Baseball 2006 Archives

As usual this time of year, I'm creating new categories for the new year. This is especially important for those of you who come here directly to the baseball category page, which should now be here. Update your bookmarks accordingly. Also note that posts about the 2008 presidential race will be in the Politics 2008 category.

First reaction to the news: this stinks for the Mets, who really could have used Zito and his durability. Second thought: 7 years and $126 million is crazy money for a guy who is a durable quality pitcher, yes, but not a championship-quality staff ace.

One thing that happens in Rotisserie baseball is that you sometimes realize that the economics are shifting - people are throwing stupid money at closers and speed is cheap, something like that. So you change your strategy. Starting pitching still matters, but it matters less than it used to, and yet has become obscenely expensive. I can't criticize the Mets for mostly staying out of the feeding frenzy. Glavine and Maine give the Mets two solid starters, and El Duque will hopefull be OK when available. Dave Williams and Jason Vargas may give the Mets some non-Lima-quality insurance. Which, with Trachsel, Bannister and Zambrano gone, leaves two rotation slots, one to be filled by Oliver Perez in the hopes of progress, the other open for competition between Pelfrey, Humber, and Soler, and Pedro to return at mid-season.

Not a great rotation. But with a deep bullpen and a solid lineup and defense, maybe the Mets are ahead of the game in shifting their strategy and saving their resources.

Good overview of the big fish that might be on next year's market. Carlos Zambrano is obviously the major prize here.

The Royals deal Andrew Sisco to the White Sox for Ross Gload. This is an interesting deal. My gut reaction is to say that it is a horrendous deal for the Royals. Sisco is a 23-year-old lefthander who could throw a feather through a brick wall, and those don't grow on trees, especially for the pitching-starved Royals. He had a fine rookie campaign in 2005 followed by a terrible year, but 6'10" power lefties have something of a history of coming along slowly, and they are dealing him when his stock is down. I'm also not sure it's a great deal for Sisco; while he gets into a much better organization for developing pitchers, he is probably more likely now to get pigeonholed as a situational lefty reliever, which is not the best role for a guy with his upside but also his control problems.

All of that said, though, the deal may yet be partly salvaged if Gload turns out a few good years as a regular. He is a pretty good hitter, probably better than, say, Jeff Liefer or Jeff Abbott or Greg Norton. While his upside is lower than Sisco's, he's a better bet to be productive in 2007. That may not be the profile you are seeking if you are KC and building for 2008-09, but it's something.

UPDATE: Pinto says Sisco may have been dealt for eating tacos during a game in Mexico. Or something.

Boy, the Mariners are just idiots, aren't they? First they trade Rafael Soriano for Horacio Ramirez - at first glance a deal of two young-ish pitchers with good arms and bad injury histories, but really a deal of a guy with a great record (when healthy) as a reliever (2.89 career ERA), who could easily hold down an elite closer job, for a starter who has never pitched decently or had good peripheral numbers at any stage of his career. Then, they trade one of their few promising (albeit also injury-prone) young bats, Chris Snelling, for a manifestly washed-up and expensive Jose Vidro - and, in the process, eliminate the job of 23-year-old Jose Lopez, who for all of his second half swoon last year is a promising young hitter whose top ten comparable players include three Hall of Famers.

Win now, or build around youth. The Mariners will do neither in 2007.

For those of you who have been wondering what I was doing instead of blogging about baseball lately - besides being swamped with work and a not-sleeping-well baby - I decided to take a systematic look at this year's free agent signings thus far, using Established Win Shares Levels. These are all the signings through Monday, drawn from ESPN's list. [UPDATE: Yes, I know the chart is already a bit out of date - I may re-run this later to include Drew, Lugo, and Pettitte, as well as some of the people who sign later in the offseason].

EWSL is explained here, and the age adjustments I used, developed from the 2004-05 results, are here (I have not yet had time to add the 2006 results). As you will recall, EWSL is not a predictive tool and is not individually tailored to the player; it simply looks at the established level of quality a player has produced over the last three years, applies an age adjustment derived from actual experience, and concludes that a particular level of Win Shares is a player's current established level of production. I see it as a baseline or starting point for an analysis of this nature, rather than an endpoint - in other words, if EWSL says a player's current established level is 6 Win Shares, you need a really good reason to explain why you are paying a guy with the expectation that he will give you 20. I don't exclude the possibility that a closer statistical analysis or some teams' scouting and coaching staffs may have such good reasons, but the bigger the gap is, the more skeptical we should be.

The chart below is mainly self-explanatory. The last five columns list, in order, (1) the average per-year contract value, (2) the player's 2007 EWSL, (3) the average contract value divided by 2007 EWSL, (4) the player's average EWSL for the life of the contract, and (5) the average contract value divided by the average EWSL for the life of the contract. The chart is ranked by the final column, with the best bargains in terms of dollars per EWSL for the life of the contract at the top, and the worst deals at the bottom. I explain below some of the biases in the study, however.

EWSL more than a year out was computed by successive application of the age adjustments (I'll spare you the algebra). Obviously that's a crummy way to project a player as far as 8 years into the future, but then I'm not convinced that the Cubs have a better way to project a player 8 years into the future.

Player	Age	Old	New	Yrs	Dollars	$/Yr	EWSL	$/WS	WS/Yr	Tot$/WS
Geoff Blum, 3B	34	SD	SD	1	$900,000	$900,000	5	$166,256	5	$166,256
Damion Easley, SS	37	AZ	NYM	1	$850,000	$850,000	5	$175,941	5	$175,941
Mike Lieberthal, C	35	PHI	LAD	1	$1,250,000	$1,250,000	6	$211,411	6	$211,411
Ramon Martinez, 2B	34	LAD	LAD	1	$850,000	$850,000	4	$219,828	4	$219,828
Royce Clayton, SS	37	CIN	TOR	1	$1,500,000	$1,500,000	6	$235,738	6	$235,738
Kazuo Matsui, 2B	31	COL	COL	1	$1,500,000	$1,500,000	6	$259,905	6	$259,905
Adam Kennedy, 2B	31	LAA	STL	3	$10,000,000	$3,333,333	12	$276,228	12	$283,546
Kevin Millar, 1B	35	BAL	BAL	1	$2,750,000	$2,750,000	9	$292,180	9	$292,180
Craig Counsell, SS	36	AZ	MIL	2	$6,000,000	$3,000,000	11	$283,447	10	$315,146
Sean Casey, 1B	32	DET	DET	1	$4,000,000	$4,000,000	12	$323,939	12	$323,939
David Weathers, RP	37	CIN	CIN	2	$5,000,000	$2,500,000	8	$317,622	7	$344,545
Alex Cora, SS	31	BOS	BOS	2	$4,000,000	$2,000,000	6	$338,839	6	$363,488
Jose Mesa, RP	41	COL	DET	1	$2,500,000	$2,500,000	6	$394,737	6	$394,737
Scott Spiezio, 3B	34	STL	STL	2	$4,500,000	$2,250,000	6	$363,685	6	$397,448
Rich Aurilia, 3B	35	CIN	SF	2	$8,000,000	$4,000,000	10	$394,633	10	$397,615
Frank Catalanotto, LF	33	TOR	TX	3	$13,000,000	$4,333,333	11	$379,164	11	$401,637
Gary Bennett, C	35	STL	STL	1	$900,000	$900,000	2	$414,365	2	$414,365
Jay Payton, RF	34	OAK	BAL	2	$9,500,000	$4,750,000	13	$365,610	11	$417,342
Wes Helms, 3B	31	FL	PHI	2	$5,450,000	$2,725,000	6	$472,161	6	$454,489
Aaron Fultz, RP	33	PHI	CLE	1	$1,650,000	$1,650,000	4	$454,566	4	$454,566
David Dellucci, LF	33	PHI	CLE	3	$11,500,000	$3,833,333	9	$414,026	8	$462,964
Alex Gonzalez, SS	30	BOS	CIN	3	$14,000,000	$4,666,667	12	$397,886	10	$471,003
Gregg Zaun, C	36	TOR	TOR	2	$7,250,000	$3,625,000	8	$440,355	7	$493,970
Tanyon Sturtze, RP	36	NYY	ATL	1	$750,000	$750,000	2	$494,071	2	$494,071
Mike Stanton, RP	40	SF	CIN	2	$5,500,000	$2,750,000	6	$496,241	6	$498,913
Jose Valentin, 2B	37	NYM	NYM	1	$3,800,000	$3,800,000	7	$511,888	7	$511,888
Bengie Molina, C	32	TOR	SF	3	$16,000,000	$5,333,333	11	$490,286	10	$521,305
Pedro Feliz, 3B	32	SF	SF	1	$5,100,000	$5,100,000	10	$525,665	10	$525,665
Mark DeRosa, 2B	32	TX	CHC	3	$13,000,000	$4,333,333	8	$566,893	8	$546,034
Ray Durham, 2B	35	SF	SF	2	$14,000,000	$7,000,000	13	$542,159	13	$559,361
Dave Roberts, CF	35	SD	SF	3	$18,000,000	$6,000,000	12	$512,616	11	$560,597
Kerry Wood, SP	30	CHC	CHC	1	$1,750,000	$1,750,000	3	$570,652	3	$570,652
Roberto Hernandez, RP	42	NYM	CLE	1	$3,500,000	$3,500,000	6	$614,035	6	$614,035
Russ Springer, RP	38	HOU	STL	1	$1,750,000	$1,750,000	3	$618,229	3	$618,229
Wade Miller, SP	30	CHC	CHC	1	$1,500,000	$1,500,000	2	$625,000	2	$625,000
Steve Kline, RP	34	SF	SF	2	$3,500,000	$1,750,000	3	$521,558	3	$643,051
Luis Gonzalez, LF	39	AZ	LAD	1	$7,350,000	$7,350,000	11	$648,949	11	$648,949
Darren Oliver, RP	36	NYM	LAA	1	$1,750,000	$1,750,000	3	$667,429	3	$667,429
Henry Blanco, C	35	CHC	CHC	2	$5,250,000	$2,625,000	4	$659,216	4	$676,174
Jose Guillen, RF	31	WA	SEA	1	$5,500,000	$5,500,000	8	$710,701	8	$710,701
Juan Pierre, CF	29	CHC	LAD	5	$44,000,000	$8,800,000	14	$612,103	12	$721,928
Jim Edmonds, CF	37	STL	STL	2	$19,000,000	$9,500,000	14	$695,020	13	$743,655
Paul Bako, C	35	KC	BAL	1	$900,000	$900,000	1	$745,856	1	$745,856
LaTroy Hawkins, RP	34	BAL	COL	1	$3,500,000	$3,500,000	5	$768,611	5	$768,611
Gary Matthews Jr., CF	32	TX	LAA	5	$50,000,000	$10,000,000	14	$708,617	12	$813,729
Tom Glavine, SP	41	NYM	NYM	1	$10,500,000	$10,500,000	13	$818,713	13	$818,713
Nomar Garciaparra, 1B	33	LAD	LAD	2	$18,500,000	$9,250,000	10	$888,057	11	$869,319
Guillermo Mota, RP	33	NYM	NYM	2	$5,000,000	$2,500,000	3	$739,754	3	$881,379
Greg Maddux, SP	41	LAD	SD	1	$10,000,000	$10,000,000	11	$889,548	11	$889,548
Woody Williams, SP	40	SD	HOU	2	$12,500,000	$6,250,000	7	$897,129	7	$898,150
Mike Piazza, DH	38	SD	OAK	1	$8,500,000	$8,500,000	9	$912,507	9	$912,507
Joe Borowski, RP	36	FL	CLE	1	$4,250,000	$4,250,000	5	$933,245	5	$933,245
Aramis Ramirez, 3B	29	CHC	CHC	5	$75,000,000	$15,000,000	18	$839,991	16	$957,903
Scott Williamson, RP	31	SD	BAL	1	$900,000	$900,000	1	$983,965	1	$983,965
Orlando Hernandez, SP	41	NYM	NYM	2	$12,000,000	$6,000,000	6	$971,660	6	$990,388
Alan Embree, RP	37	SD	OAK	2	$5,500,000	$2,750,000	3	$937,820	3	$1,027,868
Danys Baez, RP	29	ATL	BAL	3	$19,000,000	$6,333,333	7	$908,917	6	$1,083,488
Frank Thomas, DH	39	OAK	TOR	2	$18,120,000	$9,060,000	11	$829,556	8	$1,094,241
Chad Bradford, RP	32	NYM	BAL	3	$10,500,000	$3,500,000	3	$1,018,923	3	$1,096,806
Kenny Lofton, CF	40	LAD	TX	1	$6,000,000	$6,000,000	5	$1,133,680	5	$1,133,680
Carlos Lee, LF	31	TX	HOU	6	$100,000,000	$16,666,667	17	$977,422	14	$1,156,569
Moises Alou, RF	40	SF	NYM	1	$8,500,000	$8,500,000	7	$1,160,806	7	$1,160,806
Justin Speier, RP	33	TOR	LAA	4	$18,000,000	$4,500,000	5	$921,848	4	$1,261,868
Alfonso Soriano, LF	31	WA	CHC	8	$136,000,000	$17,000,000	17	$1,028,620	13	$1,315,438
Mike Mussina, SP	38	NYY	NYY	2	$23,000,000	$11,500,000	9	$1,258,848	9	$1,329,466
Jamie Walker, RP	35	DET	BAL	3	$12,000,000	$4,000,000	3	$1,524,100	3	$1,391,725
Vicente Padilla, SP	29	TX	TX	3	$33,750,000	$11,250,000	8	$1,462,210	7	$1,597,677
Ted Lilly, SP	31	TOR	CHC	4	$40,000,000	$10,000,000	7	$1,366,618	6	$1,804,602
Jason Schmidt, SP	34	SF	LAD	3	$47,000,000	$15,666,667	10	$1,594,355	8	$2,011,000
Gil Meche, SP	28	SEA	KC	5	$55,000,000	$11,000,000	7	$1,542,669	5	$2,042,034
Octavio Dotel, RP	33	NYY	KC	1	$5,000,000	$5,000,000	2	$2,219,263	2	$2,219,263
Adam Eaton, SP	29	TX	PHI	3	$24,500,000	$8,166,667	4	$2,009,185	3	$2,372,750
Kip Wells, SP	30	TX	STL	1	$4,000,000	$4,000,000	2	$2,500,000	2	$2,500,000
Randy Wolf, SP	30	PHI	LAD	1	$8,000,000	$8,000,000	3	$3,000,000	3	$3,000,000

As I see it, this analysis has three biases you need to take account of before using it to analyze contracts.

1. You will notice that the top of the chart is dominated by short-term deals for low-cost, low-quality players, while most of the stars are in the bottom half. There's a rational reason for that that doesn't depend on GM stupidity. Lots of players can give you 1 Win Share; very few can give you 30. And there are still only 25 roster spots. In a perfectly efficient free agent market, that marginal 30th Win Share should be more expensive; the stars ought to cost a premium for scraping the right end of the bell curve. That's an argument that the best measures analyze contracts by marginal value, but I didn't have time to run an analysis of that nature.

2. Win Shares accords a fairly large share of the value of preventing runs to fielders as opposed to pitchers. As a result, especially with declining innings totals, all but the very best starters and nearly all relievers will top out in the mid teens, comparable to a solid but not star-level regular. While you could argue that this is a reflection that real-world teams should spend less on individual pitchers, you still need pitching, and accordingly the pitchers generally come in as more expensive. Another way of viewing this is to recognize that pitching is scarce and thus more valuable.

3. Unsurprisingly, players returning from long injuries preceded by periods of injury-reduced effectiveness are rated by EWSL as not being worth much. Naturally, the teams employing Randy Wolf and Octavio Dotel know that they are taking on a risk.

That said, some thoughts:

*I see Adam Kennedy as a guy nearing the end of his effectiveness, at least as an offensive player, but EWSL sees him as a guy who has been a consistent producer and is not that old, and just signed for a lower annual salary than Jose Valentin. The Cards don't need to get a ton of value from Kennedy for that to pay off. Credit the savvy Walt Jocketty for that one.

*Yes, I recognize the inherent skepticism that accompanies anything that rates Kaz Matsui as a good deal. Just because he appears to be a good use of money doesn't mean he's a good use of at bats. Although I do still think Matsui may have a revival in him in Colorado.

*No, I do not actually think Gary Matthews and Juan Pierre are better investments than Glavine. Don't forget the value of their defense, but I do see Pierre in particular as a guy who is in rather faster than usual decline.

*Note that Aramis Ramirez is the only player on the chart who has an EWSL of 15 or higher for the duration of his contract. Obviously, he's a steal.

*I was a little surprised to see Jason Schmidt in the rogues' gallery with Eaton, Wells, Meche, Lilly, and Padilla, none of whom are pitchers of comparable quality.

Slick-fielding, light-hitting 1980s Giants shortstop Jose Uribe was killed in an auto accident late last night; he was 47 and living back home in the Dominican Republic:

Uribe owned a hardware store and other businesses in his hometown of Juan Baron in recent years, and ran unsuccessfully for mayor earlier this year.

For some reason, I found this description especially touching, symbolizing both the importance of ballplayers to the Dominican and the bond between generations of players:

Uribe's death prompted an outpouring of grief in his hometown, where Los Angeles Angels outfielder Vladimir Guerrero led thousands of mourners through the streets.

Guerrero blasted music out of a van as they marched from the Uribe family home to the town's baseball field. Among the mourners was Chicago White Sox shortstop Juan Uribe, a second cousin of Jose Uribe and from the same town.

The article mentions that Uribe's widow is named Guerrero as well, so Vladimir may also be some sort of kin. Pinto notes that his first wife died in 1988. A postscript, not to blame the dead but as a reminder to the living: like Derrick Thomas, Uribe wasn't wearing a seat belt.

Let's see - the wholly unaccomplished Adam Eaton and the injured Randy Wolf sign $8 million/year contracts, Vincente Padilla, Gil Meche, Ted Lilly and Greg Maddux sign $10-11 million/year contracts, even though Maddux is past 40 and got plastered for three months straight last season and Meche ran out of gas in the second half last year and hasn't had a good ERA in seven years.

Now word comes that Andy Pettitte, still in his prime and with a chance at 300 wins and the Hall of Fame if he sticks around, has decided not to retire. Gee, what do you think convinced him?

I'll have to do a more comprehensive roundup of the free agent deals soon, but so many of these contracts are just insane.

Blez gives the pros and cons of Mike Piazza signing with the A's to DH for $8.5 million. Personally I think Piazza's value is wasted on a team that barely uses its backup catcher and will make him #3. Oakland probably would have been better off with Bonds, but I don't know the whole story there. Still, there are only so many good hitters available and freeing Piazza from the daily grind of catching should keep him healthy. I agree that the A's are rather short of offense after replacing Frank Thomas with Piazza, who whatever his other virtues is not Frank Thomas.

Ryan McConnell tears apart a supremely silly column by NY Daily News writer Bill Price complaining about the Mets' patience in waiting out Tom Glavine's decision to re-sign. Price somehow manages this screed without once explaining how the Mets suffered from waiting for Glavine or how he is not worth the $10.5 million price tag compared to the alternatives in the market, and his overwrought comparisons to Tom Seaver and Sandy Koufax just sound stupid, given that Glavine is a certain Hall of Famer who will almost certainly pass 300 wins next season.

It really is amazing how stupid and consumed by petty envy so many sportswriters are.

