 1981, the Dodgers decided to put the Mexican phenom in the rotation and let Sutton and his 230 career victories walk as a free agent. To the Astros, no less. Lasorda turned up the heat and the hype even further by naming the rookie to start Opening Day at home against Houston and Joe Neikro.

He threw a 5-hit shutout, and won 2-0. In his second start, Fernando tossed another complete game victory at Candlestick, striking out 10 Giants and allowing just a run on 4 hits. In his third start, another 2-0 victory, a 5-hit, no-walk, 10-K blanking of the Padres in San Diego. Oh, and he went 2-for-4 at the plate. Start #4 was on to the Astrodome to face the defending division champs again; Fernando went the distance on a 1-0 victory, striking out 11, and added two hits and the game's only RBI for good measure. Start #5 was back home against the Giants, and another complete game shutout; Fernando also had 3 hits and drove in the go-ahead run. In Start #6, in Montreal, Fernando went 9 innings again, allowing one run, and left with the game tied 1-1; the Dodgers scored 5 in the tenth for another victory. I first saw him that season in Start #7, matched up at Shea against Mike Scott, who pitched what looked (until 1986) like the best game he'd ever throw; the Dodgers got just a single run off Scott, but Fernando went the distance yet again, winning 1-0. Here's his record at that point:

1981: 7-0, 0.29 ERA, 7 starts, 7 CG, 5 shutouts, 63 IP, 40 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 0 HR, 16 BB, 61 K. On the season, he was also hitting .318.

Career: 9-0, 0.22 ERA, 80.2 IP, 48 H, 4 R, 2 ER, 0 HR, 21 BB, 77 K.

He had already posted scoreless inning streaks of 35.2 innings AND 32.2 innings - in a career spanning just over 80 innings of work. He had beaten mostly good teams, and he had come out ahead in an exceptional run of close,
low-scoring games. He had pitched in pennant race pressure, and he had taken the place of a Hall of Famer on Opening Day. (You can check my source, the game-by-game breakdown of his season at Retrosheet).

In his next start, Fernando went the distance on a 3-hitter for a 3-2 nail-biter against the then-mighty Expos, scattering a pair of solo homers, the first two of his career, to go 8-0. This raised the Dodgers' record to 23-9 and their division lead to 5.5 games; by Fernando's next start, they were 26-9, and only the Big Red Machine, in its last hurrah, was within 7 games of them.

The effect of all this was electrifying. Fernando was everywhere, and between the shutouts and the hitting and his eccentric, roll-the-eyes-to-heaven delivery, he was being compared to a cross between Sandy Koufax, Babe Ruth and Mark Fidrych. His first home start after the three straight victories on the road drew more than 49,000 fans to a Monday night game at Dodger Stadium, followed by a crowd of over 46,000 in Montreal (granted, between 1979 and 1983, the Expos were never lower than fourth in the league in attendance), almost 40,000 for a Friday night game against a dismal Mets team, 53,000 for a Thursday night game in LA, and 52,000 for a Monday night game in LA against the Phillies. Not all of his starts were packed, and attendance would be off later in the year following the strike, but there was no question that, especially among LA's huge Mexican-American population, Fernando was a big draw.

You may think of Clemente and Juan Marichal as the trailblazers for Latin American ballplayers - you could even go back as far as Dolf Luque, the "Pride of Havana," in the 1920s - but those guys blazed it with little company. It was Fernando more than anybody who really represented the turning of the tide to Latin American players as commonplace in the game; more than that, it was the marketing potential tapped by Fernando that helped teams overcome the fear that Latino players wouldn't be popular.

Valenzuela cooled off eventually, with some rough outings in late May and early June, and by the end of May his batting average, as high as .360 at one point, fell below .300. He would have some more spectacular successes late in the season, have several more great years including a 21-win season in 1986, and earn a deserved reputation as a great big-game pitcher with a 5-1 record and 1.98 ERA in six postseason serieses, including three wins en route to the Dodgers' 1981 World Championship. By age '25,' he had won 99 major league games; eventually, though, he broke down from severe overuse by Tommy Lasorda, which you can see in the 1981 records as well as the stretch in late 1987 when Lasorda left a struggling Valenzuela on the mound to throw 150 pitches in three consecutive starts, followed by a complete game, followed by a 10-inning complete game. Last I heard, he's still pitching somewhere in Mexico; who knows if he'll be back again someday for one of the abortive comebacks he's pursued for the last 14 years. We probably never will know how old he actually is.

But all that is epilogue. If you want a "moment" when a new arrival turned
the baseball world on its ear -- well, there's Jackie Robinson, and there's
everybody else. But aside from Robinson, even the likes of Ichiro, Fred
Lynn, Karl Spooner and Harry Krause paled in comparison to Fernandomania.

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FUN FACT: Fernando has hardly been the only Latin American pitcher to star
in the postseason. Before Livan Hernandez' shellacking in Game 3 of the
Series, ten Cuban-born pitchers had appeared in the postseason, with a
combined record of 23-9 with a 2.70 ERA in 296.1 IP spread over 38
postseason serieses. Only two Cuban-born pitchers had a losing record in
the postseason: Camilo Pascual and Diego Segui, each 0-1. The bulk of the
pitching has been done by Orlando Hernandez (9-3, 2.51), Mike Cuellar (4-4,
2.85), Livan (6-0, 2.84 through the 2002 NLCS) and Luis Tiant (3-0, 2.86),
with honorable mention to Luque (1-0, 9.1 scoreless IP).

1. Valleys Are At Least As Important As Peaks
Look over the Angels lineup, and the striking thing is not strength but the absence of weakness. The average AL team scored 4.81 runs/game this season. The Angels scored 5.25, fourth in the AL but really in a 4-way knot of teams behind the Yankees at 5.57. STATS, Inc. does runs created per 27 outs calculations, which have some fancy math but are basically a well-established estimate of what a team of 9 of this guy would score. They're not perfect - the stat takes little note of baserunning other than steals and caught stealing, and doesn't adjust for park effects - but it's been proven in multiple ways to be a highly accurate estimate, and takes account of the whole spectrum of offensive accomplishments, like GIDP and HBP.

12 Angels batted more than 100 times this season, and only two of them created less than 4.7 runs per 27 outs: Darin Erstad, a little under the average at 4.4 on account of the fact that he hit for no power (10 HR, 28 2B), didn't draw walks (27 in more than 650 plate appearances), and didn't compensate by hitting over .300; and Bengie Molina, the one weak link at 2.7. (If you're wondering, the team leaders were Tim Salmon at 7.3, Brad Fullmer at 7.0 and Garret Anderson at 6.3 - nobody in the range of Bernie Williams (7.8) or Jason Giambi (9.9)).

How 'bout the Giants? Well, the average NL team scored 4.45 runs/game; the Giants scored 4.83, third in the league. Among the Giants' 7 regulars - the guys with 400+ at bats -- four ranged between 4.1 (Rich Aurillia) and 4.7 (David Bell), and Reggie Sanders at 5.1 isn't very far ahead. The one weak link is Tsuyoshi Shinjo, 3.8 over 362 at bats, and he's batted just once in the postseason. 8 other Giants have batted between 100-200 times, and again only two (Shawon Dunston at 2.6 and Pedro Feliz at 3.1) are truly non-hitters, while the tops is Kenny Lofton at 5.3.

But the Giants do have one top offensive star -- 2000 NL MVP Jeff Kent at 7.4, a bigger number in an NL pitcher's park than, say, Salmon's production - and Barry Bonds at 21.4. (Yeah, you read that right, a team of Barry Bondses would score over 21 runs a game).

Turn to the rest of the squads, and it's the same story. Of the guys who have started games in the postseason for these teams, none is a true superstar, and the biggest star is probably Jarrod Washburn. Not exactly Maddux, Schilling or Mussina here. But the highest ERAs are Kevin Appier (3.92) and Livan Hernandez (4.38, but 6-0 lifetime in the postseason). Virtually all of the two teams' relievers have been effective.

The lesson: sometimes, the way to win pennants is by removing weaknesses as much as creating strengths. It's not glamorous work, but in a game that requires a team to use 18-20 players in large or important roles on a regular basis, it adds up.

2. Just Showing Up Is Half The Battle
Check the numbers above: 7 Giants batted more than 400 times, and the low man in at bats in the group was Bonds, who also drew 198 walks. NINE Angels topped 400 at bats. Besides 4 starts for rookie Kurt Ainsworth, the same five guys started all of the Giants' games; the Angels replaced Scott Schoenweis (who went to the bullpen) with rookie John Lackey in mid-season, and those two and the other four top starters made all but 7 turns for the Halos. Anaheim had 5 relievers with at least 37 appearances, the Giants six. These teams were remarkably healthy all season, and they were rewarded.

The emblem for both the Angels' health and consistency is Garret Anderson. Statistical analysts of the game have labored long and hard to get more attention for productivity stats like slugging average and on base percentage, and less emphasis on the traditional Triple Crown of Batting-HR-RBI. Anderson, who tends to do well in the Triple Crown categories while hitting for only middling power (in comparison to his vast accumulation of plate appearances) and rarely walking, has thus been a target of (justified) scorn for analysts for some time. But a little balance is sometimes in order as well, and if anybody embodies the idea that you can be a good outfielder without a good on base percentage, without hitting 30 homers regularly, it's Anderson. Yes, Anderson had just a .332 on base percentage, just one point above the league average, which is dismal for an outfielder, particularly one who sometimes plays in the outfield corners. But against that, set this:

-- Anderson has never hit below .285 in his major league career and has had more than 180 hits 6 years running +Anderson has stayed healthy enough to ring up more than 640 plate appearances seven years in a row.

-- Except for 2001, Anderson's slugging average has gone up every year, and has been above .450 five years in a row

-- Anderson hit between 33 and 41 doubles 6 years straight, and then went up to 56 this season, pushing his slugging % to a career-high .539

-- Anderson's LOWS over the past 3 seasons: 28 homers, 117 RBI

-- Add to that, Anderson has grounded into just 23 double plays over the last 2 seasons (1382 plate appearances), while hitting with enough men on base to drive in 246 runs

-- He's a solid fielder who can play anywhere in the outfield as needed.

In short: consistency, durability, flexibility, athleticism, growth over time, and a good batting average. Not a recipe for greatness, but Anderson's a guy you can write in the lineup and forget about, and that's a virtue that shouldn't be underestimated.

(The anti-Garret Anderson would probably be Jeremy Giambi, a wonderful, high-OBP hitter with power who is slow as all get out, has no defensive position, has had various nagging injuries, and has twice been traded by teams that hated his attitude).

Lesson: having the best team on the field starts with having the whole team on the field at once.

3. They Call It "Prime" For A Reason
Neither of these teams is young, but the Angels have avoided aging veterans (including dumping Mo Vaughn, bringing in a younger replacement for Gary DiSarcina, and even trading Jim Edmonds for Adam Kennedy), avoided too many rookies, and wound up with a team in its prime. There are just 2 nonpitchers on the postseason roster over 30 - Tim Salmon's 34, and reserve outfielder Orlando Palmiero's 33 - but also only one (pinch runner Chone Figgins, age 24) under 26. The pitching staff is a bit older, but only John Lackey (23) and Francisco Rodriguez (20) are under 27, while only Kevin Appier (34) and Troy Percival (33) are over 32. The Giants are heavy on pitchers in their prime, although they are also very dependent on hitters who are quite long in the tooth (Bonds, Lofton, Santiago, Kent and Sanders are all 34 and up). Lesson: the Angels, at least, don't have gobs of big-name talent, but except for Salmon and maybe the still-developing Troy Glaus, everybody on the team is as good as they will ever be.

4. Never Stop Tinkering
This season, we can call this the "Rodriguez principle,' and it has two sides. On the one hand, the Angels had a fabulous bullpen; but they didn't rest on their laurels when provided the opportunity to add flamethrowing rookie Francisco Rodriguez. On the other, the Giants were getting just killed by Felix Rodriguez, but they didn't give up on him, and he wound up hot at the end of the year when he finally got his control down. In either case, the team could have been tempted to just look at who had pitched well this season and pushed the Rodriguezes off as projects for next year. Lesson: what matters is who is hot in October, not who had a good first half.

5. Hitting Like Babe Ruth Never Hurt Anybody
OK, this one's not so easy to imitate . . . I won't belabor this point, which has been made elsewhere, but Barry Bonds is the first player to scale the heights that Babe Ruth scaled with the bat in the early 1920s (Ted Williams was close, and for all we know Williams may have peaked as a hitter in 1944, but he wasn't quite Ruth), with on base percentages way above .500 and a slugging average in the .800 range. Obviously, that makes a big difference.

6. Dump Your Problems At Shea
A small point . . . the Giants upgraded to Jason Schmidt after trading away the erratic, frustrating Shawn Estes; the Angels cleared out the unhappy ballast of Mo Vaughn. Both wound up with the Mets. Not that I'm bitter . . .

Then, just as badly as things started, they turned around. The Giants ripped off 17 straight wins on a stunning 19-1 road trip, ending the month of May just 1.5 games behind the Dodgers, and second in the league in both runs scored and fewest runs allowed. During the 19-1 run the team scored 5.65 runs/game while allowing just 2.15/game. I couldn't find individual stats for each period, but in the 2-13 run, the Giants were 2-3 with Jeff Tesreau starting, 0-2 with Fred Anderson starting, 0-2 with Pol Perritt starting, 0-2 with Emilio Palmero (who finished the season with an 8.04 ERA) starting, 0-2 with Sailor Stroud starting, 0-1 with Rube Benton starting and 0-1 with Christy Mathewson starting. Not a very stable starting rotation, although early season rain may explain some of this. On the road trip, Anderson started 5 times, Perritt (who started the team's only loss) and Benton 4 times each, Tesreau and Mathewson 3 times, and Stroud once, for something closer to a set 5-man rotation.

But the road trip, largely against the league's lesser teams (as opposed to 5 games against the Dodgers and 5 against the Phillies in the opening 15), would be the last hurrah for the old Giants. From June 1 through September 6, the team went 38-48-2 (ties happened in those days, when games would be called for darkness), scoring 3.27 runs/game while allowing 3.67. This time, the hitting was the major culprit. Merkle hit .237 with the Giants; Doyle, the 1912 MVP and still an offensive force in 1915, fell off to .268. Neither one of them did much else besides hit singles. Rariden, the new catcher, finished the season at .222 with just 13 extra base hits, and McKechnie hit .246. Kauff finished at .264, a far cry from his Federal League exploits, and George Burns, one young star from the 1913 team, wasn't much better, although both provided some power, steals and walks.

On the pitching front, the team's old faithful ace, Christy Mathewson, had also broken down for good. After the hot May road swing in which he'd figured in the rotation ended, Matty started a 6-4 defeat June 2 and a 4-0 defeat June 14, and would never start another game in a Giant uniform. Entering action on July 20, the Giants' record in games started by the various starters was as follows:

Tesreau (7-8)
Anderson (8-7)
Perritt (8-7)
Benton (7-5)
Mathewson (3-3)
Stroud (1-2)
Rube Schauer (1-2)
Palmero (0-2)
Ferdie Schupp (1-0)

Not much to choose from here in cleaning house, but Stroud, Schauer and Palmero wouldn't start another game the rest of the year, and on July 20, McGraw made a wrenching break with the past, trading Mathewson to the Reds (who would make him the manager; he barely pitched again) along with McKechnie and the young Edd Roush (who hated McGraw) for 30-year-old Buck Herzog (an old favorite of McGraw's from the 1911-13 team, even though they couldn't stand each other either) and Cincinnati's 31-year-old left fielder, Red Killefer. Herzog was installed at third for the moment, and Killefer (who was batting .244) was sent straight to the bench; he would bat only twice for the Giants. Inserted into the starting rotation on was Schupp, who had made his first start July 13. Three days later, the Reds sold McGraw another starter, 31-year-old Slim Sallee, for $10,000. Basically, the Reds were dumping salaried veterans in favor of younger players, and gaining a manager in the deal.

Schupp and Sallee would be the most important keys to the Giants' revival, pitching as well as any two pitchers have pitched over the season's final two months. Schupp would make 11 starts (including 4 shutouts) and 19 relief appearances on the season, registering a microscopic 0.90 ERA in 140.1 innings. Sallee, struggling along at 5-5 with a way-above-league 3.47 ERA with the Reds, would post a 1.37 ERA with the Giants. Their combined stats with New York: 18-7, 1.11 ERA in 252 IP, 6.25 H/9IP, 1.68 BB/9IP, 4.32 K/9IP, and just 3 home runs allowed. From July 20 to the end of the season, the Giants' record by starter was as follows:

Tesreau (10-6)
Benton (8-6-2)
Perritt (10-2-1)
Anderson (5-6)
Sallee (7-4)
Schupp (7-3)
George Smith (1-0)

The primary starters in the 26-game winning streak would be Tesreau and Schupp, each starting 6 times. Opposing teams would score just 3 runs in Schupp's 6 starts during the streak, 10 runs in Tesreau's six starts during the streak (1.67 runs/game), and just 27 runs in Pol Perritt's last 13 starts of the season (2.08 runs/game).

So, the pitching was in place; now for the offense. Still languishing hopelessly in fourth place in late August, McGraw shipped Merkle to the Dodgers for backup catcher Lew McCarty, age 27 (same as Merkle but with less mileage), on August 20. On August 28, he dealt Doyle, the team's biggest star, with little-used Herb Hunter and Merwin Jacobson to the Cubs for disgruntled 29-year-old third baseman Heinie Zimmerman (a solid hitter but a player whose glove work was so poorly regarded that he finished sixth in the MVP voting when he won the Triple Crown in 1912) and reserve shortstop Mickey Doolan. Although Zimmerman was less than spectacular, the overhaul could scarcely have worked better. Here's what the Giants' starting lineup now looked like; the new additions are listed in CAPS with their final season numbers (Avg/Slg/OBP) with New York:

C LEW McCARTY (age 27) .397/.559/.453
1B WALTER HOLKE (23) .351/.423/.390
2B BUCK HERZOG (30) .261/.325/.326
SS Art Fletcher (31)
3B HEINIE ZIMMERMAN (29) .272/.298/.304
OF George Burns (26)
OF Benny Kauff (26)
OF Dave Robertson (26)

On September 6, 1916, the Giants spilt a doubleheader with the Dodgers, Rube Benton starting both ends and losing the second game to Marquard. New York stood 59-62, 12.5 games behind the third-place Braves, 13 games behind the second place Dodgers and 13.5 behind the defending champion Phillies. But the Giants had one big ace in the hole: they were now 3 games into a 31-game homestand. And another: a 19-game stretch of that was against the league's three weak sisters, the Reds, Cubs and Cardinals, from whom McGraw had taken Herzog, Sallee, Perritt, Zimmerman, and Benton over the prior year. And then they got hot. Over the next 27 games, the Giants strangled their opponents, scoring 122 runs (4.52/game) while allowing just 33 (1.22/game). Only three of the wins in the Giants' streak were by 1 run, and one of those was a shutout by Schupp, although there was also the one tie (a 1-1 duel between Perritt and Hall of Famer Burleigh Grimes) to mar the streak. Besides the weak teams, the Giants swept 4 straight from the Phillies, beating Hall of Famers Grover Alexander, Eppa Rixey and Chief Bender in the process, and 3 straight from the Braves before Sallee lost 8-3 to the Braves in the second game of a September 30 twin bill to snap the streak; a win would have finally pushed them past Boston into third place. On the morning of October 1, the Giants woke up 4.5 games back of the Phillies and Dodgers (with the Phils leading by percentage points) with four games in Brooklyn left to play. Schupp, Benton, Sallee and Tesreau started those 4, but Benton's and Tesreau's starts went badly, the Giants were shut out by Jack Coombs in the game Schupp started, and the Dodgers took 3 of 4 while the Braves took 4 of 6 from Philadelphia for the pennant. The magic was gone. In the meantime, though, McGraw's outlays of cash had paid off; the Giants' attendance was the best in the NL, recovering nearly to the 1911-13 levels from a horrible slump in the Federal League years. 26-game winning streaks at home have a way of doing that.

There are three postscripts to the 1916 run, two good, one unsavory. First, despite the speed with which the team came together, McGraw's men were no flash in the pan; they would go on to dominate the National League in 1917, leading the league in scoring, ERA and Fielding Percentage and winning the pennant by 10 games with basically the same lineup that ran the table in September 1916, except that Rariden won back most of the catching job, Anderson (who started 3 times during the streak) spent about half the year in the bullpen, and McGraw brought back Al Demaree. Kauff, Burns and Zimmerman would all hit around .300, while Schupp, Perritt and Sallee combined to go 56-21 with an ERA just a hair under 2.00. Perhaps just as amazingly as the fact that this hastily constructed team turned into a powerhouse is the fact that McGraw then tore it apart within the next two years and built a whole new team around young talent, starting with the arrival of Ross Youngs in 1918 and the emergence over the next two seasons of Frankie Frisch, George Kelly, as well as the acquisition of Jesse Barnes and Art Nehf from the Braves and Dave Bancroft from the Phillies' fire sale.

The sadder, seamier part may be connected to why (other than Schupp hurting his arm) McGraw had to rebuild the team, and perhaps even to why so many of these players were available in the first place: too many of them were crooks. The Giants lost the 1917 World Series to the Chicago White Sox of Shoeless Joe Jackson and Eddie Cicotte, and there have long been rumors (unsubstantiated, as far as I know) that that series, as well, was fixed, perhaps by the same New York-based gamblers who reached the Black Sox two years later. Zimmerman and Kauff, two of the team's best 3 hitters, hit .120 and .160 in the series. Both men would be banned from baseball a few years later for their involvement in various scandals, including links to the 1919 fix, as well as Kauff's indictment for auto theft (he was acquitted). The White Sox had shown a propensity for corruption already, as they were accused of making payoffs to other AL teams to lay down during the 1917 race. Rube Benton, who (along with McCarty) failed to cover home plate in a rundown as Eddie Collins scored the winning run of the deciding game of the 1917 World Series, was banned from the National League in 1922, and Benton alleged that Zimmerman, Hal Chase and Herzog had tried to bribe him to throw a game in 1919. Herzog and Merkle both left major league baseball under a cloud in 1920. (As far as I know, nobody has ever accused Slim Sallee of anything, but Sallee pitched terribly in the 1917 Series and much more effectively for the Reds in the 1919 series, including winning one of the games thrown by Lefty Williams.) Apparently not satisfied with such a team, McGraw went out and got Chase in 1918, after Christy Mathewson's illness rendered him unavailable to press charges that Chase had thrown games under Mathewson's eyes with the Reds. McGraw testified as a character witness for Chase, who was basically the ringleader of many of the fixes of that era and was persona non grata in baseball after 1920.

