2003 NLDS/ALDS Picks

Late night at the office last night, so no time for real blogging this morning. Just some time to finish up my thoughts to get on record before the first round starts:
Yankees-Twins: You have to assume the Hated Yankees juggernaut will crush the Twinkies, who haven’t even won a game against the Yanks since May of 2001. Key to the series will be Johan Santana, the type of nasty young lefty flamethrower who can just dominate a series against the odds. Think the Astros and Marlins regret letting Santana go in the 1999 Rule V draft? Also key to any play for an upset will be Shannon Stewart, who’s thus far made the highly questionable Bobby Kielty deal pay off; Stewart’s the one guy on the Twins who can really put the ball in play against the porous Yankee defense. Totally pointless stat: Twins starting pitchers batted .286 this season. More important stat: I saw in the paper the other day that Santana, Brad Radke and Kyle Lohse had won 25 of their last 30 decisions.
Red Sox-A’s: I like both these teams and wish they both had cracks at the Yankees. Oakland roared down the stretch as usual, but without Mark Mulder they don’t look as scary in the postseason against a healthy Sox team with – strangely enough – a healthy San Pedro de Fenway.
Marlins-Giants: Echoes of 1997, although this is a stronger Giants team against a weaker Florida team. Jason Schmidt and Sidney Ponson are key here; the Giants’ starting pitching has wobbled pretty badly down the stretch. I smell a Florida upset.
Braves-Cubs: I’ll be pulling for the Cubbies, and certainly the Braves’ pitching makes them vulnerable. But there’s too much offense here to favor the Cubs. Could go either way — of course, so could any short series — but I’m sensing a Braves return to the NLCS.

Coming Up Short

Another of the stories that needs to be remembered in analyzing a lost opportunity is Mike Sweeney’s injury. Sweeney remains the Royals’ best player, and he was batting around his usual numbers — .321/.540/.440 — when he went down in June. He’s more than that, though; for the season, Sweeney batted .363/.579/.459 with men on base, .398/.648/.493 with men in scoring position, .339/.431/.429 in the late innings of a close game. But after returning from the DL, Sweeney (while relegated to DHing) batted just .260/.379/.325 the rest of the way. In a race that was airtight until the last 2-3 weeks, that’s a significant blow.

Don’t Cy For Me

Now, long-time readers know that I’m a big fan of San Pedro de Fenway here, but even though he was baseball’s most effective starting pitcher this season, and at the risk of contradicting what I just said below about Maddux, I just can’t see giving Pedro another Cy Young Award this season:
1. He only won 14 games.
2. He only threw 186.2 innings.
3. These two facts are not coincidental.
Not only did Pedro not pitch for nearly a month, but in Pedro’s 11 no decisions, he threw less than 7 innings five times. He also left after 7 five others. Now, 7 innings should get you a decision in today’s baseball, so including those in the case against Pedro may not be fair; let’s take a look at those five starts:
March 31 (Opening Day) in Tampa: Martinez leaves with a 4-1 lead after throwing 91 pitches, having allowed a run in the seventh. Hard to fault him here; it was Opening Day, he had a comfortable lead against a rotten team, and Alan Embree and Chad Fox imploded in the ninth inning to lose the game 6-4.
April 27 at Anaheim: Again, Martinez is lifted after allowing a run in the seventh; he leaves with a 4-2 lead after throwing 101 pitches. A lot of pitchers might have been pulled at that point, so it’s unfair to give him all the blame for the fact that Brandon Lyon and Chad Fox each allowed runs (in the 8th and 9th) and the Sox had to go 14 innings to reclaim victory.
June 21 at Philadelphia: Martinez throws 92 pitches, leaves with a 2-1 lead. This one really looks like a game where you’d want your ace pitcher to go 8 with a shaky bullpen. Mike Timlin lets Jim Thome go deep in the 8th to tie it; in the absence of a lefthander, you’d rather have seen Pedro pitch to Thome than a famously gopher-prone righthander. Jason Shiell lets Thome go deep in the 12th, and he and Rudy Seanez blow the game in the 13th.
July 7 at Yankee Stadium: The most notorious of the bunch; the Hated Yankees tie the game 1-1 in the sixth, and Martinez leaves after 7 having thrown 115 pitches. Byun-Hyung Kim blows it in the 9th. Verdict: pitching the 8th might not have made a difference, and Martinez had thrown plenty of pitches here.
July 12 at Detroit: Martinez throws 105 pitches, Red Sox take a 2-1 lead in the top of the 8th, the 24-66 Tigers tie it up in the bottom of the 8th off Embree and the game goes 11. This one’s really not Martinez’ fault so much as the bullpen’s.
Interesting that each of these games was on the road, and all were before the All-Star Break. Even if you exonerate Martinez in each of these five games, the team’s overall 4-7 record in his no-decisions, combined with his starting only 29 games in the first place, really has to lead you to conclude that Martinez just wasn’t a big enough factor to win the award. That leaves the field to Roy Halladay, Tim Hudson and Esteban Loaiza. (Note that the A’s were 10-1 in Hudson’s no decisions). I think I’d give the award to Hudson, myself; he carried a heavier innings load (240) than Loaiza (219), but had a considerably better ERA (2.70) than the other two (2.96 for Loaiza and 3.25 for Halladay).

K/BB

Here’s an eye-popping novelty stat: 13 major league pitchers struck out at least 178 batters this season. Only one, major league whiff leader Kerry Wood, walked as many as 60 batters. (After that, you get to Nomo). Doesn’t that, together with the growing dominance of the game’s best closers, say something? Perhaps that the gap between the best and the rest is growing? Or that the best pitchers are now working harder on throwing strikes because they realize the importance of both K and BB to pitching?
Then again, it could just be a fluke. The 2002 list looks quite different.

Taking His Turn

Lost in the controversy over Greg Maddux’s durability and conditioning (addressed by Baseball Musings here, here and here) is the fact that Maddux led the National League in starts, with 35 (Roy Halladay led the majors with 36). Granted, that’s just 1 extra start over guys like Millwood and Vazquez and teammate Russ Ortiz, but at Maddux’s age there’s something to be said for just showing up every fifth day and knowing what it takes to get you there.
That said, the criticism that Maddux might be able to go deeper in games if he was in better shape seems a fair one. Maddux threw 100 pitches in a game just four times this season (the last time on July 22), and averaged just under 82 pitches per start.