Matt Welch, as part of his top-ten list of the best seasons by an Angels DH (see if you can guess who is #1), has a lengthy and exhaustive analysis of why the Angels need to trade Chone Figgins for the same reasons as the Dodgers benefitted from dealing away Bobby Valentine before the 1973 season. Welch's analysis sold me, as well as reminding me exactly how much young talent the Angels really have. The interesting question is where to deal Figgins, who has great speed and flexibility but fell off to a career-low .336 OBP last year at age 28, making him a dicey prospect at best as a leadoff man (I'm thinking St. Louis, which has a couple of weak spots in its lineup, a few injury-prone stars at 3B and CF, and a manager who worships defensive flexibility).

The Indians are looking at Keith Foulke to shore up a bullpen that just killed them in 2006. Foulke may well be a good gamble for a team that has made extensive use of re-built relief pitchers like Bob Wickman and Bobby Howry in recent years, but he has to be regarded as a reclamation project unless and until he proves that he's healthy again.

Chris Carpenter signs for five years at $13 million a year. Presumably Carpenter's long injury history (including missing the 2004 postseason) will prevent this deal from being a ceiling on Barry Zito, who is a lesser but more durable pitcher (although I would prefer not to shell out more than $65 million for Zito, given that he's really not a legitimate #1 starter, as Carpenter is).

I know I'm a bit of a broken record on moving starters to the bullpen and vice versa, but I would feel a lot better about the Mets keeping Orlando Hernandez around if I thought there was at least a reasonable possibility that he could be shifted to the pen if needed (I gather he was not happy pitching relief with the White Sox). Hernandez is ideally suited to middle relief work, as he eats up righthanders and his unorthodox motion will be quite off-putting to a hitter who has taken a few at bats already against someone else. I looked at his career record and if you count the postseason, Hernandez has made 10 career relief appearances (mainly with the White Sox, and half of them in October). The results? 0.76 ERA in 23.2 IP, 24/8 K/BB ratio, and just 11 hits allowed (2 of them solo homers). I'm not saying it has to be done ASAP, but with the departure of Bradford, Hernandez signed to a two-year deal and a bunch of young arms on the way, that has to be an option the Mets should consider down the road.

Well, the Mets' pitching staff is coming into focus. Glavine will be back next year, but Roberto Hernandez won't, nor Chad Bradford. I also didn't get the chance at the time to comment on the deal that sent Royce Ring and Heath Bell to the Padres for reliever Jon Adkins and outfielder Ben Johnson. I don't like that deal - I realize that Bell and Ring had lost the confidence of the organization, but I just don't see what in Adkins' record suggests a useful pitcher, and Johnson seems like a guy whose upside is that he might be Xavier Nady someday.

Looks like the Mets' pen will depend a lot on (a) the return from injury of Duaner Sanchez and Juan Padilla and (b) who doesn't make the rotation.

I can't believe that the Mets are paying more to keep El Duque than to keep Glavine. If you look at the pitcher salaries this offseason, Glavine is a pretty good deal even before you consider the fact that it's just a one-year commitment. Here's how this year's pitching free agents stack up (in millions per year):

Mike Mussina 11.5
Tom Glavine 10.5
Adam Eaton 8.2
Randy Wolf 8
Danys Baez 6.3
Woody Williams 6.3
Orlando Hernandez 6
Justin Speier 4.6
Kip Wells 4
Jamie Walker 4
Chad Bradford 3.3
Mike Stanton 2.8
Kerry Wood 1.8
Aaron Fultz 1.7
Wade Miller 1.5
Scott Williamson 0.9
Tanyan Sturtze 0.8

Here's a good brain-buster - name the ten players since World War II to score 140 or more runs in a season (it's been done 12 times in that period, two guys doing it twice). I guarantee you can keep this one going for a good while in a group of reasonably knowledgeable fans - a ten-man list is the right length for this kind of question and none of these guys is truly obscure, although you may need to think about the ballparks they played in to get two of them.

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Word is that JD Drew is signing with the Red Sox for 4 years and 56 million. Drew's an outstanding offensive player - he's a real upgrade compared to Trot Nixon - and the star-studded Sox shouldn't need him to be an emotional leader, which he obviously isn't.

That said, $14 million a year for a guy who has qualified for the batting title just twice in 8 years and has missed more than 50 games in a season three of the past six years is awfully pricey, even considering how badly inflated the free agent market has been thus far (it sure makes Aramis Ramirez at $15 million a year look like a steal). What is alarming is the idea that the Sox might use Drew to replace Manny. Manny's contract at this point is cheaper - $38 million over two years. If you look at Runs Created, for example, Manny's established performance level over 2004-06 is 127 runs created compared to 88 for Drew (9.20 per 27 outs compared to 7.69 for Drew). Now, there are ameliorating factors. Drew played in Dodger Stadium and Turner Field, not Fenway. And Drew is 31, while Manny at 35 is entering a serious danger zone, especially for a guy who is coming off an up year - the odds are way more than 50/50 that Manny is due for a serious falloff in 2007. But even for all of that, Drew's fragility and lesser offensive skills still make him worth a lot less than 74% of Manny (which is where their salaries stack up).

PS - This TJ Simers article about Drew is interesting on many levels I lack the time to address at the moment.

One of the many fancy new features rolled out at Baseball-Reference.com lately is the ability to get career and year-by-year splits, in more detail than they have previously been available even at Retrosheet or through David Pinto, because they are derived from a newly completed database of all box scores dating back to 1957. It's a goldmine, the potential of which I have not yet fully absorbed.

One cool feature is the splits showing how pitchers over the course of their career pitched in their wins vs. their losses. I started examining some recent pitchers of interest and decided to do a comparative study.

I looked at 58 pitchers, including every 200-game winner to start his career since 1957, plus three Hall of Fame pitchers for whom all but their first two years are available (Koufax, Drysdale and Bunning), plus a bunch of other guys who cleared 150 wins and/or 2500 Ks or were otherwise notable: Dwight Gooden, David Cone, Dave Stewart, Fernando Valenzuela, John Smoltz, Andy Pettitte, Al Leiter, Kevin Appier, Bret Saberhagen, Ron Guidry, Rick Sutcliffe, Mark Langston, and Sam McDowell. The group is a cross-section of the top pitchers from the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, Nineties and today. Some conclusions:

1. I was amazed at quite how dramatic the difference was between these guys' average ERAs in their wins and losses. Yes, you expect a big separation - but of the 58, all but 12 had ERAs below 2.00 in their victories, and all but three had ERAs above 5.00 in their losses. The lesson: yes, starting pitching matters quite a lot in determining wins and losses, in case you still had any doubt.

2. The 12 who posted ERAs above 2.00 are obviously weighted more towards the post-1994 period and almost exclusively towards good teams. In order: Kenny Rogers (2.39), Pettitte (2.33), Jamie Moyer (2.30), Jack Morris (2.29), Sutcliffe (2.26), David Wells (2.25), Mike Mussina (2.17), Langston (2.10), Appier (2.07), Charlie Hough (2.06), Dennis Martinez (2.06), and Stewart (2.05).

The guy who jumps off that list is Morris - he played in the 1980s, not the 1990s, but always had superior offensive firepower at his back. The relatively high ERAs in his wins suggests that his W-L record should be viewed with a bit of skepticism, which I have argued for years as being a reason to doubt his Hall of Fame credentials. The same doubts, to a lesser extent, may be raised about Mussina, depending how his career record ends up, and especially since Mussina lacks Morris' reputation as a big-game pitcher.

Appier was more surprising, until you remember that he got a disproportionate number of wins with the A's, Mets and Angels after his prime, as opposed to his best years in KC. Appier also posted a solid 3.50 ERA in his no-decisions, but more on that below.

(If you are wondering, Steve Trachsel had a 3.97 ERA in his wins in 2006, 2.23 career).

3. The three guys with the lowest ERAs in their losses should not be surprising, though I was mildly surprised. One was Bob Gibson (4.69), who pitched in the pitcher-heaven Sixties (in 1968 he had a 2.14 ERA in his losses and a .500 record when not throwing a shutout despite pitching for a first-place team). One from the same era who surprised me more, since he always had good Mays-and-McCovey offenses, was Juan Marichal (4.94), but then you have to figure that Marichal lost a lot of his games to Gibson and both lost a lot to Koufax and Drysdale. The third, unsurprising given his teams, was Tom Seaver (4.92).

4. The very best pitchers in their wins were the extreme power pitchers and guys who won a lot in Sixties-era pitcher's parks: Koufax (1.34), McDowell (1.43), Nolan Ryan (1.45), Drysdale (1.48), and Pedro Martinez (1.49). But the next rank, the guys in the 1.50s is a mixed bag: Jim Palmer (1.52), Gaylord Perry (1.54), Tommy John (1.57), Jerry Reuss (1.58), Gibson (1.59). Bert Blyleven was next at 1.60, if you were wondering.

5. The worst pitchers in their losses - Rogers (7.39), Wells (7.27), Pettitte (7.18), Leiter (7.04), Mussina (6.73), Sutcliffe (6.70), Stewart (6.62), Langston (6.57), Moyer (6.55), Gooden (6.54). Leiter (1.90-7.04) and Rogers (2.39-7.39) have the biggest differences between wins and losses, though Reuss (1.58-6.24) has perhaps the biggest percentage difference (I didn't run the numbers on that).

6. A fascinating field of study would be to look at these guys' no-decisions, but that proved labor-intensive and I may wait and see if further changes on the site make it easier to compute. One problem is that there is as yet no way, outside of reviewing individual games, to separate no-decision starts from no-decision relief appearances - for example, Koufax had a 6.90 ERA in 118 games where he appeared without a win, loss or save, but only 64 of those were starts, and much of the rest was probably early-career mopup work.

Anyway, while the results of this study can't be separated out from the various other influences on a pitcher's ERA and W-L record, I did find it interesting and illustrative.

Comments may be down but you can still amuse yourself. Derek Jeter slugged .483 this year and finished second for the MVP Award, leading to the question: how often has a player won the MVP and slugged below .500?

Well, since 1969, it's been done five six times. The winners are below the fold.
(UPDATE: Added one I missed).

Read More »

Justin Morneau wins the 2006 AL MVP Award; my pick, Joe Mauer, the first catcher to lead the majors in batting average since Deacon White in 1875, finishes sixth, Derek Jeter (who unlike Morneau was clearly one of the two best players on his own team) finishes second, David Ortiz (who unlike Morneau was one of the three best hitting 1B/DHs in the AL) third, Frank Thomas fourth. Jermaine Dye fifth. Once again, the MVP voters fall under the hypnotic sway of RBI.

AL batting leaders are here; Morneau finished seventh in batting, sixth in slugging, eighth in OPS, fifth in Total Bases, and seventh in Hits (he wasn't among the OBP, Homers, 2B, or Runs leaders). AL Win Shares leaders are here (Morneau tied for fifth with Raul Ibanez).

Lots of baseball stuff to catch up on the past two weeks or so.

*Judging by the search engine traffic, a lot of people are looking for my take on the 2006 NL MVP race, the 2006 AL MVP race, and the other postseason awards; go here for that. The big surprise to me in the NL voting was Lance Berkman finishing third. Given Carlos Beltran's spectacular defense and superior baserunning, I have little doubt that Beltran was more valuable; then again, it's good to see Berkman get some overdue recognition.

*It can't have been lost on the agents for Ryan Howard and Miguel Cabrera that Alfonso Soriano finished sixth in the balloting, behind their clients, while having a career year. Soriano's 8-year, $136 million ($17 million per year) contract with the Cubs is utter madness. I know I was too hard on Soriano for his huge home/road splits in Texas, and it's true that (a) he's a tremendous athlete, and athleticism does matter in projecting how a player ages, and (b) under Frank Robinson's tutelage he drew 67 walks, more than he had drawn the prior two seasons combined and almost 30 above his career high. If Soriano can sustain most of that (his 16 intentional passes will probably fall off), he will remain a very dangerous hitter into his 30s, not only because he will get on base more but also because he will be less susceptible to pitchers taking advantage of his aggressiveness.

But that's a big "if" for $136 million (the Mariners made the same gamble on Beltre and look how that worked out), and Soriano remains either a bad second baseman or a mediocre left fielder (the Cubs apparently plan to keep him in the outfield), plus Lou Piniella wants to bat him leadoff, which is nuts. And even if he does repeat 2006 a few times, that's an awful lot of money and he is unlikely to be worth it by age 35, 36, 37 and 38. Perhaps the Cubs expect such salary inflation under the new collective bargaining agreement that $17mil for a 36 year old left fielder batting .270/.485/.340 with 18 stolen bases will be a bargain, but I doubt it.

And the Soriano signing represents a larger failure to come to terms with the organization's persistent inability to take a pitch. I was OK with the Aramis Ramirez re-signing, which was cheaper and for a younger player who plays third base, but the two in combination tie up a lot of resources in aggressive hitters. Consider, since 1986, where the Cubbies have placed in the NL in walks:

5th once
6th three times
9th twice
10th twice
12th eight times (most of them when the league was 12 teams)
13th once
14th twice (2003 and 2004)
16th twice (2005 and 2006)

Although Sammy Sosa eventually learned patience, the tendency to import guys like Andre Dawson and Sosa and make them the team's signature veteran leaders has not helped this. Simply put, the Cubs will continue to underachieve as long as they fail to make use of the free pass.

*I'm yet again not thrilled with the Mets' signing of Moises Alou, which together with the money thrown at El Duque and Jose Valentin establishes a rather ominous pattern of over-investment in geriatric players (Glavine too, but Glavine's worth it). Replacing Cliff Floyd with Alou is six of one for half a dozen of the other in terms of their injury histories, and at 40 Alou is more likely to decline or get hurt again; I'd give Floyd a 60/40 chance of having a better year in 2007 than Alou. In an ideal world, you would platoon them and get rid of Shawn Green, who unlike those two has almost zero chance of slugging .500 again. Green was a necessary stretch drive pickup but with a full offseason to work with he should not remain penciled in as a regular.

What is doubly concerning is the implication that the Mets are looking to dump Milledge, who I discussed at some length here. I'm fine with trading Milledge if the Mets get major value in return, but telegraphing their interest in dealing him is probably the first step to giving up way too soon on a guy who is just 21 and (so far as I can tell) has no problems that maturity can't fix.

*The Mets also had a couple deals under the radar. They brought in Damion Easley, another 37-year-old infielder, which isn't great news but I'm inclined to trust Minaya on this one, as he has had a decent record locating veterans to stock the bench. I'm less happy with dealing minor league relief stud Henry Owens, who the Mets gave up on after 4 major league innings, for Jason Vargas (the deal also includes Adam Bostick from Florida for Matt Lindstrom; I know nothing about either except that Lindstrom is three years older and both have had trouble throwing strikes in the minors).

Yankees re-sign Mussina. I agree with David Pinto that the 2-year, $22.5 million price tag is a reasonable one for a guy of Mussina's age and effectiveness, especially for the Hated Yankees. Glavine should command about the same ballpark - in fact, he will probably want more than Mussina given his superior durability.

Signing Gil Meche, as the Yankees are contemplating, I don't understand. Talk about being doomed to repeat your mistakes. Meche was an exciting prospect a few years ago and his 32 starts and revived K rate this season (7.52/9 IP) suggest a guy who may finally be healthy, but his health record is certainly no better than Carl Pavano's and Jaret Wright's were when they signed with the Yanks. His ERAs even pitching in SafeCo the last four years are 4.51, 5.01, 5.09, and 4.48, and he wore out in the second half last year (3.83 ERA before the break, 5.42 after; his career ERA after the break is 5.03). Meche hasn't actually pitched well in seven years.

Mets re-sign Orlando Hernandez for two years and $12 million, through an age known only to his Maker. This, like the Valentin signing, seems to be a signing a bit like the Kris Benson deal, driven more by fear of the market and complacency with 2006 than a cold-eyed analysis of the future. Of course, Omar Minaya is blunt about the fact that the second year was the price of the first:

"The way the marketplace is, I didn't think it would be realistic to sign Orlando Hernandez for one year. He stays in shape. He's a hard worker. If you wanted to get him, you were going to give him two years."

Yeah, I like El Duque too, and he can still pitch. But he's also a 41-or-so-year-old pitcher with a checkered record for durability, who was signed for the purpose of pitching in the playoffs and then pulled up lame and missed them, and who posted a 4.66 ERA in the regular season. That may well be a pitcher worth bringing back, but for twelve million dollars?

Jose Valentin returns for a 1-year deal for 2007, estimated at $3 million. You gotta have a second baseman, and it's hard to cut Valentin loose after the tremendous bounce-back year he had. But I have a feeling that the Mets will be shopping for a replacement by July.

*The Cubs really had no choice but to re-sign Aramis Ramirez to retain credibility with their fans, especially as a big-market team that could obviously afford to do so. While I obviously prefer more patient hitters and the Cubs in particular have a longstanding problem in that regard, Ramirez is too valuable a property, as a 29-year-old who hits for big-time power and a good batting average, to blame him for the things he doesn't do.

*I have to regard the Jaret Wright trade as a sign of hubris on the part of Leo Mazzone. Perhaps Wright is best suited to middle relief work, given his utter inability to go past 5 innings with any regularity. As for the Yankees, they eat the bulk of yet another ill-considered contract, a luxury few of even the other rich teams have.

*I just gotta say: if you had tried at the All-Star Break to name the members of the traveling Major League all-star team that would visit Japan at the end of the season, how long would you have been guessing to come up with John Maine on the roster?

*The Rookie of the Year awards will be handed out this afternoon. The NL field is just an embarrassment of riches (the Dodgers and Marlins alone were loaded with quality rookies), but I have to regard the top three as Hanley Ramirez, Ryan Zimmerman and Josh Johnson. I'd give it to Ramrez very narrowly over Zimmerman, for having a slightly more impressive year, but both will - health and contract issues permitting - contend with Jose Reyes, Jimmy Rollins, David Wright, and Miguel Cabrera for many years to come for the title of best SS and 3B in the NL East (in fact, Ramirez and Reyes are almost even as is). Dan Uggla had a fine year and may win the award but wasn't as good as his double play partner this season and doesn't have as bright a future - Ramirez is four years younger, had the same slugging percentage and an OBP 14 points higher, plays a more demanding defensive position, had more plate appearances, and stole 51 bases to Uggla's six.

In the AL, I don't really have a quarrel with Justin Verlander, who seemed to become the consensus choice after Liriano went down, although it's easy to forget that Jonathan Papelbon is also eligible for the award; Papelbon will head to the rotation next year, which combined with Keith Foulke being cut loose raises some interesting questions about what the Red Sox bullpen will look like.

*My picks for the other major awards are discussed here.

UPDATE: Ramirez and Verlander win, with Zimmerman, Uggla and Johnson finishing 2-3-4 in the NL and Papelbon and Liriano 2-3 in the AL. Well done by the writers.

Can it really be possible that Keith Law ranks Barry Zito behind Mike Mussina, Ted Lilly, and Gil Meche?

I like and respect Law, but someone needs a remedial lesson on the value of durability.

Gary Sheffield becomes the first major player move of the offseason, shipping out to Detroit for three minor league pitchers. Interestingly, while the Yankees concluded that they had too many big, exorbitantly-paid veteran sluggers with big egos, the team that knocked them out of the playoffs was eager to claim one of those sluggers. Go figure.

From the Yanks' perspective, the deal probably had to be made. Sheffield wasn't going to fit well in the lineup unless he was willing to play first base, and while few of the pricey Yankee vets can really be moved, Sheffield was the one with the longest and best-known arsenal of methods to make himself a nuisance in the clubhouse. Even with Sheffield's departure, if Giambi can't play first base, the Yanks are stuck with nowhere to put Melky Cabrera unless he, Abreu, Damon or Matsui parks his wheels at first.