As a result, it's hard to draw too many lessons from this story. The main lesson is the genius of John McGraw; acting as his team's manager, GM and primary scout, he used both his substantial baseball acumen and his team's deep pockets to repeatedly rebuild his team on the fly, playing the hot hands and importing needed veterans while at the same time breaking in numerous young talents who would be keys to his team's ongoing success. On the other hand, McGraw clearly had some financial advantages over his competitors, and you have to wonder how he was so blind to the dishonesty pervading his roster. Was he in denial? Perhaps, as a man who liked to play the horses himself, he believed that players who ran with gamblers off the field could still be trusted to play to win? The answer is lost to history. But we know this much: from 1914 to 1917, John McGraw led the fans of his Giants on one heck of a ride.

A little history is in order. The Giants became one of the National League's perennial powerhouse franchises shortly after the turn of the 20th century when, in short succession, three significant things happened: In 1900 they traded their burned-out superstar pitcher, Amos Rusie, to the Reds for 19-year-old Christy Mathewson; Andrew Freedman, the penurious megalomaniac whose salary disputes with Rusie had ruined the previous decade, sold the team to John T. Brush; and in 1902, John J. McGraw abandoned the Baltimore Orioles of the American League (who would move to New York to become the predecessor of the Yankees the following year) to manage the Giants, bringing with him Joe McGinnity, Roger Bresnahan and a few other players. By 1904-05, the Giants had seized control of the National League.

Perhaps McGraw's best team, and certainly his favorite, was the Giants team that won three straight pennants from 1911-13 and lost three straight World Serieses, at least one of them (1912) in exceptionally heartbreaking fashion. That team was built around a fast, agressive young lineup, plus hard-hitting veteran catcher John 'Chief' Meyers, with the pitching staff balanced between two young stars (Rube Marquard and Jeff Tesreau) and three veterans (Mathewson, still one of the league's premier pitchers, and Hooks Wiltse and Red Ames).

If the Giants thought they had heartbreak in 1908 (the Fred Merkle incident) and 1912, though, they were in for even more in 1914, when the team was 52-33 on July 29, and 58-40 with a 6 1/2 game lead on August 12, and in sole possession of first place as late as September 4, but went 32-37 down the stretch while the Boston Braves (who had been in last place in the 8-team NL as late as July 18) finished the season on a 68-19 tear to become the "Miracle Braves," the first real 'Cinderella' team in the history of pro sports, and run off with the pennant by 10.5 games.

The Giants' collapse was partially just bad performances in close games: over the team's last 71 games, in which they went 32-37 with 2 ties, the Giants actually outscored their opponents 272-248, which should have been expected to produce 38 or 39 wins. But a six-game swing wouldn't have been enough to make the difference anyway, and wasn't enough to explain an 84-win season by a team that had won 99, 103 and 101 games in 1911, 1912 and 1913. The Giants' offense dropped off from 4.7 runs/game to 3.8 runs/game over those last 71 games, and while they still led the league in scoring, McGraw must have seen that he needed more sock. So, in January 1915, he made a disastrous panic move: he dealt the team's weakest hitter, 20-year-old third baseman Milt Stock, to the sixth-place Phillies along with underachieving pitcher Al Demaree, age 28 (13-4, 2.21 ERA in 1913, 10-17, 3.09 ERA in 1914) and 24-year-old backup catcher Bert Adams for 33-year-old third baseman Hans Lobert, who had batted .327 in 1912, .300 in 1913, and .275 in 1914. You can see where this was headed, but uncharacteristically, McGraw didn't. Lobert would hit a punchless .251 in 1915 on the way to losing his job, while Stock and Demaree would play small roles in the Phillies' leap to the 1915 pennant and Stock would eventually mature into a solid player, hitting over .300 five times between 1919 and 1925.

The bigger problem was the pitching, which had fallen in 1914 to sixth in the league in ERA. At age 33, Mathewson's ERA had jumped a full run to 3.00 in 1914 (above the league average) after having ERAs ranging from 1.14 to 2.12 every year for the prior 7 seasons, he allowed more than a hit per inning, allowed twice as many homers as his career high, and struck out just 80 men in 312 innings. Marquard saw his ERA also rise above 3.00, and he went 12-22 after three seasons of 24-7, 26-11 and 23-10. While Tesreau had another fine season, the decline in the team's two stars combined with Demaree's slide left the Giants' staff weak. McGraw responded with his other, wiser offseason move, buying 22-year-old Pol Perrit from the financially strapped Cardinals, for whom he'd posted a 2.36 ERA in 286 IP the prior year.

That brings us to the other bit of context that would become significant later on: the Federal League, a third major league that put severe competitive pressure on the established NL and AL in its two years of existence in 1914-15, before the Feds folded under the strain. The Giants were under a financial crunch like other teams, but when the Feds went under, the checkbook would open again with important results.

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In the meantime, 1915 brought a new and unfamiliar form of humiliation to the team that had fallen just short of glory so many times in the prior 7 years: a last place finish. The Giants' mainstays through the pennant years showed the severest decay: Chief Meyers, now 34, hit .232. Mathewson, finally sore-armed after all those 300+ inning years dating back to his early 20s, was 8-14 with a 3.58 ERA. Marquard was worse. With bad pitching and bad defense, the team allowed more runs than anyone else in the NL, and while the offense could still score (3.75 runs/game, third in the league), it wasn't enough to make up.

Once it became apparent that the veterans weren't making a run back to glory, McGraw was merciless in cleaning house. Red Murray, a regular for the three pennant winners but now 31 and hitting .220, was cut loose in mid season, as was backup catcher Red Dooin. In August, McGraw sold Fred Snodgrass -- only 27 but hitting .194 and never to recover as an everyday player -- to the Braves, sold the sore-armed Marquard to the Dodgers for the waiver price, and bought the 28-year-old Rube Benton from the Reds to shore up the rotation. After the season, Meyers would also be sold to the Dodgers for the waiver price. McGraw was also looking down the road, carrying rarely used teenager George Kelly (later the Giants' star first baseman in the 1920s and now in Cooperstown) and pitcher Ferdie Schupp, age 24 and severely ineffective in limited use for the second straight season. Schupp must have been used for mopup work: between 1913 and 1915, he pitched 36 times but with just one decision.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A long, slow rebuilding process was underway, but McGraw had other plans in the meantime. When the Federal League went under, McGraw came out swinging: on December 23, 1915, he bought 2-time Federal League batting champ Benny Kauff (the "Ty Cobb of the Federal League") from the Brooklyn franchise and catcher Bill Rariden (to replace Meyers) and slick-fielding third baseman Bill McKechnie from the Newark franchise. The Kauff acquisition alone cost $35,000, a huge price tag for 1915. In February, McGraw bought starting pitcher Fred Anderson from the Buffalo franchise the same day that he sold Meyers. McGraw also bought future Hall of Famer Edd Roush from Newark. The 1916 team now looked like this on paper:

C Bill Rariden (age 28)
1B Fred Merkle (still just 27)*
2B Larry Doyle (at 29, the Giants' best hitter in 1915 but a bad glove man)*
SS Art Fletcher (31)*
3B Bill McKechnie (29)
OF George Burns (26)
OF Benny Kauff (26)
OF Dave Robertson (26)

SP Jeff Tesreau (27)*
SP Christy Mathewson (35)*
SP Rube Benton (29)
SP Pol Perritt (23)
SP/RP Fred Anderson (30)
SP/RP Sailor Stroud (31)
RP Ferdie Schupp (25)

* - Players remaining who had major roles in the 1912 team.

IN PART TWO, to follow soon (hopefully; I haven't written the second half yet): McGraw's late summer purge, and the aftermath.

1. The Braves

While many people (myself included) predicted the Braves to hang on to their NL East crown, you would have to have looked long and hard before this season to find anyone picking them to have the best record in baseball, cruise to 100+ victories, and run away with the division. Yet, there they are. With at bats being wasted on the likes of Vinny Castilla, Keith Lockhart, Wes Helms, and Henry Blanco, plus Rafael Furcal underachieving and Javy Lopez and Marcus Giles failing to hit, Atlanta is in the bottom half of the National League in scoring. Yes, their starting pitching has been more outstanding even than usual with the revival of Glavine and Millwood and the emergence of Damian Moss (the fifth slot has been unreliable but less so than most teams'), and their defense has been the best in the league at converting balls in play into outs , but neither of these is a big shock. What has transformed the Braves from an ordinary low-scoring pitching team into a juggernaut has been the emergence of a killer bullpen populated largely by guys with (1) no major league track record of success or (2) a long recent record of failure. Here are the combined numbers on the 7 Braves relievers with 40 or more relief appearances this season - John Smoltz, Mike Remlinger, Chris Hammond, Darren Holmes, Kerry Lightenberg, Kevin Gryboski and Tim Spooneybarger:

W-L SV-BS ERA G GS IP H/9 HR/9 BB/9 K/9 WHIP
25-12 51-14 2.45 363 0 388.2 6.78 0.5 4.01 7.66 1.20

(All stats through Wednesday's action)

For perspective, the average NL reliever has a 3.83 ERA and has allowed 1.36 baserunners/IP; the average AL reliever has a 4.24 ERA and has allowed 1.41 baserunners/IP. In each league, relievers have thrown approximately a third of their team's innings (oddly, last season NL relievers had a higher ERA than AL, 4.10 to 4.09) . . . also, bear in mind that relievers issue a lot of intentional walks.

2. The Twins

Here we have a classic example of a team where the bullpen -- a perceived weakness of the team before the season -- has made a huge difference. The Twins' have exceeded their Pythagorean W-L record (i.e., the number of games they should mathematically be expected to have won given the number of runs they have scored and allowed) by more than 5 games this season, the second-largest margin in baseball (I'll get to the biggest one below), always a sure sign of a team winning a lot of close games and a lot of games in the late innings. The Twins don't have a terrifying offense; they are ninth in the AL in scoring, they don't have a single hitter who can compete with, say, Manny Ramirez or Nomar as far as season-to-season production, and they've been heavily dependent on unexpected development of outfielders Torii Hunter, Jacque Jones and Bobby Kielty. The team's strength was supposed to be the starting pitching, but beset by injuries, the big three of Brad Radke, Eric Milton and Joe Mays has won just 22 games with a 5.11 ERA. So, how have the Twinkies cruised to such a huge lead in the AL Central that even a recent slump leaves them 12 games ahead in the loss column?

Well, previously unknown J.C. Romero has been one of baseball's most devastatingly effective pitchers, Everyday Eddie Guardado has put a hammerlock on what has been a revolving door closer's job since the departure of Rick Aguilera, and even LaTroy "Line Drive" Hawkins has showcased pinpoint control in the best season he's ever had (although the Players Union's website went a mite far when it said he had "recapture[d] his dominating form"). Bob Wells has had a terrible year (5.66 ERA, 65 hits and 7 HR in 47.2 IP), but otherwise, here once again are the combined numbers on the other 5 Twins relievers to make at least 39 relief appearances this season - Romero, Guardado, Hawkins, Mike Jackson (if there were a Hall of Fame just for setup men . . . ) and Tony Fiore:

W-L SV-BS ERA G GS IP H/9 HR/9 BB/9 K/9 WHIP
24-10 39-13 2.60 270 2 335.1 7.38 0.7 2.90 6.98 1.14

(and only 2 unearned runs!)

(It may be objected that I'm skewing the numbers here by picking different samples from different teams, but of course as the season goes on, bullpen roles change, and I'm looking at who has emerged as the key guys on each team).

3. The Angels

The Angels' success has been in the details: the way that four of the five starters (everyone but Aaron Sele) has pitched well; the best defense in the AL at turning balls in play into outs; a career year by Adam Kennedy, a revival by Tim Salmon, and production from several other lineup slots. But this is a team that was not expected to hang with a tough division, the team's putative ace (Sele) has struggled, and of the top 3 hitters on the team (Salmon, Troy Glaus and Darin Erstad), one (Glaus) has had a major off year and another (Erstad) has been very unproductive, with a .319 OBP and has had a complete power outage. But the bullpen, mostly consisting of steady journeymen plus a closer who has been off his game more often than on in recent years, has filled the breach. Here are the combined numbers on the 7 Angels relievers with 20 or more relief appearances this season without making a start (Scott Schoenweis has made 15 starts and 27 relief appearances, with a 5.00 ERA) - Ben Weber, Troy Percival, Al Levine, Dennis Cook, Brendan Donnelly, Lou Pote and Scot Shields (Mike Scioscia has spread out their workloads; none of the 7 has pitched more than 50 times, due also partly to Percival's and Cook's injuries):

W-L SV-BS ERA G GS IP H/9 HR/9 BB/9 K/9 WHIP
17-12 44-10 2.85 263 0 306 7.29 0.7 3.82 6.65 1.24

4. The Dodgers

Eleventh in the NL in scoring; fourth even in their own division. Their ace starting pitcher reduced to 3-3 with a 4.53 ERA, having started just nine games. Some wonderful starting pitching, led by Odalis Perez, has been a big factor; so has the second-most-effective defense in the NL (see the Baseball Prospectus link above). But the big story has been Eric Gagne, a talented but underachieving starter (in his first two go-rounds) who has set the ninth inning ablaze, saving 47 games with an 8-to-1 strikeout to walk ratio and more than 12 whiffs per 9 innings; Gagne has struck out 98 batters and allowed just 55 baserunners. Combined with two other guys who overcame disaster as starting pitchers, one of them during the Carter Administration (Jesse Orosco and Paul Quantrill) and unheralded if gopher-prone Giovanni Carrara, the Dodgers have improved on what was already a strong bullpen in 2001 to have their best pen since Tommy Lasorda retired. Gagne, Orosco, Quantrill and Carrara have been the only Dodger relievers to appear in 40 or more games (although Guillermo Mota hasn't been terrible in 32 appearances, despite his ugly ERA, and Orosco has tossed just 25 innings in 49 games); here's the combined line for those four:

W-L SV-BS ERA G GS IP H/9 HR/9 BB/9 K/9 WHIP
12-10 50-11 2.73 248 0 240.2 7.37 0.9 2.66 7.67 1.11

++++++++++++++++++++

THEN, there are the underachievers:

1. The Red Sox

I think most of you know this story, which involves the second-biggest shortfall in baseball between the Bosox' Pythagorean expected record and their actual record - an underachievement of 7 games. Art hit on the bullpen's role in this back on August 9.

It's a little hard to separate Boston's main relievers because of the instability in the bullpen; only 4 pitchers have made as many as 25 relief appearances for the Sox this year, and 2 of them (Wakefield and Fossum) have pitched a substantial amount of their innings as starters (Castillo and Arrojo have also split time). That leaves just Ugueth Urbina, whose numbers aren't terrible (5 blown saves in 35 tries), although he's been a bit more hittable than you'd like, and Rich Garces, a mainstay of recent Sox bullpens who imploded this year under the force of his own gravitational pull, being charged with 20 runs in 21.1 innings.

Here are the combined relief numbers for the three relievers (Urbina, Wakefield and Fossum) with 30 appearances, excluding Wakefield's and Fossum's numbers as a starter, followed by the totals for the other 11 pitchers to grace the Boston pen (also as relievers):

W-L SV-BS ERA G GS IP H/9 HR/9 BB/9 K/9 WHIP
5-9 34-7 3.35 110 0 153.1 7.57 0.9 3.40 8.28 1.22
8-10 6-5 5.08 171 0 388.2 9.42 1.0 3.32 6.21 1.42

As you can see, the good part of the bullpen has been OK - it just doesn't stack up to teams like Minnesota and Anaheim, not to mention Seattle, Oakland and the Yankees. One thing that sticks out here: the Red Sox bullpen has only won 13 games all year. Get ahead early, or it's over. And with guys in the back of the rotation who don't go deep into games (Burkett's averaging just 5.85 IP/start, Castillo 5.63, Wakefield 6.1, Fossum 5.47, Arrojo 4.92), it should come as no surprise that it's been Pedro and Lowe and pray for snow.

2. The Cubs

I said the Red Sox were the second-biggest underachievers this year relative to their runs scored and allowed; the Cubs are worse. The Cubs' offense has been bad, but not this bad - they HAVE managed to score more runs than the Braves, Reds or Dodgers. And despite the recent injuries to Jon Lieber and Mark Prior, they've gotten some surprisingly good starting pitching from those two, Kerry Wood, Matt Clement and Carlos Zambrano. But the key to last season's 88-win Great Leap Forward was the bullpen under the tutelage of pitching coach Oscar Acosta and anchored by Jeff Fassero, Kyle Farnsworth, Todd Van Poppel and Tom Gordon, who among other things combined to whiff an astounding 343 batters in 276 innings.

This year, Gordon has been hurt and Acosta and Van Poppel have gone on to less distinguished seasons in Texas, leaving four pitchers to anchor the pen - Farnsworth, Fassero, Joe Borowski and Antonio Alfonseca. All four have logged 40 or more appearances without a start, while no other Cubs pitcher has made more than 27 relief appearances. Here are the grim results:

W-L SV-BS ERA G GS IP H/9 HR/9 BB/9 K/9 WHIP
13-18 20-15 4.54 214 0 236 9.19 1.0 3.74 8.08 1.44

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's right, the GOOD part of the Cubbies' bullpen has been as bad as the BAD part of the Red Sox' bullpen.

3. The Mets

The Mets' bizarre collapse this year -- not a totally unexpected result but shocking in its scope -- has come from every cause you could have dreamed up before the season and then some. The pivotal moment, though, was a blown save by Armando Benitez on a Craig Counsell home run in the first game of a doubleheader with Arizona on August 3, leading to the second of the Mets' record-setting 15-game home losing streak. Between them, Benitez and Scott Strickland have been tagged for 15 home runs in 117.1 IP, an unacceptably high rate for a team's top late-inning relievers, and the great majority of them game-breaking.

Let us speak no more here of the Mets. They have gone on to a better place.

++++++++++++++

Of course, no theory explains everything, but even the less dramatic cases offer some support. The White Sox have struggled from a myriad of causes, and the loss of confidence in Keith Foulke isn't really at the top of that list, but it has been a factor. The Cardinals, in true LaRussa fashion, have used 6 different relievers with 40 or more games pitched, with varying results. But the triumvirate of closer Jason Isringhausen and setup men Mike Timlin (since traded) and Mike Crudale (ERAs of 2.47, 2.51 and 1.80, respectively) have been devastating. Another partial example is the A's. The red-hot A's, who have exceeded their Pythagorean W-L record by nearly 6 full games this season, the largest margin in baseball. The A's have gotten brilliant setup work from Chad Bradford (a 2.82 ERA, 69 baserunners allowed and just 1 home run in 67 innings) and a solid year from closer Billy Koch (9-2, 37 saves in 43 tries, 2.93 ERA), plus recent additions Ricardo Rincon (acquired the day before the trade deadline, a 2.13 ERA and just 6 hits and 3 walks in 12.2 IP over 16 appearances) and Micah Bowie (called up July 29, 2-0 with a 1.00 ERA in 9 games) have been big factors in the recent hot streak. Arizona has three top relievers with ERAs in the ones and a combined 14-3 record - Byun-Hyung Kim, Mike Koplove and Mike Fetters - although the bullpen's overall numbers are scarred by Eddie Oropesa (30 games, 11.03 ERA) and Bret Prinz (17 games, 10.45 ERA), and it's hard to say that the bullpen has been the key factor in the D-Backs' pitching staff.

In the modern (post-Eckersley) game, a bullpen invariably involves anywhere from 4 to 7 pitchers who are expected to pitch regularly, each with a small role in terms of total innings, but collectively having a large impact on a team's ability to win close games. (Some managers always used these types of committees rather than individuals with huge workloads - Earl Weaver comes to mind, as well as Sparky Anderson in his Reds years and Chuck Tanner, who always went several deep around workhorse Kent Tekulve). There are a few steady setup men out there of the Arthur Rhodes/Jeff Nelson/Mike Jackson variety, but by and large, the individual relievers tend to be erratic from year to year; they are often drawn from the scrap heap; and many managers have to largely rebuild the pen every year. Handling patterns, who has what role and who warms up when can all have a big impact. That's why I regard the bullpen as the critical test of any manager in this day and age, the part that separates the men from the boys.

Bobby Cox is the master, and Tony Muser was the worst at it, becoming the first, then the second manager ever to have a team with more blown saves than saves. (Do you doubt that most of the guys in the Atlanta pen would have ERAs over 5.50 pitching for Muser?) Many managers fall in between. The success of many of his bullpens is a big reason I've been a convert to Bobby Valentine, although this season even that has finally gone sour. The newer managers? Give me Ron Gardenhire, Jim Tracy, and Mike Scioscia. And I haven't seen enough Sox games to connect all the dots, but - for now, I'll pass on Grady Little.

My father has been a baseball fan since the 1940s, and baseball has always been something we talked about; but in my house, at least, it was my mother who was even more important in shaping me, my brothers and my sister as baseball fans, as Mets fans. Ours was not a house where Dad had to battle to get sports on TV.