Phanatacism

Tom of Phillies blog Shallow Center defends the meanness and negativity for which Philadelphia fans are famous:
We should be applauded, not denigrated, for demanding better of our teams. The Red Sox and the Cubs may be lovable losers, but they’re still losers. Boston and Chicago deserve better, but they’re too wussy to realize it. We in Philadelphia know we deserve better. That’s why we boo when Pat Burrell fans, again, on a pitch about six feet outside, or when the Eagles, in their new, publicly financed stadium, look as adept as a peewee football team tripping through its first scrimmage.

Silverstein Loses

The Second Circuit today affirmed summary judgment against Larry Silverstein and his related real estate companies, holding that the September 11 attacks on One and Two World Trade Center were a single “occurrence” rather than two “occurrences” within the meaning of the insurance policies on the World Trade Center, and thus that Silverstein is entitled to $3.5 billion rather than $7 billion in insurance proceeds. I mostly just skimmed the 62-page opinion (link opens in PDF form), which appears to be rather dusty reading relating to the negotiation of the various insurance policies; probably the most interesting part looks to be the court’s decision that the Port Authority is a citizen of both New York and New Jersey for purposes of federal diversity-of-citizenship jurisdiction.
Of course, if I’d just won a case saving my client $3.5 billion, I’d find that pretty interesting. Congratulations to the 47 lawyers listed as appearing on the appellees’ various briefs, including my Constitutional Law professor, Charles Fried, and my college classmate and fellow Harvard Law grad John C. Demers.

Crazy From the Heat

France revises the death toll from August’s heat wave upward to 14,000. The methodology (counting as heat-related any number of deaths beyond the deaths in the same period the prior year) still seems a bit flimsy to me, but a spike of a few hundred over prior periods could be chance; a spike of 14,000 means that probably something over 10,000 is the real number actually caused by the heat.
This is a Bangladesh-size humanitarian disaster. Maybe we can get a benefit concert going to buy air conditioners for elderly Frenchpersons. Call it Cool-Aid.

Living Down To Expectations

Tom Glavine leaves tonight’s game without a chance for a decision, which should cap off his season’s record at 9-14. Here’s what I predicted on December 5, 2002 following the Glavine signing:
Glavine likely has one horrible train wreck of a year coming, with a revival to a battered veteran squeezing out one last good in in 2004 or 2005. At best, he’s Kevin Appier all over again . . . This contract will probably do in Glavine’s bid for 300 wins: you heard it here first, he’s going 7-15 in 2003.
Well, looks like I was a little pessimistic, but not by much. And we’ve got three more years of Glavine to look forward to.

“[I]ntegrity and character issues”

Yesterday’s big news was retired Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Hugh Shelton’s statement at a college forum hinting at why he wouldn’t support his former colleague Wesley Clark for president:
“I’ve known Wes for a long time. I will tell you the reason he came out of Europe early had to do with integrity and character issues, things that are very near and dear to my heart. I’m not going to say whether I’m a Republican or a Democrat. I’ll just say Wes won’t get my vote.”
(Emphasis added). Now, this is a little too tantalizing, and while General Shelton may not have expected the Drudge Report to circulate his comments nationally, he should have known this could be newsworthy. He can’t stop at this statement, because he’s left us with two possibilities:
1. Something in Clark’s record of service as Supreme Commander of NATO – beyond what we already know – reflects poorly on his “integrity and character” and resulted in his unceremonious termination from that post. If this is the case, given that Clark now seeks the most powerful job on earth on the basis of a resume that is painfully thin on conduct that has been subjected to public scrutiny and at a time of great danger for the nation, Shelton’s got an absolute responsibility to the public to tell us the whole story. (I should add that, if there’s something unsavory or just unflattering here, some people who have been falling over themselves to line up behind Clark are going to have some mighty big egg on their faces, especially people from the Clinton Administration who’d be in a position to know such a thing).
2. Shelton’s vague reference is just a value judgment on what we already know about Clark’s sometimes bristly relationship (typical of many civilian-military relationships) with the political branches or with other generals, in which case Shelton’s statement has the effect of unfairly smearing Clark’s reputation by implying something darker. I’ve made this point before about publicly floated rumors about Tom Cruise, Barry Bonds and Mike Piazza: don’t imply something if you’re not willing to come right out and say it, and don’t do either if you don’t have some evidence to back it up.
(UPDATE: Instapundit quotes Spoons quoting Ramesh Ponuru making basically the same point. So does Kevin Drum. So I’m in good company here.)
On another note, Shelton also related a story that reflects very, very badly on an unnamed (probably Republican, I’m guessing) member of Congress:
Three days after Shelton took office as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, his commitment to the integrity of the military was tested. When U.S. planes in the Iraq no-fly zone were attacked, a member of Congress suggested that perhaps “we” could fly a U-2 spy plane so low over Iraq that it could easily get hit. Then we’d have a reason “to kick Saddam out of Iraq.” After Shelton responded that he would order that “just as soon as you are qualified to fly (it),” he was not asked again to compromise his office.
“Sometimes people in a position of power lose perspective on right and wrong,” Shelton said.

You could say that.

Falling Short

Well, the Marlins’ big victory last night probably seals the NL wild card race; a 3-game lead with 4 to play is a bit much.
With one more game in San Diego and three in San Francisco, the Dodgers bullpen will be pushed to the limit on a pair of milestones. Eric Gagne notched save no. 55 last night; he needs two to tie Bobby Thigpen’s single-season record and three to break it, although he’s also still (hold your breath) not blown a save this season in a regulation game (as you’ll recall, he did blow the All-Star Game). And Paul Quantrill, who made his 86th appearance last night and who’s also wrapping up a tremendous year, needs to pitch in all four remaining games to be the first pitcher since Kent Tekulve in 1987 to pitch in 90 games in a season; it’s only been done seven times, six of them between Mike Marshall (3) and Tekulve (3) and the other by Wayne Granger.