I don't know that much about the pitching prospects, Humberto Sanchez, Kevin Whelan and Anthony Claggett. The 23-year-old Sanchez, a starter, is the top guy for now, the closest to the majors but having missed the last two months of the season with an elbow injury. His numbers suggest a guy just mastering his stuff, as his career minor league BB/9 rate is 4.56, but under 4 in 2005 and 2006; in 2006 he struck out 129 batters in 123 innings between AA and AAA. The 22-year-old Whelan, a reliever, is behind him in progress, having walked 4.26 per 9 innings for his career without advancing beyond 78.1 career innings A ball, but his 110 career whiffs (12.68 per 9) suggest a live arm. Claggett is a college reliever with a little over a year of pro experience, but good results so far. To an organization starved for young arms, this is a good deal.

For the Tigers, Sheffield is an investment in taking a 1-year miracle and turning it into a credible contender, as with the White Sox' acquisition of Jim Thome a year ago. And certainly Sheffield's history (a lifetime .297/.525/.398 hitter in over 9500 plate appearances) suggests that he should immediately become the defending AL champs' best hitter. But they had to sign him to a 3-year deal through age 40, a risky proposition for a guy coming off a season nearly wiped out by injury and whose durability without the aid of performance-enhancing substances is questionable. It's a calculated gamble, and an expensive one.

The big Mets news of the day is that the new ballpark to open in 2009 will be named CitiField, thanks to an 8-figure deal with Citigroup (the parent company of Citibank) estimated as much as $20 million per year. (More here). While it would have been nice to follow my suggestion that the Chock Full O' Nuts coffee company pay to name the place Jackie Robinson Stadium, I'm basically fine with this, and not just because Citigroup (1) is a major client of mine and my firm's and (2) holds the mortgage on my house. Four points about stadium names:

1. You get a new stadium, you get a new name. Let's have none of this "New Shea"/"Old Shea" nonsense. Shea Stadium is a place with its own identity and its own place in the history of the game and the hearts of Mets fans. You tear it down to build a new stadium, you get a new name.

2. I don't, in principle, have a problem with corporate stadium names (ballparks have been named after companies, egomaniacal owners, or some combination of the two - see "Wrigley Field" and "Turner Field" for examples - as long as there have been ballparks). $20 million a year can make the Mets more competitive, and that is a good thing. I'm fine with corporate names subject to points #3 and 4.

3. No ridiculous names. CitiField isn't a ridiculous name, like the Poulan Weedeater Independence Bowl, the rather wimpy-sounding Minute Maid Field, or abysmal phone company names like SBC Field. There is a certain affinity between "Citi" and "Metropolitans," after all. Citibank is a longstanding New York-based business and in an industry (banking and Wall Street investment banks) that has deep roots in the city.

4. No names that change every few years. In fact, were I negotiating a stadium deal, I would add in a substantial premium and an escape clause for renaming rights. That's my big issue with naming stadiums after banks and phone companies, as well as new and unstable companies (see: "Enron Field"). But the First National City Bank of New York has been known as "City Bank" or Citibank for decades, and given its size and brand equity, should be for the forseeable future.

The A's are about to ink a deal to build a new stadium in nearby Fremont, leaving Oakland and the Coliseum behind. Not clear yet whether the former Philly/KC franchise will take the name of its fourth city or, NY Giants and Jets style, stay the Oakland A's. Could this be an end to 106 years of boom-and-bust financial cycles for the A's?

Via Pinto.

Sammy Sosa wants back in.

Really, I was never a huge Sosa fan but I never actively disliked him, either. And unlike some people I'm not calling for Sosa, McGwire, Bonds, Sheffield and Palmeiro to be barred from Cooperstown. Like the great spitballer Ed Walsh, or like the cheat-any-way-they-could Orioles of the 1890s, they were creatures of the conditions of their era.

But baseball needs to turn the page on that era. We're stuck with Bonds - he hit too well last year and is too close to the record for him to end up blackballed this offseason - and for a little longer we will be stuck with Sheffield, as well perhaps with other veteran sluggers yet to be unmasked. But we don't need any more of those guys playing in the aftermath of the steroid revelations than we have to.

Guillermo Mota suspended 50 games for failing a steroid test. Indians fans in particular will be amazed to hear that Mota was taking performance-enhancing drugs. People who remember his clashes with Mike Piazza may not.

I'm ambivalent about Mota as a pitcher anyway, and this certainly complicates his free agency, as did blowing the lead in Game Two of the NLCS. On the other hand, if the Mets can re-sign him for cheap as a result, this may be a blessing in disguise.

Note that middle relievers remain seriously over-represented among the guys who get caught.

Apparently George has fallen ill.

Perhaps the bigger story than Piazza is the unsurprising news that despite a rough 2006, the White Sox picked up the option on workhorse Mark Buehrle. The exit of Buehrle and the Mets' likely re-signing of Tom Glavine will leave the field of free agent pitchers exceedingly narrow, with Barry Zito, Jason Scmidt and Andy Pettitte the only guys who can be seriously characterized as healthy, effective and in their prime (although the wild card is Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka), plus a few oldsters like Mike Mussina and Greg Maddux.

The Padres have declined an $8 million option for Mike Piazza. Which makes sense; Piazza may have been worth that money this year in retrospect (although what they actually paid him was a good deal less), but a catcher his age he is always a risk of major injury or catastrophic falloff. The ESPN article indicates that both sides are interested in keeping him in San Diego, and when you discount for the fact that they are negotiating in the newspapers here it seems pretty likely another deal will get done.

The Mets, of course, have no room for Piazza, but if things don't work out with San Diego there's his hometown of Philly, which split its catching duties among three guys, none of them younger than 33, but there aren't a ton of teams with money and a chance of competing that need either a starting catcher of a catcher/DH.

So, let me take one more crack at explaining precisely why the 2006 Cardinals winning the World Series bothered me, and then I'll shut up on the topic, or at least move on to something else.

Obviously, of course, as a Mets fan, I was bitter at the way the NLCS ended. But that's not really the heart of it - I was bitter at the end of the 1999 NLCS, but I didn't think the Braves didn't belong in the World Series. If the Mets had lost to the Tigers, I would have felt the same way.

Larry Borowsky of Viva El Birdos had an article in Slate that captured one part of the equation:

St. Louis' surprising run seems particularly galling now because this era of playoff randomness coincides with the height of baseball's statistical age. While random chance governs the sport from game to game, the opposite is true on a season-long level. The gradual accretion of outcomes - pitch after pitch, at-bat after at-bat, game after game - yields a deep body of evidence about which teams and players are the best. By the end of the season, we know not only who's more valuable, but by how much. And Yadier Molina isn't valuable.

Stat-centric analysis holds such sway over fans and sportswriters that when it clashes with the outcomes on the field, we tend to sneer at the outcomes. Next to the rich trove of data we've acquired throughout the season, a seven-game series seems like a ridiculously crude instrument for determining the best team. The Cardinals' October accomplishments, however stirring, don't seem as believable as those recorded by better teams over the long haul. I'm a huge Cardinals fan, and I still can't convince myself that they're the best team in baseball.

The problematic aspect of the Cardinals' victory is that it is a defeat for rationality. There is, of course, more than one way to build a champion, and nobody wants to see the team with the best record or the scariest roster on paper win every single time - that would be boring. But most of the winning teams in the game's history had at least a plausible case for why they could represent a model for postseason succcess, like this column I wrote on the Angels after the 2002 Series. The 2002 Angels were a healthy team all in its prime, specializing in putting the ball in play and pressuring the defense. The 2003 Marlins had young power pitchers, who could rise to the occasion in October; the 2001 D-Backs had two veteran aces who seized control of the postseason; the 2000 Yankees, who were one of the weakest champs in memory, represented the fruits of keeping a championship core together past their prime. Past Cardinal teams offered clinics in fielding and baserunning. And both the strong teams and the overachievers generally played to their strengths in the postseason. If you predicted the 1988 Dodgers to win it all, it would be on the back of Orel Hershiser, and so it was. If you expected the 1973 Mets to topple the Big Red Machine, it would be with outstanding starting pitching and Tom Seaver throwing the clincher, and so it was. I always loved Bill James' analogy to baseball, which he borrowed from a friend's description of chess, as being an argument without words about how the game should be played. Different arguments can win at different times, but you'd like to see the winner at least have an argument.

But what of this Cardinals team would you imitate in building a roster to win in October? Pujols, of course, is the best player in baseball, but while Pujols contributed at key junctures he was not the dominant figure in any of St. Louis' three series victories. Carpenter, the ace, wasn't especially effective, and Reyes, the young power pitcher, had his moments but didn't blossom overnight like Ryan in 1969 or Rivera in 1995. Rolen and Edmonds played hurt and were not consistent contributors. You just would not ever try to build a championship team by assembling veteran mediocre hurlers like Suppan and Weaver and anemic hitters like Yadier Molina; and even David Eckstein is at best a complimentary player.

Of course, there is still room in any sport for the unexpected Cinderella team. But the great Cinderellas come from humble origins - the 1914 Braves were a moribund franchise for a decade and a half and were in last place on the Fourth of July. The 1969 Mets had never finished higher than 9th; the 1973 team had been doormats again in 1972 and was in last place at the end of August. Same dynamic goes for the worst-to-first 1991 Twins and Braves, and the 1987 Twins. The Cards don't seem like any kind of a Cinderella; this team won 105 games in 2004 and 100 games in 2005, has been a powerhouse in its division for a decade, and was running off with the division until a late season collapse. The Cards were, essentially, a veteran team on the way down - with some young talent, yes (Wainwright, for example) but not the kind of Talent that presages a return to glory in the immediate future.

They aren't a small market team, either, or a city that has suffered long awaiting a championship - St. Louis may lack the resources of the New York and LA markets but as one of baseball's most storied franchises (only the Yankees have won more championships) they are vastly more financially successful than neighbors like the Royals and division rivals like Cincinnati or Pittsburgh, and in recent years they have regularly imported guys the A's could no longer afford (McGwire, Mulder, Isringhausen) or other pricey veteran stars (Rolen, Edmonds). That's not a reason to root against them, given the presence of other, larger payrolls in the annual postseason picture, but it is yet another reason why the Cards don't fit the "miracle team" mold.

I love the drama of the postseason as much as anybody, but when the storyline goes in the books, I want it to make some sense, whether the strictly rational sense of the most talented or best-suited-to-October team winning or the best player carrying his team on his back, or the Hollywood poetry of a good dramatic arc. This championship, at the end of it, doesn't feel like a good ending to a story so much as an ordinary June hot streak for a just-above-.500 team that just happened to come in October. That's anticlimactic for anybody outside St. Louis, and it makes the whole season seem like an exercise in random sample sizes instead of a coherent narrative the way so many postseasons past have been. That's why I think the Cards winning this one was bad for baseball.

I can't say the postseason was lacking in thrills for Mets fans, but David Pinto does make a good and admirably concise point about this being a lackluster postseason from the perspective of the fan with no special rooting interest:

Only one series was truly competitive. Only the Mets and Padres won a game facing elimination. Of a possible 41 games, 30 were played. There was a distinct lack of drama.

I dare you to find anyone before this - or any - series who said that the series would turn on the fielding of the pitchers. Next thing you know, the Tigers will be lobbying the American League to institute the Designated Fielder. Eight unearned runs the Tigers have now allowed, almost all due to their pitchers. Appalling.

Where else but the Midwest would you see a banner reading "Please win"?

For the record, I actually agree with McCarver calling for the Cards to take Duncan out for a fielding replacement in the middle innings.

UPDATES: Yes, I just posted that moments before his error in the sixth. Duncan is a born DH.

Weaver makes a great play in the field - talk about rubbing salt in the wounds of Tigers fans.

Eckstein brings his own Rally Monkey everywhere he goes, doesn't he?

McCarver wants the Cards to start bunting to pressure the Tiger pitchers, as if they are Jim Abbott or something. Then again, Jim Abbott was never this bad a fielder.

You would never know Fernando Rodney was Dominican to look at him; the guy looks very American.

Rolen gets the 2-out RBI. You have to tip your cap to Rolen for a gutsy performance even though he is plainly not close to 100% at the moment. 4-2 Cards in the 7th.

I keep seeing this ad from the US Postal Service with a water cooler talking to boxes of sneakers. The voice of the water cooler has to be William Sanderson, Larry of Larry, Daryl and Daryl from Newhart.

Tigers down to their last 3 outs. This is sad, and very bad for baseball.

Wainwright's in. I'm getting ugly flashbacks.

Frankly, little as I feel the Cardinals deserve this, their fans do. I would have been rooting for them in 2004 if it hadn't been the Red Sox.

Casey doubles after a long at bat to bring up the tying run with one out. Jose Reyes would have had a home run on that ball, which bounces past Taguchi in right and jangles around center.

Rodriguez grounds out to Wainwright, who does not make an error. Two outs.

1-2 to the hitless Polanco. Polanco takes a knee-buckling curve, but this time it's a ball.

Polanco walks, it's up to Inge with the tying runs on.

That's it. Inge strikes out. Cards win their 10th World Series.

I'm still really in shock as to all of this. Congratulations to all the Cards fans.

How long 'till pitchers and catchers?

I have to admit that after the way the NLCS ended I just have not been able to muster a lot of enthusiasm for the World Series - I've mainly been listening on the radio while doing work. But I gotta ask: you think Leyland will have his pitching staff taking grounders before Game Five?

I always get hopping mad myself when someone pays me $13 million.

And after having a crummy year, no less. I guess if the Yankees are keeping A-Rod and Sheffield they really are committing to go with their present core largely intact next year. Although the ESPN report suggests that the Yanks still want to deal Sheffield but re-upped him just to keep him from signing with the Red Sox or Mets.

I noticed this recently - I forget whether this is a record or not and haven't had time to check, but in 1959 Ernie Banks led the Cubs in RBI by a margin of 91. Banks drove in 143 runs; #2 on the team, Bobby Thomson, drove in 52.

Banks actually had a pretty short peak - for all but about 7 seasons he was mainly a mediocre first baseman - and he wasn't a very patient hitter (he topped 50 unintentional walks only once), but with the arguable exception of Arky Vaughan, there wasn't a shortstop between Honus Wagner and A-Rod who could stand up to him with a bat in his hands.

What was that on Kenny Rogers' hand?

Of course, pine tar on the pitcher has factored in the postseason before - in 1988, Dodgers batting practice pitcher closer Jay Howell got suspended for having pine tar on the bill of his cap, forcing the Dodgers to replace the spectacularly ineffective Howell with Orel Hershiser, who took over as closer in between starts and was devastating. Without that suspension the Mets, who just owned Howell that year, may well have pulled that NLCS out.

The moral of the story? Um, I'll get back to you on that one...

UPDATE: Of course, anyone looking for hidden advantages for Rogers has to explain why his strikeout rate has fallen off sharply in the last two years. The fact is, Rogers is an aging pitcher hanging on to effectiveness, albeit better than others have done historically.

Matt Welch takes a look at the numbers and concludes that Ivan Rodriguez was the third-best 34-year-old catcher ever this season. (Also from 2006 are Jorge Posada at #6 and Paul Lo Duca at #13. Of course, Rodriguez had all but punched his Hall of Fame ticket by the time Lo Duca was a rookie). Topping the list, perhaps unsurprisingly, is Elston Howard, a guy whose time behind the plate in his younger years was limited by the color line and Yogi Berra.

This game was fairly impossible for New York baseball fans - Mets and Yankees alike - to view without a hot steaming cup of bile at hand:

*Jeff Weaver yet again pitching creditably (albeit not more than that) in a postseason game.

*Kenny Rogers throwing lights-out baseball one more time, 8 innings of two-hit ball.

*The Tigers closer (Todd Jones) beaning a guy - not just any guy, but Mookie's stepson - to load the bases while protecting Rogers' lead, setting up the potential for karmic retribution for 1999.

*Yadier Bleeping Molina hitting into a game-ending double play with the bases loaded and the tying run in scoring position.

This was better baseball than Game One, but this still has the feel of a series that hasn't really gotten rolling yet. Which is fine; such serieses sometimes come to highly dramatic conclusions after the two combatants circle each other for a few games, setting up the decisive battle.

A few disjointed observations:

*Gradually, Scott Rolen seems to be getting his swing back, or at least admirably gutting out his shoulder troubles.

*Justin Verlander must be unpleasant to face in any conditions, but the fact that tonight wasn't as cold as originally predicted had to be a factor in the Cards having a fighting chance against him (which they made the most of).

*As we have known for some time, Anthony Reyes has a good arm and the makings of a good pitcher. Like Oliver Perez, he really isn't at the stage where you trust him in a big game, but he could be that kind of guy some day, and tonight's performance obviously puts him on the road to that.

*That said, I have to think that every now and then Cardinals fans wish they had Dan Haren back.

So the World Series is just beginning, and the Mets are at home watching on TV with the rest of us. I'll be taking at least tonight off from live-blogging, and I'll play it day to day during the Series; it takes a little time to get back into the swing of this after such an abrupt and painful defeat.

The bitter irony of the NLCS is that the Mets were defeated not by their weaknesses (besides Trachsel, the starting pitching held up better than could have been hoped, and Cliff Floyd was more than adequately replaced by Chavez) and the Cardinals' strengths (Pujols did much damages but ultimately had only one RBI - six fewer than a game this season against the Mets, which the Mets won, and Carpenter was ineffective), but rather by their strengths (offense and bullpen) and the Cardinals' weaknesses (Taguchi, Molina, Suppan, Weaver).

There is no point in making predictions for this World Series. The Tigers are heavy favorites, and deservedly so. As we saw in 1988, of course, that's no guarantee that a team that spilled a far superior team can't do it again. But these Cards are so much less compelling than past Cinderellas - this isn't like the Hershiser of 1988 imposing his will on the postseason single-handed, nor is this a young team on the way up. The Cards are an old team on the way down from their 2004 peak that ended in getting swept.

In truth, this doesn't feel so much like 1988 as like 1999, when the Braves beat the Mets in a tenaciously contested NLCS, and then gave no sign of even wanting to win the World Series, rolling over and playing dead for the Hated Yankees. I have never wanted to watch a series less than that one.

In a short series, anything can happen. So who knows? But I can't pull for the Cards the way the NLCS played out. Go Tigers.

Game Seven. The importance needs no explanation, the drama no introduction. If the people on the LIRR with me an hour before game time were any indication, the crowd will certainly be raucous.

The Mets have played a double-elimination game (loser goes home) four times in their history, and won three, including both that have been played at Shea.

1973, NLCS Game Five, at Shea: The 1973 NLCS was a mirror image of this one, an 82-win Mets team against a Big Red Machine with a powerful and versatile offense and a suspect rotation. The deciding game pitted Tom Seaver against Jack Billingham. Ed Kranepool drove in two runs in the first, Cleon Jones had three hits and two RBI, and the Mets behind Seaver won 7-2.

UPDATE: Writing too fast, forgot Game Seven of the 1973 World Series, John Matlack vs. Ken Holtzman at the Oakland Coliseum, which the Mets lost.

1986, World Series Game Seven, at Shea: Even with a day's rain giving Bruce Hurst the start against Ron Darling, a shell-shocked Red Sox team couldn't hold a lead. Keith Hernandez had the big hit and Darryl Strawberry a famous insurance home run, but the hero was Sid Fernandez, pitching 2.1 electrifying innings of hitless relief, striking out 4 to hold the fort until the offense arrived. 8-5 Mets.

1988, NLCS Game Seven, at Dodger Stadium: Darling knocked out early again, this time fatally and with the help of a meltdown by the Mets' infield defense, with errors by Wally Backman and Gregg Jefferies. Gooden, Leach and Aguilera pitched scoreless relief but the damage was done, as Orel Hershiser shut the Mets out. 6-0 Dodgers.