My mother was an old Brooklyn Dodgers fan, and sufficiently set in the National League ways that when my parents got married, she converted my father to a Mets fan from his prior allegiance to the Hated Yankees -- not an easy feat, in the early 1960s. She always pulled for the National League in the World Series and the All-Star Game, even when the Mets and Dodgers weren't involved.

There are different types of baseball fans. Some fans are the hard-core stat-heads, box score readers, rotisserie players and the like -- people who get into the history, the facts and figures. Some are guys who play ball themselves, and love the mechanics of the game. Some are season ticket holders who go to every game. Some are just casual fans who only get interested when the team is going good and the race is heating up.

My mother was another kind of fan -- the kind who follows every game team faithfully on the radio and TV, and forms most of her opinions about the players from what she sees. She loved listening to Bob Murphy, Ralph Kiner and Lindsey Nelson. She knew generally who was a .300 hitter or a 20-game winner or held the famous records, but she didn't pore over stats or think of the players in terms dictated by the numbers. She always remembered the guys who tortured the Mets, like Mike Easler and Bob Knepper, and always preferred the scrappy little players like Mookie Wilson and Wally Backman and had little use for big sleepy lumbering sluggers like Dave Kingman, John Milner, George Foster, Darryl Strawberry, Kevin McReynolds, Bobby Bonilla and Mo Vaughn. I never asked in so many words, but I think her favorite player was probably Jerry Koosman, or maybe Gil Hodges or Rusty. She always said the best baseball games were the 4-3 games, just enough scoring to keep things interesting. She stuck by the Mets during the times in the mid-90s when even I was too disgusted and depressed to watch, and even in the worst years they always seemed to win when she made it out to Shea. And she always liked to talk about the Mets or just listen to us talk, even about our rotisserie teams -- and there are few topics in this world that get old faster than listening to somebody else talk about their rotisserie team.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

As baseball keeps teetering on the edge of the abyss, uncertain whether or not the players will be striking in September, the game should be worried about fans like my mother. The stat-heads will always come back; where else can we go? The jocks may leach away to other sports, but the love of playing the game and talking about it won't go away. The casual fans will disappear with another strike, but they're easily replaced.

But the fans who follow the game religiously for the sheer fun of it, for the love of their favorite team -- those are the backbone of the game, the way the guy on the couch with the beer in his hand is the backbone of the NFL. Unlike basketball and hockey, baseball's fan base isn't so much threatened by pricing its core fan base out of the seats and pulling all the games off free TV; but the one thing baseball can only survive so many times is plain ill will. Baseball needs to raise a younger generation of fans like my mother, and it's not going to do that if the game isn't there when we need it. The continuity of the game, the steady rythm of a game on the radio every night in the summertime -- my mother would listen to the games on the radio while doing jigsaw puzzles -- that matters, a lot.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

My mother was out at Shea Stadium on Memorial Day weekend, watching this year's disappointing Mets drop a game to the Marlins, doing just fine. Two days later she was laid out in the hospital with a brain tumor. Bill James wrote in 1988, following the death of Dick Hoswer a year and a half after he managed the Royals to the summit for the only time in their history, that "[t]hrough the experience of Dick Howser, we in the Kansas City area learned a great deal about brain tumors. There was no good news along the way." I know now what he means. She died two weeks ago.

My mother got to see her favorite team win the World Series four times -- the Dodgers in 1955 & 1959, the Mets in 1969 & 1986. If I could ask her today, I'd say the only regret she had as a baseball fan was never seeing a Mets pitcher throw a no-hitter even with decades of power pitchers like Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Dwight Gooden and David Cone, even a guy like Hideo Nomo who threw them before AND after being a Met. She always mentioned how the perennially optimistic Bob Murphy ("if Doug Flynn can get on here, that will bring the tying run into the on deck circle") moans about that one absence in Mets history. I hope she's watching when somebody finally throws one. I hope the game gets its house in order and doesn't let somebody else's Baseball Mom down. I'll still be watching. I'll just miss watching with her.

+I was one of the biggest boosters of Derek Lowe as a starter, but even I didn't picture him starting the All-Star game. Let's update some of the numbers, and throw just a little cold water on him:

Lowe has cut down on the longball, but when you combine the lower strikeout rate and the lower hits/9IP, what you get is simply a dramatic improvement in the rate of balls in play becoming hits. Experience suggests that while improved team defense may help that hold up, it's not a great bet to continue. His rate of groundballs to flyballs, at 3.57 the highest in baseball last season, has jumped to 3.87; I'm not sure if that's sustainable, but it does suggest that the defensive improvements that have helped him the most have been the return of Nomar, the addition of Sanchez (and, improbably enough, Baerga) at second, and the maturation of Shea Hillenbrand, rather than the addition of Johnny Damon . . . I noted before the season that Lowe's walk rate should improve because he wouldn't be issuing so many intentional passes; in fact, Lowe's unintentional walk rate has risen slightly from 1.96 to 2.14, but he's cut his walks because he hasn't intentionally walked anyone all year . . . the Sox have also caught a third of all base thieves against Lowe and there have been far fewer attempts, a key improvement from the last two seasons and leading to a dramatic increase in GIDP (one every 12.9 groundouts as opposed to every
17.5 last season) despite having far fewer men on base. Also, he's caught the other trouble spot I identified before the season: a great part of his improvement has been against lefthanders, who are hitting .209 against him
compared to .317 last season. The bottom line: as long as he keeps being as effective against lefties as righties, as long as the Sox infield stays solid, and as long as he holds runners on, Lowe should remain effective. But 6 hits per 9 innings? Don't bet the ranch on it.

+Trading Bartolo Colon and not trading Vizquel, Thome, Finley, Wickman, Burks, Lawton and what's left of Travis Fryman - that's just silly. Trading Colon is a sign the Indians are really serious about rebuilding - except that they're not. Instead, they are doing it halfheartedly, the way they tried this past offseason to play it halfway between rebuilding and contending. Omar Vizquel was in the All-Star game - you're telling me you can't trade him?

+Will Barry Bonds ever see his reputation rehabilitated the way Ted Williams' has been? Partly, but not entirely. Williams mellowed with age, partially because he reached a stage in his life where he could put on a pair of pants without getting a microphone stuck in his face. Most anybody is happy to talk to reporters three times a year, and unhappy to do it twice a day. But he also benefitted from changing times: when Williams played, players who were surly with reporters, distant with teammates and obsessed with their personal accomplishments were considered unusual. Players (and sportswriters, for that matter) who served their country in wartime were common. Both of those things changed; the younger generation of writers came to see Williams' virtues as being exceptional and his vices as being ordinary. Bonds does have his virtues - he works hard, generally shows up ready to play and he's never had significant off the field problems - but I don't see the same shift happening.

One of the things that irritates me about Barry Bonds' defenders, notably Joe Sheehan of the Baseball Prospectus, is their tendency to assume that Bonds' bad reputation stems entirely from being unpleasant with reporters. This is a whitewash. I went over this ground last year - Bonds has a long history of shooting his mouth off and feuding with teammates. The writers don't make this stuff up.

+The Mondesi and Jeff Weaver deals. What these deals really do is to lay bare the Yankees' financial advantage. I mean, Raul Mondesi is clearly a better ballplayer than Shane Spencer, and is healthier (if less productive) version of Rondell White, but is Mondesi a huge upgrade for the Yankees? No, not particularly close. And Jeff Weaver has more of a track record of success than Ted Lilly, but again, is he a big-time upgrade? Heck, the Yankees didn't seem 100% sure they had room for Weaver -- the best player on the Tigers -- in their rotation.

But this, in a nutshell, is the difference between the Yankees and everyone else. Any other team, even the "big-market" teams, given the ability to pay Ted Lilly peanuts, would be crazy to take Jeff Weaver's contract. WHY? Because the extra money spent on Weaver is money the team couldn't spend to
upgrade somewhere else. But to the Yankees, there is no such cost -- they'll just spend more. Yankee fans love to point to the home-grown talent -- Jeter, Bernie, Posada, Rivera, Pettitte, Soriano -- and say that shows the Yankees don't buy success. Yeah, but look at the home-grown talent of any other team, or the list of players acquired by trades, and inevitably you will come across a bunch of people who left town for greener pastures. Alone among major league teams, the Yankees never lose anybody they want to keep - the last guy they had some interest in keeping and didn't was John Wetteland. Look, the Yankees are a well-run ship, and have been for nearly a decade. If they were as stupid as they were in the '80s, they wouldn't win anyway. But the financial advantage is part of the story, it has to be.

The Weaver deal makes some baseball sense for all three teams, and also emphasizes the cost of stupidity: the A's got Carlos Pena cheap, and the Yankees got Lilly for Hideki Irabu. Both teams cashed those guys in for something better. The Rangers and Expos got the shaft.

As for the Blue Jays, I understand that they think dumping Mondesi is addition by subtraction, but why give a guy who's still a potentially good player in his prime to the perennial powerhouse in your division, and for almost nothing? As with the Clemens deal, this just stinks.

+Adam Dunn. Man, is that guy built like a brick wall. Reminds me of old pictures of Mantle or Gehrig. What's amazing about Dunn's progress this year is his patience, which was already considerable - he's on a pace to draw 145 walks, and he's 22 years old . . . Better get used to seeing Mike Sweeney at the All-Star game. Better not expect to see Randy Winn there again . . . Robin Ventura's having a fine year, but I still expect him to finish around .245. He hit .253 in April, .222 in May and .258 in June if you take away that crazy series at Coors Field. Ventura has not finished well in recent seasons.

+The Fish send Cliff Floyd & Ryan Dempster packing. The Marlins assure us that it's not a fire sale if you give away a bunch of good players for next to nothing, as long as you get expensive stiffs or the walking wounded in return. Turns out Jeffrey Loria really did want to build a winner in Montreal, just not until he owned a different team.

+Charlie Manuel has bitten the dust, and Jerry Manuel may also get the axe for the underachieving White Sox. Doesn't Ron Gardenhire have to be manager of the year if he succeeds in getting all the other managers in his division fired in the same season?

+A little trivia: on 8 occasions, a major league pitcher has thrown 300 innings in a season without allowing a home run, all of them between 1904 and 1916:

1. Walter Johnson, 1916, 369.2 IP. Of course, Johnson holds the record.

2. Jack Coombs, 1910, 353 IP. This is the year he was 31-9 with a 1.30 ERA
for the "$100,000 infield" A's.

3. Ed Killian in 1904, 331.2 IP. Killian would go two more full seasons
without allowing a home run, 794.2 IP without being taken deep. In those
days, a good defense was a key to this, since most homers were inside the
park, and Killian had Sam Crawford and Matty McIntyre, who would in later
years be joined by Ty Cobb in a 3-time pennant-winning outfield.

4. Babe Ruth, also in 1916, 323.2 IP. Ruth also cracked 3 homers that
year, his best on the mound. (Johnson also hit one in 1916).

5. Hall of Famer Vic Willis in 1906, 322 IP. Consistency? In his 4 years
with the Pirates, Willis went 23-13, 21-11, 23-11, and 22-11.

6. Rube Vickers, 1908, 317 IP. Vickers is also remembered, if at all, for
throwing a 5-inning perfect game on the last day of the 1907 season, in the
second game of a doubleheader in which he tossed 12 innings of relief for
his first major league win in the opener.

7. Killian again in 1905, 313.1 IP.

8. Jake Weimer in 1906, 304.2 IP. Weimer, even I hadn't heard of.

(By the way, whenever they get Fran Healey out of the booth, the Mets get some great analysis from incisive ex-ballplayers like Tom Seaver, Hernandez and even the aging Ralph Kiner - all guys who have really thought about how the game should be played, and sometimes have very interesting arguments).

Mo is contending with a series of problems that may be interrelated, and frankly the Mets should have been more realistic about the risks when they signed him to a long-term mega-bucks contract. OK, they didn't actually sign him to the contract, but they agreed to take the contract, which as a practical matter is almost the same thing, except that they couldn't have put the money to use in the free agent market unless they first dumped Kevin Appier's awful contract. Then again, Appier was a starting pitcher coming off a good year; it's not impossible that the Mets could have found someone desperate enough for starting pitching to take him without saddling the Mets with Mo.

Anyway, let's count the ways: (1) Mo's missed a year, and it can take a very long time to get your timing back after that - many hitters are never quite the same, even if they've stayed in shape and not been injured. (2) he tore up his arm - that's bound to affect his swing. Frank Thomas was a better hitter than Mo before they got hurt, and he's got a longer, more fluid swing - but Thomas has also struggled after tearing a muscle in his arm. I'm not sure how many guys have had this injury in the past, but it seems like the kind of thing that can really screw up your swing. (3) The Fred Lynn problem: Mo benefited tremendously from Fenway -- from 1992 to 1996, he batted .322/.577/.414 at Fenway compared to .273/.503/.367 on the road, with 84 doubles in 1278 at bats in Boston compared to 48 doubles in 1195 at bats on the road. In other words, outside of Fenway he was never a .300 hitter. Thus, expecting anything better than his Anaheim numbers as a ceiling was unrealistic, particularly coming into a pitcher's park with poor visibility. (4) Mo didn't just miss a year, he missed a year when the strike zone changed. Another factor to adjust to. (5) The weight - Mo could get away with carrying extra weight when he was young and healthy, but he's now neither.

Oh, and (6), my own pet theory: Mo has a short stroke and generates most of
his power with bat speed generated by powerful forearms, as opposed to using
a leg kick or a long, looping swing to generate bat speed and as opposed to singles hitters who don't need the quickest bats because they're content to go the other way. This is a purely anecdotal observation, but it seems to me that players like this tend to lose it very fast; as soon as they lose a little quickness, they don't have anything else to fall back on. Steve Garvey and Howard Johnson are classic examples of this type; both hit the wall in their early 30s, while big guys like McGwire and Winfield and Strawberry can keep hitting as long as they stay healthy because their size gives them leverage. Frank Thomas, too: it's one reason Thomas is doing better than Mo. (I'm skeptical of how long Jeff Bagwell's career will be for the same reason, although Bagwell's production hasn't eroded much).

I was guardedly critical of the Mo deal before the season, but even the harshest critics never thought he'd be this bad. Actually, Mo hasn't been as bad as advertised with the glove, since he's actually got fairly quick reflexes and makes the occasional impressive play, although as has been true of both Mo and crosstown acquisition Jason Giambi throughout their careers, the rest of the infield has made more errors with Mo on the bag.

Does Mo's homer off David Wells change any of this? I fear not; ESPN ran his lifetime stats against Wells, whom Mo owns as much as any hitter owns any pitcher (now .455 with 9 homers in 66 at bats), and Wells missed half of last year as well; he may not be the best barometer. (It was the ultimate insult to Mo that Joe Torre left Wells in to face him, given their history; he must have just decided that Mo was too washed up to matter). In the end, Mo needs to get in shape; he needs to understand that just being in the shape he was in three years ago isn't enough. But even that may not be enough, and the Mets will be stuck with one of the most immovable objects in sports for the next few years. I'm not optimistic.

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A few other notes on the Mets-Yankees series . . . if we've learned two things over the years about high-profile and high-pressure games, it's that you don't want Roger Clemens starting one, and you don't want Armando Benitez finishing one. Add two more exhibits to their lengthy rap sheets as big-game busts . . . the Piazza homer really puts the ball back in Clemens' court, since we're now back where we were before the initial beaning: with Piazza beating up the Rocket. Any bets on how long before Piazza hits the deck again? . . . Piazza is getting hot, which leaves only four everyday players in the Mets lineup severely underachieving . . . I thought before the season that Alfonzo and Astacio would be the pivotal players for the Mets. Here we are in June with Alfonzo hitting .319 and Astacio fifth in the league in ERA, and the Mets are at .500. Go figure.

And if there are gay professional athletes out there - and we know too much about human nature to say there are not - people look to baseball to deal with it, to bring someone into the open and test exactly how much the public is willing to accept. The first rumblings started with the whole story about a year ago about a gay writer who hinted, vaguely but tantalizingly, about a ballplayer he had had an affair with who played on the East Coast and wasn't the biggest star on his team (the writer has since scoffed at the suggestion that he was talking about Piazza, who is very obviously the biggest star on his team) and who was thinking of 'coming out.'

There's a long tradition here. Baseball invented the color line, as far as sports were concerned, and baseball broke it; no other athlete did more to change the country than Jackie Robinson (Muhammad Ali fans to the contrary). Baseball started many of pro sports' traditions in honoring and disciplining players and others in the game; baseball was looked to for an example in wartime, and led the response after September 11. Baseball pioneered free agency, player unions and labor disturbances. Baseball grappled with the fixing of the World Series; as Bill James memorably wrote in the 1986 Abstract, "the reaction of the public in the period after the War to End All Wars was, in essence, that it was one thing when the police were corrupt, that it was one thing when juries were bribed and judges kept on retainer, that it was one thing when elections were rigged and politicians let contracts go to the highest briber, but when baseball players started fixing games, well that was just too much; something had to be done about it." James was writing about the Pittsburgh drug trials of the 1980s, and he wrote in the aftermath that nearly everyone in the game who'd used drugs in the late 70s-early 80s had been publicly exposed as such. Meanwhile, Art Rust jr. famously remarked in the 1970s that "if cocaine were helium, the whole NBA would just float away." But the NBA had no messy public reckoning. It's not like they were baseball players, after all.

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Of course, the way the Piazza story broke was a particularly shabby episode, with a gossip columnist who knows nothing about sports running an item that was pointed enough to suggest Piazza, the most ostentatiously single Met, but does not appear (from the public reports) to have had much in the way of support from credible sources. This would appear, among other things, to violate the gossip columnists' code of ethics (if there be such a thing): don't make a 'blind item' so specific that everyone knows who you're talking about, unless you've really got the goods. Piazza will be heckled about this for the rest of his career, and there's not a damn thing he can do about it. Whatever you think about the merits of a gay man in baseball coming out publicly, I can't possibly imagine a worse situation than 'outing' the star of a contending team in midseason against his will. A week of the season was consumed by the story, and if there had been more support to it, the whole season would have been overshadowed. Remember, Branch Rickey didn't bring Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers in June, and he didn't bring him against his will, either.

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Now the steroid story is the front-page saga, hitting the cover of Sports Illustrated with Ken Caminiti's extremely un-shocking confession that he used steroids in his transformation from a 30-year-old who slugged .390 in 1993 while tying his career highs in homers (13) and doubles to the muscle-bound player who slugged .621, cracked 40 homers and drove in 130 runs in his 1996 MVP campaign. If you were surprised that Caminiti was on steroids, well, there's also some bad news I should give you about pro wrestling.

As with the gay question, there are people throwing around percentages and unproven innuendoes about specific players without a lot of support; in some cases, the same names come up in both debates. On this one, though, the truth should come out, and eventually the dam will break, because it can't hold forever. The SI story will naturally push a lot of people to ask questions they'd shied away from asking before. For my money, the use of steroids doesn't make the homer explosion of the last few years illegitimate any more than the spitball made Ed Walsh's exploits illegitimate or the rampant and varied cheating of the 1894 Baltimore Orioles made them less than true champions - it's just another facet of the competitive conditions of the era. But, like those earlier abuses, it has to be changed. And it's up to the players to change it. The league can police the issue once there's a testing plan in place - but the impetus will have to come from the players themselves, because as long as the owners can only get testing at the bargaining table, they will always have priorities that have more importance to their own interests that they would rather seek as a concession. Can you blame them? At some level, the health of the players is their own business. But sometimes the public has a role, when people need a little outside pressure to resist peer pressures to disregard their own health. You and I can be a part of that, and can give moral support to the 'clean' players who want to re-level the playing field.

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The two issues of condemning the use of steroids and accepting (or not accepting) gay players involve very different underlying considerations, and perhaps some day I'll go back to untangle some of those in this space. (I'd probably be crazy to do so on the issue of gay athletes, but that day will come). But for a moment the two got intertwined: the issues are hot at the same time, the media (in all its various forms) is using the same methods to push them towards disclosure. In doing so, all I can say is, please, folks, tread cautiously.

In the steroid debate, those methods, however ugly, may prove a necessary evil; even so, we can hope that reform will come without anyone's reputation getting slimed unfairly. As Bonds argued, false accusations of steroid use don't just hurt the player; they also contribute to the perception that everyone is doing it and that steroids are the road to success. But when innuendoes and unsubstantiated rumors are used to expose or distort people's sexual preferences against their will, well, that's not right. Because who is or isn't gay is at bottom a social/political issue and not a baseball one, and baseball players shouldn't be forced into social/political debates if they don't want to be.

But people will always try. After all, they are baseball players.

Dick Allen, you see, was a great hitter. Hank Aaron great. Willie Mays great. Or very close, at least. Despite several lifetimes' worth of distraction and controversy, Allen was a career .292/.534/.378 hitter, with a higher career slugging average than Mel Ott, Mike Schmidt, Ty Cobb, Harry Heilmann, or Edgar Martinez, despite playing in the most pitcher-friendly era in modern history and spending seasons of his prime in some severe pitchers' parks like Dodger Stadium and Busch (for years he was the only man to hit 30 homers in a season at Busch Stadium). By any measure of per-at-bat offensive production, the top howevermany you're looking at winds up being a bunch of Hall of Famers, some guys with extremely short careers, some active players, and Dick Allen. Baseball-reference.com, for example, has a stat called "Adjusted OPS+", which is basically on base plus slugging divided by the league average over a player's career, with some park adjustments. Allen is 20th on the list, ahead of people like Aaron and Joe DiMaggio and Honus Wagner and behind only one eligible non-Hall of Famer, Pete Browning. (Browning played in the American Association in the 1880s, then the weaker of the two major leagues, and was a notoriously bad fielder, finishing his career with 659 RBI and 414 errors, not a ratio we usually associate with immortality). Allen's career totals are respectable: 351 homers, 1119 RBI. Other less productive sluggers have been enshrined without substantially larger totals (Orlando Cepeda and Hack Wilson and Chick Hafey, for example).