The Closer

Counting this season, five pitchers in baseball history have had 30 saves and 100 strikeouts in the same season more than once; two have done it in back-to-back years. The five? Bruce Sutter, Rich Gossage, Trevor Hoffman, and now Billy Wagner and Eric Gagne. Only Hoffman and Gagne have done it in consecutive seasons; only Wagner and Gagne (assuming no disaster outings this week) have had sub-2.00 ERAs both times as well (Sutter did it once, as did John Wetteland, John Hiller, Robb Nen, Bryan Harvey, and Willie Hernandez); only Gagne among the five has had fewer than 20 walks in either season (Harvey’s the only other one to match that), let alone both, and besides Gagne – with his two 50-save seasons – only Hoffman and Wagner have cleared 40 saves in one of the seasons (also matched by Harvey, Nen, Wetteland, Armando Benitez and Ugueth Urbina). Gagne also now holds the record for most whiffs in a 30-save season, with 135 through last night; Sutter had 129 in 1977.
Verdict: he’s got a ways to go to prove himself the best or even the most dominant, but Gagne has already staked a real good claim to be the most overpowering closer in the four decades since closers started becoming something of a steady job.
(Hat tip to Aaron Haspel’s search engine for the 30/100 club data).

Just For The Record

It’s probably not going to happen. But if the Bush Administration has anything new that could be aired about ties between Saddam Hussein and terrorist groups, or about WMD, today’s speech before the U.N. — just after the end of summer, with guaranteed worldwide attention, just at a time when the Administration is getting jittery about polls again — would be an awfully good time.

Friendly Fire

Josh Marshall has noted the unsavory tendency of Howard Dean backers to tear into fellow Democrats who aren’t Clean for Dean, or whatever. Kevin Drum, reviewing Dean’s reaction to the Wesley Clark boomlet, picks up the same theme, and frets that Dean himself is showing signs of confusing himself with the greater good of the Democratic Party.
I’ve been saying this for a while now: Dean’s campaign and personality have so much in common with John McCain’s, that the real test of whether he’s got what it takes to win the nomination will be his ability to avoid McCain’s fatal mistake, which was turning his guns away from the opposing party and on to his own party’s troops. Dean’s followers have been escalating the friendly fire already, but things will unravel for Dean very badly if he responds to the Clark phenomenon by opening a second front against the Clintonites who control the party machinery and who have been none-too-subtly pushing Clark precisely as an alternative to Dean.

You Chose Wrong

As the White Sox fade to grey there’s delicious irony for Mets fans in noting that one of the key decisions that did in the Sox was the decision to dump D’Angelo Jimenez and replace him at second base with Roberto Alomar. (Long-time readers of this blog will note that I’ve been fascinated for some time with Jimenez, the on-again, off-again former Yankees infield prospect, who has shown a recurring tendency to confound his supporters and critics alike.) Check out their numbers since Alomar arrived in Chicago and Jimenez in Cincinnati:

PLAYER G AB H 2B 3B HR R RBI BB+ SB AVG SLG OBP OPS XO RC
Alomar 64 242 63 11 1 3 41 17 30 6 .260 .351 .337 688 11 29.4
Jimenez 66 266 80 12 2 7 32 30 31 7 .301 .440 .371 811 7 46.3

BB+ = BB+HBP
XO=(GIDP+CS)
RC=Runs Created
You’ll recall that I noted at the time that Jimenez was in a terrible but not very long-term slump when the Sox dumped him; maybe that was a wake-up call, but maybe the Sox just panicked after 59 bad at bats and cost themselves a valuable performer. Oops.
On the other hand, I’ll admit that I was more optimistic about Alomar than this here, although I was less so here; the biggest problem is that the Sox forgot to platoon Alomar, as he wound up hitting .191 against lefties.

Just Plain Chicks

The Dixie Chicks have essentially divorced country music. This was an inevitable development; there’s no art form quite like country music in terms of the fans’ demand for an emotional, one-of-us connection with the artists. The Chicks may have impaired that bond with Natalie Maines’ ill-chosen anti-Bush and anti-Texas remarks, but if they’d left it at that, it would have been all. But once the Chicks started portraying themselves as First Amendment martyrs (probably the key moment was the nude magazine cover), they basically set themselves into a melodrama with their own fans cast as the villains. You’ll win a lot of new friends in Hollywood that way, but you can never again go back to the country crowd once you’ve sided with people like Bob Herbert (who called country music fans “flag-waving yahoos”).
How long until the “Dixie” is dropped from the band’s name?

War of the Rhodes

Now, I’ve known only two Rhodes Scholars in my time (at least that I can think of offhand), and neither particularly well, but doesn’t Andrew Sullivan appear to be overgeneralizing a wee bit, in his haste to attack Wesley Clark, when he says that “[a]lmost to a man and woman, they [Rhodes Scholars] are mega-losers, curriculum-vitae fetishists, with huge ambition and no concept of what to do with it.”

Muppet Influence

We rented Chicago over the weekend, and it was pretty much as advertised, a very musical musical; if you like musicals, you’ll enjoy it. (Unless I’m missing something, it has to be the first major Hollywood release where two of the top 3 stars’ last names started with “Z”).
Anyway, considering that the cast mostly broke down between people who hadn’t sung and danced in the movies before and people who hadn’t sung and danced, period, they pulled it off well. The one part I didn’t buy was ubiquitous That Guy John C. Reilly’s lead-footed dancing to the song “Mr. Cellophane.”
Anyway, as I’m thinking this, I realize that one reason I noticed this is that I remember the incomparable Ben Vereen performing the same song on “The Muppet Show,” gliding effortlessly about. Looking back, I realized how many songs and people I was exposed to in those childhood years from watching that show, many of which I might not have heard until years later or not at all otherwise. And it wasn’t just show tunes, but pop, rock, country . . . from Sly Stallone singing “Bird in a Gilded Cage,” which I believe is a 19th century standard (or sounds like it), to Debbie Harry doing “The Tide is High,” which was then near the top of the pop charts, to people like Paul Williams and Leslie Uggams who I would just never have heard of otherwise.
How strange, in a way, that one of the last successful shows to truly present a variety of entertainment was a show aimed at children and starring muppets.