1999, One-Game Playoff, at Riverfront Stadium: The Reds again, after the Mets recovered dramatically from a September swoon to force a one game playoff for the Wild Card. Al Leiter vs. Steve Parris; Edgardo Alfonzo homered and drove in three, but the key guy was Leiter, pitching as dominant a game as I have ever seen, a 2-hit shutout in which I believe the Reds got only one runner as far as second base. 5-0 Mets.

Obviously, while any number of players will be important tonight, the guy with potentially the biggest impact is Jeff Suppan. Oliver Perez is very unlikely to throw a dominating pitching performance here, especially on three days rest. But Suppan shut the Mets down the last time around, and despite his terrible road stats, he is a threat to a good start tonight.

Top One

Perez gets a fly out after falling behind Eckstein, then punches out Preston Wilson looking. A good start. But now Pujols is up. 0-1.

Ugh, Perez gets Pujols - Pujols! - to pop it up in the infield, but Delgado drops it and Pujols ends up on second.

Perez gets out of trouble. If my expectations for Game Four were low, this time it's even lower - two scoreless innings is all I ask. Everyone is available.

Bottom One

Beltran barely legs out a 2-out double. Mets get started.

2-2 to Delgado. Mets need a base hit. 3-2.

Delgado walks, and Wright drops a single down the right field line. Slump over? 1-0 Mets.

Top Two, 1-0 Mets

Leadoff single for Edmonds. Let's not see that graphic again about the Cards scoring to answer every Mets score.

Rolen flies out.

0-2 on Molina.

Edmonds goes to third on a bloop single to left; Chavez bobbles it but to no cost.

1-1 to Belliard. Strikeout would be good here; Perez isn't a ground ball pitcher.

Belliard bunts the run home.

Suppan's not likely to homer here, with Trachsel not pitching.

Suppan whiffs.

Bottom Two, 1-1

We're hearing about Suppan in Game Seven in 2004 again.

1-2-3. Suppan hopefully is not getting into a groove.

Top Three, 1-1

Eckstein leadoff double. Typical of Eckstein, it was just blooped in front of Chavez.

Two strikes on Preston, the crowd smells blood.

Walking Pujols with 1 out. I guess you need to do this, but I hate to give Perez the chance to give up a 3-run homer.

A lineup with both Wilson and Encarnacion will really strike out a lot. 0-2 on Encarnacion.

Encarnacion shatters his bat and hits into the 5-4-3 double play. Perez has now exceeded expectations.

Bottom Three, 1-1

This is sad: Armed Forces Radio won't cover the World Series for the first time in 60 yars due to lack of interest, as uniformed personnel prefer overhwelmingly to watch on TV (and in the military, unlike an office job, you can't listen to the radio on duty).

It really hasn't sunk in that the winner here starts the Series with just one travel day to Detroit.

Reyes and Lo Duca have been quiet so far tonight.

Another 1-2-3 inning. A pitchers' duel is not what the Mets need tonight.

Top Four, 1-1

Perez really is throwing more strikes than usual, so far. Long as he does that, he will stay in the game, although of course the longball remains a risk.

Perez gets Edmonds. Gets ahead of Rolen 0-2 before throwing a ball.

3-2. This is still Perez, folks.

Perez gets Rolen on an infield popup. Strike one to Molina.

Perez gets Molina.

Bottom Four, 1-1

If Perez gets out of this game having allowed just 1 or 2 runs, that will be a huge confidence-builder. Of course, you generally don't use these games for that purpose...

Leadoff walk for Delgado.

Weak grounder for Wright, at least he avoids the DP. Probably should not have swung at the first pitch.

Green whiffs again. I've perhaps been too hard on Green's hitting, but he has struck out quite a bit in this series.

Suppan just winked twice - does he have a nervous twitch? That would explain the wink to Trachsel before his home run.

You always see something in baseball you never saw before - maybe I have seen this, but I don't remember it - Valentin gets beaned by a pitch that bounces off the plate and hits him in the face.

Top Five, 1-1

Still 1-1? I'm nervous again. Perez can't hold the fort that well. Suppan can.

Leadoff single for Belliard, just out of Reyes' reach.

Game Seven in 1986 comes to mind, where the Mets struggled early to get good wood on the ball as they had before against Hurst.

Idiot Bartman-esque fans almost interfere with an Eckstein foul that Chavez misses. Eckstein then takes one for the team.

Perez is probably on his way out here, but Randolph likes him against Wilson. 0-2.

Make that 0-3. Wilson just can't lay off Perez' high hard stuff.

Randolph leaves in Perez to face Pujols. This is nuts.

Well, it worked. Perez gets Pujols to pop up to Reyes in short left. Amazin'

Bottom Five, 1-1

Wow, Perez is batting! Randolph is treating him like a real starting pitcher.

Reyes goes quickly again, Lo Duca is up. Last night's heroes, quiet this time against the Soup Man.

The problem with letting Perez bat is that he is throwing on three days' rest. He's thrown just 76 pitches, though; he can probably go one more inning. But I'd have taken him out.

Collision between Edmonds and Wilson - not really that violent, but Edmonds looks a little shook up.

Top Six, 1-1

Edmonds is still in.

3-2 to Edmonds. Edmonds walks.

Perez issues his first walk, has thrown 87 pitches. This has to be it for him soon.

WOW WOW WOW! Chavez robs Rolen of a home run AND doubles Edmonds off first, Edmonds having rounded second.

Move over, Ron Swoboda. There's a new best catch in Mets postseason history.

Bottom Six, 1-1

I actually feel bad for Rolen. Guy just can not catch a break.

Now, we need to capitalize on the momentum.

But Beltran grounds out. I think Wright needs another RBI this inning.

Delgado walks, here comes Wright.

I'm assuming that Perez really is done now.

Wright still up there hacking early.

Wright hits a very slow roller, Rolen throws the ball into the seats. This really is not his day. They're walking Green to load the bases with one out for Valentin.

Cards are clearly banking on the DP here.

Hey, was that John Franco in the stands?

Perez, Chavez, - now Valentin? That would be your unlikely heroes.

1-0. Nowhere to put him.

1-2.

Just get it out of the infield.

Another foul.

Rain is coming down something serious here.

Whiff. Looks like Endy Chavez has to do everything tonight.

Chavez flies out to center, a fly that would have been great news if Valentin had hit it.

Top Seven, 1-1

I want Heilman here, Heilman or Bradford.

Seventh game, seventh inning, still tied. Many hearts yet to be broken tonight. Until then, no, it does not get better than this.

Bradford's in. Perez did everything you could possibly have asked of him. Now if we can be rid of Suppan, we go bullpen-to-bullpen. I'll take those odds.

2-2 to Molina - Bradford is very good at getting even when he starts off behind in the count.

Good play by Valentin on yet another of those slow bouncers past the mound against Bradford.

Suppan stays in to hit. Grrrrr.

Bottom Seven, 1-1

Dare I breathe it: extra innings? I do not want to see Wagner except in a save situation, I know that.

Tucker pinch hitting. I guess he's the best option to lead off.

OK, time for the top of the order to make something happen.

1-2-3 inning. Suppan still pitching like there is no tomorrow. He just threw his 100th pitch.

Top Eight, 1-1

Heilman is in. He's the guy I want here, win or lose.

Gets Eckstein, 1-2 on Speizio, batting for Wilson. Pujols on deck.

Long at bat here. Heilman punches him out.

You pitch here to Pujols verrrrrry carefully.

Now, they make it intentional. Yes, I prefer Encarnacion with two outs and a man on first than Pujols with the bases empty, at least in a tie game.

0-2. I have a feeling Heilman's going to spend a lot of time here trying to get Encarnacion to swing at a bad pitch.

Nope, just one in the dirt.

Bottom Eight, 1-1

Beltran, Delgado, Wright due up next. It's go time.

Taguchi is in in left. La Russa must be expecting to see Wagner.

3-1 to Beltran. A leadoff walk would be good. Mets do not have a hit since the first. I hate Suppan.

Beltran walks. No Suppan for you! Tony goes to his bullpen, at last.

Randy Flores is in, probably just for Delgado.

Rain falling pretty visibly now. I wonder what it would take to stop the game. In 1925 they played Game Seven in a downpour and in the dark, with ugly results, lots of balls to the outfield that disappeared in the slop. Walter Johnson went the distance and set a record for total bases allowed in a World Series game.

Delgado strikes out on a check swing. Sure didn't look like he swung, but there we are.

Wright takes the first pitch. Good, stay back, play within himself, like he usually does.

2-0, way outside. I think I am still breathing. If I stop typing you will know why.

2-1, check swing, at least that was a swing. Now 3-1. 3-2, Wright takes one inside.

Wright strikes out. It's up to Green.

Green hits a shot to Pujols.

Top Nine, 1-1

Please, no Wagner. Tie game. Pitcher up in the next inning. Leave. In. Heilman.

Both teams have put on a tremendous struggle here, but this will be a tough one to lose.

Heilman still in.

Edmonds strikes out on another one in the dirt.

0-2 on Rolen. McCarver just called Endy "Eric Chavez"

Rolen takes a ball right down the middle.

Rolen is certainly battling here. Single to left. Molina is up, the designated bad hitter who kills us.

And he does. Home run, 3-1. Doom, defeat, ruination.

Molina smacked that ball into the LF bullpen. Now we need a miracle.

Adam Wainwright warming up. We will need him to be Calvin Schiraldi tonight.

No further damage. Three outs remain, and they belong to the bottom of the order.

Bottom Nine, 3-1 Cards.

The starters held the line, the last two games. How ironic.

Ball One to Valentin. Wait the kid out.

Three high pitches, two balls.

Bloop, very Game Six 1986-ish bloop, to right center. Chavez bats as the tying run. McCarver wants him to bunt for a hit????

Wainwright almost sails one to the backstop. It ain't over till it's over.

Cliff Floyd goes up looking for a GIDP longball.

1-1 to Kirk . . . Cliff Floyd.

With Floyd up there it feels like two outs. Molina tries to pick Chavez off first.

2-2. Floyd strikes out, it's up to Reyes and maybe Lo Duca.

High ball, inside strike. 1-1 to Reyes. Foul, 1-2. Another foul. Reyes drills one to center, too close to Edmonds. All up to Lo Duca.

Gotta sit on the curve, Wainwright can't get the fastball down into the zone.

Bases loaded for Beltran. Tying run in scoring position. An out ends it, a single ties, a double or HR wins it.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Beltran strikes out looking. It's over. It's over. It's over.

Yadier Bleeping Molina.

Willie Randolph on who is picthing Game 7 and why: "Oliver Perez, and I like him."

Given Darren Oliver's record as a reliever compared to starting, I agree with this, much as it horrifies me to start a guy as volatile as Perez in an elimination game, and on three days' rest no less. The good news is, Perez has great stuff and is unpredictable, so the Cardinals don't get an edge from just having seen him.

Here is the Mets' staff by how rested they are for Game Seven in terms of pitches thrown:

Pitcher	D-1	D-2	D-3	D-4	D-5	D-6	D-7
Perez				92
Oliver					72
Trachsel					43
Glavine		80					89
Maine	98					88
Hernandez		18			10	1
Mota	4	15		8		23	19
Feliciano		23		10		1
Bradford	14	7		20		29
Heilman	12					33
Wagner	24					24	15

Glavine reportedly is available for an inning, roughly. Trachsel, hopefully, will not pitch. Oliver has four days' rest and should be fresh if needed. The thing that jumps out here, though, is how rested Heilman is; he's really the guy I'd like to see go two or three innings tomorrow with the chips down. Wagner threw a lot of pitches tonight but had several days of rest before that, and could be sharper tomorrow from having pitched tonight, as relievers sometimes are. Maine and Glavine are the only guys on the staff who have thrown more than 24 pitches over the past three days.

Well, this is it. The LIRR picked a horrible night to go out of order; I had quite an odyssey getting home on time for the first inning.

Top One

Second and third and one out after a Pujols double. Maine not looking too steady here.

Ha-yooooge strikeout for Maine getting Edmonds. Two outs, but then Maine hits Encarnacion, to set up two outs and bases loaded for Rolen.

Maine gets Rolen to fly out weakly. Like Pedro and Piazza, Rolen has an uncomfortable habit of being seriously out of gas come October.

Maine and Oliver Perez were both essentially throw-ins in trades - and here the Mets are with Maine standing between them and elimination, and Perez possibly starting tomorrow.

Bottom One

Profesor Reyes goes yard! 1-0 Mets. No shutout for Cy Carpenter tonight. Hey, the last Game Six at Shea the other team had Clemens going, and the Mets wore him out, getting him to throw 138 pitches. Let's see a repeat; Carpenter's good but he's no Clemens.

Beltran grounds out to first; Pujols does not try to race him to the bag.

Top Two, 1-0 Mets

Why is it that the really good Latino players so often have names like Pedro and Carlos and Fernando and Manny, instead of, say, Yadier?

Maine could really be a solid pitcher someday. He's the same general type as Maddux, Glavine, Brad Radke, Rick Reed, obviously more in the vein of the latter two.

La Russa is complaining about the count. I think he's trying to ice Maine.

1-2-3 second.

Bottom Two, 1-0 Mets

Wright is still due.

DP by Valentin. They're gonna need more than one run tonight.

Top Three, 1-0 Mets

Eckstein really is the closest thing going these days to Wally Backman. Leadoff walk.

Maine gets Speizio to whiff on a low pitch; they walk Pujols and Maine falls behind Edmonds before getting him to fly out to right.

First and third, two out (Eckstein went to third on the fly).

Bottom Three

Chavez beats out a leadoff bunt. Nobody expects the Venezuelan bunt! That really was a great bunt.

OK, wireless internet is back. Reyes is on second, after being tackled by Belliard to avoid trying for third on a slightly wild throw. Belliard basically sat on him. Then again, Reyes went into him awfully hard.

Lo Duca grounds out.

Top Four

Belliard is definitely not built like a middle infielder. He's built more like a shopping mall security guard.

Not much happened in the fourth, except that a walk to Molina means Carpenter won't lead off the fifth. The Mets still need more than one run.

Bottom Four

Beltran gets on for Delgado, Wright on deck...need some runs here.

Delgado crushes the ball to straightaway center, might as well have hit a popup. One out.

The funny thing about all the guff Wright is taking is, he batted .333 with 4 RBI in 3 games in the NLDS, he has a double and a homer in this series. But he needs to do more for people to feel like he stepped up.

Green singles in a run. About time he contributed. 2-0 Mets.

Speizio hauls in a short fly by Valentin. Even as a veteran infielder playing out of position he hasn't been any worse out there than Green.

Top Five, 2-0 Mets

Good recovery by Maine on a grounder he knocks down. The longer Maine goes, the better relievers the Mets can bring in. Saving the pen for tomorrow is secondary, since you need to win tonight or there is no tomorrow.

Pujols bats with two outs and the bases empty and down by more than one run. This is how it should always be.

Pujols whiffs on a low pitch outside the strike zone. He's done plenty of damage in this series but the Mets have also made him look bad more than usual.

Bottom Five, 2-0 Mets

Reyes is on again, which hopefully will drain some energy from Carpenter keeping him on first.

Nope - instead, Lo Duca hits an odd-bouncing grounder, so Reyes goes to second with two outs.

Top Six, 2-0 Mets

So far this looks a lot like Game One, but I don't see this ending 2-0. Maine has thrown 86 pitches; he might go seven innings at most, but this is probably his last.

Bradford is getting warm. Feliciano can't be far behind.

3-1 to Edmonds. This does not have the look of another 1-2-3 inning.

Leadoff walk. I'd leave Maine in a bit longer - he is still pitching a shutout - but he can't have much rope here.

2-1 to Encarnacion. If he gets on, curtains for Maine.

Bloop into shallow left; that drops in front of Floyd, but Chavez hustles under it for out #1.

Maine comes out after 98 pitches, still pitching a shutout. One more run and you would just leave him in until they draw blood, but Willie is nervous here. Let's hope everyone else has it tonight too. The Shea crowd gives him a well-earned standing O.

Bradford enters the game with a 2-0 lead, one out and a man on first.

Bradford goes 3-0 to Rolen. Uh-oh.

Bradford deals a beautiful 3-0 strike on the outside corner; if he threw that pitch all day nobody would hit it.

Bradford gets the double play! La Russa proves that he was right to bench Rolen earlier. Would La Russa rather be right than win the pennant? Don't answer that.

Bottom Six, 2-0 Mets

Can I say just now that I'm not excited about the prospect of Mota entering this game?

Carpenter is going after Wright with contempt for his bat. This is painful to watch for a guy who so rarely slumps.

Wright and Green both strike out looking.

Top Seven, 2-0 Mets

Just saw a Ned Lamont ad with lots of pictures of Lieberman with Bush & Cheney. I won't get political here, just passing that on that Lamont thinks he can win voters in this telecast. Interesting.

Bradford still in. Belliard singles - Bradford gets two quick strikes and Belliard hits a bouncing grounder up the middle, just luck that it gets by Bradford.

Bradford gets ahead of Molina, too. He's throwing well, but guys like him can get chipped away even when they do.

He's got Molina down 1-2. This time, he needs to put him away - maybe another GIDP?

Molina hits a towering fly to CF. I'm not sure Beltran even opened his eyes to catch that one.

Pitching change. I think I have seen enough of Uncle Ernie and his heartburn.

Mets need eight more outs.

Mota comes in to face Duncan. I have a very bad feeling about this.

1-1 to Duncan. Foul, 1-2. This is a very big inning.

Mota gets Duncan to hit into a DP. I bow before Randolph's genius.

Bottom Seven, 2-0 Mets

Looper Time!

Valentin bunts, is thrown out. Now, I know Looper's healthier and tougher this year but he's still one of those guys you want to give a chance to dig his own hole.

Heilman warming up.

I'm not sure why Tucker is hitting here. I'd try Floyd in the two out none on situation and hope for a Big Fly.

Tucker flies out to left, except that Speizio butchers the ball. Reyes is up.

Tucker is running; I would not mind risking him running here, since if he is thrown out Reyes leads off.

I'm guessing right now that this game comes down to Wagner with the bases loaded. Probably against Pujols.

La Russa overthinks, Tucker steals on a pitchout. Reyes gets an easy infield single as Eckstein can only knock the ball down in the hole.

Reyes steals second uncontested. The Cards had to hold the ball but if Lo Duca gets a hit that will be very costly for the Cards.

And so it is: LoDuca drills a single up the middle, 4-0 Mets. Looper Time!

Which ends, as Tyler Johnson comes in. Tucker goes up there with Dave Roberts in 2004 and Otis Nixon in 1999 for LCS-turning steals.

Error on Rolen. Which brings up Delgado with two men on. I would be throwing things right now, were I a Cards fan.

Delgado grounds out.

Top Eight, 4-0 Mets

The Mets will win this game, or they will suffer a catastrophic bullpen failure that will make Heilman and/or Wagner persona non grata at Shea for life. No middle ground remains.

Five outs remain. Speizio comes up, Pujols on deck, can not tie the game.

And the Speez pops out on the first pitch. Albert bats again with 2 down and the bases empty. Let him hit it off the 7 train.

Pujols singles, Edmonds up. They are talking about Perez vs. Oliver for Game Seven. Um, let's make sure first we have one.

Edmonds whiffs. Heilman does his job. Wagner will get his chance to pull out his set of matches and gasoline. Always leave 'em wanting more, Billy.

Top Nine, 4-0 Mets

Wright pops up. Vindication will await Game Seven. If there is one, of course.