For this reason, the statistically-oriented among us tend to be drawn to Allen's Hall of Fame cause. Allen's cause even has a "hook" -- many people feel that he's been unjustly slighted for being a world-class jerk, and relatedly for his gift for creating racially tinged controversies in the racially charged Sixties. Allen was the guy who wore a batting helmet in the field because the Phillies fans threw so much stuff at him, remember. A good sample of the pro-Allen case is this piece by Don Malcolm on the Baseball Primer site. Bill James, one of Allen's leading critics, hasn't really helped the argument by being unusually dismissive of the statistical record in lumping Allen with Hal Chase as a player whose clubhouse influence was so malignant that he may not even have helped his teams win no matter what he did on the field.

There's something to the argument that Allen may be one of those players who was such a polarizing figure that it's an impossible task for him to get a fair shake from the people who saw him play. Even so, while I've been attracted by Allen's cause in the past, I ultimately don't buy it, and the reasons he falls just short are the same as why I don't think Jose Canseco is within shouting distance of being a Hall of Famer. In a nutshell, when I look at a Hall of Famer, the first question I ask is, "how many seasons did this guy have where he was a Hall of Fame quality ballplayer"? And the second is, "how good was he in those years -- just around or above the line, or way above it?" Dick Allen and Jose Canseco had plenty of days when they brought Hall of Fame talent to the ballpark. But they also both missed too much time and had too many other problems to really pile up a large number of Hall of Fame quality seasons. And if you don't have a decent number of those type of seasons -- I tend to think of an 8-10 year peak as the minimum necessary -- you need to either have a truly incredible Koufax-like peak or an equally incredible record of both consistency AND longevity a la Don Sutton (756 career starts, third all time) to belong among the immortals.

The conclusion that Dick Allen was not quite a Hall of Famer came to me one day when I was trying to figure out, in the context of this argument, how Allen had been treated by the MVP voters of his day and whether he had been given a fair shake. Dick Allen only placed in the top 10 in the balloting 3 times, winning the award in 1972, finishing 7th in 1964 and 4th in 1966, and received virtually no votes in any other season. This seemed to me to be a poor performance for a guy who was such a dominating offensive force in his prime years, so I took a season-by-season look, with some help from Retrosheet and the player notes in the old edition of the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. The voters were indeed much too hard on Allen. Even so, there just weren't quite enough full "star" years to convince me of his case.

Allen's Rookie of the Year season in 1964 was a legitimately brilliant year with the bat, comparable to Albert Pujols' debut but more valuable given the lower-scoring context. The Phillies improved by 5 games with Allen in the lineup and led the pennant race until a now-infamous late-season collapse, which wasn't any more Dick Allen's fault than anyone else's. Nor can you really blame Allen's "leadership," since he was a 22-year-old rookie. Allen led the league in runs and total bases, was 7th in on base, 5th in batting, 3rd in slugging, yet he finished just 7th in the MVP vote -- what gives? After all, the voters gave the award to Roy Campanella over Monte Irvin in 1951, Maury Wills over Willie Mays in 1962, Jim Rice over Ron Guidry in 1978, and George Bell (who was a huge cause of the Blue Jays' collapse) over Alan Trammell in 1987, so you can't say that the voters are biased against players on teams that choke down the stretch. I'd agree that Allen should probably have placed higher, but he was hardly the best player in the league. Allen was a very unstable glove man at third base, making a staggering 41 errors that season, and you can't plausibly argue that he was better than, say, Willie Mays, who hit 47 homers and finished ahead of Allen. The award went to Ken Boyer, a better fielder who drove in more runs; not a great award, and Allen probably should have been voted ahead of Boyer and Johnny Callison, at least. Give Allen a few points here for ranking lower than he should have, but he wasn't the MVP.

1965 is a somewhat similar story: Allen didn't have an argument to be one of the 4 or 5 best players in the league: he was miles behind Mays and Koufax, and since he was 7th in the league in OPS, didn't drive in or score 100 runs and made 26 errors at third base, he easily deserved to rank below people like Aaron, Willie McCovey, Frank Robinson, Ron Santo, Joe Torre, Clemente and Pete Rose. On the other hand, Allen's 28th place finish seems rather low for a guy who played 161 games for a team with a winning record, batted over .300 with power, drew walks and ran well.

But 1965, when he was 23 years old, would be the last time Dick Allen appeared in more than 155 games. In 1966 he had a monster year with the bat: .317 with 40 homers, 110 RBI, 112 Runs, .632 slugging, .396 OBP. He led the league in slugging and OPS and was among the top 4 in the league in numerous other offensive categories. His team won 87 games. He finished 4th in the MVP balloting. By my reckoning, he should have been second: he was by far the best hitter in the league. I would have voted for Koufax, who threw 323 innings with a league leading 1.73 ERA and won 27 games for a team with a below-average offense (even adjusted for the park). But the voters put Allen behind Roberto Clemente (who had more RBI and a better throwing arm and won the award even as the second-best hitter on his team) and Willie Mays. Why? Well, Allen's team finished behind the Pirates and Giants, and the Phillies were buried in the early going because they went 11-13 in Allen's absence after he dislocated his shoulder in late April -- when Allen returned, the team had dropped from 1.5 back to 6.5 games back and in 6th place. They finished 8 games out. Of course, Mays and Clemente each missed a few games as well, but the voters clearly cut Allen for the damage done by his absence, as well as for a highly publicized and racially tinged fight with Frank Thomas, a veteran outfielder who had hit well for the Phillies down the stretch in 1964 and was released by the team shortly after the altercation. Also, the Phillies tried Allen in left field for 47 games, but his defense there was poor, and he wound up back at third.

Then we get to 1967 . . . in 1967, the Phillies were never really in the race, but there wasn't much of a race: the Cardinals had an 8 game lead by the 5th of August. But 1967 would be the typical Dick Allen season: he hit tremendously well, leading the league in on base percentage (.404) and finishing second in slugging (.566), plus he stole 20 bases in 25 attempts and hit into just 9 double plays. A great player, right? But Allen wasn't among the league leaders in Runs, RBI, or Total Bases for a reason: he missed 40 games, including a 35-game stretch at the end of the season after shredding his hand pushing it through a headlight while moving his car. In his absence the team mostly used weak-hitting utilityman Tony Taylor (.238/.312/.308) at third base. The Phillies were 14-21 after Allen's accident, losing six 1-0 games in that period. The Phillies scored 3.78 runs/game on the season, but just 2.88 after September 1. Unsurprisingly, Allen finished 19th in the MVP voting, mostly behind players who stayed in the lineup (with the exception of catcher Tim McCarver, who missed 24 games and was second in the balloting).

In 1968 Allen had to be moved to the outfield. He was healthier than usual, missing just 10 games and finishing second in slugging and home runs and 5th in RBI. His on base percentage was .352 compared to a league average of .298 (yikes!). His defense in left field was nothing to write home about, he was benched for a time by Gene Mauch, and the Phillies finished 10th, but you would still have counted him among the league's best players just for his bat in a league where bats were hard to come by. Instead, he was ignored: not named on a single ballot, while a variety of hitters with weaker numbers and uncertain defensive credentials drew support (Lou Brock was on the pennant-winning Cardinals, yes, but he was a dreadful fielder and not in Allen's universe as a hitter, and Brock was 6th in the balloting, with teammate Mike Shannon 7th for batting .266 with 15 home runs. Ernie Banks and Tony Perez also drew support for far weaker power numbers and unimpressive glove work).

So, in his first 5 years in the league, Allen had a start: three outstanding seasons among the league's best players, one year as a star, one season of superstar quality but missing a quarter of the schedule. But his durability went downhill from there. In 1969 he missed 44 games; "missed" is one way to say it, but Allen was benched for a month in late June by Bob Skinner (Mauch was gone by now, and Skinner would be gone soon after) for failing to show up for a doubleheader after being late for games on several earlier occasions. By this point he was stationed at first base, and accustomed to his absences, the Phillies had lined up a backup (Deron Johnson) who was an above-league-average hitter, if no Dick Allen. For once the team played well in his absence, although they lost 99 games by season's end. Not surprisingly, Allen was ignored in the MVP race, drawing not a single vote. It's hard to fault the writers for this -- can a guy be MVP when he misses a month of the summer because he didn't care to show up for the games? We're not talking Barry Bonds or Albert Belle here -- there's a world of difference between a guy who's a jerk because he annoys reporters and teammates and a guy who's a jerk because he doesn't bother to play the game.

Allen was traded to the Cardinals in the offseason, as part of the deal that touched off the Curt Flood controversy, with St. Louis looking to fill the void left by the departure of Orlando Cepeda the previous year. Allen was then pressed into service at third base when Mike Shannon's career came to an abrupt halt; he fielded .895, plus he made 2 errors in his 3 appearances in the outfield. He was 8th in slugging and OPS and seventh in homers against the headwind of Busch Stadium and made his fourth All-Star team, but once again not among the league leaders in Runs, RBI or Total Bases thanks to missing 40 games with assorted injuries. Bob Gibson went 23-7 and won the Cy Young Award, but the Cards were falling apart at the seams anyway, finishing 10 games under .500, and Allen was again ignored in the MVP race.

In 1971, it was the Dodgers' turn. The Dodgers got 155 games of good play from Allen, and the team won 89 games and finished second, their best showing since Koufax retired, with Allen leading the team in slugging, on base, homers, and RBI. Allen's only league leaderboard appearances were 10th in OPS and 4th in walks, although baseball-reference.com lists him 5th in "OPS+", which is a park-adjusted figure, behind Hank Aaron, Willie Stargell, Joe Torre and Willie Mays. Despite his usually dreadful defense at multiple positions, Allen belonged in the race -- he was in the lineup more than Aaron or Stargell or the 40-year-old Mays (who finished 19th in the voting) -- and Torre was hardly a Gold Glover, although the OPS stat ignores the fact that Allen hit into more double plays than even the lead-footed Torre. Instead, Allen again got not one vote.

The slightly strike-shortened 1972 season (most teams played 154 games) brought a fresh start in the American League, including a new group of writers. Allen played 148 of them, and responded with his best season, leading the league in homers (37, with only one other player topping 26), RBI (by 13), slugging (by 65 points), OBP, walks, and extra base hits. Chuck Tanner stuck Allen at first base, where he didn't do much damage. The White Sox improved by 8 games, their first winning season in 5 years, and held sole possession of first place as late as August 28 (the latest they'd held the lead since 1964) before fading in September. The writers recognized this -- Dick Allen fell just 3 votes shy of a unanimous MVP selection, the 3 votes going to idiosyncratic choices Joe Rudi, Sparky Lyle and Mickey Lolich.

At this point, at age 30, Allen was still building his Hall of Fame resume. He'd been the undisputed best player in the league once, a legit MVP candidate 4 or other times, but with serious drawbacks regarding his defense and in some cases his durability, and had one very good season and three others cut short by injuries and insubordination.

After that, there wasn't much left. 1973 was classic Dick Allen: he added 250 at bats of superb production to his career totals, but missed half the season with an injury. His team, 27-15 at the end of May and in first place on June 29 (around the time Allen went down), finished in fifth place, 17 games out; forced to replace Allen with light-hitting glove man Tony Muser at first base (Muser had a decent OBP but slugged just .388 to Allen's .612), the offense dropped off from 4.2 runs/game through June to 3.89/game the rest of the way. Allen made the All-Star team but did not finish in the MVP balloting, drawing just one tenth-place vote.

Then there was 1974, Allen's last good year. Again, the numbers look good: he led the league in homers, slugging and OPS and was 7th in RBI. But Allen missed 34 games, including abruptly announcing his retirement in mid-September. The pennant race moment had passed for the White Sox anyway -- they wouldn't contend again until 1977 -- but Allen's absence certainly didn't help. He finished 23d in the MVP voting, behind a host of lesser lights (including Elliott Maddox, who also missed 25 games).

Allen came back with the Phillies in 1975 but hit poorly, .233 with little power. He was more productive despite assorted injuries the following season (.268/.480/.346 in 85 games) but was not a factor in his first postseason. The A's released him early the following season, ending his career at 35.

Allen was one of the best players in baseball in his prime, yes, but -- well, even in his best years there was always a "but" that kept him from being really the best, mainly poor defense. And a guy who played 130 games in a season just 6 times needs to do better than that. Allen's teams were always visibly better when he was in the lineup than they were before he arrived, after he left or when he was hurt -- but the Hall of Fame is about how much a player did to push his teams towards a championship, and in the real world championship teams need guys who show up for the games. Allen's career as a whole averages out to some great stuff -- and the totals aren't bad. Bill James' Win Shares system, for example, ranks Allen as one of the ten best eligible players not in the Hall of Fame in total Win Shares. But I just can't give him the same credit for, say, the 322 games he played in 1967 and 1973-74 as if he had played them in two seasons at 161 a pop; those absences had a real, concrete impact on teams fighting for position in real standings. That context matters. It's not the Hall-of-OPS, after all.

What does all this have to do with Jose Canseco? Well, Canseco's story is much like Dick Allen's, although while Canseco can be a conceited pain in the rear end he's never been half as disruptive as Allen. But while Allen's take at the end of 15 big league seasons leaves him just shy of Cooperstown, Canseco's qualifications are far weaker, with even fewer genuine star-level seasons. Canseco has appeared in even as many as 120 games in a season just six times, in which he's batted .240, .257, .307, .274 (in 131 games, 43 of them as a DH), .266 and .237 (with more than half his games as a DH). Here's Canseco's line for those six years:

(XO= GIDP+CS)

That's a fine ballplayer, with one season as the best player in the game, but is that the guts of a Hall of Fame career? Bear in mind that Canseco not only missed 31 games in 1990, he also spent another 43 as a DH, and he played more than half his games at DH in 1998. His on base percentage was below .320 in half of his full seasons, in years when the league average was between .328 and .337. Two of those years, 1987 and 1998 (as well as many of the years when Canseco has been plugging away at 75-115 games a year as a DH/stationary object), were high-scoring seasons. (And we're not even getting into his pitching exploits or the time the fly ball bounced off his head for a home run, which remains the single funniest thing that has ever happened). A typical Canseco year was 1995, when he hit .306/.556/.378 in 102 games as a DH for the division-winning Red Sox; you may remember him as a productive player, but there was a reason he didn't make the All-Star team or finish on the charts in the MVP balloting, because his limitations in the field and durability-wise made him a lot less than a star. Is that a Hall of Famer? Maybe if you have that same season every year for 27 years. Maybe. If you're dependable as clockwork. But the unpredictability of Canseco's career, as with Dick Allen's, has convinced innumerable employers that they can't bank on him as part of the foundation of a winning team. To me, that means something.

Certainly a guy can have injury-shortened seasons or be used as a part-time player, and they can be part of his Hall of Fame case. Look at George Brett, or Ted Williams, or Mickey Mantle, or Joe DiMaggio, or Al Kaline, or Willie McCovey, or Willie Stargell. But those guys all had more of a foundation to build around than Canseco. Reggie Jackson played at least 131 games 12 years in a row (streak broken by the strike) and 16 times overall; Jim Rice 11 times, Stargell 9 times, McCovey 8 times and never with an on base percentage below .350. Billy Williams, with career totals similar to Canseco's, played 150 or more games 12 years in a row, and went 8 years without missing a game. Other than old-time catchers, nearly everyone in the Hall of Fame made it there by playing regularly for a good chunk of time; the exceptions are people like Frank Chance, who's half in as a manager, or Chick Hafey, whose enshrinement can't be justified without reference to the influence of Frankie Frisch over the Veterans' Committee. The only player in the Hall who may have legitimately put himself in on the basis of part-time play was Ted Lyons (I'll save the debate about the "Sunday pitcher" for another time).

But by and large, you don't stitch together a Hall of Fame career out of bits and pieces of seasons. Dick Allen was a great ballplayer -- when he was available. Jose Canseco was sometimes a great ballplayer -- when he was available. A Hall of Famer is a great ballplayer -- period.

For a team that's drawing some early raves but can't keep it up, I'd take the 17-9 Reds. Through Wednesday, the Reds were the only team in the vaunted NL Central to have outscored their opponents on the season, and only barely at that (108-100). The infield and catcher Jason LaRue aren't hitting at all, which might be a positive in a way (Sean Casey and Aaron Boone could get hot later on, and Barry Larkin and Todd Walker aren't this bad). The team's offense has come largely from young outfielders Adam Dunn, Juan Encarnacion, Ruben Mateo and Austin Kearns, and Ken Griffey is expected back soon. But that could also lead to a logjam, while the health record of the people involved suggests that the Reds would be premature in trying to trade any of them. The bigger problem is the pitching; the rotation really isn't in any better shape than at the start of the season. Jimmy Haynes has been terrible for about the seventh straight season. Joey Hamilton has a good ERA, but has allowed 59 baserunners in 37.1 innings, and you can't win for long doing that; ditto for Chris Reitsma (36 baserunners in 22.1 innings; I'm more optimistic about Reitsma but recall how he tailed off last season). Jose Acevedo was sent back to the minors two weeks ago, and in his place is Jose Rijo, hardly a guy you can bank on for 200 innings (remember all the times Fernando came back with 3-4 good starts and then fell apart). That leaves just Elmer Dessens, who's a solid enough third starter but not likely to post a 1.80 ERA over a full season.

(The Dodgers are too early to call, although I'm skeptical since their success is based almost entirely on pitching and defense and depends on the mercurial Hideo Nomo and the equally wild but unproven Kazuhisa Ishii, neither of whom is likely to keep succeeding if they keep issuing so many walks. Odalis Perez has also been unconscious in the early going with a 1.64 ERA and a 25-3 K/BB ratio, threatening to justify the Sheffield trade. The Pirates, by contrast, are already running out of smoke and mirrors, with most of the non-Giles lineup not hitting and the starting rotation other than rookie Josh Fogg getting shelled).

At this point in the year, the teams you look most skeptically at are the ones that are winning with late rallies, unreal relief pitching and a lot of close games - things that can all turn on you in a heartbeat, and usually do over the long season. The Reds and Pirates fit that bill to perfection, the Expos and Mets to a lesser degree.

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On the other side of that coin, there's the Rangers. There has been more than a little unrestrained gloating over the Rangers' disastrous and embarrassing start to 2002. A prime example was this ESPN column by Phil Rogers, but he's hardly the only one. Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News has been piling on Tom Hicks ever since he signed Lupica's nemesis Alex Rodriguez after the 2000 season.

There's a lot of reasons for this. Hicks is a brash, big-spending type who has tried to replicate his NHL experience of pouring big dollars into the free agent market to produce an instant winner, and a lot of the owners don't much care for the threat of salary inflation; writers like Rogers who tend to side with the owners echo this sentiment. Hicks is also close to a certain former Rangers owner now in the White House, and as with George Steinbrenner and Peter Angelos, his outside political activities give some people an added reason to dislike him. Lupica's war of words with A-Rod goes back a ways, and there's enough wrong to go around - A-Rod was treated shabbily by some of the teams he talked to as a free agent (i.e., the Mets), but he shouldn't have tried to paint himself as a martyr for selling out to the highest bidder; Lupica of all people should be the last to criticize a guy for changing jobs. I'm just picking on two writers here, but if you go down the list you find a lot of people with axes to grind against not just Hicks and Rodriguez but also John Hart, Juan Gonzalez, John Rocker, Hideki Irabu, Kenny Rogers, and of course Carl Everett.

But beyond the media's ppig pile, the Rangers haven't actually been that bad in the early going. Sure, the bullpen's been dreadful, and that can be demoralizing as well as undoing all the good work of the rest of the team. But a bullpen is the cheapest and easiest part of a baseball team to fix. Specifically, Texas' starting rotation has been vastly improved over last year, but with the bullpen giving away leads like Halloween candy, there hasn't been a lot of attention paid to the starters. Kenny Rogers, Doug Davis and Ismael Valdes have all pitched well; none of them is going to challenge for a Cy Young award, but all have thrown strikes and generally kept the ball in the park (Davis has had longball problems but his control is exceptional). A return by Chan Ho Park in the next few weeks would greatly stabilize the staff, leaving Dave Burba as the only underperforming starter. They also have Rob Bell on hand, a talented youngster who has lost his way the past few years; if Bell throws well in Park's absence there would be a backup on hand if Burba flames out or Valdes goes down. Even with the bullpen gasping for air, the team's ERA is 4.48, much improved from last season, and tied for fifth in the AL. The Rangers have actually allowed fewer runs than division leaders Seattle and the White Sox. The hand of pitching coach Oscar Acosta, who guided the Cubs to a major league K record last season, is already apparent; only the Yankees have struck out more opposing batters among AL teams.

Then there's the Fat Toad. The naming of Hideki Irabu as the Texas closer of the week drew predictable snickers (including from me), but Irabu has always had the stuff and the control, his problem has been stamina and concentration, which are less likely to be issues in the closer role. Cutting him back to 70 critical innings and two pitches may yet give the Rangers a solid foundation to build the bullpen around. The other people on hand - Todd van Poppel, Francisco Cordero, John Rocker, and Steve Woodard - are also talented guys (all except Woodard have serious fastballs), so it would not be a shock to see this team wind up with a half-decent pitching staff after all is said and done. With this team's offense, that ought to be enough to play .550 ball the rest of the way.

Problem is, that won't be enough. In the wild wild NL West, the division winner may need scarcely more than 90 wins; even fewer may be needed to thread the needle between the aging divisional powers and the uneven upstarts in the NL East. The NL Central is practically upside down today, with the top teams talent-wise struggling, and the White Sox can probably win the appalling AL Central even if they take the second half of the season off. But to make the playoffs over the heads of the Mariners, A's, and the loser of the Yankee-Red Sox race could easily take 95 or more wins; recall that last season's AL Wild Card won 102 games. And the same dynamic may hold for 2003 as well, despite the age and injuries on people like Edgar Martinez, Andy Pettitte, Pedro Martinez, Roger Clemens and Jamie Moyer. The Rangers, if they are genuinely serious about building a championship team, need to do better than build a pitching staff that's sort-of competitive and an offense that's just one of the best in the league; they need to either dominate on offense or get a lot better pitching-wise. The pitching is still a good place to look - since divisional play started in 1969, only four teams have reached the World Series with a pitching staff that finished in the bottom half of the league in ERA, and one of those played in Fenway Park when it was a serious hitter's park (the four teams: the 1975 Red Sox, 1987 Twins, 1992 Blue Jays, and 1997 Indians). But offensively the Rangers also have needs: right now, in fact, they sit in 8th place in the AL in
runs scored, and are no better than sixth in any significant offensive category.