The Inscrutable Cartoon

By the way, Mark Steyn answered a question I posed in this week’s Mark’s Mailbox:
Q: OK, I’m sure you’ve had this question before, but why is the online edition of your Spectator column invariably interrupted by a cartoon that has absolutely nothing to do with the column? Is this some abstruse form of British humor (excuse me, humour) that I don’t get? Or is it just an attempt to replicate online the layout of the magazine, regardless of the sometimes jarring contrast between the cartoons and the subject matter?
PS. Of course – keep giving ’em hell.

MARK REPLIES: It doesn�t always have nothing to do with the column. Sometimes it�s a subtle attempt by the editors to undermine it.

Stryker on Clark

About the only thing worth examining on Wesley Clark’s resume — at least as far as his qualifications for high executive leadership are concerned — is his leadership of the Kosovo war. For this reason, attention has focused on the charge that Clark risked starting a war with the Russians with aggressive operations at Pristina Airport until cooler heads prevailed. The charge is deeply ironic, since it casts Clark as precisely the hot-headed, unilateral, overly aggressive cowboy that his supporters love to caricature George W. Bush as being.
Sergeant Stryker has taken an enlightening closer look at this incident, and while there remains fair grounds for dispute over Clark’s judgment, it’s clear that he showed good instincts — not backing down from aggression just to keep the allies happy — and that his reaction was one of the reasonable options. Where you ultimately come out on the proper resolution of this particular crisis depends in large part on what you think of the whole murky Kosovo operation, a subject that I admit I paid little attention to at the time and on which I never bothered to form a strong opinion.
Andrew Sullivan, by contrast, has a much more damning take on Clark’s 2002 article in the Washington Monthly, in which he lauds the value of running foreign policy by committee.

One Too Many

Ted Kennedy has gone off the deep end with a recent interview in which he bellowed about the Iraq War that
There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud, . . . [Referring to costs of the war, Kennedy added that m]y belief is this money is being shuffled all around to these political leaders in all parts of the world, bribing them to send in troops . . .
Yup, Ted K, he knows his frauds. Hey, wasn’t Vietnam made up in Hyannisport? Just asking . . . . the Democrats keep raising the stakes with all this vitriol, and maybe they need to; people don’t generally vote out the incumbent if they aren’t mad at him. But they seem hell-bent on alienating anybody who isn’t steaming mad at the president, and that is how they could wind up with an Alf Landon-sized disaster.

The Outsider

The Sacramento Bee’s Daniel Weintraub has some advice Ronald Reagan might give Arnold Schwarzenegger:
I remember how Reagan almost never used the word �Democrat� when criticizing his opponents. I always assumed that this was because he wanted every possible Democrat to vote for him, and he figured that blasting the party by name would make its members defensive and less likely to support him. So he always said things like �there are those who would undermine our security�� or �my opponents say��

Scent of Failure

Man, you can just smell the desperation in the comments by Democrats lining up to support Wesley Clark for president:
It’s very bad for me as a Democrat to be tagged as somebody who doesn’t support the military,” said Rep. Baron Hill, D-Ind. “He takes that issue back for us.” Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., a decorated veteran of the Korean War who is backing Clark, said the former NATO supreme commander “is Teflon to the question of being a patriot.” Democrats “need someone who’ll stand up with Bush and doesn’t have to say, ‘I’m as patriotic as you are, now let’s debate the issues,'” Rangel said.
Translation: “we don’t care if he can win, at least he won’t make us look like America-hating, stuck-in-the-Sixties, tie-dye and Birkenstock-wearing peacenik wusses in the process.” Of course, it’s a ridiculous canard that Republicans question the patriotism of anyone with dangerously bad judgment in foreign policy, but then a good chunk of Howard Dean’s support comes from people who really are unpatriotic, in the sense that they can’t or won’t agree with James Lileks’ simple mantra about Iraq: I hope we win.
Tennessee Rep. John Tanner, a member of the Blue Dog coalition, said many in the group like Clark’s emphasis on fiscal discipline as well as his military background. Tanner said Clark brings a perspective that needs to be heard in the presidential race. When asked if he would support Clark, Tanner said he already pledged to support Gephardt early in the race.
Translation: there’s nobody in the race like that now.
South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, whose support is being sought by several presidential candidates, said Clark called him Tuesday night to let him know he was entering the race. Clyburn said he will consider endorsing Clark.
“I think having Wesley Clark demonstrates very forcefully that we are soldiers, we are patriots, we are lovers of this country,” Clyburn said.

Translation: you couldn’t get that from the other Democrats in the race. Note that Clyburn all but comes out and says that Clark is really just there to cast a warm protective glow of military experience around a party that has been more than a little cool towards the military.
[Long Island Democrat Steve] Israel said no other candidate in the race can confront Bush so effectively on national security.
“When the president is debating Wesley Clark and has to call him ‘General,’ it becomes highly problematic for the president,” Israel said.

In other words, nobody else even causes a ripple in the president’s support on national security. Of course, what’s more relevant experience: being a general or being the Commander-in-Chief?
The problem for the Democrats is the down-ticket issue: if Bob Graham and John Breaux don’t run for re-election, the Dems could wind up defending open Senate seats in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana, plus an incumbent in Arkansas. Who wants to be a “Howard Dean Democrat” in those races?
(Then again, things aren’t going perfectly on the GOP end in the Senate races either)
Finally, the quote of the week, from Mickey Kaus, on the other celebrated military veteran in the race:
Watching [John] Kerry thrash, flip-flop, and nuance his way to humiliating primary defeat will be one of the few pleasures of the upcoming presidential campaign.
There hasn’t been a train wreck that was this much fun to watch since Mark Green.