Green gets drilled in the butt. That looks intentional, but I can't imagine why.

Rolen throws high, but gets Valentin. Man, he's had a terrible night.

La Russa is wearing those shades again. It's 11:00 and it's very dark out.

Chavez takes a 3-0 strike halfway down his shins.

Top Nine, 4-0 Mets

Wagner will enter the game in a non-save situation. You know, like that 4-run lead he blew against the Yankees.

I don't want to be too hard on Wagner, who was (with Hoffman) one of the NL's two dominant closers. He's probably going to nail this one down. I just don't entirely trust him.

First two pitches out of the strike zone. Here we go.

2-2 to Encarnacion. Trachsel is up in the pen just to frighten the fans. Encarnacion singles. This gives us a test: the fork in Rolen's back or the monkey on Wagner's?

Rolen bounces a double off the fence. The crowd is restive. Justifiably.

Why did Heilman come out?

1-2 to Belliard on a ball in the dirt that almost goes as a wild pitch. He bounces a grounder; Wright wisely takes the easy out at first. Molina is up.

Molina flies out quickly to CF. Taguchi comes up; La Russa is just gambling here. I guess he had nobody fit to hit for Molina.

0-2 to Taguchi. Wagner has his required degree of difficulty here.

2-run double to left for Taguchi. !#^%!$%!$^#*!&#%&!%&*!^#*&!^#*&!

Game Six, one out away. Why does that sound familiar? Ugh.

Nobody ever goes out to talk to Wagner in these situations.

Eckstein grounds out! We go 7!

Maine is giving a distracted and detatched interview while giving high fives with his left hand. Those two insurance runs sure came in handy.

They just asked Randolph who is picthing Game 7 and why: "Oliver Perez, and I like him." A Choo Choo Coleman-esque answer.

Who would you rather have starting the big game tonight, if you had to choose - John Maine or Kris Benson?

I'd take Maine, who at least has a live arm and hasn't shown signs of wearing out down the stretch. Maybe he doesn't come up big tonight, but I definitely feel the Mets have a fighting chance with Maine.

Liveblogging but with some interruptions anticipated

TRIVIA QUESTION OF THE NIGHT: Almost all World Championship teams have at least one Hall of Famer playing a significant role. Of course, more recent teams' players haven't gone on the ballot yet; of players to play for World Series winning teams since the 1994 strike, I believe only Wade Boggs has gone in the Hall, although most teams will meet the test - consider Pudge Rodriguez, Tom Glavine and Albert Pujols on the three remaining rosters. But for the period before 1994, only three teams had no Hall of Famers, four if you count one team that had a Hall of Famer who had retired by October (three of these four teams had Hall of Fame managers, though). Name the teams. Answer to go below the fold as the game progresses.

Top One

Chvez in the lineup again, regardless of how good Cliff Floyd says he feels. Reyes starts off hot, with a single, but Lo Duca's grounder takes out Reyes as the lead runner. On the whole, Weaver doesn't look like a guy who will throw a shutout tonight.

Another fielder's choice with Delgado after a Beltran single - two out, Lo Duca on second, Delgado on first. Wright whiffs.

Bottom One

Eckstein singles off Glavine, who I assume will also not fare as well on the Cardinals' second look at him. Still, he's the best pitching matchup the Mets have in this best-of-three remaining, so this remains a big game.

Top Two

My son can now recite that anti-steroids ad from memory.

Buck says that despite the power of positive thinking we are also not likely to see Floyd pinch hitting. Chavez responds with a double down the left field line.

Bottom Two

The strike zone doesn't love Glavine tonight.

Inning ends on a strike-em-out, throw-em-out DP. All in a day's work for Glavine and Lo Duca.

Top Three

Two quick outs. Weaver is settling in. Make that three.

Bottom Three

Once again, scoring first is likely to be important in this game, not that it was decisive last night.

Not...much...happening. Of course, with Glavine on the mound I should not complain.

Top Four

Long delay while they fix first base...

Wright looks cold again.

Green nails a double right down the line; fan interference may have saved the Cards a run, as Delgado pulls up at third. Then again, Delgado isn't exactly the most aggressive baserunner.

But it's moot, as the suddenly un-frozen Jose Valentin follows with another double for two runs.

Glavine batting, two outs and Valentin on third. Groundout.

-INTERMISSION-

Bottom 4, 2-0 Mets

I'm back. And a rough inning for Glavine, who finally ends the Christy Mathewson act with a Pujols bomb to left and now a drip-drip Cardinal rally consisting of a walk to Rolen and dink singles by Edmonds and Belliard to right, and now a long at bat for Molina.

Molina walks, bases loaded and 2-0 for Weaver, a career .206 hitter.

Glavine gets another grounder, this one weakly to Reyes. But a costly inning not just in runs but in pitches thrown, plus Weaver doesn't lead off the fifth. Glavine has thrown 73 pitches through four innings.

Top Five, 2-2

They were saying Weaver may be making himself some money this postseason - maybe earning a second chance, but Weaver was really, really bad this year, 5.76 ERA and his K rate went off the table. If he is smart he'll stay in St. Louis with Dave Duncan (who specializes in mediocre veterans), a good organization, small-city media and supportive fans.

That said - Please, please go to the Cardinals bullpen.

Beltran rips one to right, but within Encarnacion's reach.

Buck says this is by far the biggest at bat of the night, Delgado up with a man on first and 2 outs. Um, didn't the Cards just leave the bases loaded? But Weaver gets Delgado.

Bottom Five, 2-2

Reyes almost made a really great catch there going over the shoulder on a bloop by Eckstein. Glavine's still getting eaten away here, and the bullpen will probably be in soon.

Preston Wilson tattoos a double to right, 3-2 Cards. Glavine's not fooling anyone.

Glavine's walking Pujols intentionally, and then getting pulled. I guess you don't ask Bradford to walk a guy intentionally, with his windup.

Encarnacion apparently can't bunt. But he can single. Bases loaded. Nobody out. This is trouble.

Bradford whiffs Rolen. Now, a DP can get them out of this. Easier said than done.

Top Six, 3-2 Cards

Somehow, they got out of that; I was trying unsuccessfully to walk the baby back to sleep and missed how.

Very nice grab by Pujols on a Green shot down the line, saving a double.

Weaver throws a serious brushback at Valentin. Valentin rips one foul - I think he's back.

Chavez is hacking again.

Bottom Six, 3-2 Cards

Weaver's coming out for a pinch hitter. Still, it feels like it's getting late early.

Big, high arcing homer to right for Duncan. 4-2.

Top Seven, 4-2 Cards

Rally cap time!

That Tucker at bat would have been a good time to see Cliff Floyd if he had been available.

1-2-3 inning. Six outs left or we face an elimination game against Carpenter and another with "staff" pitching.

Bottom Seven, 4-2 Cards

Pujols grounds out off Roberto Hernandez.

They're showing El Duque. He should be available for the Series, maybe Floyd will too. But only if they get there.

Gun says Roberto is throwing 95. Another ageless wonder on this team.

Top Eight, 4-2 Cards

Beltran whiffs.

Delgado doesn't look too good either. Until he drills one just foul into the RF corner.

Infield hit for Delgado! Well, in the sense that Belliard was playing in shallow right.

Man, Wright is due. And if he wasn't in such a slump he'd usually be the best guy to have up representing the tying run down 2.

And he hits one off Hornsby on the left field fence. As I have said before, Wright reminds me of Rogers Hornsby, at least in his build and batting stance (not that I expect him to hit .400)

Green, on the other hand - not that guy. But he's the guy we have. Edmonds hauls in a bloop with a basket catch.

Down two, game we really need the Mets to win, second and third, two out - and it all comes down to Jose Valentin. Did you expect this, in April?

Cliff Floyd looks like he really wants to grab a bat here.

A second high curve, 2-2. But the third one drops in and freezes Valentin. The odds on these Mets just got very long.

Top Nine, 4-2 Cardinals

Longshot territory, now. Another night off for Heilman so far, as Mota starts the ninth.

About 40% of Cardinals fans are blonde and female. And wearing red.

Miles triples to right. The Cardinals now - properly - have contempt for Shawn Green's defense in right. For a guy who opened the postseason with a great play with the glove, he has struggled terribly out there.

Forget winning the game, the potential squeeze play gives La Russa the chance to manage real hard. That's what this is all about.

Eckstein pops up in the infield; now there's two outs and Wilson up. Please, don't walk Wilson and get Pujols up there.

Top Nine, 4-2 Cards

Chavez, probably Franco, and Reyes due up. Need two guys to get on to bring back the boppers. If Franco gets on, with Reyes' wheels behind him, you have to run Anderson Hernandez for him.

Floyd is on deck. Interesting.

Chavez is not inspiring confidence. And he grounds out.

Here comes the big man. A risky move, down one. I can't fault Randolph too much; he's a fine hitter and you can run for him, if he gets out of the box.

Floyd grounds out. He hobbles to first, but really anyone but Reyes, and maybe Reyes, is an easy out on that ball anyway.

Reyes is wound up pretty tight here.

Reyes whiffs.

Gotta go through Carpenter now to force a Game Seven. After that . . . well, no win in Game Six, no after that to worry about, is there? The Mets always have to do it the hard way.
Reyes is our last hope.

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If this series goes seven, there is talk that the Mets might start Darren Oliver. But Oliver hasn't started all year, and for good reason. As I noted back in May, Oliver has a very pronounced record, going all the way back to his rookie year in 1993, of pitching much better out of the bullpen. I'd rather see him stay in that comfort zone that allowed him to have his best year in more than a decade. The breakdown:

S/R	G	IP	IP/G	ERA	H/9	HR/9	2B/9	BB/9	K/9
S	228	1299.1	5.70	5.14	10.27	1.13	2.24	3.58	5.17
R	123	188.2	1.53	3.91	8.49	1.05	1.24	4.10	7.01

Sources for split stats here and here.

The 1973 Mets entered October with a tremendous 4-man rotation, a solid bullpen - and a completely punchless offense led by Rusty Staub, Cleon Jones and John Milner. Which would you rather have in the postseason: that team or this one, as it stands today? Great as Seaver, Koosman, and Matlack were, and as big an impact as big-time starters can make, I think I'd still take the current team, with its deep, powerful and versatile offense, and I'd certainly take this team if you added El Duque back into the mix.

Blez looks at the firing of Ken Macha, which seems unfair to me, but it is true that the one thing the Beane-era A's have never had is a manager who could be an emotional leader. Even within the parameters of selecting a guy who will go along with the Beane program, you would like to see them hire someone who is a little more Captain Kirk and a little less Mr. Spock. In fact, on a team where roster management and strategy are largely decided above the manager's pay grade, you would think the emphasis on getting a good leader of men would be greater.

Meanwhile, the Cubs hope Lou Piniella can recreate the success he has had in Tampa. Or was that the postseason success he had in Seattle? I do think, though, that the Cubs would be well-served by trying to acquire A-Rod to replace Ronny Cedeno at shortstop, and the hiring of Piniella could help that. But the Cubs, in sharp contrast to the A's, also need to shake a two-decade-long aversion to patience at the plate; adding another guy who hits solo homers won't help that. Even a middle of the order with two patient hitters (Lee and A-Rod) needs tablesetters.

So the Mets get cosmic justice for the Game One rainout in New York with a Game Five rainout in St. Louis, as tonight's game is put off to tomorrow. I don't want to sound like Whitey Herzog here, bemoaning that the particulars of the postseason schedule didn't precisely fit the relative strengths of his and his opponents' pitching staffs, but it is in general a good thing, as well as obviously good for the Mets, that Glavine and Weaver will now start on their regular rest. (It's even better news, in a way, if this tempts LaRussa to start Carpenter on short rest, since the Mets need to beat him once anyway). Of course, it's even more urgent than it was in the 1986 NLCS (with Mike Scott looming) that the Mets put this away in six with Glavine and Maine, rather than have to go back to the grab bag of Perez, an injured Trachsel, or a reliever who hasn't started all year (Oliver or, less likely, Heilman - especially less likely with no rest after Games 5&6) to start Game 7 against Suppan.

As to Trachsel, unlike some, I don't fault him for coming out of the game the other night after being hit by a line drive - he was about ready to be yanked anyway, and the injury gave the Mets time to get Oliver warm. And a really deep bruise can be nasty. But if the Mets did want him to pitch Game 7 (I'd rather see Perez, at this point, if only because he's more likely to make it to the third or fourth inning before melting down), I can't see why a days-old bruise, painful as it is, would prevent a professional athlete from wanting that ball.

The other good news: if the Mets do get to the next round, El Duque will be ready to go. Hold on: the cavalry is coming! (that is, to the extent that "the cavalry" means "a 40-year-old pitcher with a 4.66 ERA who hasn't pitched in three weeks").

Anthony Reyes' 5.06 ERA this season makes him the easy favorite in tonight's pitching matchup...the goal for Oliver Perez tonight is twelve outs. If Perez gets through four innings with one or even two runs allowed, everything else will be gravy; any shorter leash and he would not be a starter at all.

A few things appeared in nthe cold light of morning today. One is something I should have noted before the series, since I had seen it in the numbers: Suppan had a great second half, such that the Cards should be regarded as a team with a 1-2 punch, rather than Carpenter's one man band.

Another is that the loss of Floyd and Valentin looking largely out of gas means that the Mets aren't really the same offensive team, let alone the same pitching rotation.

A third is that, at least once Game One was rained out, my assessment of the dynamics should have been the reverse of the Dodger series - the Mets were much better served putting this one away early rather than getting into a war of attrition.

Top One

I really would have liked a run to stake Perez with in the top of the first.

Bottom One

Ugh, Wright and Delgado both butcher that play. Perez is not the guy you want to see errors behind.

Double play; redemption for the defense.

My kids have nearly all the regular ads committed to memory by this point. An occupational hazard of watching playoff TV in baseball or basketball.

Perez...seriously, this is like the '86 Mets starting Bruce Berenyi in the NLCS.

Top Two

Jim Edmonds is keeping very busy tonight.

Oliver Perez walks! Yes it's still 0-0 and yes these are two talented pitchers, but you can see them both playing with fire. A wise man will wait Reyes out.

You know what? Ugly as this has been between the ending of Game Two, the beginning of Game Three, and the innings of mutual ennui since then, all the Mets really need to do is get a lead in this game and my faith and optimism will be restored. I'm easy that way.

Bottom Two

As much as I have griped about the condition of the Mets starting rotation, it should be borne in mind that the collapse of the Cards down the stretch was caused as much as anything by the injury/fadeout of Rolen and Edmonds, and neither guy has really been himself yet.

How many balls have been trapped or gone off the fingers by the Mets outfielders in this series?

Chavez throwing out Belliard at third was huge - the Cardinals get a run, but the difference between man on first two outs and first and third one out is... well, Perez has to work to make this a big inning now; he should get out of this.

And he does.

Top Three

Man, Lo Duca is slow. The play that captured this was in Game Two when Speizio and Pujols both bobbled the ball and he was still thrown out by 10 feet. In fact, I suspect Lo Duca is distinctly slower now than he was three or four months ago.

I would not like Beltran so much, were I a Cardinals fan. Line shot homer to right, 1-1.

Wright homers into the left field bullpen. Hope has returned.

Bottom Three

Six outs down for Perez, six to go with no more than one more run and he will have exceeded expectations.

They just replayed the two homers. Wright's swing was the big power swing, looked like a home run. Beltran just sort of reached out and golfed his.

Nice try by Jose Reyes to fake dropping a line drive by Pujols to get a double play. Reyes needs to spend some time with Vlade Divac.

Well, the Cards tie it back up on the 2-out triple to right bobbled by Shawn Green. Green is not having a good series in the field.

Three outs to go with no runs scoring for Perez to cover the spread. Then we're playing with the house's money.

Top Four, 2-2.

It's 8:20 pm in St. Louis. The lights are on. And Tony La Russa is wearing sunglasses. What does he think this is, the World Series of Poker?

You get a real sense of scale of major league players when you see Endy Chavez listed at 195 pounds.

Maybe I missed him but I don't believe there has been a Stan Musial sighting yet. Is he waiting for the Series? Or is Stan the Man finally getting too old to show up for events like this?

Wow, Reyes has thrown 84 pitches after striking out Perez. Perez, who is hardly economical with his pitches, has thrown 49 to get just two fewer outs.

Bottom Four, 2-2

New Busch is definitely tough on long fly balls - not like the old 80s-era Busch, but a bandbox this is not.

If you look at the transactions, La Russa in his short major league career was employed by the A's, White Sox and Cardinals. Interesting coincidence.

Belliard steals second as Molina strikes out. The throw beat him, but Valentin just didn't quite get the tag down. As McCarver points out, this is partly due to Molina obstructing Lo Duca. But no harm done, due to some outstanding defense by Valentin on the next play.

Perez has done his job now; if he gets in any more trouble he can be bailed out without disaster.

Top Five, 2-2.

3-run homer for Delgado! It is now actually imaginable that Perez could get the win in this game. A lot of baseball still to play, but that's a major lift. I had to run upstairs and tell my 9-year-old son, who just got sent to bed under protest.

Momentum is such a fickle thing, almost as fickle as Fox announcers - suddenly the flairs dropping in and botched grounders are going against the Cardinals.

Perez is batting with two on and two outs in the top of the fifth. And you know what? I'm fine with that. What a turn of events.

And he's ahead in the count again. You really would not want to walk him to face Reyes with the bases juiced. I mean really.

But he whiffs. On to...

Bottom Five, 5-2

Eckstein goes waaaaay deep, and yes, Virginia, this is still a tight October ballgame. I get Perez out if anybody gets on ahead of Pujols.

Willie Randolph calls both Perez and Darren Oliver "Ollie." Perez, if he ever does recapture his 2004 form, could use an intimidating nickname.

And whiffing Pujols with a pitch at his eyes is a reminder that this is still a possibility for this guy.

Top Six, 5-3 Mets.

Reyes singles to right - the ball just jumps off his bat.

To answer a question in the comments, yes those in-game interviews are idiotic, uncomfortable and risk giving away too much information to boot. But at least Tony took his shades off.

First and (Reyes on) third, nobody out. This is at least one run you need to add.

Beltran walks, bases loaded for Charlie the Cat. Hancock is having a tough series.

Deep fly for Delgado, which is what you wanted there. Ground rule double, two runs in, 7-3.

Buck is busting on Speizio for missing that, but let's face it, Speizio is an aging infielder playing out of position.

Hancock walks Wright on four pitches. Cards fans are unhappy, and it takes a lot to get them restive.

Ron Livingston, action hero? Not sure I am buying that.

Bases loaded, nobody out, up 7-3 - at this point you just want to keep bleeding in runs, even if with outs.

Green singles - only one run in, but we're still bases loaded, nobody out. 8-3.

Valentin drills one down the left field line for a double, empties the bases, 11-3. Now, I feel good. Heck, we may see Perez go 8 innings tonight.

Chavez strikes out on a pitch in the dirt. Really, you have to wonder if he takes that cut if they didn't just get an 8-run lead. Perez bats again.

In a normal postseason, you try to battle against getting too high or too low, which is a powerful temptation. I thought it would be different now that I'm older. But it's been awful hard to avoid, given how precarious is the state of the Mets rotation - everything turns on avoiding situations where you need a well-pitched game.

Edmonds hits the fence to catch the third out trailing by 8 runs. That's why he's Jim Edmonds.

Bottom Six, 11-3 Mets.

Perez goes right after Rolen and Edmonds, gets a popup and a home run. Hey, that's how you pitch with a big lead - don't fool around, don't worry about solo homers. (Beltran hits the fence trying to rope it back, too, but more smoothly).