The problem? Don't look at the $252 million man, who's earning his pay as usual, leading the league in homers and slugging near .700. It still astonishes me that we've become jaded to a shortstop who hits like this. Heck, we Mets fans would kill for a shortsop who slugged .375. Injuries to Ivan Rodriguez and Juan Gonzalez haven't helped, with Bill Haselman providing woeful offense at catcher and Gonzalez' absence forcing the team to stick with both Carl Everett and Gabe Kapler, neither of whom is hitting. (Fortunately, light-hitting Calvin Murray has started well since being acquired to cover for Everett's inability to handle center field). Super-prospect Hank Blalock also proved unready in the extreme to handle an everyday job; he may come around with some patience, but people who expected Blalock to be the next George Brett from day one probably forgot that the original Brett slugged .363 with a .312 on base percentage as a 21-year-old rookie.

I still expect Kapler and Frank Catalanotto to get hot at some point, but the fact is that the Rangers don't have a true leadoff hitter, and when Pudge and Gonzalez are in the middle of the order, neither one gets on base very much. The solution to this mess is as painful as it is obvious: trade Ivan Rodriguez when and if he's healthy again. If you're serious about building a truly excellent team for a period of years, trade Rafael Palmiero too, while he's still a deadly hitter. Trading the 33-year-old Rusty Greer while he's hot wouldn't be a bad idea either. The other options aren't so good: Alex Rodriguez is unlikely to bring back equal value in return, plus he's still only 26 and only a few teams could even afford to talk about him. Juan Gonzalez, like A-Rod, was bought on the open market for money only the Rangers would pay him; he's not going to bring back equal value either, and despite his injury history he's still young enough (unlike Palmiero) to project him as part of the answer for several more years.

Unfortunately, that's the kind of long-range thinking that John Hart hasn't done in years; rather than contemplate planning a long-term attack on the division, Hart traded Carlos Pena before the season in a rerun of his deals of Brian Giles, Sean Casey and Richie Sexson. In fact, given Hart's record, the last thing I'd ask him to do is deal offense for pitching, for fear that he'd unload Blalock for Mike Williams or John Halama or somebody. Which is why, if I'm a Ranger fan, I'd be gritting my teeth and hoping for some wild breaks to go my way - because this team looks unlikely to make the moves it's going to need to get to that next level.

That's right - Maddux is ahead of ALL the others at the same age. Every single 300 game winner of the past 80 years. This is an extraordinary group; you can say all you like about how exceptional they each were, but the fact that Maddux stands ahead of every one of them puts him in a fine position, and the fact that Glavine is right in the thick of things means you can't write him off either, although I'm deeply skeptical about whether Glavine can continue as an elite pitcher (his early 2002 returns say he can, but it's early). Sutton is probably the most positive model for Maddux, since he was a similar (albeit lesser) type of pitcher, and he finished his career not with a powerful late-30s surge but just with a long series of 15-11 seasons.

Now, that's no guarantee of anything: Bob Feller has 262 at the same age even despite having missed three and a half seasons to war; Jim Palmer had 248, Fergie Jenkins had 247, Robin Roberts had 244. None of them made it; they were all great pitchers, and none of them was quite done at 35, although all had shown many more signs of decline than Maddux. Jim Kaat, a pitcher of Glavine's type, had 238 wins through age 36 after consecutive 20-win seasons, and his 12-14 record the following year was the last time he cracked double figures in wins. Jenkins and Palmer were both coming off a similar hot-and-cold streak to where Glavine stands now. Maddux still has to win 41 more games after age 35, Glavine 73, and the sledding only gets rougher from here. At the end of the day, the real lesson here is that in modern baseball there's no easy way to 300 wins -- you can only get there by staying in shape and effective to 40 and most likely beyond.

(If you're wondering, Mike Mussina can catch Glavine's pace with 60 wins in the next 3 years, which is possible but a very tall order, while Pedro's 132 wins entering this season put him 8 ahead of Glavine at the same age but 18 behind Maddux and 20 behind the Rocket. Also, Niekro is the only 300-game winner with fewer than 231 wins through age 37 -- he had just 163 -- so Randy Johnson, with 200 wins through 37, will have to blaze some fairly untrodden ground to get to 300. Throwing 100+ mph at his age, of course, puts him in a class of two, but even if he matches Ryan's win total from here out he will come up 7 wins short).

If we go back to pitchers who started their careers between 1890 and 1920, we get a more mixed bag:

Christy Mathewson 373 (0)
Kid Nichols 361 (0)
Walter Johnson 354 (63)
Cy Young 351 (160)
Grover Alexander 266 (107)
Eddie Plank 224 (102)

Still, that puts Maddux almost even with Grover Alexander, as well as 54 wins ahead of Warren Spahn - and both of those guys finished closer to 400 wins than 300. We won't go back further, since most pitchers in the 1880s didn't win much of anything past 30 - while Phil Niekro was 48 when he won his last game in the majors, three of the first five 300-game winners were dead by that age (Old Hoss Radbourn died at 42, Pud Galvin at 45, John Clarkson at 47).

What started me looking at this issue, actually, was Jose Rijo. Rijo is one of the endless parade of pitchers we've seen in recent decades who had Hall of Fame talent -- or at least a shot at a Hall of Fame win total -- but couldn't stay healthy. And now, after he'd already been on the Hall of Fame ballot, he's back and getting another chance to start. Rijo had 97 career wins through age 28 (assuming all reported ages are correct), and a great ERA. Was that the start of a potential Hall of Fame career? Here's another (somewhat arbitrary) chart, comparing Rijo, some active pitchers and a few other recent flameouts to a battery of Hall of Famers through age 28; the non-Hall of Famers are marked with an asterisk:

Dwight Gooden 154*
Vida Blue 142*
Dizzy Dean 141
Milt Pappas 138*
Dave McNally 135*
Roger Clemens 134*
Ken Holtzman 133*
Greg Maddux 131*
F. Valenzuela 128*
G. Alexander 127
Rube Waddell 126
Pedro 125*
Larry Dierker 124*
Sam McDowell 122*
D. Eckersley 120*
B. Saberhagen 113*
Frank Tanana 113*
Sandy Koufax 112
Tom Glavine 111*
Gary Nolan 106*
Nolan Ryan 105
Rube Marquard 105
Mussina 105*
Frank Viola 105*
Ted Lyons 104
Dave Steib 102*
Bill Gullickson 101*
Andy Pettitte 100*
Jose Rijo 97*
Burleigh Grimes 96
A. Messersmith 93*
Brad Radke 93*

Whitey Ford 91
Red Ruffing 88
Eddie Plank 86
JR Richard 79*
Herb Pennock 76
Eppa Rixey 76
Early Wynn 72
Bob Gibson 71
Jim Bunning 70
Jack Chesbro 70
Lefty Grove 67
Red Faber 67
Warren Spahn 65
Gaylord Perry 60
Carl Hubbell 59
Stan Coveleski 58
Bob Lemon 57
3 Finger Brown 42
Jesse Haines 42
Joe McGinnity 28
Phil Niekro 18
Dazzy Vance 0

Gee, you'd almost think winning a lot of games by age 28 is bad for your career - and maybe it is, given how much better the bottom group performed after 28. Of course, this isn't a scientific survey, just the flavor of how little a pitcher's early success can tell us for certain about his staying power. One encouraging sign: even with 6 years of arm injuries, Rijo still entered this season with the same career win total as Dazzy Vance at the same age. But Vance, who won his first game at 31, won 22 games at age 36. Better get busy, Jose.

* * * * *

ANSWER TO THE LAST COLUMN'S TRIVIA QUIZ: The five men who played for Pete Rose in Cincinnati and later went on to manage in the big leagues are Buddy Bell, Tony Perez, Lloyd McClendon, Terry Francona and Tom Runnells. And the group could get bigger; ex-Rose players who may yet manage include Ron Oester, Ken Griffey Sr., Lenny Harris and Joe Oliver.

Random observations: I forgot to list Marlon Anderson on my "thumbs down" pre-season list and Brad Penny, Ben Sheets and Toby Hall on the "thumbs up" list, although I see Hall as more a Terry Steinbach-type hitter than a Ted Simmons-type hitter . . . the early returns are looking up for the 2002 Corey Patterson Experience . . . look for Brian Hunter to get lots of playing time in the Darren Lewis role in Houston . . . Opening day was a banner one in Yankee-land. Sure, Roger Clemens got rocked by the worst team in baseball, giving up a grand slam to Tony Batista and a bases loaded 3-run double to Melvin Mora. But Pedro got clobbered, and the logic is inescapable: Pedro never gets rocked if he's healthy; if Pedro's not healthy, the Sox don't challenge for the division title; if the Sox don't challenge for the division title, nobody does, and the Yankees start resting people for October. An ugly loss, but a good day for the Yankees.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Al Cowens died recently, of a sudden heart attack. In his youth, Cowens was the Carlos Beltran of his day, but better; as a 25-year-old in 1977, he hit .312, slugged .525, drove in 112 runs, and won the Gold Glove as a right fielder for the team with the best record in baseball. He finished second in the AL MVP voting, ahead of Reggie and Jim Rice and behind only a .388-hitting Rod Carew, and drove in 5 runs in the best-of-5 ALCS. Cowens followed with a disappointing 1978 and missed 21 games after Ed Farmer drilled him in the jaw with a pitch in May 1979, escalating a feud that would culminate in Cowens charging the mound after grounding out against Farmer in June of 1980. Cowens had good years and bad years in the 9 seasons after 1977 - after he hit .205 in 1982, Bill James remarked that he'd had "a worse year than a biker in a Clint Eastwood movie" -- but in what should have been his prime years he was never the same star he had been for that one magical year. Sometimes, the best part gets away from you before you know it. Cowens was only 50 when he died.

Jesse Orosco is 5 years younger than Cowens, and he made his major league debut on this day in 1979 at Wrigley Field, relieving Dwight Bernard following a 2-run double by Ted Sizemore with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, and retiring one batter to protect a 4-run lead. Here's the box score, thanks to the magic of Retrosheet.

The one batter, the first Orosco faced in over 1100 major league games? Bill Buckner.

TRIVIA QUESTION: Name the 5 men who played for Pete Rose in Cincinnati who have gone on to manage in the major leagues.
(Answer in the next column)

The Phils have a good offensive talent core, but they still have the execrable Doug Glanville (998 outs the past two seasons and just 163 runs scored), and will wind up with either Glanville or Jimmy Rollins as their primary leadoff man. Unless Randy Wolf has a breakthrough they don't have anything resembling a #1 starter, and I still don't trust their bullpen. The good news is the return of Mike Lieberthal, who should hit even if not at his old level, the likelihood of mild improvements from Abreu and Rolen, and the high likelihood of a major step forward by Pat Burrell.

The Marlins, with their young pitching, are a tempting choice for this year's surprise team, but other than Cliff Floyd there isn't a guy in this lineup who is likely to be significantly above league average in both slugging and OBP. I don't see them having the bats to keep up with the Cincinnatis and Philadelphias of the league, let alone Houston or St. Louis. And young pitching can make you famous, but it can also kill you; Josh Beckett could easily be the next Dwight Gooden, or he could be only the next Greg Maddux, Roger Clemens, or Randy Johnson, which is to say, not that much as a rookie. Paul "Mr. February" Wilson was once a projected superstar rookie, too.

Some of you may have seen the recent article citing the "new fad" of using on base percentage to evaluate players and Montreal Interim GM Omar Minaya's disdain for the stat (Art noted the piece in his Notebook yesterday). What's strange to me about some of the "baseball people" knocking OBP is that it is one of the few statistics developed principally by and for people inside a major league organization -- the modern form of OBP came about through the efforts of Branch Rickey and his team statistician with the Brooklyn Dodgers. This is in contrast to, say, the save rule, which was invented in the 1960s by a Chicago sportswriter and yet has somehow assumed totemic proportions among the game's insiders. While Minaya's thinking may be stuck in the 1930s, however, Interim Manager Frank Robinson was an Earl Weaver disciple who gave Mickey Tettleton, Andre Thornton and Moose Milligan their first everyday jobs, so maybe we can hope that Robinson's thinking will rub off on Interim Right Fielder Vladimir Guerrero and Interim Second Baseman Jose Vidro.

Thumbs up:

+Bobby Abreu. If you don't think he's one of the game's biggest stars, you aren't paying attention.
+Andruw Jones. I assume that he's the age he says he is -- has anyone investigated Curacao lately? -- and he should recover from last year's bump on the road to superstardom.
+Edgardo Alfonzo. Having a good spring with the bat, less so the glove but will come around at his old (pre-1999) position.
+Josh Beckett. The most likely scenario is a season like Kerry Wood, Rick Ankiel and Matt Morris had as rookies.

Thumbs down:

+Tom Glavine. His days as an elite pitcher are done.
+Jason Marquis. Good stuff, but not ready for prime time as a rotation starter.

NL CENTRAL

1. Cardinals
2. Astros
3. Cubs
4. Reds
5. Brewers
6. Pirates

The Cards still have the upper hand in this division unless the trio of Matt Morris, JD Drew and Jim Edmonds reverts to their injury-prone ways. A lengthy absence by Morris would be critical, especially now that it seems that the Rick Ankiel Era may have to wait another year (the name "Sam Militello" is starting to come to mind). I liked the acquisitions of Tino and Izzy even though I'm not a fan of either; they were better than letting holes fester at those spots.

Here's two related questions: has any organization been as snakebit by injury as the Cards the past 15 years? Maybe Anaheim, but St. Louis stacks up with anyone. And has any organization had a better run of good health than the Cardinals did before that? Starting when they followed their first World Championship in 1926 by trading super-slugger Rogers Hornsby for the hustling Frankie Frisch and running at least through their last championship in 1982, the Cards had a clear and coherent organizational philosophy: young players who ran well and played hard, and pitchers who threw strikes. They were rewarded with many years worth of players, mostly in their twenties, who never got hurt; even the guys who lasted into their thirties with the team were durable. People like Frisch, Stan Musial, Enos Slaughter, Keith Hernandez, Ozzie Smith, Lou Brock, Curt Flood, Garry Templeton, Ted Simmons, Tim McCarver, Ken Boyer, Red Schoendienst, and Bob Gibson were astonishingly healthy. There were careers ruined by injury, to be sure: Dizzy Dean, Johnny Beazley, Joe Garagiola, Mike Shannon. But their numbers were generally fewer than you would find anywhere else in the majors. The mid-80s came, and there was Jack Clark, Pedro Guerrero, Bob Horner, and an incredible rash of pitching injuries (I think Greg Mathews and Ken Dayley are still on the DL). The 90s were even worse, from McGwire to Alan Benes to Donovan Osborne to Brian Jordan to Fernando Tatis. Maybe it was just their luck changing, but it seems that the gradual abandonment of the Cardinal philosophy, at least on the offensive side, played a role: fewer jackrabbits, more sluggers, more pulled muscles.

The key for Houston overtaking the Cards is whether they can get .300 and 30+ homers each out of the outfield of Berkman, Hidalgo and Ward; a big year by any one of them is highly likely, but if all three click at once and Morgan Ensberg can step up before Craig Biggio steps down, they will be hard to contain even with weaker hitters at catcher and shortstop. Lance Berkman, center fielder. The mental image alone says all you need to know about how their surroundings have changed the Astros from the days of Terry Puhl, Craig Reynolds and Enos Cabell. A year ago I thought Enron Corp. must have been thrilled to have its name on a stadium where power is cheap and plentiful . . . The Central runner-up will almost certainly take the wild card.

The next three teams are more interchangeable than you think; all three have young pitchers and young power hitters, and then there is Sosa and Griffey. But the pitching staffs aren't a match for St. Louis, nor the lineups a match for Houston. The Pirates will be in the game's desperate underclass again; new stadiums aren't as important as good players. I'll admit that I haven't seen enough of Jason Kendall to know if he'll ever return to the hitter he was just over a year ago.

Thumbs up:

+Roy Oswalt. Tim Hudson, Barry Zito, Juan Guzman, Whitey Ford, Bill Gullickson, Robin Roberts, Fergie Jenkins, Walter Johnson . . . there are plenty of examples of guys putting in a partial good season as a rookie and then handling the transition to a full-time starter as a second-year pitcher seamlessly.
+Kerry Wood. This is the year Wood hits it big.
+Geoff Jenkins. One injury-scarred season and everyone seems to forget about the slugger who was just starting to get noticed a year ago.
+Glendon Rusch. I still like Rusch, albeit less so with the Brew Crew.

Thumbs down:

+Adam Dunn. Not saying he won't be a great player someday with Mark McGwire power, and if he's healthy he should hit 35-40 homers this year. Just this: the guy strikes out A LOT, and he's 22 years old. Don't be surprised if he struggles to hit .250. You know, like the young Mark McGwire.
+Rick Ankiel. Ankiel is a supremely talented major league pitcher, and he did last year was such pitchers are supposed to do when they are sent back to rookie ball: struck out 2 men per inning, totally overpowered the competition. But now he's hurting, and you wonder if there is a connection between his control problems and his arm trouble. One thing says it's coincidence: his problems started with his fastball, and at first at least didn't affect his curve.
+Derek Bell. Ah, I'm beating a dead horse here. But it feels good. The injury in late 2000 that forced the Mets to use Timo Perez instead of Bell was a tremendous blessing, regardless of how Game 1 of the World Series turned out; doesn't that say everything you need to know about Derek Bell?

NL WEST

1. Diamondbacks
2. Rockies
3. Giants
4. Padres
5. Dodgers

Any team in this division could finish anywhere, although the Dodgers look pretty unlikely to contend given the loss of Sheffield and Chan Ho Park as well as key 2001 contributors Terry Adams and Matt Herges. In a close pennant race, I still like the ability of the D-Backs to throw the Johnson-Schilling buzzsaw at whoever challenges them. They do have an awful lot of guys on the decline from what was already a weak offense, though, and if Schilling's 300-inning season catches up with him, they could finish last. Easily. The Giants still have Bonds, Kent and Aurilla, but the penny-pinching they went through to keep Bonds will catch up with them (Tsuyoshi Shinjo as a leadoff hitter?). Interestingly, Baseball Prospectus projects David Bell to recover his home run swing at Pac Bell. Highly-touted Kurt Ainsworth could be important, assuming he's healthy. The Pads may surprise, but I don't see their pitching as particularly reliable. Colorado should expect a better year from Mike Hampton, who flamed out after a good first half last season; like Pedro Astacio after 1998, he may be back with a better appreciation of how to pace himself at Coors. I like this team up the middle, and they are the most likely candidate to win if the
D-Backs falter.

Thumbs up:

+Mark Kotsay. Think 'Trot Nixon 2001'. Not as good as Nixon but the same type of player.
+Todd Helton. Will hit .360 again.
+Adrian Beltre. Healthy again.

Thumbs down:

+Miguel Batista. The numbers don't add up.
+Byun-Hyung Kim. I like his nasty sidearming style, but you know why.
+Rick Helling. Too much wear and tear.
+Barry Bonds. Of course, he can fall off sharply from 2001 and still have a year better than the average Willie Mays season with the bat, so take this with a grain of salt. But a return to his MVP-candidate level (as opposed to runaway-MVP level) would be a big blow to the Giants. The same goes for Luis Gonzalez.
+Paul LoDuca. The poor man's Piazza should be productive but is unlikely to match his Cinderella debut last season.
+Cesar Itzuris. May help your roto team, but won't hit enough to help Jim Tracy's team.
+Todd Zeile. Coors will help, but then the altitude couldn't save Howard Johnson and Dale Murphy when their numbers were up.

AL EAST

1. Yankees
2. Red Sox
3. Blue Jays
4. Devil Rays
5. Orioles

Another boring, same-as-last-year's-predictions division. I've been through the Yanks and Sox already; the return (or not) of Pedro remains the biggest question mark in the game. One interesting subplot will be whether the Yankees have the patience to break in Nick Johnson if he doesn't come roaring out of the gate the way Soriano did last season; the answer, like the treatment of Ted Lilly, will say a lot about the sustainabilty of the current dynasty. Toronto could hang around the race a while but I sense that, with their commitment to rebuilding under J.P. Ricciardi, they won't hesitate to deal veterans even if they are in the thick of it. The main man likely to be dealt is Darrin Fletcher, who's 35 and being pushed by Josh Phelps and Jayson Werth, but Raul Mondesi and Shannon Stewart could also be on the market. The Rays seem to finally be going somewhere, and if they can locate Ben Grieve, they could get mediocre in a hurry. The Orioles don't have a single player who's better than a 50/50 shot to be above average at his position this season, or at any time in the future, and few prospects in the minors. That's pathetic, and there is absolutely nobody La Famiglia Angelos can blame but themselves. Let 'em rot in the cellar.

Thumbs up:

+Esteban Yan. Throws hard, mastered the strike zone last season. I like Yan's chances to hold down the closer job.
+David Wells. Wells has thrown well in camp and could add needed stability to the Yanks' rotation.
+Jay Witasick. Not as bad as he was with the Yankees last season. Witasick can bounce back to be a contributor.
+Johnny Damon. Wishful thinking? I spent $29 on this guy for my roto team. Seriously, Damon should bounce back and hit comfortably over .300.
+Jay Gibbons.
+Jason Tyner. I still think he will learn to get on base enough to be useful.

Thumbs down:

+Sterling Hitchcock.
+Carlos Baerga. See Bell, Derek.