Iraq Page

I’m going to use this page as a reference, a holding place for collecting internal and external links of enduring interest on the Iraq war, its justifications and its critics (for now, I’m still filling in the blanks here; I’ll add in more links and categories when I have more time):
Overall Strategy
Steven Den Beste’s Strategic Overview
President Bush’s September 7, 2003 speech on the continuing postwar hostilities in Iraq.
President Bush’s November 6, 2003 speech: “the United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East.”
Iraq and Terrorism
Richard Minter at TechCentralStation summarizes the extensive links between Iraq and Al Qaeda (Sept. 25, 2003).
Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard reviews the Iraq-Al Qaeda connection as of September 2003. (And a similar summary: James Robbins in NRO on September 19, 2003).
Hayes reviews the evidence on the careers of Ahmad Hikmat Shakir and Abdul Rahman Yasin, both providing possible links between the Iraqi regime and Al Qaeda, as of October 2003.
Hayes again, from the November 3, 2003 issue, on Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim a/k/a Abu Hajer al Iraqi, a close confidant of bin Laden’s who may have acted as a critical go-between with Saddam Hussein; this article also rehashes a good deal of the prior article.
Hayes yet again, from the November 24, 2003 issue, on a memo from Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith summarizing Al Qaeda-Saddam contacts.
Gilbert Merritt on the Al Qaeda Connection
Deroy Murdock on Salman Pak and Abu Abbas.
Christian Lowe in The Weekly Standard October 1, 2003 on Foreign Terrorists Captured in Iraq
Weapons of Mass Destruction
Tony Blair’s War Message (March 2003)
John McCain and Jed Babbin on WMD (June 2003)
Andrew Sullivan’s summary of David Kay’s report on Iraq’s WMD programs as of October 2, 2003; the Kay Report itself; and Gregg Easterbrook’s take.
Dick Gephardt on why he believed Iraq had WMD (November 2003).
Unilateralism
Den Beste on the Allies in post-war Iraq (as of October 2003)
Yellowcake-gate
Spinsanity, July 29, 2003
Daily Howler, July 28, 2003, July 22, 2003, July 17, 2003, July 16, 2003, and July 15, 2003.
Clifford May on Niger
16 Words, in Context
Baathist Brutality
Photos of mass graves.
Roundup of links on use of poison gas on civilians at Halabja.
Sports Illustrated on Uday’s depradations as head of the Iraqi Olympic program.
Saddam executed 61,000 people in Baghdad alone.
Media Complicity
John Burns on reporters looking the other way.
Instapundit April 11, 2003 on CNN’s Eason Jordan’s op-ed as “a journalistic Enron”; a followup from Jordan in the Boston Phoenix.

Teams On Base

Given the positive reaction to my study of the great slugging teams, I thought I’d take a look at the teams with the greatest on base percentages in a single season, relative to the league. This time, I’ll just run the “modern” teams rather than the too-old-time-to-be-quite-legitimate teams, drawing the line at 1893, the point at which the pitching conditions (mound distance, number of balls for a walk) and length of the season started more nearly resembling the modern game. Here are the 19 post-1893 teams that finished at least 9% above the league:

Year/Team OBP Lg OBP % Above Lg
1. 1908 New York Giants .333 .293 13.7
2. 1898 Baltimore Orioles .365 .325 12.3
3. 1976 Cincinnati Reds .357 .320 11.6
4. 1931 New York Yankees .380 .341 11.4
5. 1915 Detroit Tigers .353 .319 10.7
6. 1897 Baltimore Orioles .381 .346 10.1
7. 1905 New York Giants .340 .309 10.0
8. 1988 Boston Red Sox .355 .323 9.9
9. 1906 New York Giants .334 .304 9.9
10. 1902 Pittsburgh Pirates .336 .306 9.8
11. 1930 New York Yankees .382 .348 9.8
12. 1927 New York Yankees .381 .348 9.5
13. 2001 Seattle Mariners .360 .329 9.4
14. 1894 Philadelphia Phillies .408 .373 9.4
15. 1971 Baltimore Orioles .344 .315 9.2
16. 1894 Baltimore Orioles .407 .373 9.1
17. 1965 Cincinnati Reds .336 .308 9.1
18. 1913 Philadelphia Athletics .349 .320 9.1
19. 1953 Brooklyn Dodgers
.362 .332 9.0

A few things jumped off the page here. First, the teams that dominate the OBP category have done so by a far narrower margin than the great slugging teams; we’ve got just seven teams here, and just three since 1910, that finished more than 10% better than the league, whereas the top slugging teams were in the 15-22% range. Second, as Rob Neyer and others love to point out, slugging and OBP go together like chocolate and peanut butter: 7 of the top 10 modern slugging teams reappear here (including a reprise by the unheralded 1965 Reds). Another of those teams, the 1950 Red Sox, just missed the cut (beating the league OBP by 8.2%), but is tied for the highest team OBP of the 20th century (.382, tied with the 1930 Yankees and 1921 Tigers; you can run the decimal places and tell me who comes out ahead if you like; the 1894 Phillies, with four .400 hitting outfielders, and 1894 Orioles remain the only teams ever to crack the .400 barrier). Third, the name “John McGraw” comes to mind: McGraw played for three of these teams and managed three others (credit should be shared with Hugh Jennings, who got drilled by 40-50 pitches a year for those Orioles teams, and with Roger Bresnahan, the on-base star of the Mathewson-era Giants). Other teams on the list make you think instantly of Babe Ruth, Earl Weaver (Weaver’s 1971 O’s are known for four 20-game winners, but a .422 OBP from Merv Rettenmund and a .365 OBP from Mark Belanger had more than a little to do with that), Ty Cobb (the 1915 Tigers didn’t have the top 3 in the league in RBI for nothing), and Wade Boggs. There are also remarkably few recent teams, which makes the 1976 Reds’ dominance that much more impressive. And, of course, there’s an awful lot of pennant-winning teams here, as you’d have guessed.
Although one suspects that the repeat presence of McGraw teams suggests that — as analysts today would argue — a focus on OBP can be a choice, the fact that the leagues have often been quite compressed (the 1980 National League is one extreme example, with the Cardinals’ .329 league-leading figure compared to a league average of .321) would suggest that even without thinking about OBP, managers have mostly stayed within a narrow band in assembling their teams. On the other hand, even a 5-7% advantage in OBP can mean a lot of runs. And it does seem that the spreads are widening in recent seasons, with the 2001 Mariners beating the AL average by 9.4%, the 2002 Yankees by 8.3%, and the 2003 Red Sox by 8.4% through Tuesday, and the 2001 Rockies leading the NL by 8.3% (the biggest margin of the 1990s was actually the 1994 Yankees at 8.4%).
For what it’s worth, the top old-time teams were the 1876 Chicago White Stockings, 27.4% above the league at .353 compared to a league average of .277, and the 1875 Boston Red Stockings of the National Association, 24.9% above the league; the top legitimate (non-Union Association) 1880s team was the 1886 Chicago White Stockings, 16% above the league. One reason I included the 1890s teams in the list above rather than lumping them back here was that I had a hard time convincing myself that the game played by the 1897-98 Orioles was really that different from the game played by the 1902 Pirates or the 1905 Giants.
UPDATE (Through 2004 season): The 2003 Red Sox actually wound up 9.4% above the league (.360 compared to .329), and thus should be listed with the 2001 Mariners in 13th place on the chart.