Home run Molina. Well, maybe after this inning you get Perez out of there, if not sooner. You don't want to damage his confidence, and you don't want to turn this into a game again.

11-5, Bradford's coming in. The end was ugly but only because of the big lead did Perez go that last inning. And yes, to answer another comment, the Mets would really like to see a rainout tomorrow so Glavine can get back on his regular rest. In 1986, we didn't care if it rained (as it did twice), at least for the Mets' staff (it did matter that rain let Bruce Hurst start Game 7 rather than Oil Can Boyd.)

Preston Wilson being another reminder of 1986.

Top 7, 11-5 Mets.

Beltran goes deep; that's the Braden Looper we know and love. Nice twist of the knife there, needed or not.

Bottom Seven, 12-5.

Cards need seven runs, Mets need six outs. I like those odds.

Delgado's favorite actor is Morgan Freeman. If he were 10 years older it would be Lou Gosset jr.

Bradford still in; I'm feeling like a Roberto Hernandez sighting is in order soon, but Wagner (?!?) is warming up. OK, never mind that, he's not; they just mentioned him while I had my head down typing between pitches.

Top Eight, 12-5 Mets

It's 10:11pm in St. Louis, and LaRussa is still wearing sunglasses.

Buck is asking if you start Perez or Trachsel in Game 7. This, you see, is why a Game 7 is not a hopeful prospect. I'd rather start Heilman and see if he can go 4, if he hasn't been burned by then. In 1986, Roger McDowell went 5 in NLCS Game 6 (and had surgery the next spring)

Bottom 8, 12-5 Mets.

They are saying they will ask Randolph before tomorrow who will start Game 7. I predict they will not get an answer.

Top 9, 12-5 Mets

I can hear the Mets fans in the stadium now, doing the "Jose, Jose Jose Jose" chant.

The Braden Looper Face is in the house.

Somewhere, an Astros fan is throwing things at the screen after a gratuitous shot of Jesse Orosco celebrating the 1986 NLCS Game Six clinching strikeout.

And there's Mookie in the stands!

La Russa is warming up his closer down 7 runs. You can't fault the man for lacking optimism.

Reyes gets doubled off first for running on contact on a ball in the air with one out. Granted, Reyes doesn't do the space cadet bit in a close game, but that still should not happen.

Bottom Nine, 12-5

Needless to say, you need to put this one away. In the books, as Howie Rose would say. Mota is in; what ever did happen to Hernandez? Is he tired from pitching last night?

One on, one out. The Mets really did need the 12 runs tonight, even if they win by seven.

It's over. What can I say? Amazin'

LIVEBLOGGED DURING THE GAME

Let me say, first of all, that I - like many other Mets fans - will be very happy after this season is done to never see Steve Trachsel in a Mets uniform again. Granted, Trachsel pitched some fine baseball before his back injury in 2004, but he's never been the same since.

It's not just that Trachsel pitches badly so often, but that he most frequently pitches his worst at the start of the game, so there's no way to get him out of there before he does his damage.

With Trachsel leaving in the second, that rainout stripping the Mets of a travel day off is looking huge right now.

And so is Game Two. It was the fifth time in fourteen postseason serieses in franchise history that the Mets have blown a lead at home in the sixth inning or later - and it has not been a good omen:

1. 1973 NLCS Game 4: up 1-0 into the 7th, Mets lose 2-1 in 12 innings. Mets go on to win the clincher the next game.

2. 1973 World Series Game 3: up 2-0 into the 6th and 2-1 into the 8th, and ended up losing 3-2 in 11 innings. Mets lost the series in 7 games.

3. 1988 NLCS Game 4: the Mike Scioscia game - up 4-2 into the 9th, Scioscia homers off Dwight Gooden, and the Dodgers win 5-4 in 12 innings. Mets lost the series in 7 games.

4. 2000 World Series Game 5: Mets lead 2-0 into the 6th, Yankees tie it up and score 2 in the 9th to end the series.

Of course, much as I'd like to see no more Trachsel next year, I also don't especially want tonight's injury to promote Oliver Perez to third starter.

I'm already very sick of Scott Speizio's . . . it's not really a beard so much as a tassel.

I guess they will ask Suppan after the game why he was winking at Trachsel before his home run - maybe he was talking some trash about the last homer he hit off Trachsel?

I was astonished this morning to see the papers all blaming Wagner for last night's debacle - sure, Wagner blew up and lost the game, but Mota was the one who lost the lead.

Why was I not surprised at the graphic last night saying that Lo Duca's favorite actor is Robert DiNiro?

I'm not thrilled to see Oliver batting in the third, but I guess you can't burn all your pitchers in the third inning.

Down by less than 5, I think that triple by Reyes went far enough that it could have been an inside the park HR.

I'd feel a lot better about the Mets being in a hole here if they were hitting the ball well.

TRIVIA QUIZ - Answer below the fold. They said that Jim Leyland is now the 7th manager to take a team to the World Series in each league. Can you name the other six?

Great job by Darren Oliver to settle back down, albeit after aggravating the bases-loaded situation he inherited from Trachsel.

Ack! Valentin gets thrown out stretching a single to a double down 5-0. Which completely kills the inning.

Now I'm really baffled as to why Oliver bats a second time leading off the sixth. Is Randolph writing off Game 3?

OK, I am ready for Gonzalez and McCarver to shut up now. Which is not to say I'm not sick of Joe Buck, too.

It's extremely frustrating to see Yadier Molina ripping the ball - I'd call him the poor man's Ben Molina, but Jose already has that role filled.

If the Mets lose this series, the odds of Omar giving Jeff Suppan an imprudently large free agent contract have to be rising. (Although as I have noted before, Minaya hasn't actually pulled the trigger on that many bad moves - it's just the things he's been rumored to do.. And of course you can't argue with the results of a lot of his gambles.). Suppan is basically the same pitcher Trachsel used to be, a guy who gives you a steady 32-33 starts a year right around the league ERA. I remember when he was a hugely touted ("next Greg Maddux") Red Sox prospect, but he's long since made his own record to be judged against.

Roberto Hernandez is definitely leading the team in most games warmed up without pitching. Looks like we might see him come in next, though.

I really feel bad for Matt Cerrone; if you haven't been there, his site is down, at the worst possible time for a Mets blog to be down.

It would really be nice for Wright to get a hit in this series .. . . after that seventh inning I'm all but ready to write this game off myself. If you can't tell, I'm not in a real optimistic mood right now.

I know there's no one way to win a baseball game, but it will be very, very useful if the Mets can score in the top of the first tomorrow night before Perez takes the mound. The upside is that a good outing by Perez would wash away the past two years.

OK, we go to the 8th inning needing five runs before the Cards get six outs. It can be done; this team can do it.

Leadoff walk in the 8th for Green. It's a start.

Make that five runs vs. three outs. Now we are in serious miracle time.

Down without a fight. The only good things there are to say about this game are (1) it's just one game, (2) it's over, and (3) they didn't burn much of the bullpen, other than the fact that we won't see Darren Oliver again for a while.

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Well, the Mets have finally lost one, and a crusher, sending them to St. Louis with Trachsel, Oliver Perez, and Glavine on short rest coming up. Ugh. The crucial mistake here was Randolph leaving in Mota too long - I knew after the marathon at bat to Pujols that something bad was going to happen to Mota in that inning. Someone should go back and count how many pitches the Cards fouled off tonight, between Pujols and Eckstein's at bat against Heilman.

Off to bed - more on this game later.

Listening on the radio...will update as I go.

Glavine strikes out Pujols! They should put that on a poster, like the famous John Starks dunk (hope this series ends better than that one).

Jeff Weaver is pitching a no-hitter.

Floyd is hurting, and is out of the game. That did not take long.

You know, Encarnacion can pop a big hit now and then, but I have to believe that batting him cleanup is a deliberate ploy to get the Mets to walk Pujols.

Oof! Pujols doubled off first by Beltran! Inning over!

Where did the Cardinals get this Jeff Weaver guy? He can't be related to the guy who pitched for the Yankees, Dodgers and Angels.

This game is starting to remind me of Game One of the 1986 World Series. Come to think of it, there wasn't much scoring in Game One in the NLCS in 1986 or 1988. Game Three of the 1999 NLCS comes to mind as well, Glavine being prominently involved in that one.

BELTRAN HOMER! 2-0 Mets!

Delgado doubles. It's midnight and Weaver just turned into a pumpkin.

Tyler Johnson on in relief. Allowed 56 baserunners this year in 36.1 innings.

I don't like seeing Mota instead of Heilman in the 8th.

Two outs, Eckstein on first, Pujols on deck, 2-run lead, Mota really needs to get Preston Wilson here.

Bradford warming up - because Bradford keeps the ball down, I'd rather have him face Pujols in that situation than Heilman or certainly Mota.

Mota back from 3-0 to 3-2 on Wilson. Foul out to Delgado! Whew. Pujols will lead off 9th and can hit the ball to Hartford and it won't matter.

Braden Looper is in! It's Christmas in October!

2d & 3d, 1 out. Lo Duca on third. I think I would run for Lo Duca here; the insurance run would be big.

Instead, Wright grounds out. Need a hit from Chavez for the big insurance run.

Nope, lineout to Edmonds. !^%$#^!% Edmonds.

You can hear on the radio how hard Wagner is throwing. I still say Randy Myers is the only Mets closer I have really, truly trusted.

Two outs, none on. Wagner can't do this without drama, can he?

Wagner walks Rolen. That's more like it. Speizio will come up as the tying run. Other than Pujols he's the only Card to hit in September.

The Mets Win! Theeeeeee Me-e-e-ets Win!

Well, that was unexpected: a shutout and only three pitchers used. Of course, that was Glavine on regular rest; it's all downhill from here (not that Maine is a problem, but he probably won't go 7). Now we hold our breath for word on Floyd's ankle.

I only recently discovered that The Baseball Cube has historical minor league stats going back to some time in the 60s or 70s, albeit of spotty coverage. But this Dave Cochrane page must be a typo - I think I would have heard if a guy, especially a guy in the Mets system, had stolen 800 bases in the minors in the 1980s, including a single season high of 146. I suspect the walks, steals and strikeouts columns got transposed somehow (note his persistent single-digit walk totals).

Also, while looking through the site, I got to look at Dan Norman's minor league numbers, and let's just say that for a guy who was supposed to be the key guy in a trade for Tom Seaver, they don't pass the smell test. Norman batted .297 and slugged .441 as a 19 year old in rookie ball in 1974, reasonable enough numbers, but in 1161 at bats between A, AA and AAA between then and The Trade, the man batted .269 and slugged .422. I know the Cube lacks walks and steals data for those years and Norman hit a ton of triples, so he presumably was quite fast, but nothing in his subsequent career suggests a budding Rickey Henderson. The Mets should have known, and probably knew, that Norman was at best a middling prospect with limited chances to become a major league regular.

Another reason I was baffled by the Mets putting Anderson Hernandez on the NLCS roster is that, with Cliff Floyd hobbling on a bum Achilles, you would think you would want some extra insurance in the outfield before another infielder. I expected to see either Milledge or (gasp) Ricky Ledee, even notwithstanding Milledge's immaturity and inconsistency and the fact that Ledee appears to have nothing left.

While I was thinking of that, I took a look at Milledge's 2005-06 numbers at AA, AAA and the majors; they add up to a full season's worth of at bats, and while you can't get a lot of information about quality by lumping together two seasons' work (at age 20-21) at three different levels, when combined they do offer a bit of insight into the type of player Milledge is and could be:

AB	H	2B	3B	HR	R	RBI	BB	K	SB-CS	HBP	SF	DP	AVG	SLG	OBP
666	190	45	6	15	99	82	69	153	25-17	23	4	6	.285	.438	.370

Conclusions:

*Milledge isn't much of a home run hitter yet, though at his age and with his doubles power, he should still develop some home run pop as he ages and fills out.

*He's unlikely ever to be a successful base thief; almost all successful base stealers are already successful at it by the time they get to AA ball. Again, Milledge's youth is an asset, as he may be able to learn some, but a guy who is stealing at less than a 60% clip even in the minors is never going to be Carlos Beltran on the basepaths.

*I didn't realize how often Milledge gets hit by pitches. That will help his OBP long term as long as it doesn't lead to a lot of injuries.

*Milledge obviously doesn't have good strike zone judgment at the major league level, but he's not a no-walks guy in the minors, which suggests the potential to learn.

I still think he's an excellent prospect, although even in 2007 he may need more AAA seasoning before handing him an everyday job in Queens.

Deny Eeeeeeeverything!

It's hard even for a fanatical fan like me to focus on tonight's games after what happened this afternoon, but as you have likely seen by now the Mets were rained out. The Mets will now lose the travel day between Games Two and Three, which is awful news for a team with only three starting pitchers.

The big story today - I've been hearing the sirens from my office - is a small plane crashing into an apartment complex on 72d and York. Word just came across Fox News that the plane was registered to Yankee (and ex-Met) pitcher Cory Lidle. No word on who was on board.

UPDATES: ESPN says Lidle was on board and is dead:

Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle died Wednesday when a small plane he was piloting crashed into a 50-story condominium tower Wednesday on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

This is shocking, shades of Thurman Munson and then some. Presumably Lidle was on his way home from the end of baseball season. I always liked Lidle when he was with the Mets, and he had some decent years, especially in Oakland. Lidle was 34.

Here's an article from September about Lidle as a pilot. As you will recall, Lidle was a descendant of Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat; I guess the interest in transportation ran in his family.

Readers at Athletics Nation remember Lidle. Commenters at MetsBlog are talking about a tough interview Lidle did with Mike and the Mad Dog earlier this week.

Bloomberg's doing a press conference now. He's basically saying NTSB will have to clear up what happened, nobody knows much else for certain yet, reports are conflicting. Air traffic control lost contact around 59th street as Lidle was heading north. Bloomberg is utterly emotionless.

This obviously casts a very serious pall over tonight's scheduled games, including two of Lidle's former teams. The Mets may not play anyway, given the rain (more on the implications of that later).

Via Instapundit, though, a smidgen of humor: Alec Baldwin being . . . well, Alec Baldwin.

Via the invaluable MetsBlog, you can go check out the Mets' NLCS roster. Cliff Floyd will indeed be on the roster, though I expect we will at most see him pinch hitting for the moment. The only change appears to be the substitution of Anderson Hernandez for Royce Ring, which I don't understand (why would you need fewer pitchers in a longer series?) unless Randolph wants to carry a guy to pinch run for Lo Duca, Floyd, Franco and perhaps Delgado. Cerrone also reports that the Mets have not abandoned hope of El Duque being ready to go for the World Series.

Ryan McConnell debates whether this season is a success if the Mets don't win it all. Entering the playoffs I felt like the Mets needed to do two things for me to be satisfied: climb over the weak NL field to the World Series, and outlast the Yankees. They did the second; as to the first, if they lose to a Cardinals team with poor pitching several holes in their lineup and as many injury problems as the Mets, I will go home disappointed. If the Mets make the Series and lose to Detroit or Oakland, I'll of course wish they had won, but I'll have no real basis to complain.

Some people will tell you that tonight's Game One starter for the A's, Barry Zito, is overrated. They will look at his mediocre W-L records for contending teams, his solid but unspectacular ERAs, his also solid but unspectacular K/BB numbers, compared to the money and attention Zito will attract this offseason, and conclude that Zito isn't really even a legitimate number one starter, let alone a guy who will likely end up as the highest paid pitcher in the game.

All of that is true as far as it goes, but it also misses the point of why Zito was so valuable to the A's that Billy Beane kept him around while he was dealing Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder, and why teams will be falling over themselves to get him. You see, there are two things you want, at a minimum, from an expensive investment in a starting pitcher: consistent durability and consistent quality. And Zito is among baseball's best in that regard. Let's look at the major league pitchers who have met, for at least three years running, what you would think of as the minimum tests for a star pitcher: 200 innings pitched and an ERA at least equal to the league (measured by ERA+, baseball-reference.com's park-adjusted comparison to the league ERA). As it turns out, there are but eight pitchers who have met that standard three or more seasons in a row entering 2007:

Pitcher	Yrs	200	Age
Barry Zito	6	6	29
Carlos Zambrano	4	4	26
Greg Maddux	4	4	41
Freddy Garcia	3	6	32
Johan Santana	3	3	28
Brandon Webb	3	3	28
Roy Oswalt	3	3	29
Jon Garland	3	3	27

"200" is consecutive seasons of 200 or more innings, regardless of meeting the quality threshold; "age" is 2007 age. To complete the picture, let's list the guys who have thrown 200 more innings three or more years, but with a shorter string of those seasons beating the league ERA (bear in mind that some of them have beat the league ERA a few times in that stretch; "0" just means they missed it in 2006).

Pitcher	Yrs	200	Age
Livan Hernandez	0	7	"32"
Jamie Moyer	2	6	44
Mark Buehrle	0	6	28
Jake Westbrook	1	3	29
Doug Davis	0	3	31
Randy Johnson	0	3	43

One note on the arbitrary 200-IP cutoff here - if Maddux had thrown an additional two-thirds of an inning in 2002, he'd top the list with 19 years in a row of 200 innings and a 100 or better ERA+.

No, Zito isn't Pedro Martinez; he's never led the league in ERA or strikeouts. But Pedro isn't pitching this week, and Zito is, and that counts too. Don't think GMs the league over aren't excited by Zito's four times leading the American League in starts. Just as with Don Sutton's Hall of Fame credentials, in an age of ever decreasing starting pitcher workloads - this year's Mets setting a new historical nadir - there is much to be said for the sheer dogged persistence of a guy who hitches up the plow every fifth day ready to give his best effort.

I thought I'd pass this along after an exchange with a reader - a 2002 Baseball Prospectus study by Keith Woolner on what length of at bats favors the hitter vs. the pitcher. The short answer is that 3 pitches is the best for pitchers; OBPs start rising rapidly after that, whereas power numbers drop sharply after 2 pitches and don't recover until around 11.

On David Wright's admirers:

There might've been more of them during spring training, but the signs still show up at Shea.

"David, I love you!" And "Marry me, David," flapped by young and not-so young girls on the off chance Mets third baseman David Wright might be looking.

"He makes them himself, you know," Billy Wagner said, nodding at his teammate. "We ask him if he's handed out the day's signs."

Defeat is an orphan:

Four hours after they were eliminated by the Detroit Tigers, the New York Yankees pulled up to Yankee Stadium in three buses late Saturday night, greeted by fewer than a dozen fans.

With as many police as supporters on hand, most of the players quickly went to their cars and drove away. . . Backup infielder Andy Phillips was the only player who talked with reporters.

Ouch. In all seriousness, this one has to hurt worst of all for Yankee fans (well, except for 2004), given how rapidly the team just froze up and went down without a fight. Like I said: just good pitching and a short series. But that doesn't help you through the winter months.

Time to break that old 80s greatest hit, hatred of the Cardinals.

Vince Coleman

Tommie Herr

John Tudor

Todd Worrell

Willie McGee

Whitey Herzog

Terry Pendleton

Yeah, now I have your attention. I should put some Def Leppard records on to get in the mood.

The good news is, the series starts Wednesday, so with three days off the Mets can get all three of their starters set, whereas the Cardinals can't start Carpenter on his regular rest until Game Three.

UPDATE: OK, want some more contemporary names? Braden Looper. Jeff Weaver (that's for the Yankee fans). And of course, it's every baseball fan's duty to hate Tony La Russa.

Besides, if you liked the 2004 NLCS, you have to want a Beltran-Pujols rematch.