AL CENTRAL

1. White Sox
2. Twins
3. Indians
4. Royals
5. Tigers

I'm not excited about the White Sox, given the disarray of their pitching staff. But the offense is so far and away the best in the division that they can't help but win if they are healthy. Besides, only the Twins even have enough of a settled pitching rotation to take advantage of the matchup on the defensive side, and the Twins don't have Chicago's bullpen. 76 games against this division will make the White Sox look scary entering October, but don't be fooled.

Look at some of the people the Indians had in camp, like Brady Anderson and Mike Lansing, and tell me these guys haven't crossed over into Angelos Land. The Nineties are over. Pretty soon they will be a "small market" team again and begging the taxpayers for a new stadium and the league for revenue sharing.

The Royals . . . it's astonishing how many AL pitchers are holding down rotation slots despite no prior record of major league success. One pre-season depth chart listed a guy named Darrell May as the Royals' number two starter, and I'd never heard of him (May was in Japan). They need an offensive juggernaut to give their young arms (including guys who have been unproven young arms for 4-5 years now) breathing room, and instead we get Neifi Perez, Raul Ibanez, Brent Mayne, Michael Tucker, Carlos Febles, Joe Randa, and Chuck Knoblauch . . . and the Tigers, despite some good pitchers, should be even worse, having let go three talented everyday players in their twenties in the offseason and replaced them mostly with scrubs other than Dmitri Young. The Tigers have a bunch of catchers who can hit, so of course they intend to play two or three of them in the lineup at once and are still considering giving the catching job to a guy who can't. Both of these teams should by all rights lose 100 games.

Thumbs up:

+Matt Anderson. Heh heh, heh heh, fire!
+Paul Konerko. Again. Most of Konerko's apparent decline last season was caused by the decline in offense around the league, as was true for a number of his White Sox teammates; he was actually better. He's in his prime.
+Todd Ritchie. Ritchie's no star, but he and Buerhle are the only guys in the White Sox rotation who are solid bets to take their 33-34 turns and not get bombed, and that alone makes them good bets to win a bundle of games.

Thumbs down:

+Bobby Howry. I hadn't noticed when I drafted him for my roto team that he has misplaced his fastball. It you've seen it, please contact the White Sox front office ASAP.
+Karim Garcia. I used to expect Garcia and Jose Guillen to be breakout candidates, a la Aramis Ramirez, as they hit their mid-20s and if they got another full shot. Now, I'm not so sure with any of these Latin American players how old they are; the ones to be suspicious of are guys like this whose careers haven't progressed the way you would expect them to at their age. Garcia can hit some homers and looked to get some playing time before the Indians cut him, but I've lowered my expectations.

AL WEST

1. Mariners
2. A's
3. Rangers
4. Angels

Lou Piniella has what sounds like the easiest assignment in baseball: if your team wins within 25 games of last season's win total, with everyone of significance returning except one good starter and one mediocre third baseman, you probably make the postseason. But too many of us ran into trouble last season by rating the Mariners against the prior year's results rather than looking at the talent on hand from scratch. The Mariners have a lot of reasons to decline: Bret Boone won't match last season, the bullpen can't be as flawless again, Edgar's second half fade may signal the overdue onset of decline. But this team still has a solid lineup; Ichiro may drop down to .330 but a recent Baseball Prospectus analysis of his Japanese batting stats suggests that he may flash more power this season; Joel Piniero will improve the rotation; Carlos Guillen isn't sick anymore; and Jeff Cirillo should hit. I don't see a real weakness to this team, and that should keep them in the race all year.

The departure of Giambi leaves the A's without any survivors of the slow-pitch softball talent core of the 1999 team, Giambi, Grieve, Stairs and Jaha. Either the Mariners or A's are Boston's primary rival for the wild card. Oakland is now a pitching team, not a mashing team and not really an exceptionally patient team at the plate, not with Tejada, Chavez, Dye, Long and Hernandez in the lineup. If Carlos Pena develops into an everyday player by midseason, Dye comes back good as new and Billy Koch bounces back, they may not feel as severely the impact of their many losses, but I don't see this as a 100-win team again.

Texas is going to score a ton of runs even if Carl Everett falls off the face of the earth, and the pitching could hardly be worse, although it won't be good. I consider them a legitimate contender in this division.

Anaheim may improve this year if Tim Salmon and Darrin Erstad bounce back - Salmon's had a good spring - but they won't keep up in this division.

Thumbs up:

+Jeff Cirillo. May have psyched himself out at Coors; won't see his numbers drop off as much as expected and his real level of performance should improve.
+Jeremy Giambi. Sloooooow, but turned it on with the bat down the stretch last year and could be a big factor in 2002.
+Chad Bradford. More on this later in the season, but I'm a sucker for sidearmers.
+Matt Wise. Good control, good minor league record.
+John Rocker. Has the closer job back, has the help of Oscar Acosta, the pitching coach who did so well with the Cubs' power arms last year, and he's back in Dixie.

Thumbs down:

+Paul Abbott.
+Bret Boone. I say he gets hurt; that seems like the most likely outcome.
+Jermaine Dye. Not a famously quick healer.
+Chan Ho Park. Will really miss Dodger Stadium.
+Carl Everett. He can't cover center field, and the severe decline in his walk rate corroborates the impression that his performance suffered last year in part because he lost his mind. I just don't think Everett will bounce back the way you would otherwise expect a guy with his record to do.

The Postseason:

I'm not going to try predicting the postseason in March again, except to say that it's been nearly 40 years since the fifth and most recent October meeting of baseball's two most successful postseason franchises. The Cards lead the Yankees 3-2, if you're keeping score. My pick, assuming there's a postseason instead of a strike: the Yankees beat the Cards. Hey, I said they were the preseason favorite. I'll be happy to be proven wrong.

2. Did Duquette do a good job?

I'd say yes, mostly; he took over a franchise that was nowhere near serious contention, quickly assembled a team that pulled out a surprise division title in 1995 largely out of spare parts, while the organization broke in the talent base for a more sustained run starting in 1998. That's really the definition of what you want in a GM. The fact that the Sox fell short and that Duquette contributed with a few misfires . . . well, not everyone can win the World Series, and it's not Duquette's fault that the Yankees had such a strong team from 1996 to 1999.

The criticism of Duquette basically focuses on the past two seasons, when the Sox had an incredible talent core, the Yanks were vulnerable, and they just couldn't get the job done. Part of the problem was Duquette's preference for risky players: Bill James once said that Gene Mauch took on too many projects and not enough good teams, and you could say the same here. Even if a lot of the Saberhagens and Nomos and Castillos were good ideas, collectively they left the Sox without the rotation stability they needed. Duquette generally made the right strategic decisions in Boston -- when to build, when to go for it. Where he failed was in bringing in a lot of useless or overpriced veterans to gear up for the 2000 run (I was harshly critical of the Bichette and Arrojo deals at the time, and they really did nothing to move the Sox closer to a title), and overpaying to keep expendable talents like O'Leary.

Duquette has some important skills that overwhelmingly argue in favor of another organization giving him a second chance. This is the man who pulled off the heist of the decade in Montreal (Delino Deshields for Pedro) and then went and got Pedro again in Boston. He fobbed off Heathcliff Slocumb for Derek Lowe and Jason Varitek. He traded Andres Galarraga for Ken Hill, a steal of a deal at the time, although Galarraga later revived his career in Colorado and Hill wore down after a few seasons. He is a fine judge of free talent, bringing in people like Wakefield, O'Leary and Daubach who'd been trapped at AAA. One of his better such pickups in Boston was Matt Stairs, but he let Stairs go before he hit it big as a major leaguer. His genuinely big-ticket acquisitions -- Manny, Pedro, Damon -- have been wise ones. Jose Offerman is a bargain compared to Darren Dreifort, after all. The Duke got ripped for letting Mo and Clemens go, but in retrospect he deserves more criticism for offering Mo a gigantic contract than for letting him leave, and you can understand why Sox management felt that Clemens was a bad risk given how he had fallen off after getting his last big contract after the 1992 season.

3. Did Joe Kerrigan deserve the axe?

Kerrigan was even more the victim of the change in ownership than Duquette, in the sense that it's doubtful that he'd really had time to wear out his welcome of its own accord. Obviously you can't hold him responsible for the bad end to last season, but if the new team thought he wasn't up to the job, they were better off getting their own guy now. It's unfortunate, because Kerrigan seemed like a smart guy and talked like an innovative manager, even if he didn't manage like one last fall. When was the last time the Sox had a manager who thought a step ahead and who did things other managers would emulate - Dick Williams? Strong and decisive leadership is more important in a manager than pure brainpower, but after three decades of managers who came across as decidedly lowbrow (with the exception of Kevin Kennedy, who was more of a harebrained-scheme kind of manager), it would have been nice to see the Sox for once try a manager in the mold of a LaRussa or Bobby Cox, just for a change of pace. It's too soon to judge Grady Little, but from what I've heard he sounds more like a conventional Olde Towne Managere.

One thing that interested me about the coverage of Kerrigan was the sense that, as an ex-pitcher, he couldn't command the respect of the everyday players. This was a widespread theme in the demise of Larry Dierker in Houston as well, and to a lesser extent Ray Miller in Baltimore. What puzzled me about the new conventional wisdom is that it was something I had never heard until a few years ago. It was always thought around the game that pitchers could have trouble adjusting to the everyday responsibilities of the manager's chair. But maybe it's just me, but I don't recall anyone suggesting that Tommy Lasorda or Roger Craig or Bob Lemon or Dallas Green or Fred Hutchinson couldn't get the respect of the players because they had pitched, and nobody micromanaged his offense more than Roger Craig or rode his players harder than Green. If it's true now that an ex-pitcher can't command the players' respect, when did it change?

4. What about the new owners?

Maybe it's too soon to prejudge, but remember that the Henry-Werner team is a rogues' gallery of bad baseball owners cobbled together based mostly on their willingness to ask for taxpayer money. Tom Werner should have been banned from baseball for letting Roseanne Barr sing the national anthem, if you ask me. And Rob Neyer hit it on the head in the column last week suggesting that the Sox' decisionmaking process is already showing the hallmarks of an excessively bureaucratic management structure. On the positive side, Henry never did carry out his threat to hold a second fire sale in Florida, and Larry Lucchino had his moments in San Diego. I'd be worried about these guys if I were a Sox fan, but things could still work out OK.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I haven't had the time for a full Sox preview either, but here are some thoughts:

*Perhaps the Sox' biggest need, besides health, is to improve their defense over last season. The acquisition of Johnny Damon to replace the increasingly immobile Carl Everett and shift Trot Nixon back where he belongs should help that greatly, despite Damon's weak throwing arm. With Nomo gone and the likelihood that both Lowe and Burkett will be in the rotation, the Sox will badly need to convert balls in play into outs, and I would like to see Rey Sanchez in the field when those two are on the mound, even with his weak stick, whereas a more offensive-minded second baseman may be in order when Pedro pitches, especially since he usually faces the other team's ace.

*The second base mess. It goes without saying that Sanchez is only a viable option if the Sox don't have a decent two-way player to plug in. Veras would be the best option if he was 100%, but the early returns aren't encouraging. Carlos Baerga . . . don't get me started. We've seen that movie here in NY, and it does not have a happy ending. Offerman, to my mind, needs to either get the everyday job or a pink slip. The Sox have rid themselves of a whole raft of grumpy, overpaid veterans, the exceptions being Offerman, Arrojo and Wakefield. Arrojo and Wakefield are useful enough, but my sense is that Offerman is not, and if Grady Little doesn't have faith in him he should let him walk. He can let the new owners blame Harrington and Duquette and get the contract behind them. Media reports about "chemistry" can be overblown, but there's little doubt that the Red Sox need to fix the atmosphere around the team, and a younger, hungrier bench is a good first step. That's one good reason not to bring in Rickey, even if he is still useful as a platoon DH. Besides, there's nothing that helps a new manager set the tone better than just up and cutting a big-name veteran with a big contract in spring training.

*John Burkett and Dustin Hermanson. Burkett for several years was living proof that a guy with a good K/BB ratio could still get his clock cleaned. Was the new strike zone the difference last season -- or did he have a better defense behind him, or just better luck? The good news is that Burkett is a horse, and should chew up plenty of innings. I like him to go 14-9 with an ERA in the high threes this season. Hermanson I'm deeply suspicious of, a guy who's been losing ground to the league for years. He gave up 34 homers in 33 starts last season pitching in Busch Stadium. I know Busch ain't what it used to be, but if that's how he does in a big ballpark, how will he fare in Fenway? Stranger pitchers have found themselves in their thirties, but Hermanson could well have further to fall before he does.

*Is Trot Nixon already a star? Don't forget that run scoring was down 8.3% in the AL last year. Nixon's steps forward last season look that much more impressive when you account for that decline. He's still on the Paul O'Neill/Andy Van Slyke career path.

*Tony Clark was just a great pickup; he's better than Dante Bichette ever was, even in his prime. Yes, he brings a great big question mark to a team with too many of them. Yes, he's been known to have slumps that last half a season. But trust me: if this guy gets even 400 at bats this season, he will have a huge impact. He's just shy of his 30th birthday and hit .283, slugged .497 with a .366 OBP the past two seasons, even with back problems and even in spacious Comerica Park. The big question marks are guys where you say "if he's healthy maybe he can get back to where he was." But Clark never left: he's kept producing at a 30-homer 100-RBI pace, just missing time. Any time you can get a guy like that in his prime for nothing but a short-term salary commitment, you do it.

*Another acquisition I liked, even if he seems to be on the outside looking in at the moment, is Jeff Abbott, a guy who fits the mold of a Troy O'Leary a few years back, a 29-year-old guy stuck in AAA for years who could hit for a good average with line drive power and contribute off the bench.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It's just not spring training without Darryl Strawberry getting in trouble, promising he's finally grown up, or both. Man gets kicked out of rehab on his 40th birthday, it's time to admit he's never going to get it. When the Mets' current owners bought the team in 1980, they agonized over their first draft pick, and were ecstatic when they got both of their top two choices: Straw and Billy Beane. What different career paths for the two men took. Darryl came from a fatherless home in a bad neighborhood, but then his brother became an LA cop and by all accounts a level-headed guy, and Eric Davis came from the same part of town and has never been a serious troublemaker. God can give a player talent, and He gave Strawberry the same basic package that went to Reggie, and to Bobby and Barry Bonds, and Dave Winfield. Darryl's just got no sense, and never did.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Either Ruben Rivera is a complete idiot, or there is something else seriously wrong with him that causes the guy to make bad judgments and need cash in a bad way. Either one would go far to explaining why Rivera has made so little of his tremendous talents. The Irabu-Rivera deal, like the trade that sent Fernando Tatis to Montreal for Dustin Hermanson, looks increasingly like one of those trades where both sides came away with a lot less than they expected. Good to see Eldon Auker back in the news, though . . .

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Since I was on the subject of economics lately, and since it ties in to the game on the field, I thought it would be useful to look once again at how recently each major league team has contended for a postseason berth. I'm using an arbitrary cutoff of finishing within 6 games of the postseason, and obviously a lot of teams finish within 6 games of a wild card without being serious challengers to win it all, but the Twins and Mets both finished 6 out last season and it's safe to say that both teams gave their fans some real excitement and meaningful games in September. It's a useful reminder of how few of baseball's franchises have truly been hopeless for an extended period of time; 17 teams have finished in or close to the postseason in the past two years, 24 teams in the past five years, and the six franchises that haven't been to the postseason since 1991 include a team that had the best record in baseball in 1994, a team that lost a 1-game playoff in 1995, and a team that was just started in 1998. Only the fans of the Royals, Brewers and Tigers can really say that their team has not been in the hunt in fairly recent memory; if you are talking economics (the subtext of almost any discussion of competition these days), the Tigers are in a big market with a new stadium and a deep-pockets owner, and the Brewers also have a new stadium. Not to dismiss the plight of the Expos or some of the recent travails in Pittsburgh and Florida, but by historical standards, the size of baseball's true have-nots is fairly small.

Team In Within 6 Games
Diamondbacks 2001 -- (Won World Series 2001)
Yankees 2001 -- (Won World Series 2000)
Braves 2001 -- (Won World Series 1995)
Indians 2001 -- (Lost World Series 1997)
A's 2001 -- (Lost World Series 1990)
Cardinals 2001 --
Astros 2001 --
Mariners 2001 --
Mets 2000 2001 (Lost World Series 2000)
Giants 2000 2001
Cubs 1998 2001
Dodgers 1996 2001
Phillies 1993 2001 (Lost World Series 1993)
Twins 1991 2001 (Won World Series 1991)
White Sox 2000 --
Red Sox 1999 2000
Blue Jays 1993 2000 (Won World Series 1993)
Rangers 1999 --
Reds* 1995 1999 (Won World Series 1990)
Padres 1998 -- (Lost World Series 1998)
Angels** 1986 1998
Marlins 1997 -- (Won World Series 1997)
Orioles 1997 --
Pirates 1992 1997

Expos*** 1981 1996
Rockies 1995 --
Brewers 1982 1992
Royals**** 1985 1987
Tigers 1987 --

Devil Rays***** Never Never

*Lost one game playoff for Wild Card in 1999
**Lost one game playoff for AL West title in 1995
***Leading the NL East with best record in baseball when strike hit in 1994
****Four games out when strike hit in 1994
*****Founded in 1998

QUOTES: "Just look at my Rotisserie value. I'm a pretty cheap pick this
year. I'm telling all my friends to pick me up in their leagues."
- Mike Lieberthal

In an ideal world, we'd all love to see our favorite team build a multi-year champion from the ground up, with young players who grow and develop into stars, the way the Mets did in the 1980s. (Recall that under the present divisional alignment, that team would have won 7 consecutive NL East titles). With this ideal in mind, some in the "sabermetric" community have tended to be harshly critical of any non-Yankee team that adds expensive veteran players in an effort to get over the top or sustain a run at the top. It's true that it merits criticism when teams overpay for help they could have had on the cheap, as the Mets and others have done in recent years. But, to my mind, you only get so many chances to make your run, and once you've got the talent to commit to it, it's sometimes more short-sighted to start rebuilding or even retooling while the window is open and the chance is there. After all, anything really can happen in a short series; while there is generally at least one team in the postseason these days that has no realistic prayer, a team with an outstanding offense OR great starting pitchers always has the potential to run off a hot streak if it gets to October, at least a streak that (like the 1999 Mets) gives the fans a ride to talk about for years. You can criticize the Mets' decision to stage an offseason makeover aimed solely at 2002, but they may not come this way again for many a year. With Piazza still near the top of his game and more popular than ever in NY, the fans aren't crazy to expect another shot at October drama.

Once you accept the premise of the Mets' approach to the offseason and the reality of who was available on the market, most of Steve Phillips' moves made great sense. After dumping the veterans in the bullpen just before they lost their trade value, the Mets in 2001 had a team with strong but not overpowering starting pitching, but the worst offense in the major leagues: a combination of old, slow power hitters with little or no power left (Ventura and Zeile), impatient, slap-hitting outfielders who hit for unimpressive batting averages (Payton, Shinjo, Timo), an injured Edgardo Alfonzo and the dismal Rey Ordonez, who as I noted in this space last fall needed a late season hot streak to avoid setting a new record for fewest runs scored by an everyday player. This would have been a horrifying record to set in a league where the average team scored 4.7 runs per game, close to the highest levels of offense seen in the National League since the foul-strike rule was implemented at the dawn of the 20th century. To top it off, Benny Agbayani proved unequal to the task of playing everyday, and Matt Lawton failed to hit the way he had in Minnesota. Two of the team's three best hitters were utility infielders having career years: Joe McEwing and Desi Relaford. Even the pitching staff was one of the worst-hitting staffs in baseball.

Defying conventional wisdom about the scarcity of pitching, Phillips surveyed the market and apparently decided that, in this offseason, it would be easier to find cheap help for the rotation than for the lineup. With Rick Reed already gone in a midseason trade, Phillips proceeded to get rid of Kevin Appier, who had rebounded strongly in 2001, and Glendon Rusch, who was coming off a poor season but remained a good bet to be significantly better than a league-average starter in 2002. On top of that, promising reliever Jerrod Riggan was shipped to Cleveland in the Robbie Alomar deal. This left just Al Leiter, who pitched brilliantly in 2001 but missed time with injuries; Bruce Chen, a talented lefty who remains maddeningly inconsistent; and Steve Trachsel, who was one of the league's best pitchers in the second half (9-3, 2.74 ERA after the All-Star break) after struggling to get his ERA below 10.00 before a late-May demotion. To fill the two primary holes, Phillips signed free agent Pedro Astacio on the rebound from surgery, and added a second irritating lefthander in Shawn Estes (8-5, 3.33 ERA at the end of July, but started just 7 more times and was bombed in 4 of them), who the Giants - in a fit of frustration and Bonds-induced
salary-trimming - let go in exchange for the useful but eminently replaceable Shinjo and Relaford.

Astacio may be a real find, although he may never regain his health; the strain of pitching all those long innings in Colorado for several years will wear down nearly any pitcher. Estes is also talented, and we were treated a few weeks ago to that annual rite of spring, the newspaper story about which Mets pitcher was getting tutored by club president Fred Wilpon's close friend and high school teammate, Sandy Koufax. Personally, I'd rather see Sandy teach Estes how to throw 335 innings in a season than how to get his curveball over better, but that's just me.

The Mets also brought in Jeff D'Amico, who makes Estes look like Don Sutton in the durability department and is roughly the size of Estes and Sutton put together. I regarded D'Amico as basically free dummy - the deal was essentially Burnitz for Rusch, with the other players the Mets gave up being either expendable (the justly popular but limited Agbayani) or simply not worth their salaries (Zeile, manager-in-training Lenny Harris). For that price, a guy with D'Amico's talent is worth the gamble, but I wouldn't go trading Chen to make room for him in the rotation, because he'll just be visiting.