The Dean Record, Part 2: Spending

Continuing from yesterday:
2. Spending
This is the part of Dean’s record that is the subject of the most contested talking points on each side. Dean’s backers, eager to show that he is really more fiscally conservative than President Bush (I’ll leave the issue of when the Democrats became the green eyeshade party for another day), love to point out that he repeatedly balanced Vermont’s budget and even ran surpluses, despite the fact that Vermont (unlike most states) does not have a constitutional requirement of a balanced budget.
At first glance, it’s a good record. McClaughry grouses that some of this was smoke and mirrors:
On several occasions during those years he was forced to make some spending cuts. In his earlier years, he favored directing his department heads to reduce their spending. In later years, he became adept at fund raiding and cost shifting. On the former point, Jack Hoffman, the longtime liberal commentator for the Vermont Press Bureau, observed in 2002 that “Dean’s proposal to squeeze the education fund looks less like an exercise of fiscal restraint and more like an old fashioned raid on the one account that’s still healthy.”
This, to me, sounds like par for the course for state governors; Al Gore made essentially the same charge about Bush’s budget-balancing record in Texas. Let’s accept, for now, the idea that Dean kept a close eye on discretionary spending. There are still two caveats here.
First, of course, there are a variety of reasons why balancing the Vermont budget in the 1990s is a lot easier than balancing the federal budget today. Vermont has just over 600,000 inhabitants, a fact I still find shocking; New York City has a third of that in a single police precinct, and Texas has 21 million people. Like the Scandanavian countries it chooses as a model, Vermont is heavily rural (Dean has never had to contend with the problems of a major city), almost absurdly ethnically homogenous (96.8% white and just a third of the national average speaks a language other than English at home), which reduces a number of the social frictions that create government headaches, and of course, Vermont has no defense budget. You could institute Platonically ideal policies for Vermont that still wouldn’t work at the national level. The stock market boom of the 1990s made everyone’s job easier. Also, as Kevin Drum noted the other day, it’s easier to balance your budget when your state is a net recipient of federal tax payments, as is Vermont (again, unlike, say, Texas).
Second, and far more significantly, while it’s true that the GOP has not been diligent about policing spending, the real gripe conservatives have with the Democrats is that their policy proscriptions invariably involve creating big entitlement programs that, once set in motion, can never be cut or eliminated. As Steven Moore notes, that’s exactly what Dean seems to have done in Vermont, creating:
a state-funded universal health care system (which as president he would take nationwide), government-subsidized child care (even for the rich), . . . a mega-generous prescription drug benefit for seniors with incomes up to four times the poverty level, . . . and taxpayer-funded campaigns.
The NR piece I noted yesterday contended that Vermont’s new Republican governor had found it necessary already to trim the sails of Dean’s healthcare plan to keep the budget in balance. And, as with taxes, that is the question voters have to ask themselves about Dean: what does he propose to do? The answer, of course — as I’m sure we’ll discuss in more detail as the campaign goes on — is still more big entitlement programs.
Dean kept the budget of a tiny state in balance during boom years. That’s not nothing, but it bears about as much resemblance to balancing the federal budget as does balancing your checkbook.

The Happy Recap

I was listening to the Mets radio broadcast the other night and Bob Murphy said that the Mets “certainly have no hope of any postseason action this year.” Now, I’ve been realistic about this fact since April, but there’s knowing you have no hope, and then there’s hearing Bob Murphy say that there’s no hope.
If there’s been one unflagging constant with Murphy over his 42 seasons as a Mets broadcaster, leading up to his retirement after this season, it’s that there was always hope. In 1962, the Mets started with a three-man broadcasting team of professional broadcasters Murphy and Lindsey Nelson and former player Ralph Kiner. Under the arrangement at the time, two of the announcers would do the TV broadcast and one would do the radio broadcast, and they would rotate every few innings. The choices could hardly have been better: the broadcasting team stayed unchanged for 16 seasons (Nelson retired in 1977), and Murphy and Kiner are still here. Murphy and Nelson were inducted in the broadcasters’ wing of the Hall of Fame, and Kiner was inducted as a player in 1975. After the late 1970s, Murphy moved to radio full-time, while Kiner became part of the TV team; the past decade or so he has mostly worked either with Gary Thorne or, more recently, Gary Cohen.
Through it all — including years on end of lousy baseball — Murphy remained at all times the eternal optimist, the soul of a franchise whose stock in trade is the improbable comeback and the miracle team: “If Bruce Boisclair can get on here, Ron Hodges will come to the plate with the potential tying run on deck . . . “ And he rarely had a harsh word for anyone, even the surly and despised Dave Kingman, who Murphy always referred to, most formally, as “David Arthur Kingman.” Murphy always played it straight, as well: he’s always left the analysis to the color man, preferring to just give you the game and the occasional anecdote to keep things moving. Just the same, you could always tell from the sound of his voice if the Mets were winning or losing, if a deep drive headed out of the ballpark was good news or bad. And if the Mets won, he would always announce the postgame show with, “and now, it’s time for the happy recap.” Probably Murphy’s only regret as a Mets broadcaster, and one he has mentioned often on the air, is that the Mets never did get a no-hitter, despite some very close calls (especially by Tom Seaver).
Murphy is retiring after this season; although he can still call an entertaining game, you can hear him slipping on the air, and I’m sure he’s tired of the travel. I’ll miss him; he’s been the voice of the Mets all my life, and for a variety of reasons I’ve listened to an awful lot of baseball on the radio over the years. Thanks for giving Mets fans everywhere hope. We’ll need it.