Who needs injury reports when you've got a blog? Cliff Floyd speaks:

I want to play, and I don't know what to think. I wanted to score that run. It's the postseason. You don't hold back. We wanted that run, and now my leg might hold me back.

My Achilles betrayed me...

The good news is that I've got Monday and Tuesday to get treatment before we play again. And I've already started treatment with ice. I'll be wearing one of those boots again. I don't know, maybe it'll get better in two days. If it doesn't, I'll deal with it. Someone already suggested to me that I could be the DH if we get into the World Series.

I'll just rub some champagne on it and see, or I'll have a few beers. Maybe a few more, and by the time I get to Wednesday, I'll be good to go.

H/t MetsBlog. If you don't like Cliff Floyd, well, you just don't like baseball.

Baseball-Reference.com has the 2006 stats up.

I don't see a specific story on the website but the talk of the TV is that the Daily News is reporting that Hated (or Pitied?) Yankees will fire Joe Torre, perhaps as early as today, and bring back Lou Piniella. Mike Lupica wants it to happen. This strikes me as insane - I'm no lover of Torre but how exactly is it his fault? This is a veteran team, and they just picked a bad time to lose 3 in a row to a good pitching staff. And I'm not sure what Piniella adds to the picture.

Very quick thoughts here, perhaps to be expanded upon later:

*METS WIN! METS WIN! METS WIN! METS WIN! METS WIN! METS WIN!

*I guess we'll never know who the Game Four starter would really have been. I fear finding out in the next round, though.

*Broxton bombed - but not really. That long sixth inning was a replay of the 1986 Game Six rally in terms of dinks and dunks into short center. Still, Grady did leave him out there an awful long time. Randolph also left Mota in so long as to really tempt fate, when there's really no reason why a fresh Roberto Hernandez is inferior to a tired Mota.

*I sure hope Cliff Floyd is OK.

*The Yankees were, purely and simply, done in by the 1-2 punch of a very short series and good pitching. Of course, as I have noted before, if you hold the view that the Yankees' victories in 1996-2000 were due to some superior reserve of clutch-ness, you need to find scapegoats. Hence, A-Rod will get all the blame.

*I have to think the pressure to trade A-Rod for pennies on the dollar will now be irresistible, most likely to a team that can return him to his natural position. Granted, that's still a lot of pennies. The team with perhaps the best case for making a run is the Cardinals - Edmonds, Carpenter, Rolen and Izzy aren't getting any younger, and upgrading from Eckstein to A-Rod would be huge on both sides of the ball. A deal won't make sense except for a team that can take on a substantial amount of the remaining 2/3 of A-Rod's salary the Yanks are on the hook for. It won't make any sense for the Yankees, but the focus of media/fan anger at him has passed the tipping point of rationality.

*Frickin' Jeff Kent. ^!#%!# Carlos Baerga.

*Will they never learn to never give the "Player of the Game" until the game is over?

In 1977, Mike Torrez was a big part of the Yankees stretch drive against the Red Sox, and pitched brilliantly in the World Series. Sox fans, having suffered through watching Torrez lead the Hated Yankees to vitcory, were ecstatic when the Red Sox got Torrez - only to see him hurt them even worse in 1978, going 1-4 with a 5.96 ERA against the Yanks, including the notorious Bucky Dent home run that decided the season in its 163rd game.

In 2000, Joe Torre - the man who led the Mets to three straight seasons of 95 or more losses - managed the Yanks to their fourth World Championship in five years, defeating the Mets in the Subway Series.

Today, the Yankees finally found themselves on the other end of such a turnaround, as Kenny Rogers, notorious for his playoff flops in New York, stuck a dagger in the Bronx Bombers and their vaunted lineup.

Somewhere in the darkness of Comerica Park, he broke even.

If you count tonight's liklely starters and the likely starters for the remaining divisional series games that are certain to be played (counting tonight, 2 in the Yankees-Tigers series and 1 in each of the others), 26 different starting pitchers will have taken the mound - and of those 26, the cream of the major league crop after a long season, the frontline starters for the best teams in baseball, 12 are either (1) rookies, (2) age 40 or older, or (3) had ERAs of 4.89 or higher (the league ERAs were 4.55 in the AL, 4.48 in the NL). And this is before Oliver Perez (6.55 ERA), Carlos Silva (5.94 ERA), Rich Harden (9 starts all season) and Brad Penny (6.25 ERA after the All Star Break) take the mound, in Perez and Silva's cases replacing 40-something Orlando Hernandez and rookie Francisco Liriano. The guys who are counted as OK here include second-year starters Chien-Ming Wang and Chris Young, 37-year-old Mike Mussina, Jeremy Bonderman (4.72 career ERA), Jeff Suppan (4.60 career ERA, 5.83 ERA before the All Star Break), Brad Radke (pitching with a career-ending stress fracture in his shoulder), and Jaret Wright (career ERA of 5.07; this year, 4.49 ERA an an average of 5.05 innings per start). If you include Wright, you can conclude that half of the frontline playoff starters are very old, very inexperienced or below-average pitchers.

Here's the story, if you've missed it so far, about how the Dodgers' only significant lefthanded reliever suffered a freak accident and will miss this series. Here's a NY Times piece on Vin Scully, his New York roots and his call of yesterday's hijinx on the basepaths. And here's Jon Weisman's look at "The Play".

What a Mets game today:

1. The 9-4-2-2 Double Play

Obviously, the headline play - if you somehow missed it - was Jeff Kent and J.D. Drew both being thrown out at home on the same play. I'm not sure which is worse - Kent getting thrown out at the plate coming in from second on a ball that bounced off the right field fence, or Drew trying to score when he had to see that the guy ahead of him wasn't even home safely yet. Dodger third base coach Rich Donnelly, the least popular man in LA right now, says the two were so close together he couldn't switch his signs fast enough:

Kent froze between second base and third, waiting to see if the ball would drop. Drew, with a better angle at first base, could see the ball slicing and knew it would fall safely.

Drew started running while Kent was still standing.

Rich Donnelly, the Dodgers' third-base coach, saw Kent get a late break from second and knew he would have a hard time scoring. But as Donnelly started to raise his arms, the universal stop sign, he noticed that Drew was only about 10 feet behind Kent.

"If I held up Jeff," Donnelly said, "we would have had two guys on third."

Donnelly kept his arms by his side, watching Kent barrel toward home plate. When he turned back to third base, Drew flew right by him...

Drew never considered that the Mets might have a play on Kent. He said he did not even see Kent until he was halfway to home.

"I thought Jeff was scoring standing up," Drew said. "I thought the play was on me."

Of course, Drew and Kent are both pretty universally unpopular everywhere anyway... credit to Green for a great thrown and Valentin for the relay, and credit to John Maine, for screaming at Paul Lo Duca to get up and tag Drew (he had no idea there was another runner on the way), but after he tagged Drew, Lo Duca then came up in throwing position, looking to see where Russell Martin had got himself to. Maybe he thought Martin was next.

2. The Three Man Rotation

Willie Randolph can't seriously be contemplating a 3-man rotation for the NLDS, can he? It makes some sense, and it's the most logical reason why he would have pulled John Maine in a jam in the fifth inning, pitching on his regular rest and having thrown only 80 pitches and resulting in burning two relievers to get through the fifth. The Mets have a deep, healthy, relatively fresh pen and only three even semi-reputable starting pitchers, and they have Friday off; if Glavine also doesn't go deep tomorrow, he and Maine could be available to start Games 4 & 5 on three days' rest (if Glavine does go 7 or 8 innings, it's less likely that there would be a Game 5).

3. Mota Is The Guy You Pinch Hit With, Not For?

The other really bizarre thing in this game was when, having burned relievers like there was no tomorrow but still with Oliver, Ring, Perez, Heilman, Hernandez and Wagner to go, Randolph let Guillermo Mota hit with 2 outs and the bases loaded up 4-1 in the sixth. I say you go for the jugular there and pinch hit; you pulled the starter early, why get antsy now about using too many pitchers?

4. Miscellany

I really didn't need to see Steve Phillips in there. Mercifully I watched the game from crowded bars with no audible sound.

Great to see Floyd, in particular, contribute. What a massive homer that was.

Does Marlon Anderson get a pitch in the ear for his takeout slide at Reyes' legs? We know Mota's not above that.

I've got just a minute to blog this morning - quick thoughts:

*There really is nothing more frustrating in professional sports than having a great regular season and not being able to field the same team in the postseason. With the exception of David Wells begging out of a big game, and perhaps Dwight Gooden running out of gas in 1996, this sort of thing never happens to the Yankees. That said, as to Game One itself, if we get John Maine pitching on his regular rest, well, we could do worse.

*This is the Dodgers lineup over the last two months, which in contrast to LA's full-season numbers is a steady nine. While old warhorses like Kent and Lofton are locked in now, the really scary guys are Furcal and Drew. Furcal really is the star of this team, and a guy whose value to the Braves - and loss this year - was not fully appreciated. And has there been anything more improbable than Marlon Anderson slugging .813 over his tenure in LA?

One of the more irritating arguments, to me, in favor of Ryan Howard over Albert Pujols for NL MVP is that Howard drove in more runs. Even aside from the fact that RBI depends on your teammates, the obvious problem with counting only total runs on the board is that while Howard drove in 12 more runs, Pujols scored 15 more - so in total, Pujols changed the numbers on the board directly more often than Howard, even in fewer games.

Just to help out in that debate, I thought I would run a chart (with much help from Pinto's database) showing who actually put the most runs on the board in 2006. It's not, as I said, the best measurement of offense, but it is an actual, real-world number and thus something of a reality check on these debates.

There are two ways to measure Runs and RBI together. One is the "Runs Produced" measure that seeks to ask how many runs a player contributed to - that's (Runs + RBI - HR). Homers are subtracted out because a player would otherwise be double counted for driving in and scoring the same run.

Of course, driving in and scoring the same run is twice as valuable, since it means the hitter needed no further assistance, so I prefer a second measure - I'll call it "Total Runs" here but I'm sure someone else has called it something else before and I just can't remember what. This is a figure that gives a player half credit for driving the run in and half for scoring: (R+RBI)/2. Obviously, that means home run hitters are implicitly given their due for one full run, so it won't cheat guys like Howard and David Ortiz who do a lot of their work with the longball.

The chart below ranks all players with 400 or more plate appearances by their Total Runs, and also adds a second measure: Total Runs per 27 outs, with outs calculated by ((AB-H)+SF+CS+DP). Again, this isn't the most precise computation, but neither is it complicated theoretical metric; it's just dividing runs by outs, and multplying by 27 for ease of comprehension.

So, who actually put the most runs on the board?

Read More »

All signs point to "up": Twins hitless through 4, now scoreless through 5.

UPDATE: 8 innings, 1 run, and Zito lowers his career postseason ERA to 2.43. And The Frank is Mighty and Shall Prevail: Frank Thomas homers twice. A's lead 1-0, Santana or no Santana.

IN OTHER NEWS: Kenny Rogers is under police investigation for choking. No, seriously.

And El Duque is questionable for Game One due to a calf injury. It's almost Lima Time! Either that, or Glavine does the Old Hoss Radbourn routine and starts every game.

The New Republic has a silly effort to compare the Mets to the Democrats. Much as I do both baseball and politics on this site, I try not to mix the two, and I have mocked similar efforts in the past.

That said, if we are just having fun with the numbers, it's time to update one of my favorite factoids: The Hated Yankees haven't won a World Series with a Republican in the White House since 1958. In fact, the Yankees won their first pennant in 1921, and since then:

Democratic Administrations: 40 seasons, 19-3 in the World Series
Republican Administrations: 45 seasons, 7-10 in the World Series

(If you are wondering, just for comparison, the Mets have won 4 division titles, 3 pennants and 2 World Championships with a Republican in the White House, compared to 1 pennant and 2 Wild Cards under Democratic presidents; they've also had 9 last place finishes during Democratic administrations compared to 4 under Republicans).

Yankees over Tigers in 4: Yankee fans, of course, are drooling at the prospect of facing a team that heads its rotation with Kenny Rogers and his 8.85 career postseason ERA. The Yanks in recent years have shown three vulnerabilities in the postseason. First, like all teams, they are vulnerable to superior starting pitching; the Tigers could have that if Bonderman and Verlander get their acts together. Second, teams like the Angels that put the ball in play a lot can exploit their defensive weaknesses; those weaknesses have been less pronounced this year, and in any event the Tigers are a power team, not a contact team. And third, the Yankees have run into trouble when their bullpen wears down - but Mariano in particular is fresh entering October. Sheffield and Matsui are back too - Torre has always had a great record of getting his teams healthy in time for the playoffs. They are just too tall an order for Detroit, as good a year as the Tigers have had.

Twins over A's in 5: The Twins are hot and have Santana . . . much as I'd love Oakland to finally win in October they are just not the strongest team, and they are heavily dependent on Frank Thomas staying healthy. It's hardly impossible, and the holes in the Minnesota rotation make it unlikely that the Twins can put away anybody quickly, but I'd go with the Twins.

Padres over Cards in 3: I don't think I have ever seen a team back into the playoffs as badly as the Cardinals, and it's not an accident of a late-season slump - their pitching really is that bad, and their offense really is that shallow behind Pujols and Rolen.

Mets over Dodgers in 5: More on this tomorrow, time permitting. The echoes of 1988 frighten me; this is a different Dodgers team than that one (much deeper offense, but not similarly strong frontline pitching), while the Mets are much weaker (the 1988 team had a deceptively dominant offense and a deep bullpen, but they also had an outstanding rotation, and unlike these Mets they entered October with only their third starter unavailable rather than their ace and fifth starters; on the other hand, their defense was much weaker than this team's). The Dodgers don't have the one thing these Mets fear - proven quality lefthanded starters - but they will now start the talented Hong-Chih Kuo in Game Two at Shea and hope for a repeat of his mastery of the Mets when he last faced them.

This Mets team is built more for long serieses than short ones, as the depth of the bullpen and strength of the offense makes them well-designed for exhausting wars of attrition. Which is why the first round is scary. But I do think they are the better team, and the longer the series goes, the more it favors the Mets.

Jon Weisman has a good rundown of the Dodgers heading into the postseason. One thing that jumped out as I ran down the LA roster is just how many rookies played key roles on this team - LA got 67 Win Shares (25% of the team's total) from Russell Martin, Takashi Saito, Andre Ethier, Jonathan Broxton, Chad Billingsley, Hong Chih-Kuo, and James Loney.

Which raises an interesting chicken-and-egg question. On the one hand, the staggering number of successful rookies in the NL this year may bode well for the future strength of the Senior Circuit. On the other hand, you could say that those rookies succeeded in part because the NL was relatively weak this year.

What we know for sure is, Milledge, Ledee and Ring won't be on it. Ring's a talented LOOGY but not ready yet and not really needed. Ledee, no loss. Milledge was. I guess, just to nervous-making; the Mets don't have a ton of righthanded bats, but he's really not ready either. I would assume that that decision may be re-evaluated series by series based on how many lefties the Mets will face.

By the way, the Maddux-Glavine matchup for Game Two looks interesting.

Matt Cerrone has some perspective on claims that the Mets' budget makes them "the new Yankees". Specifically, the Yankees payroll is 62% higher than the #2 AL team; the Mets' is 2.7% higher than the #2 NL team (the Dodgers, incidentally); and, of course, the Yankees' is 93% higher than the Mets'. Cerrone also looks at the trend in the Mets' payroll in recent years.

A point I have made before, but underlined by their final season totals - you would have to look long and hard for three more similar hitters:

Player	Age	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	K	SB	CS	DP	BA	Slg	OBP
Jose Reyes	23	153	647	122	194	30	17	19	81	53	81	64	17	6	.300	.487	.354
Carl Crawford	24	151	600	89	183	20	16	18	77	37	85	58	9	8	.305	.482	.348
Hanley Ramirez	22	158	633	119	185	46	11	17	59	56	128	51	15	7	.292	.480	.353

Crawford is the weakest of the three only because he's the oldest, not a shortstop and walks the least, but I suspect he may also have the best power potential. Joel Sherman of the Post (h/t Pinto and Rays Index) think Crawford might be available in a deal for a young pitcher, maybe to the Mets. For the Rays this is either sheer stupidity (trading their franchise player) or a sign of maturity (dealing from strength in the OF) depending on what they would expect to get back.

From the Mets' perspective, while I'd love to see Crawford and Reyes as a 1-2 punch even despite the fact that this would combine two relatively low-walk guys atop the order, and while replacing Floyd with Crawford would save the Mets money (which could be invested in the rotation) while improving their defense and durability, the Pedro injury does make me doubt how much further they can be stripped of young arms. I'd certainly consider Pelfrey or Humber for Crawford - even the best pitching prospect is a much more speculative deal than a healthy young outfielder - but I suspect that the Mets' need to hold on to credible contenders for the rotation will outrank any opportunity to convert young arms into equally young bats.

There's much to discuss with the playoffs coming up, but for now I thought I would give my quick rundown of who I would vote for in the two top individual awards (I ran out of time to do the Rookie of the Year):

NL MVP

1. Albert Pujols
2. Carlos Beltran
3. Ryan Howard

I expect Howard to win the award because he has the sexier numbers in the HR and RBI columns and had an amazing run in August and September. But neither Pujols nor Howard contributes much with the glove, so you have to compare their batting lines straight up. Pujols is the obvious winner, .331/.671/.431 to .313/.659/.425 despite Howard playing in a generally more favorable park (although Howard did actually put up better road numbers, and Beltran slugged .683 on the road). On the downside, Pujols hit into more DPs than Beltran and Howard combined, but I still think his offensive value gives him a decisive edge. And Pujols' clutch hitting was certainly instrumental in the few Cardinal victories that helped carry a moribund team over the finish line.

(As a side note, Pujols' injuries ruined the bizarre consistency of one stat line - in five prior major league seasons his career high in at bats was 592, his career low was 590).

Beltran missed more time than the other two, and his offensive numbers tailed off in September - but Beltran's defense was a huge factor in the Mets finishing, among other things, 12 games ahead of the Phillies, and of course Beltran did all this in one of the toughest pitchers' parks in the league.

Honorable mentions include Miguel Cabrera, Jose Reyes, David Wright, Lance Berkman, Alfonso Soriano, and Chase Utley.

AL MVP

1. Joe Mauer
2. Derek Jeter
3. David Ortiz

The best hitters in the AL this year were Travis Hafner and Manny Ramirez, but both missed over 30 games, which combined with zero defensive value is just too much. While there are a number of other plausible candidates among the big boppers, it really comes down to Ortiz, Jeter and Mauer.

Ortiz obviously has the offensive edge, but then he's a zero on the basepaths and with the glove, and his OBP and batting average was lower than the other two. That leaves an awful lot of advantages for slugging alone to make up, and while Big Papi is clearly the emotional leader of the Sox and a major clutch hitter, you can only award so many points for leadership on a sinking ship.

When I started writing this up, I was still leaning Jeter. For the first time since I had Jeter #2 on my ballot (behind only Pedro) in 1999, the Yankee captain deserves a serious MVP look. Like Mauer, Jeter plays a crucial defensive position, and he has recovered a bit with the glove from his decline prior to the arrival of A-Rod (I intend to look at the defensive stats more closely when I get the chance, but ESPN's Zone Rating stat, which measures how many of the balls in his "zone" of the field he gets to, lists Jeter seventh among nine regular AL shortstops, albeit in a fairly close group between #4 and #8).

Jeter's main advantages over Mauer are threefold. First, Jeter played more - 14 more games, nearly 90 more plate appearances. That does a lot to balance out Mauer's better percentage stats: .347/.507/.429 to .343/.483/.417. Second, Jeter stole 34 bases compared to 18 outs on caught stealings and GIDP; Mauer's ratio is 8 to 27. And third, Jeter is a steady veteran on a team that had a lot of turmoil this season.