The bullpen is headed by veterans with various question marks. When Armando
Benitez was with the Orioles and I saw him only a few times a year, I wondered how anyone could ever hit this guy. But he has established such a long rap sheet as far as blowing big games - he's Bizarro Rivera - in combination with his beanball vendettas and murky allegations of beating his girlfriend wars, that it seems silly to deny that this is a guy whose mental makeup isn't well suited to pitching under pressure. I would have traded him, but there's really no other option to close out games in the regular season. John Franco is probably near the end of the road, past 40 and coming off surgery. David Weathers and Mark Guthrie are talented but haven't been terribly consistent over the years. The good news is Bobby Valentine's strong record in putting together good pens, one of the major dividing lines between good and bad managers. (If you answered "four" to the question "How many games into the spring will it take for Valentine to get in a feud with an opposing player, you win the prize after a dustup with Brian Jordan over a beaning this week).

I still strongly suspect that, in addition to Chen and D'Amico, a big part of the story of the Mets' pitching staff this season will be told by pitchers with limited major league exposure, specifically Satoru Komiyama, Grant Roberts, Dicky Gonzalez, Eric Cammack, and possibly Adam and Tyler Walker. Komiyama was called the "Japanese Greg Maddux," which is a nice description of his style, but he appears to be essentially an over-the-hill starter who might be useful out of the bullpen. The Mets have a fairly good record with Japanese players owing in part to the fact that Bobby Valentine managed over there, and if the Mets are lucky, Komiyama will give them something reminiscent of a good Mike Maddux year. Gonzalez is a guy I inexplicably like - he's just got nasty-looking stuff, but couldn't seem to get out of the fifth inning last year as a starter. Roberts, once a highly over-touted starting prospect, seemed to find his true calling as a
reliever.

A staff like that can win you some games, but only if you succeed in turning the game's worst offense, overnight, into a truly outstanding unit. There are a lot of high-risk bids here, but Phillips may yet have done just that.

Let's look at the lineup:

ROGER CEDENO

Cedeno is the first of the gambles. We know he can play everyday, we know he can hit around .300, we know he can draw walks, we know he can steal bases by the carload. Cedeno is, in fact, probably the finest base thief in Major League Baseball today. But can he do it all at once? Cedeno last season managed the improbable accomplishment of raising his batting average 11 points, while dropping 46 points from his OBP. To analysts accustomed to the notion that batting averages vary from year to year but "secondary skills" like a good batting eye are stable, Cedeno is an enigma. Hopefully, the Mets can get him to be patient and focused on getting on base to help win games; one got the distinct impression last season that Cedeno, finding himself on a dead-end team last season, was just playing for numbers and thought it was a waste of time drawing walks if he saw a pitch he might be able to hit. He also needs more than a few days off, since he's a high-energy player who can lose focus and some of the spring in his legs if he plays too many days in a row.

ROBERTO ALOMAR

Warning: Baseball-Reference.com lists the most similar player to Alomar at the same age as Robin Yount, with Ryne Sandberg third and Joe Morgan (probably the player, along with Jackie Robinson, most genuinely similar to Alomar's talents) seventh. Yount, the AL MVP at 33, lost 71 points off his batting average at 34 and was never again an above-average player. Morgan went from .288, 22 homers, 113 runs and 49 steals to .236, 13 HR, 68 R and 19 SB, and never again scored more than 72 runs in a season, only hitting above .250 one more time. Sandberg dropped from 26 homers to 9, lost 100 points off his slugging average, and was never a star again. Joe Torre is also on the statistical list and fell off sharply at 34, but the fact that the Similarity Scores system thinks Joe Torre, the second-slowest man in baseball in his prime (ahem, Rusty) was similar to Robbie Alomar shows why you can't take it too literally. The news isn't all bad: Frankie Frisch tailed off slowly, Robinson started missing games but stayed productive, and Charlie Gehringer at 34 batted .371 and won the MVP Award. Similarity Scores aren't destiny; all they do is give us the cautions of history. History says that even players as good as Alomar - including several players with similar talents - can just lose it overnight at his age.

That said, the Alomar deal was the key to the whole offseason. All the other players the Mets got are, at this stage, fundamentally supporting players. Alomar gives the team a second superstar; if you want to win championships, you need players like this. He was expensive in terms of depth, but easily worth the cost. Escobar, when he's played, has looked similar to a young Sammy Sosa, moreso to a young Mike Cameron, but even before he blew his knee out this spring, his injury record suggested that he'd be very fortunate to match Cameron's career path. The days of comparing him to a guy like Vladimir Guerrero are gone. Matt Lawton's a fine player, but he's no superstar, and while I like Jerrod Riggan, I liked Robert Person, Jeff Tam and Corey Lidle too, and life went on at Shea without them.

MIKE PIAZZA

Piazza's probably reaching the end of his days as a .320-.330 hitter, but he's still the man, and the best hitter the Mets have ever had. Piazza clearly prefers burning out to fading away; he will probably just retire when he can't catch anymore.

MO VAUGHN

Mo is the one offseason acquisition I was not too enthused about. He's a dreadful fielder, his contract is huge, he's been in decline since leaving Fenway and was always helped by the place, he's hardly a conditioning fanatic, he missed last year with injuries, and he's even slower than Olerud or Zeile. It was particularly depressing to see the Mets pass on bidding on the far superior Jason Giambi to sink tens of millions into Mo. The Mets also apparently backed off rumors in the fall that they were considering bringing back Roberto Petagine, who would not have been that expensive and continues to hit well in Japan.

That being said, Mo should at least remain a reliable power source for a year or two if he stays healthy, and he has to be a big improvement over Zeile, who was a few years older and had never been near the player Vaughn was in his prime. Plus, while Kevin Appier revived far more than I had thought possible last season, the fact is that Appier's contract was also a millstone, and dealing Appier was a critical part of the Mets' strategy to pull off this entire offseason renovation without substantially increasing their payroll. One thing working against him, however: Mo's big strikeout rate is likely to go over the edge this season in the poor visibility of Shea, plus he's got to adjust to a rearranged strike zone that everyone else has lived with for a year now.

The popular perception among analysts is to project a gradual decline from a point below where he left off, which would rapidly make Vaughn a below-average first baseman if he wasn't already. But we have seen plenty of examples in recent years of the old power hitter having the One Last Big Year in his thirties - Robin Ventura and Matt Williams in 1999, Gary Gaetti in 1996, Galarraga in 1998, David Justice in 2000, Tino Martinez in 2001 - so it would be foolish to write of Vaughn entirely. If Vaughn gets 500 at bats and slugs .500, he'll be worth it, and I'd give him at least a 40% chance at each of those goals.

EDGARDO ALFONZO

No player is more critical to the Mets this season than Alfonzo, one of the best in the game in 1999-2000 and a dud with a bad back for the balance of last summer. If Fonzie rebounds, this team will be in the race all year; if he doesn't, it's time to start rebuilding no matter what else happens. It's that simple.

JEROMY BURNITZ

It's always better to trade a player a year too early than a year too late, and the Brewers will eventually congratulate themselves for choosing the former. Burnitz, a guy I never thought the Mets should have let go in the first place, is probably better suited to Shea Stadium than Mo because he has proven the ability to put runs on the scoreboard without hitting for average. The Burnitz deal was a steal, as I mentioned before; Rusch still looks like a guy who could break through big time, but his chances of doing so look rather slimmer with the Brewers' track record with young pitchers.

JAY PAYTON

I contended for several years that the much-maligned Garret Anderson would eventually have a season when he hit .330 and was a legitimate All-Star. It might still happen, but don't hold your breath. Payton, who was seen by many as a better prospect than Nomar when they were college teammates, had the talent to be a rich man's Garret Anderson, but he spent too many years mending from injuries when he should have been learning to lay off bad pitches, drive the ball and steal bases. He may yet hit .300 himself, but even at that he would not be a star. Gary Mathews jr. may take his job, but Mathews is just a different flavor of mediocrity. Since Cedeno is defensively overmatched as a center fielder, the Mets may be stuck with one of them.

Then there's Timo. The sole grounds for my limited optimism about Timo Perez entering last season was his youth: a guy who could hit the ball with some authority at 23-24 years old has some growth potential, and has time to learn something about the strike zone. Turns out, though, that Perez, like so many other Latin American players, is older than advertised, which combined with a reportedly poor work ethic, clashes with teammates and bad on-field decisions, makes Perez a highly unlikely candidate to ever contribute anything useful at all to the Mets. Perez has seen some of the blame for the 2000 World Series drift away, as Game One is now more remembered as part of a long series of blown big games by Benitez, but there's really no reason to keep around a guy with minimal talents -- the upside on Timo is Randy Winn -- if he's not busting his hump.

REY ORDONEZ

Rey Sanchez was picked by the Red Sox off the scrap heap, and the Royals couldn't get takers for Neifi Perez; clearly, players like Ordonez are not in high demand. Now we don't even know how old this guy is. But the departure of Relaford leaves the Mets without even a halfway plausible alternative. Ordonez' steady defense will be needed this season, but is he really the game's only dependable shortstop? Ordonez' .299 on base percentage last season (against a league average of .338) sounds awful, but then it gets worse: that was the second-HIGHEST figure of his career; it was actually .274 if you take out his 17 intentional walks; and Ordonez hit into 17 double plays last season, so his true cost to the offense was much higher. The past three seasons, Ordonez has hit into 37 double plays while scoring just 90 runs, a ghastly ratio. Probably half the players in AA right now could do better than that.

OUTLOOK

The NL East was very ripe for the pickings before the Sheffield trade, and even fortified by Sheffield, the Braves can still be had. After all, he can't possibly hit the Mets any harder than Brian Jordan did last season. The rest of the division is getting stronger, but nobody else added any real help over the offseason; the Marlins and Expos still have questions about the health of their pitching staffs, and the Phillies still have Doug Glanville playing everyday (at least the Mets aren't playing Ordonez in the outfield) and still call Robert Person the ace of their rotation. With the growing powerhouses in St. Louis and Houston, the Wild Card is likely to come from the Central this season. In other words: the Mets can take this division, but if they don't they go home.

In spite of Ordonez and Payton, I see the offense being in the top third of the league and probably the best in the division, but not matching up to some of the Central division monsters. This won't be a top-to-bottom machine, but the Mets have two good tablesetters, plus Piazza and Alfonzo can get on base, and Mo and Burnitz should hang just above the league average in OBP. With the tremendous power the Mets have in the 2-6 slots, that should make this an efficient offense, one that's very hard to shut out.

That leaves the pitching. With some defensive question marks and a shaky bullpen, the Mets could give up a lot of runs, but there are high-upside pitchers here as well. The best outcome would be a replay of 1999: the Mets rotation muddles through the summer and gets hot down the stretch, particularly if Rick Reed comes back in July. This isn't a juggernaut - but this team has hope, and for now, I'll take that over the alternative.

QUOTE: The Red Sox "talked briefly [to the Mets] about Carl Everett, but after the Wilfredo Cordero affair, they are not going to bring in Everett"

-- Peter Gammons, November 2, 1997.

First, let's look at a critical statistical indicator: strikeouts and walks per inning pitched. Here are Lowe's numbers from 1999-2001:

As you can see, Lowe was off across the board last season, but except for hits allowed, not by much, and he was striking people out at the best rate of his career, which is rarely a sign of a guy losing his touch. The difference in homers allowed amounts to one home run over the course of the season, and while most of you reading this could easily identify the one homer too many, that's a pretty narrow basis for concluding that a guy is washed up at age 28.

The real problem was that balls in play were far more likely to fall in as hits, and recent studies have validated our experience and common sense that say that the defense can have a lot to do with this. Remember: Derek Lowe was, last season, the most extreme ground ball pitcher in the major leagues, averaging 3.57 ground ball outs per fly out; only Jason Grimsley (3.30) and Danny Patterson (3.28) were even close. Isn't it just possible that such a pitcher would find his effectiveness hampered by his team conducting open auditions for middle infielders (to say nothing of Brian Daubach at first base)? 1000 innings comes to just over 110 games played -- and Shea Hillenbrand was the only Red Sox player to play 1000 innings at the same position in 2001. There's no guar-an-tee that the Sox will be more stable this season, but if Nomar is healthy he can't help but improve on the performance of Mike Lansing and Lou Merloni at short, Daubach looks poised to spend more time at DH, and the arrival of Rey Sanchez gives the Sox a reserve infielder who's one of the best defenders in the game. Sanchez likely won't hit much, but any time he can make it to second or short (on Nomar's day off) when Lowe's pitching, that could be good news (I'm less enthused about the defensive prowess of the Veras/Offerman mix at second).

The banishment of Scott Hatteberg, the worst-throwing catcher in the majors, should also help a guy like Lowe who desperately needs to keep runners on first base in double play position, although Jason Varitek isn't exactly Johnny Bench. Opposing baserunners stole 17 bases in 19 attempts against Lowe last year, compared to 15 (but in just 16 attempts) over the previous two years. The base thieves are on to him, and they need to be stopped.

Moreover, in Lowe's case, the strikeout/walk data is also misleading in one important respect. Being a short reliever, especially a setup man as Lowe was for a chunk of last season, has one statistical drawback that can make pitchers look less effective than they really are: they get asked to issue a lot of intentional walks. Derek Lowe handed out 9 free passes last season at the insistence of his managers, averaging 0.88 intentional walks per 9 innings, compared to just 6 over the prior two seasons. Take those away and his walks/IP for the three seasons look more consistent: 1.98, 1.68, 1.96 (granted that walks were down around the AL last season from 3.7 per 9 IP to 3.2). In his three-start trial at the end of last season, Lowe walked just 2 batters in 16 innings while striking out 15, another hopeful sign.

If you're keeping score at home, Derek Lowe wasn't even the reliever who got saddled with the most intentional walks, or close to it. Here are the highest rates of intentional walks per nine innings of pitchers who threw a significant number of games or innings in 2001:

(As usual, I did these calculations manually, so I may have missed someone. For what it's worth, Greg Maddux was among the league leaders in total intentional passes, meaning that he issued just 17 unintentional walks in 233 innings). If you are drafting these guys in a roto league, remember that most of them will be doing more of the same this year, so you can't take those walks out of the equation. But if you're looking at whose record suggests a pitcher in command of the strike zone, remember that a guy like a Ben Weber or a Mike Myers has a bad K/BB ratio because of his manager, not because he's got bad control.

It's also worth noting one caution, however. Lowe has another flaw that may be harder to hide: lefthanders killed him last season, and they were about half the batters he faced; as a starter he can't be slotted against a portion of the lineup and may be more vulnerable to the kind of lineup-stacking that plagues people like Orlando Hernandez.

The stats can only point the way of trend lines and suggest that the ability is still there; Lowe still needs to put more work into finding new weapons to use against left-handed hitters and - more likely to yield immediate progress - on holding runners on first base. He needs to prove that his arm is up to 220-240 innings, although that may seem like a vacation compared to 100 innings a year out of the bullpen. He will also need help from the defense, and if Boston gives up and ships him to a team with a solid infield defense and a good catcher, the results could be dramatic. But my money is still on a solid recovery for Lowe and a lot less anxiety for Sox fans who can watch him leave games, rather than enter them, in the late innings.

1. Who has baseball's best infield?

Really, it has to be either the Yankees or Texas. The Indians ditched Robby Alomar, and the A's lost Giambi. (By the way, is it just me, or with the facial hair gone and the Yankee uniform, doesn't Jason Giambi look like a puffed up Chuck Knoblauch?) The Mariners have a weak hitter at short, and are dependent on Bret Boone hitting .330 again, plus it's unclear how Jeff Cirillo will hit now that he's returned to sea level (my bet is about .285). The Giants are weak at the corners. Nomar and Tony Clark might be healthy, but even then, the Sox still don't have a solid second or third baseman. The Mets have assembled a fine unit, but one that features two big health question marks -- one of whom is an even worse fielder than Giambi -- as well as the worst-hitting everyday player since Bill Bergen. The White Sox and perhaps Cardinals might offer competition, but an awful lot has to break right for the Cards to have an infield that stands up to Giambi, Jeter, Soriano and Ventura.

How do the Yanks stack up with Texas? Let's split the infields in two, and compare the 2001 batting lines (I'm assuming Lamb doesn't have to worry about Herbert Perry taking his job):

PA=Plate Appearances XO=Caught stealings plus GIDP

On the top line, when you consider the hitter-friendly environment of The Ballpark at Arlington and the fact that a 37 point advantage in OBP beats a 30 point advantage in slugging any day, you have to give the edge to the Yankees, at least on last season's numbers. The bottom line is a rout favoring Texas - Frank Catalanotto went on a long tear last season, and with the departure of Albert Belle, nobody in baseball gets hotter when he's in the groove than Frank Catalanotto - but that's more than a little misleading when you consider that Mike Lamb played only half the time and was coming off a season of hitting .278/.373/.328 as an everyday player.

I'd call it a close call, but the Yankees can point to one guy having an off year (Jeter), and one who gives every sign of continuing to improve (Soriano), while Lamb and Catalanotto are the least likely of the eight players to repeat their 2001 stats, and Giambi is younger than Palmiero (both are likely to be off a little from last year). Robin Ventura may not be the star he was, but he should more than step comfortably into Scott Brosius' shoes at third, and like a lot of Latin ballplayers, Soriano may have a lot of room to grow precisely because he's still learning plate discipline and some of the other basics that American players will never learn if they haven't grasped them by the major league level.

Of course, with Jason Giambi and Derek Jeter at two slots and still-raw Soriano at another, the Yankees' infield defense won't make anyone forget the 1982 Cardinals, while Rodriguez is a fine shortstop and Palmiero is a fine first baseman (and yes, he now actually plays the field unlike in 1999). I will predict that, with Giambi at first, throwing errors by all three of his mates will rise this season. But Jeter did cut his errors almost in half last season, and as we saw in the playoffs his lack of range and propensity for errors are partially compensated for by his alertness and willingness to back up the play in key situations.

I'd take the Yankees, if nothing else because I'm not convinced that the defensive edge at short and first isn't outweighed by the other two positions, because Jeter is due for a better year, and because I have a little more faith in Ventura than in Lamb. Besides, who really knows where Catalanotto will play this year? If the Yankees don't have the best infield in baseball, they're awfully close.

2. Who has baseball's best starting rotation?

Well, there's Mussina, Clemens and Pettitte, and after that there will be a scramble among David Wells, Sterling Hitchcock (who has been promised a rotation spot), and Orlando Hernandez, with Ramiro Mendoza available as always for spot duty. The talented Ted Lilly will be consigned to middle relief, which suggests that the Yankees are reverting to their bad old ways with young pitchers; after Ron Guidry, Ron Davis and Dave Righetti, the Yanks went years without developing a young pitcher of much value and sticking with him before the current crop of Pettitte, Rivera and Mendoza came along (thirteen years with nothing to show but Bob Wickman, Scott Kameniecki and Dennis Rasmussen is not a recipe for championships). But that's the price of win-now baseball, and you can't fault the Yanks for expecting to contend this year. That's a heck of a 3-man rotation, with the possibility that one of Wells or Hitchcock will rebound as a solid number 4 (my money's on Wells).

Not the Yankees? Then who? The D-Backs have a heck of a 1-2 punch, but even if Curt Schilling stays healthy all year again, the rotation gets iffy in a hurry after that. Check out Voros McCracken's "Defense Independent Pitching Stats" - a measure that looks only at strikeouts, walks and homers on the theory that hits allowed are too dependent on defense and luck to be a reliable year-to-year tool for evaluating pitchers - and you will notice that McCracken's system rates Miguel Batista as a decidedly mediocre pitcher (4.63 DIPS ERA last season) whose good ERA is unlikely to repeat this year (by contrast, several of the key Yankee starters, most dramatically Andy Pettitte, allowed more hits than they should have been expected to based on the number of balls in play, although that may simply be another way of saying the team had defensive problems). Anyway, McCracken's numbers just validate the general experience that guys who come out of nowhere to have a good year as a spot starter, but don't strike people out or have great control, tend to be flukes. And Rick Helling may be a horse, but his days of being a big winner look over.

The Braves? Again, question marks after the top two guys, even if you don't think that the deterioration of the 36-year-old Tom Glavine (career high in walks and homers despite fewer IP, lowest K total since 1989, and nearly a hit an inning allowed) is a cause for concern. Jason Marquis is promising and Kevin Millwood might bounce back and Albie Lopez might hold up as a rotation starter - I've never been a fan of Lopez as a starter - but that many what-ifs is too many.

The Mariners? Sele is gone, and while I've liked Paul Abbott for some time, he's hardly a guy who goes 17-4 every year. Jamie Moyer just turned 39, and John Halama is coming off a rough year. This could be a tough staff, and there is help on the way in the form of Joel Piniero and (more likely in 2003 than 2002) Gil Meche and Ryan Anderson, but beyond Garcia and Moyer there are a lot of unanswered questions.

In the end, the A's may have the best rotation, but the difference between Oakland and the Yankees is fairly tight. I'd take Mussina over any of the Oakland starters, but the top 3 are just about even. That leaves Corey Lidle and Erik Hiljus vs. a bunch of guys with a lot of mileage on them, which may favor the Yankees in October (see ALDS Game 4 for details), but not over the long season.

Either way, you have to put the Yankees, again, extremely close to the top. Nobody else blows them away.

3. Who has baseball's best closer?

Yeah, it's still Mariano. Do we really need to argue about this? Rivera carried his heaviest workload since 1996, and took maximum advantage of the tweaks to the strike zone. And the rest of the bullpen might not be the best in baseball - there's the Mariners, for one - but it's a deep pen with the likes of Stanton, Karsay, Mendoza, Randy Choate, and the losers in the battle for rotation spots.