The Dean Record, Part 1: Taxes

The Wall Street Journal ran an article some weeks ago by John McClaughry, a conservative former Vermont state senator who twice ran very unsuccessfully for governor against Howard Dean (in 1992 and 1994; the first time, Dean won 202,115 to 62,805), criticizing Dean’s record as governor. The National Review ran a big piece a few months back that was largely sourced from McClaughry, and a Google search reveals him as probably the main critic of Dean’s Vermont record. There’s nothing wrong with that — McCalughry is obviously the most prominent of the state’s few conservatives — but there’s a danger in letting all the anti-Dean memes arise from one man’s point of view.
So, what’s McClaughry’s line? I haven’t gone back to Vermont sources myself; I’m just evaluating what McClaughry, the NR piece and some the major pro-Dean articles (including a surprisingly favorable review from supply-side firebrand Stephen Moore) have cited as Dean’s major pros and cons. Let’s start with:
1. Taxes. Dean apparently never raised income taxes in his years as Vermont governor, and even managed an across-the-board 4% cut in 1999. That’s a major plus, one that shows a guy willing to work outside his party’s usual rut and who isn’t enamored of high progressive tax rates simply for their own sake. (The fact that Dean may have done this with one eye on his political future is not a knock on him; a Democrat who at least thinks that cutting taxes is in his political best interests is halfway there). McClaughry blasts Dean for using the income tax cuts as cover to hike other, less visible taxes:
During his last eight years Mr. Dean signed into law increases in the sales and use, rooms, meals, liquor, cigarette, and electrical energy taxes. In 1997 he raised the corporate, telecommunications, bank franchise, and gasoline taxes. Dwarfing all of these was his approval of a state education finance “reform” built on a new 1.1% state real property tax.
Moore, who pulls no punches even in attacking Bush on tax and spending issues, is less charitable:
This is the second-highest taxing-and-spending state in the country, with collections about $600 per person above the national average . . . At one time or another, Dean raised just about every tax he could get his hands on. During his 12 years as governor, he upped the corporate income tax rate by 1.5 percentage points, the sales tax by 1 percentage point, the cigarette tax by 50 cents a pack, and the gas tax by 5 cents a gallon. Sure he balanced the budget every year–by digging deeper into Vermonters’ wallets.
This is actually a common gripe raised at tax-cutting Republican governors, but it’s a fair criticism. McClaughry doesn’t give us perspective on the relative sizes of the various tax hikes and cuts.
In the end, though, none of this really matters, because whatever credit Dean deserves for his state record on taxes, he’s made a crystal-clear promise to repeal every jot and tittle of Bush’s tax rate cuts, and I take him at his word on that promise. Dean may be hoping that he can use his mixed record on taxes in Vermont to convince the public that because he’s a reasonable guy, his belief that we need to jack taxes back up to pre-2001 levels should be taken seriously. But then, Dean’s campaign persona comes off as a lot less sober and reasonable than Walter Mondale’s, and look where the tax hike pledge got Mondale (I haven’t seen polling on the issue lately, but I suspect that the Bush tax cuts mostly remain popular and that most people don’t favor repealing the whole thing). Raising taxes isn’t just bad policy, it’s bad politics as well.

BLOG/ Starting Back Up

OK, I’ve been off the blogging routine a bit lately. Yesterday I finished a gigantic time suck, as we wrapped up refinancing our mortgage, so that’s out of the way.
Of course, it’s also been a depressing time to write. The Mets have long since been down the crapper, their one exciting young player is done for the season, and the Hated Yankees are leaving the Red Sox in the dust again. And, of course, the Bush Administration went through its usual pre-Labor Day snooze (a trend dating back to the 2000 campaign); while I don’t think things are going that badly overall, it’s hard to deny that conservatism and the Bush Administration have been playing nothing but defense all summer, with no major initiatives out there — on the domestic or foreign policy fronts that promise to do anything but consolidate recent gains.
But the fray needs to be rejoined, so I hope to be starting to get back on schedule soon.

My G-G-Generation, I-M

Part III of a series (see Part I here and Part II here) looking at athletes, actors/actresses, musicians and others in my generation (including a few bloggers where I knew or could infer their ages), defined generally as people born between October 1969-October 1973. Today, our march through the alphabet reaches from I to M (bearing in mind that some cases require creativity in assigning alphabetical order):
Kazuhisa Ishii, MLB
Jason Isringhausen, MLB
Goran Ivanisevic, tennis
Jason Jacome, MLB
Jimmy Jackson, NBA
Jaromir Jagr, NHL
Jay-Z, rapper
Wyclef Jean, singer
Charles Johnson, MLB
Keyshawn Johnson, NFL
Chipper Jones, MLB
Eddie Jones, NBA
Steve Karsay, MLB
Chris Kattan, comedian
Jamie Kennedy, actor
Nancy Kerrigan, figure skater
Jason Kidd, NBA
Ryan Klesko, MLB
Vitaly Klitschko, boxer
Queen Latifah, actress/rapper
Jude Law, actor
Ty Law, NFL
Matt Lawton, MLB
Jared Leto, actor
Emmanuel Lewis, actor
Dorsey Levens, NFL
Jacob Levy, blogger
Jon Lieber, MLB
Mike Lieberthal, MLB
Eric Lindros, NHL
Esteban Loaiza, MLB
Paul Lo Duca, MLB
Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes, singer
Javier Lopez, MLB
Jennifer Lopez, actress/singer
Derek Lowe, MLB
Jamie Luner, actress
Ewan MacGregor, actor
Dr. Manhattan, blogger
Ricky Martin, singer
Pedro Martinez, MLB
Jamal Mashburn, NBA
Mike Matheny, MLB
Marshall (Eminem) Mathers, rapper
Matthew McCaughnahey, actor
Rose McGowan, actress
Joe McEwing, MLB
Steve McNair, NFL
Natrone Means, NFL
Ramiro Mendoza, MLB
Phil Mickelson, golf
Midori, violinist
Alyssa Milano, actress
Sam Militello, MLB
Kevin Millar, MLB
Lawyer Milloy, NFL
Jay Mohr, actor
Gretchen Moll, actress
Raul Mondesi, MLB
Herman Moore, NFL
Alonzo Mourning, NBA
Bill Mueller, MLB
Georghe Muresan, NBA
Notes: Yes, Sam Militello . . . As I’ve noted before, lotta Red Sox on this list; the future is now . . . I missed LaPhonso Ellis on the last list . . . Man, Alonzo Mourning just seems like he should be a lot older . . . And Muresan and ‘Webster’; I can’t help but wonder if Muresan, like Andre the Giant before him, labors under the likelihood of a short life expectancy due to the conditions that made him so tall.