4. Who has baseball's best catcher?

Despite the fact that there are two of the all-time great catchers still active and in their primes, there isn't one catcher in the majors who gives you the total package. Piazza and Posada are relatively weak defensive catchers - Piazza can't throw, and Posada is just as bad plus he has trouble catching the ball. Ivan Rodriguez, who has squatted his way through 1,326 major league games, can no longer be counted on to stay in the lineup. And let's not even talk about what has happened to Jason Kendall. But after Piazza and Rodriguez, you really have to put Posada down as the #3 catcher in the majors at the moment, a serious hitter who shows up for work every day.

5. Who has baseball's best center fielder?

One more time, the answer might not be "the Yankees," but then again it might be. Last year, Jim Edmonds was probably the best, followed closely by Bernie and Carlos Beltran; this year I'd probably still rather have Andruw Jones than anyone else despite a lackluster 2001, and Griffey might always bounce back to 50-HR form. Williams doesn't stand far out of a crowded pack that also includes Mike Cameron and maybe even Richard Hidalgo, but there's no way to make a really clear-cut argument for anyone as better than Bernie.

6. Do these guys have any weaknesses?

That leaves us with only the corner outfield slots and DH as the Yankees' "weaknesses." But Rondell White is a star-quality hitter and a respectable enough glove when he's healthy, John Vander Wal is a professional hitter who hit .313/.500/.412 in road games last season. And then you've got Nick Johnson, a prospect who once posted a .523 on base percentage in the minor leagues. These guys aren't anything you can bank on -- Vander Wal's 36 and coming off his first season as a regular, White and Johnson have gruesome injury histories, and Johnson wasn't quite the same last season after returning from a year missed to hand injuries. (There's also Shane Spencer, who's not terrible and has some value as a part-timer, but most every team can at least plug in a guy of Spencer's quality at these positions). But bear in mind that (1) at least the Yankees have options that MIGHT pay big dividends, (2) these are the easiest slots on the roster to fill in July if you need to and have money to burn, and (3) this is the WEAKEST part of the team.

Some people will predict that the Yankees will miss Tino, O'Neill and Brosius because they brought in a bunch of people who haven't won it all. Maybe in October, but for now I don't buy it. There are still plenty of people around here, from Joe Torre on down, with gobs of big-game experience, and Rivera is still here.

If you're looking for a ray of hope, I can offer you two words: Age and Injuries. The Yankees' free agent acquisitions, even though they were guys in their thirties, made them younger, but this is still an old team full of guys who the Yankees could ill afford to see break down. For all their resources, the Yankees still lack depth, particularly in the infield, although the free agent signings of FP Santangelo and Ron Coomer at least give some potential upgrades on the Clay Bellinger Show. If the Yankees had a run of injuries like the Red Sox did last year -- like losing Jeter for 5 months and Mussina for half the season -- they would probably miss the playoffs. More likely is losing a little here and there: White and Johnson break down, Bernie misses 30 games, Ventura's cranky shoulder costs him still more effectiveness at the plate and hurts his throwing, Rivera gets a tender elbow and needs to be shut down for two weeks, the 39-year-old Clemens has another year like 1999, Stanton or Mendoza misses three months, the guys at the back of the rotation just can't pull things together like they used to. None of these things are all that unlikely, and collectively they could humble the Yanks.

But you want a preseason favorite? Look no further than a team that can boast that it's at or near the top of the game in so many different areas. Like it or not, the Yankees are still with us.

12/13/00: Free Agents Roundup

Most of the pre-2001 signings were pretty easy calls. I was very harsh on
the Kevin Appier signing, but Appier now looks more like the post-surgery
Orel Hershiser and less like the post-surgery Fernando. He's still overpaid
at $10 million a year, but Appier now looks like a dependable if
unspectacular starter. He benefitted hugely from the new strike zone,
jumping his K/BB ratio in one year from 129/102 to 172/64, and as a result
cut a run off his ERA and dropped his baserunners allowed per 9 innings from
13.91 to 10.67. (Getting out of Oakland wasn't the difference; Appier's
improvement was all in his road appearances). Another guy I missed the boat
on was Jose Mesa, who revived in Philly to the tune of 42 saves in 46 tries
and a 2.34 ERA. On the other hand, Mesa allowed almost a hit an inning and
coughed up 8 unearned runs in 69 innings, so he wasn't as effective as the
numbers look at first glance.

On the positive side, I predicted that Frank Castillo would be "a good
candidate for a Joe Kerrigan-inspired 3-month hot streak," and sure enough
Castillo opened the season 7-4 with a 3.45 ERA through June 17 before the
wheels came off. He eventually regained some effectiveness after the stint
on the DL, but the damage was done. I also thought the Rangers had acquired
too many old, injury-prone infielders and that Derek Bell was "completely
done as a major league regular," but then those were hardly radical
opinions. There's a reason Cam Bonifay lost his job in Pittsburgh, although
he's still puzzled why Bell didn't hit.
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/page3/20011007cam1007p3.shtm

1/26/01: The New Strike Zone

I made a lot of predictions here based on the history of what types of
hitters got destroyed by past strike zone changes, most of which were
spectacularly unsuccessful. I predicted doom for John Olerud, Mark Grace,
David Segui, Garret Anderson, Ray Lankford, Jeff Conine and to a lesser
extent Rafael Palmiero, Paul O'Neill and Edgar Martinez; they all did fine.
Others I identified as possible problems included guys like BJ Surhoff, Jay
Bell, Dante Bichette, Troy O'Leary and Steve Finley, who didn't fall off any
more than you would expect for a player their age. On the other hand, I
also warned about Todd Zeile, Derek Bell, Rusty Greer, Joe Randa, Travis
Fryman, Herbert Perry, Ken Caminiti and Jay Payton, although most of those
guys were hurting. Most interestingly, the best under-30 players I flagged
as potential strike zone risks were Johnny Damon and Bobby Abreu, both of
whom opened the season in miserable slumps, although Abreu recovered to have
a good year and Damon recovered to have a good second half. It's not
unreasonable to suggest that those two guys had some adjutsment problems.
On the whole, however, I'd have to throw out the playbook from this column:
it just didn't work.

Pitching-wise was mixed. I thought Roger Clemens "should be one of the
biggest beneficiaries" as well as Al Leiter and Curt Schilling; Leiter
mostly pitched well, and the other two obviously had seasons beyond anyone's
highest hopes. I picked Randy Johnson to finally break the single season K
record; he missed by 11. I forecast good years for Armando Benitez, Billy
Wagner and Troy Percival; two out of three isn't bad, and even Benitez saved
43 games before blowing the pennant race against the Braves. But I
predicted that Mike Hampton and Derek Lowe wouldn't be affected (maybe they
weren't, but Hampton was off some even when you adjust for the Coors
effect).

2/16/01-2/22/01: Red Sox 2001 Preview

Nostradamus couldn't have predicted the full scope of the train wreck that
was the 2001 Red Sox, but I did argue before the season that the risk of
injuries to Nomar, Everett, Manny, Offerman and Pedro was the Sox' Achilles
heel and the thing most likely to keep them from winning the 90-93 games
they'd need to give the Yankees a run. Actually, Offerman had other
problems, but the injury bug was really the biggest of the Sox' many
problems. I hedged my bets on Hideo Nomo being helped by the new strike
zone and picked him to go 15-10; despite some magic moments, Nomo's 13-10
record reflected about how well he pitched. I was more enthusiastic about
Tomo Okha, who was a disaster, and while I expressed some concern about how
long Derek Lowe could keep up his workload, I never saw the horror of 2001
coming. I argued that Jimy should move Arrojo to the bullpen, and he did
well there for much of the season. I said I'd be shocked if Cone stayed in
the rotation with an ERA below 4.50, and I was.

3/13/01: Crank's Top Twenty

My top 7 players were decent predictions, although Pedro may have been too
much of an injury risk to be #1, and Andruw Jones (#4) didn't step up. I'll
still defend picking Bonds #8, but he clearly turned out to be the best
player in the game in 2001. After that we have a bunch of people who got
hurt (Alfonzo, Nomar, Ivan Rodriguez, Kevin Brown), and Sammy Sosa should
have been higher than #20. Doing the list after the season it would have
included Luis Gonzalez, Schilling and maybe Ichiro, but the evidence for any
one of them before 2001 was sketchy. My breakout-year candidates almost
all broke down: JD Drew (well, he did hit great), Glendon Rusch, Ben
Grieve, Bartolo Colon, Preston Wilson. I still stand by picking Todd Walker
to hit .340, which one reader reminded me of again at the season's end; he
was traded out of Coors Field after a month-long slump dragged him down from
.330. I had a hunch Jeff Bagwell was due for an off year, but he wasn't off
that much.

3/30/01: Preseason Predictions

NL East: Braves, Mets, Phillies, Marlins, Expos. Missed by 4 games. I
thought the division would catch up with the declining Braves and Mets, but
the Mets fell even harder than that.

NL Central: Cards, Astros, Reds, Cubs, Brewers, Pirates, with the Astros as
the wild card. Not bad, but the Reds should have been downgraded even more.

NL West: Rockies, Giants, D-Backs, Dodgers, Padres. I was too hard on
Arizona, but then their lineup still didn't impress me AFTER the regular
season.

AL East: Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, D-Rays, Orioles. Missed by 1.5
games. The idea that "Tampa could threaten .500" went about as far as the
idea that Afghanistan was impossible to invade.

AL Central: Indians, White Sox, Twins, Tigers, Royals, with the White Sox
as the wild card. Missed by 2 games (except the White Sox missed the wild
card by 19), although "No bad teams in the Central" was a little optimistic
given that the Tigers lost 96 games and didn't finish last. I compared the
Indians to the 1972 Tigers, 1983 Phillies and 1992 A's, and they had that
one last run in them after all. The White Sox (as I predicted) were done in
in part by pitching injuries. I though the Twins' offense and LaTroy
Hawkins would scuttle their starting rotation's best efforts to contend, and
those turned out to be the problems down the stretch. I picked Roger Cedeno
to walk off with the steals title by 15-20, and only 2 rookies came within
16 steals of him, although Ichiro was one and led the league. I had Matt
Anderson coming into his own, and eventually he did: Through April 20,
Anderson had a 25.07 ERA after his first 8 appearances, highlighted by 7
runs in a third of an inning on April 11. The rest of the way, over his
last 54 appearances, Anderson posted a 2.98 ERA, allowing 40 hits and 16
walks while striking out 50 in 51.1 innings. I got some grief from a reader
who was stunned when I said Joe Randa would hit .254 again; he hit .253.

AL West: A's, Rangers, Mariners, Angels. "[T]he A's are the only team in
the majors that doesn't need a miracle to have a realistic shot at 100 wins
this season . . . " Well, they were one of only 2 to win 100, and I guess
you could call Bret Boone hitting .331 with 37 homers a miracle, but picking
a team to finish third that ties the all time win record is a pretty big
mistake. Boone was unforeseeable and Ichiro unpredictable, but the guy I
and most of the preseason pundits missed the boat on was Mike Cameron, who
was just all-around outstanding without dramatically departing from his 2000
stats. Also, the M's benefitted hugely from getting their #1 starter
(Freddy G.) back healthy. It still staggers me that a team nobody saw
coming - none of the press, none of the stathead analysts, nobody -- won 116
games.

I predicted that "Kenny Rogers could win 20 games with this lineup," and
wound up regretting drafting him for $12 on my roto team - my apologies to
any reader who did the same (having Joe Mays for a buck softened the blow).

Postseason: Cards over Braves in NLCS, A's over Yankees in ALCS, A's beat
the Cards in the Series. Since Oakland and St. Louis were the hottest teams
in baseball entering the postseason, this still looked OK in October; both
teams fell an inning short of getting out of the first round.

4/19/01: Opening Month Notebook

I called Jay Gibbons "a legitimate major league hitter," and he hit .236,
although he did hit 15 homers in 225 at bats. I called the Angels' young
rotation (Ortiz, Schoenweis, Wise and Washburn - Schoenweis collapsed in the
second half), Rick Reed, Greg Maddux, Curt Schilling and Wade Miller as big
beneficiaries of the new strike zone based on the early returns, but also
Esteban Loiza.

8/17/01 - The 2001 AL Pennant Race

The contenders rated as A's-Yanks-Mariners-Red Sox-Twins-Angels-Indians.
The first half was right: the A's finished better than anybody. But I
still didn't see the storm clouds over Boston, while the Indians finished OK
despite lousy pitching. Kenny Lofton actually got hot down the stretch
after I stuck the fork in him.

10/19/01 - Gotta Get To Mo

This column argued, two games into the ALCS, that "nobody beats [the
Yankees] until they beat Rivera." I rest my case.

10/26/01 - Notes Before The 2001 World Series

"Yankees in five" -- OK, I gave up hope too soon . . .

QUOTE OF THE YEAR: "We're like Menudo: You reach a certain age and you
can't play here anymore"

--A's GM Billy Beane on having to replace Jason Giambi with 24-year-old
rookie Carlos Pena

The original book was divided in three sections: a decade-by-decade history of the game (Part I); a discussion of the players by position, with a comparitive ranking of the top 10 at each position and top 100 overall by both "peak value" and "career value" (Part II); and detailed statistics on about 200 players, including the top 100 plus numerous other significant players (Part III). Part I was the really revolutionary part of the book and the most entertaining, an attempt to go beyond just telling the highlights of each decade to really recapture the flavor of the game at each stage -- where the players came from, how strategies changed, what the controversies of the day were, how uniforms and equipment changed, what was going on in the minor leagues (and how the minors got that way). Part II followed in the footsteps of past books, particularly Pete Palmer and John Thorn's "The Hidden Game of Baseball," but added a lot of individual color to the portraits of some of the players, tried to explain, among other things, what about each player was ability and the perceptions of contemporaries and what was an illusion created by the time and place (the identification of a current player each guy most resembled was a useful insight). Part III included a lot of new statistical information that had not been gathered in one place, like a comparison of each pitcher's W-L record to that of his team and previously unavailable data on annual MVP voting.

Key advice on the new book: don't throw out the old one, which is now out of print. James hasn't substantially overhauled Part I, just adding some new categories (like "Last of His Kind" and "Better Man Than Ballplayer") and a section on the 1990s, but some of the interesting essays are gone or truncated (such as the history of platooning). But Part III has been basically eradicated, no doubt in deference to the availability advanced stats in the STATS, Inc. All-Time Handbook and Total Baseball. This is a loss -- not just because the collection of stats at the back was handy in working through the debates in Part II, but because there was stuff in there like "notes" on player injuries and salary data that isn't readily available in the encyclopedias. In its place is a selection of Win Shares data, an issue I'll get to in a moment.

The changes to Part II are almost as dramatic, and represent the centerpiece of the revisions. The old book had a discussion of each notable player and rankings at the end; here, the discussions are ranked in order, and go far deeper into the talent pool. You can now know where Kevin McReynolds rates among the all-time greats, and Gary Matthews, and Ed Bailey and Ed McKean. But most of the essays from the old Part II are gone, including brilliantly written summaries that captured the essence of players like Yogi Berra, Stan Musial, Al Simmons, Tris Speaker and Rube Waddell. If you read only the new book, you may walk away missing important points about these men that were contained in the original.

* * *

The rankings will no doubt be the most talked-about part of the book, intentionally so, and they aim to be much more comprehensive than the last round, including 19th century and Negro League players, both of whom were excluded the last time around for lack of reliable information. I'll come back to these to quibble from time to time in this space; many of them are uncontroversial but enough are that they will stir up debate. James has ranked players based on a statistical formula, albeit one that includes a numeric value designed to account for subjective factors, and that gives weight both to a player's overall career value and to the height of his peak, thus eliminating the separate lists for career and peak value in the earlier book and abandoning his previous criticism of "great statistics" that seek to roll all evaluations into a single integer.

On another point of great interest, James does a big mea culpa on his prior advocacy of range factors. While that groundbreaking work set the stage for many of the more recent developments in fielding statistics, by focusing attention away from errors and onto a fielder’s ability to make plays, James now concedes that the statistical illusions that plague range factors make them too suspect to use as a benchmark for defense. He specifically argues that Total Baseball’s rating of Nap Lajoie as one of the top handful of players all time, based on his defensive statistics, is deeply misguided.

The Win Shares system, which is the foundation of the new rankings, is not fully explained, and James will have a book-length explanation coming out in the spring that you will have to buy to examine the statistical underpinnings of this book. The system makes the assumptions that a team's total wins can be rationally connected to its runs scored and allowed. Thus, each player is assigned a share of the team's total wins based on his contribution to scoring and preventing runs. Thus, a team's total "Win Shares" will always be equal to three times its number of wins (1 share per win would be too small to quantify the differences between players). I can't explain the method any further without doing it some violence, but its accuracy will depend in large part on the accuracy of its offensive and defensive measurements and the wisdom of squeezing these measurements into a box tied precisely to team wins.

Because he sets out to rank the top 100 players at nine positions, James inevitably gives some short shrift to interesting players and to explaining all the rankings. I've had this problem myself in columns that try to be comprehensive -- even if you find one or two interesting lines about 900 players, you wind up leaving a lot unexamined. For example, in the first book he wrote a glowing comment comparing George Sisler to Babe Ruth in their primes -- now he drops Sisler out of the top 100 players of all time without addressing whether he's rethought that comment or just placed more weight on the Mattingly-like long, disappointing coda to Sisler's career (and compounds the confusion with a comparitively high ranking for Mattingly himself).

James has generally tried to avoid overrating active players, even at the expense of sometimes underrating them, but he abandons this in one ranking that he has to back away from in an end-of-2000 addendum to the book. In probably the most controversial ranking in the book, he rates Craig Biggio extremely highly, ahead of (among others) Yaz, Reggie, Ripken, Spahn, Seaver, Koufax, Mathewson, Bench, Yogi, Hank Greenberg, Nap Lajoie, and Charlie Gehringer. This for a leadoff man in a high-scoring era with a career high on base percentage of .415, after the 12th season of his career. I'm a big Biggio fan, but James got carried away with Biggio's virtues on this one. (He also ranks Oscar Charleston third all time, but while that's suprising, there's no way to really know how accurate it is, and Charleston has probably gotten the least respect of all the truly great Negro League players.)

Another controversial one is Will Clark, who rates above apparently superior contemporaries like Rafael Palmiero as well as above numerous Hall of Famers, including old-timer Dan Brouthers, who was the best hitter of the 19th century. Though I understand why James cuts down some of the old-timers, Brouthers’ low rating conflicts sharply with his high Win Shares totals and is hard to explain.

James’ longstanding hostility to Rogers Hornsby has only deepened, and he attacks Hornsby at numerous turns in the book for being a jerk, a bad fielder (James’ defensive method rates Hornsby as the worst-fielding second baseman among anyone with a long enough career to be worth rating), and a guy whose career fell apart after age 33 because he didn’t take care of himself. I still think it was unfair in the old book to hold Hornsby’s frequent changes of address against him when he’s compared to Eddie Collins (who was sold in mid-career by the A’s for reasons similar to those that sent Hornsby from Boston to Chicago) and Joe Morgan (who moved around as much as Hornsby did). But James does have his points on this one.

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I was gratified by James’ analysis of the starting pitchers, since I've been working on my own list for some time now and James' methods and resulting list have a lot of similarities to my own, though he rates Warren Spahn a good deal higher than I do, and he drops John Clarkson well below some of his 19th century contemporaries due (I believe) to a failure to take proper account of the value of Clarkson’s workload relative to the league.

In the pitcher section, James backs off what I always regarded as the most controversial position in the original: that Lefty Grove, not Walter Johnson, was the best pitcher of all time. Grove and Johnson had similar ERAs, if you adjust for the league and park effects; James’ previous argument had rested on three main points:

1. Grove led the league in ERA and winning percentage more often. This is a red herring; Johnson’s ERAs are just as good in context, and he was more often among the league leaders when he wasn’t number one. More to the point, Grove’s ERA titles were often in years when he didn’t throw a ton of innings, while Johnson was working like a dray horse. If you look at the innings, Johnson worked far harder than Grove did even relative to the leagues they pitched in, which made him much more valuable in comparison to his contemporaries. And Grove’s winning percentages – well, give Walter Johnson Jimmie Foxx for his whole career and see what happens . . .

2. Johnson didn’t throw as hard (which James concluded from looking at his motion) and didn’t have to throw hard on every pitch. This ignored two things: one, that contemporary observers almost unanimously said Johnson threw harder, which even if discounted for the “old fogey” factor undermines the idea that Johnson’s velocity was a myth, and two, that Johnson pitched very well in the 1920s, even winning the AL MVP in 1924, even though he was 32 and sore-armed when the lively ball arrived.

3. While Grove’s career was shorter, he should get credit for the five years he dominated the International League (Johnson’s best years were at the same age). This is worth something, but, as James now concedes, these would have to be at the level of Grove’s best seasons to keep Grove even with Johnson’s quality, and he still doesn’t match the length of Johnson’s career.

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Then there are the analytical surprises -- you'll have to open the book to see James' answers to the following questions:

*What player, rarely discussed as a glove man, not only ranks about even with double play kings Bill Mazeroski and Glenn Hubbard as one of the greatest defensive second basemen of all time, but was also off the charts as a defensive player at two other positions?

*What was the best single season starting rotation of all time? This one came as a huge surprise even to James.

*Of all the ways relief aces and closers have been used over the past 50 years, which is the most effective?

*Which DiMaggio was the best defensive outfielder?

*Who was the second-best shortstop of all time?

*What starting pitcher never won a Cy Young award -- but was robbed of several he could have won?

*What third baseman vaulted 30 spots in the rankings when James ripped up his subjective list and forced himself to look at the hard numbers?

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There are plenty of other interesting issues outside the rankings, and and I haven't touched on nearly everything here, including James' prescriptions for shortening games and fixing economic problems. Two more are worth noting.

In one aside, buried in an essay on great teams in Part I, James attacks the two fundamental bases of the team rankings in Rob Neyer and Eddie Epstein's "Baseball Dynasties," (a book he gave a glowing blurb to at the time). First, he argues that ranking teams by runs scored and allowed rather than W-L records is largely redundant. This assumes, of course, that wins a