O’Rourke

Interview with the indispensable P.J. O’Rourke over at the Onion, including a classic O’Rourke story that combines Animal House with stock options and some well-earned contempt for Rick Reilly. (Link via The American Scene). On the difference between himself and Hunter Thompson:
His political stuff is just wonderful, but basically nothing happens. It’s all about his reaction to a situation. And my stuff is much more externally driven. He brings a lunatic genius to ordinary events, and I bring an ordinary sensibility to lunatic events.
On the plague of lawyers:
I buy a tractor two years ago, and four-fifths of the tractor manual is about not tipping over, not raising the bucket high enough to hit high-tension wire… not killing yourself, basically. The tractor itself is covered with stickers: Don’t put your hand in here. Don’t put your d___ in there. And in that manual, I found out�and it cost me a thousand dollars�that when the tractor is new, 10 hours into use of the tractor, you have to re-torque the lug nuts. If you don’t, you will oval the holes. This is buried between the moron warnings. I never found it. I take the tractor in for its regular servicing, and they say my wheels are gone. A thousand dollars worth of wheels have to be replaced because I didn’t re-torque after 10 hours. How am I supposed to know that? “It’s in the manual.” You f___ing read that manual! You go through 40 pages of how not to tip over!
And some good advice for bloggers and other creatures:
O: Do you ever have a crisis of confidence when you’re writing, where you say, “Man, I don’t know if I’m right about this?”
PO: If I do, I say so. That’s the only way out of that. If there are three words that need to be used more in American journalism, commentary, politics, personal life… it’s the magic words “I don’t know.” I mean, there are certain basic principles… There are certain things that I feel pretty confident about. But when I get in deep water, I prefer to announce that I’m in over my head.

BASKETBALL: Too Much Vin

WATFO, as Bill Simmons would say (and undoubtedly will say, about this news): Vin Baker admits that he is an alcoholic. (Link via Boston Sports Blog).
Good luck to Baker getting his life and maybe even his game straightened out — he’s a guy who came far from Hartford College to the big time, and has fallen an awful long way since signing a big contract. A cautionary tale, this one, about long-term multi-million dollar deals for young men who haven’t learned how to cope with pressure.
UPDATE: A commenter corrects me – Baker went to the University of Hartford. My bad.

Mets Shortstops

With Jose Reyes out for the season, finishing at a more than respectable (for a 20-year-old shortstop) .307/.434/.334 with 13 steals in 16 attempts and 47 runs scored in 69 games, a pace for 30 steals and 110 runs. Reyes was totally overmatched early on, batting just .209 through July 11, but once he caught on, he hit an impressive .355/.486/.395 the rest of the way.
Reyes’ propensity for hamstring injuries, combined with his season-ending ankle injury, are causes for concern. Still, given the history of Mets shortstops, you’d have to believe that he won’t have to keep this up for very long at all to be the best the Mets have had at a position that has long been a sore spot for the franchise.
Well, to look at that question objectively, I took a look through Bill James’ Win Shares book, as well as at online calculations for the 2002 and 2003 seasons. Through September 7, Reyes ranked fourth on the Mets with 12 Win Shares, which projects out to 28 if he could keep this up for a full season’s worth of games. How does that stack up against Mets shortstops of the past? I looked at the shorstop with the most Win Shares for the Mets for each season of their history:

Year SS WS Year SS WS
1962 Elio Chacon 5 1983 Bob Bailor 6
1963 Al Moran 3 1984 Rafael Santana 5
1964 Roy McMillan 3 1985 Rafael Santana 11
1965 Roy McMillan 8 1986 Rafael Santana 8
1966 Eddie Bressoud 11 1987 Rafael Santana 11
1967 Bud Harrelson 13 1988 Kevin Elster 12
1968 Bud Harrelson 6 1989 Kevin Elster 18
1969 Bud Harrelson 14 1990 Kevin Elster 10
1970 Bud Harrelson 17 1991 Kevin Elster 10
1971 Bud Harrelson 19 1992 Dick Schofield 13
1972 Bud Harrelson 13 1993 Tim Bogar 6
1973 Bud Harrelson 13 1994 Jose Vizcaino 7
1974 Bud Harrelson 14 1995 Jose Vizcaino 16
1975 Mike Phillips 8 1996 Rey Ordonez 7
1976 Bud Harrelson 13 1997 Rey Ordonez 6
1977 Bud Harrelson 4 1998 Rey Ordonez 9
1978 Tim Foli 7 1999 Rey Ordonez 13
1979 Frank Tavares 12 2000 Melvin Mora 6
1980 Frank Tavares 10 2001 Rey Ordonez 12
1981 Frank Tavares 3 2002 Rey Ordonez 9
1982 Bob Bailor 6 2003 Jose Reyes 12

Bear in mind, here, that a Win Share is a third of a win, so an everyday player who’s worth 10 Win Shares (just over 3 wins) isn’t contributing all that much. Some observations:
*Average Win Shares, Mets starting shortstops: 9.83
*Total Win Shares, Mets starting shortstops over 42 seasons: 413. Total Win Shares, Robin Yount: 423.
*The Mets have twice won the National League pennant (1986, 2000) without a shortstop who contributed 3 wins to their bottom line.
*The single-season high is 19 by Bud Harrelson in 1971; Harrelson was a good player in his prime, with a good glove and decent plate discipline in a run-starved environment; you could fairly argue that he’s the only good shortstop the Mets have ever had, and certainly over any sustained period of time. Reyes has a ways to go to match Harrelson’s whole Mets career. But one more full season anything like this year, though, could well make him the best single-season shortstop in club history in short order.
*Vizcaino, in 1995, is the only shorstop to lead the Mets in Win Shares. Of course, when Jose Vizcaino is your best player, you aren’t going anywhere.
*We won’t mention Alex Rodriguez here.