But then, Mauer had to do his bit to hold together a pitching staff that was in constant turmoil as well, plus the fact is that the Twins - with far less impressive offensive talent and a disastrous injury of their own to their phenomenal #2 starter - came back from a huge deficit to win their division and end with just one fewer win than the Yankees. It's not accidental that the revival coincided with Mauer batting .452 in June. Mauer is also obviously more valuable with the glove, as a catcher with a cannon arm - as of late September the Win Shares method rates him behind only Pudge Rodriguez and Jason Kendall (and just ahead of Beltran) in terms of the most valuable defensive players in the game, and even if you don't put much stock in defensive Win Shares, Mauer threw out almost 38% of opposing baserunners (third in the AL) and may have intimidated more than that, as only Rodriguez saw fewer thieves even try. And as for playing time, a catcher with 600 plate appearances is nothing to sneeze at.

Catchers with Mauer's mix of skills are a rare breed (there hasn't really been a catcher like Mauer since Mickey Cochrane), and it's rarer to get his mix of production from a catcher these days than to get Jeter's from a shortstop. The top three AL candidates are close, but I give Mauer the narrowest of edges.

Honorable mention: Manny Ramirez, Travis Hafner, Justin Morneau, Jermaine Dye, Jim Thome, Carlos Guillen, Grady Sizemore, Johan Santana.

NL Cy Young

1. Roy Oswalt
2. Brandon Webb
3. Chris Carpenter

There's a tendency to say that the NL award should go to a reliever: no NL starter won 17 games, only one (Roy Oswalt) had an ERA below 3.00, the league leader in innings was Bronson Arroyo, and the two dominant relievers (Billy Wagner and Trevor Hoffman) towered over the rest of the league's closers in a year when most of the dominant relievers were in the AL. But then, neither Wagner nor Hoffman had the kind of mind-blowing season (sub-2.00 ERA, 80+ innings, 50+ saves) you expect from a Cy Young reliever.

Coming into the final week I assumed Webb would win the award, as he had more innings, a better ERA and a tougher ballpark to deal with than Chris Carpenter and Carlos Zambrano, but Webb and Carpenter both got lit up while Oswalt was firing bullets in an inspiring last-minute charge. Since Oswalt finished with the best ERA and a comparable record and innings total, I give him the nod.

Honorable mentions: Wagner, Hoffman, Zambrano, John Smoltz.

AL Cy Young

1. Johan Santana
[Insert vast gulf]
2. Roy Halladay
3. Jonathan Papelbon

Santana led or tied for the AL lead in wins, ERA, innings, and strikeouts, among other things, and missed by a hair (to Roy Halladay) the league lead in winning percentage. Papelbon was just utterly dominant; an 0.92 ERA deserves some special recognition, even when BJ Ryan and Francisco Rodriguez also put up mind-boggling numbers in relief and only pitched 4 or 5 more innings.

Interesting random fact: the best road ERAs in the AL were CC Sabathia and Barry Zito.

Honorable mentions: Francisco Rodriguez, BJ Ryan, Chien-Ming Wang.

So the Astros' loss - inflicted by John Smoltz, in a characteristic 3-1 offensive brownout - ends the defending NL champs' season, backs the Cards into the playoffs amidst what is, at present, a 5-0 blanking by the Brewers, ends Barry Bonds' season (by mooting a potential makeup game tomorrow) and perhaps ends Roger Clemens' career. A sad spectacle all around.

If my math is correct, the National League career record for games started is 677, by Steve Carlton. Greg Maddux started number 673 today, notching his 333rd victory and reaching 15 wins for the 18th time.

Will Maddux return next year? Hard to say. As more than one reader has pointed out to me, I was premature in declaring Maddux done this summer after consecutive months of 1-4 with a 5.94 ERA, 1-4 with a 6.25 ERA, and 2-3 with a 5.21 ERA before reviving with the Dodgers (as an aside, one reason I was skeptical that Maddux would get better in LA was that he had actually pitched much better at Wrigley this year than on the road, so the "get to a better park" theory seemed strained).

Even if he doesn't, you have to ask at this point a question I intend to address in more detail at a later date: whether Maddux is, in fact, the best pitcher in the National League's history, surpassing - when you adjust for the context of his time, including levels of offense as well as the difference in pitcher workloads over time - the National League careers of such luminaries as Carlton, Christy Mathewson, Grover Alexander, Tom Seaver, Warren Spahn, Kid Nichols, John Clarkson, Bob Gibson, and Sandy Koufax.

Pedro done even longer:

Already ruled out of the playoffs because of a bad left leg, the three-time Cy Young Award winner will have right rotator cuff surgery next week and won't resume throwing off a mound until June, Mets general manager Omar Minaya said Saturday.

Now, the truth comes out. The Pedro contract was a crucial step towards credibility for the Mets, and put a lot of extra fans in the seats in 2005, but it now looks like they will definitely not get their money's worth on the field.

Pedro. Done.

UPDATE: What, you wanted rational analysis? Not being rational right now.

Alan Schwarz has a nice profile in the NY Times of the oldest living ballplayer, a 111-year-old (born the same year as Babe Ruth) who played in a precursor to the organized Negro Leagues.

Matt Welch continues his excellent series on the best seasons ever by an Angel at each position with a Tim Salmon retrospective.

Who wouldn't buy the Benny Agbayani story?

The top 4 hitters in the Yankee batting order sure know how to score runs - look at their collective record of 100-run seasons:

Damon: 9 in a row
Jeter: 10 of the last 11
Abreu: 6 of the last 8, will be 7 if he scores 4 more runs*
A-Rod: 11 in a row

* - And the other one was a 99-run season

Soccer Dad has a great post on a subject I hadn't followed at all - apparently the Mets' long affiliation with the Norfolk (formerly Tidewater) Tides is coming to an end, as is the Yankees' affiliation with the Columbus Clippers - the Tides will become an Orioles affiliate, the Clippers a Nationals affiliate, the Mets' new AAA team will likely be the former Milwaukee franchise in New Orleans (the Zephyrs) and the Yankees will apparently take over the Scranton market, being abandoned by the Phillies' affiliate . . . well, go read the whole thing. It's not just the end of an era but the simultaneous end of several eras for different franchises.

Reading between the lines, Norfolk wasn't happy with Omar Minaya's use of the New York-Norfolk shuttle to expand his pitching staff at the expense of the AAA club.

I remember in 1981 during the strike, Channel 11 (then the Yankee station) showed the Clippers games, and they had this amazingly hokey theme song, the hokiness of which can only be partly captured with the lyrics:

Col-um-bus Clippers, our team is Number One!
Col-um-bus Clippers, our fans are having fun!

(Repeat ad nauseum - there must have been more but that's the part I remember).

I linked last fall to a Baseball Prospectus analysis of the biggest pennant races collapses of all time, ranked by the team's statistical odds of making the postseason. As of September 19, 2006, the Cardinals were estimated by Coolstandings.com to have a 99.9% chance of making the postseason, which if they blow it would tie them with the 1995 Angels for the biggest choke ever.

I believe we just saw Heath Bell's last appearance in a Mets uniform. It's a shame, I still think with a little patience someone can get a lot out of him.

It remains too early to panic, but Cardinals and A's fans are starting to get that sinking 1964 Phillies pheeling just about now; the A's have lost 3 straight and, despite a magic number of 2 to KO the Angels, have 4 of their last six games against them (the other two against the Mariners) and all six on the road; after a 6-game losing streak, the Cards' lead is down to 2.5 over the long-given-up-for-dead Astros and 3.5 over the Reds, although St. Louis has its final six games at home and four of them against the Brewers after two more against the West-leading Padres.

Congratulations to Trevor Hoffman, the new career saves leader.

Could Hugo Chavez' unhinged diatribe at the UN jeopardize Boston's landmark Citgo sign? I sympathize with the sentiment, and frankly I'm avoiding Citgo stations whenever possible, but at this point the sign is a Boston landmark.

If there's one thing that worries me more than Pedro's health or Trachsel starting in the postseason, it's Beltran's legs. We saw last year what a difference it makes if he's not 100%, and he hasn't been 100% all September.

Following up on my Trachsel vs. Maine post, a reader at Viva el Birdos has compared the game scores for Jason Marquis and Al Reyes. The split isn't quite as dramatic but as with Trachsel, Marquis' real flaw is that he almost entirely dominates the bottom of the chart.

And some, like Nick the Stick Johnson, don't. Given the angle of his collision with Austin Kearns today, I thought he had broken a collarbone or perhaps a cheekbone or something; I was surprised when the carted him off with his leg in a splint, and now it's broken. The impact in 2006 is negligible, but in addition to being painful it's discouraging nonetheless to a guy with a terrible injury history. Best of luck to Johnson in making it back in 2007; he really is a tremendous talent with the bat. My take on Johnson in April:

Nick Johnson is entering the "is that all there is" stage of his career, and I no longer expect sustained greatness, but it still would not surprise me to see him rip off one healthy year in the next year or two where he slugs .550 with a .450 OBP and drives in 110 runs.

Well, he got partway there this year - .292/.520/.428 with 46 doubles, 23 HR and 110 walks, resulting in 100 runs scored but just 77 RBI on the flailing Nationals - but I have a feeling we've just seen the best year he's going to have.

57 pitches through four innings. None of them put in play safely. If you catch my drift.

UPDATE: The Marlins eventually got to Pedro, but an encouraging outing nonetheless. He's getting there.

We'll see if Pedro is ready for the postseason, but ready or not, he's Pedro; he'll be the #1 starter. And I feel pretty solid right now about Glavine, El Duque and Maine, all things considered. But while (correct me if I'm wrong) there doesn't seem to have been a formal announcement, it seems unlikely that the Mets are going with Maine instead of Steve Trachsel.

The Maine/Trachsel decision is a major test of what Willie Randolph and Omar Minaya are made of. Starting Trachsel, who is the longest-tenured Met and has been in the rotation all year, is the sentimental move, the "he's one of my guys" move, the Joe Torre move. Starting Maine, the better pitcher, is the Casey Stengel move, the John McGraw, Earl Weaver, Connie Mack move. (In 1929, Mack sent his ace, Lefty Grove, to the bullpen because he thought Grove matched up poorly against the Cubs and started the aging Howard Ehmke instead).

Fact: if you look at Trachsel's starts 3 at a time, he has just two, overlapping three-start stretches this season (August 2-13 and August 8-18) where he posted an ERA below 3.44 - while Maine's ERA for the season is 3.42.

Bill James' "Game Score" method provides a quick shorthand for how well a pitcher has pitched in a particular game - let's look at the year's game scores for Trachsel and Maine from best to worst:

Date	P	Opp.	IP	ER	Game ERA	Gscore
7.21.06	Maine	vs. HOU	9	0	0.00	86
7.26.06	Maine	vs. CHN	7	0	0.00	78
9.18.06	Trachsel	vs. FLA	6 1/3	0	0.00	73
4.7.06	Trachsel	vs. FLA	6	1	1.50	70
8.6.06	Maine	vs. PHI	6	0	0.00	70
8.13.06	Trachsel	At WSH	6 2/3	1	1.35	69
6.4.06	Trachsel	vs. SF	7	1	1.29	69
5.17.06	Trachsel	At STL	7	1	1.29	68
9.2.06	Maine	At HOU	6 1/3	2	2.84	66
4.25.06	Trachsel	At SF	6	1	1.50	65
8.18.06	Trachsel	vs. COL	7	3	3.86	61
9.17.06	Maine	At PIT	6	2	3.00	61
8.28.06	Maine	vs. PHI	6 1/3	2	2.84	61
7.14.06	Trachsel	At CHN	6	2	3.00	60
8.17.06	Maine	At PHI	6	2	3.00	60
4.20.06	Trachsel	At SD	6	2	3.00	59
8.8.06	Trachsel	vs. SD	5 2/3	2	3.18	58
7.08.06a	Maine	vs. FLA	6	3	4.50	57
6.20.06	Trachsel	vs. CIN	6	2	3.00	57
7.3.06	Maine	vs. PIT	4 2/3	2	3.86	56
8.29.06	Trachsel	At COL	6	3	4.50	56
7.1.06	Trachsel	At NYA	6	2	3.00	56
7.6.06	Trachsel	vs. PIT	6 1/3	3	4.26	55
8.12.06	Maine	At WSH	5 1/3	4	6.75	54
5.29.06	Trachsel	vs. ARI	6	4	6.00	52
8.2.06	Trachsel	At FLA	5 2/3	3	4.76	51
5.2.06	Maine	vs. WSH	5 1/3	4	6.75	51
5.5.06	Trachsel	vs. ATL	6	4	6.00	50
9.8.06	Maine	vs. LAD	5	2	3.60	50
5.11.06	Trachsel	At PHI	4	2	4.50	49
6.15.06	Trachsel	At PHI	6	4	6.00	48
4.15.06	Trachsel	vs. MIL	5	4	7.20	45
6.25.06	Trachsel	At TOR	5	4	7.20	44
6.9.06	Trachsel	At ARI	5 1/3	3	5.06	41
7.19.06	Trachsel	At CIN	3 1/3	3	8.10	40
9.4.06	Trachsel	vs. ATL	4 1/3	3	6.23	40
9.10.06	Trachsel	vs. LAD	2 2/3	4	13.50	36
8.22.06	Maine	vs. STL	5	7	12.60	36
8.23.06	Trachsel	vs. STL	5	6	10.80	35
5.23.06	Trachsel	vs. PHI	5	6	10.80	34
4.30.06	Trachsel	At ATL	3 2/3	6	14.73	25
7.24.06	Trachsel	vs. CHN	4 2/3	8	15.43	23

You tell me - who's more likely to throw a good or at least an acceptable start in the postseason? And isn't that, not seniority or salary or sentiment, the only question Randolph and Minaya need to be asking?

For once, Mike Lupica is right on calling out Jason Giambi for having the gall to criticize anybody (in this case A-Rod). Then again, I didn't realize A-Rod was now playing the race card (hasn't he ever heard of Derek Jeter?). Face it, when people look at A-Rod, the only color they see is green; the man had few energetic detractors in Seattle, and he is hated today almost entirely because of the money he makes. Everything else that gets thrown at him is rationalization for that hatred. But that doesn't make calling his detractors racists is at all justifiable.

Jon Weisman on the Dodgers' comeback against the Padres over the weekend, and on Vin Scully's call of the comeback.

There are few things more frustrating and uncertain in the game than when a young pitcher - whether or not he appears to be talented - is suddenly going to "get it". Witness the case of Cubs starter Rich Hill. Hill had a 9.13 ERA in 2005 and picked up where he left off (in fact, incredibly, he was even worse) in 2006; entering his start on August 1, his career record stood at 0-6, 9.32. Since then: 6-2, 2.23. And it's been a complete turnaround in every aspect of his pitching line:

IP	ERA	H/9	HR/9	BB/9	K/9
46.1	9.32	10.49	1.75	6.80	6.41
64.2	2.23	6.12	0.84	2.37	8.49

Everyone who saw that coming at that precise moment, raise your hands. Time will tell if he keeps this up.

After today's game, not only is Luke Scott of the Astros batting .387/.700/.470 in 170 at bats, but per 600 at bats he's producing at a clip for 64 doubles, 21 triples and 28 homers. Zowie.

Pinto on a Dodgers-Padres feud.

Tonight's Mets starting lineup:

A. Hernandez, SS
E. Chavez, CF
L. Milledge, LF
J. Franco, 3B
M. Tucker, 1B
C. Woodward, 2B
R. Ledee, RF
M. DiFelice, C
T. Glavine, P

This looks like a World War II lineup - the very young, the very old, and the lame.

UPDATE: That is, if you're keeping score at home, a career .099 hitter leading off, a 21-year-old batting third, a 48-year-old man making his first start at third base in 24 years batting cleanup, a .208 hitter batting sixth, and three other guys who were basically picked off the scrap heap. Yet Anderson Hernandez homers, and the Mets at last check trail just 2-1.

Here is the box score from Julio Franco's last start at 3B. Starting pitchers: Marty Bystrom and Scott Holman. Pete Rose played in the game, as did Rusty Staub and the late Bo Diaz. George Foster stole a base. It was the last major league appearance for Stan Bahnsen and Willie Montanez. Five players in tonight's starting lineups hadn't been born yet (Hernandez, Milledge, Miguel Cabrera, Scott Olsen and Hanley Ramirez), and Marlins manager Joe Girardi was still four years away from being drafted by the Cubs.

SECOND UPDATE: And the Mets win with that lineup, 3-2, thus driving that fork deeper into a Marlins team that has imploded over the past week or so and miraculously salvaging Tom Glavine's 289th win.

New York Mets. Mmmmmm, that feels good. It's been a long 18 years.

Howie Rose on the Devil Rays: "They're playing out the decade."

My latest defeats in head to head fantasy baseball leagues have me re-thinking my strategy. For those of you who do fantasy baseball, read on.

Read More »

September 11, 1986: Mets lead the Phillies by 22 games with 23 to play, entering a 3-game set in Philly. Magic Number: 1 to clinch a tie, 2 to clinch outright. One win will lock it up. (Personally, I'm bummed because I'm on a religious retreat all weekend with no TV or radio). Mets get swept in Philadelphia and split two in St. Louis while the Phillies win two more against the Pirates, dropping the Mets' lead to 18.

Yeah, this is like that. Of course, the first chance the Mets got to put the race to bed at home, they beat the Cubs and that was that.

Mets play at home tonight.

How far does the best record in baseball get you in the playoffs? Not far.

ESPN reports:

The Atlanta Braves put third baseman Chipper Jones on the 15-day disabled list Thursday night so their insurance company will pay a portion of his $13.6 million salary.

+++

General manager John Schuerholz insisted the 1999 NL MVP could return early next week.

"He will not be out for the rest of the year," Schuerholz said. "He'll be eligible to return on Tuesday. If his side heals, we'll be ready to go."

I don't know the details of the Braves' policy on Chipper, but seems to me that if he's not that seriously hurt and the Braves are admitting to DL-ing him just to collect insurance, the carrier may have grounds to refuse to pay.

Armando Benitez done for the season. It would have been too good to be true to face teams with both Benitez and Braden Looper as their closers in the playoffs.

UPDATE: And more good, actual, genuine news: counting today's 8 shutout innings against the Rockies, Matt Cain is now 7-3 with a 2.21 ERA since the All-Star Break. In 81.1 IP he's allowed just 52 hits and 5 HR, walked 31 and struck out 83. A star is born.

What a wake up for Padre fans - the Pads and the Reds are on at 12:35 EDT today, which is 9:35 in the morning in San Diego.

No starting lineups yet but I'm guessing that Piazza, who caught last night, will not be catching.

UPDATE: He didn't. Padres win, 4-2, Pads lead the Phillies by 2 games, and Trevor Hoffman gets his 474th save, 4 off the record. Hoffman will have an interesting Hall of Fame case - thus far, the pure closers to go on the ballot (i.e., mainly 1-inning pitchers, not heavy-workload aces like Fingers, Sutter, Wilhelm or Gossage or half-career starters like Eck) have had short careers (Henke) or not really been all that dominant for more than a year or two of their careers (Reardon, Lee Smith, Aguilera). And Mariano Rivera is sui generis because of his postseason accomplishments. Hoffman will test whether a guy who's a genuinely outstanding (2.70 career ERA and almost 90% save conversion rate) closer over a long career can be taken seriously as a Hall of Famer despite never having thrown 100 innings or won 10 games in a season.

It really was not much of a surprise to see the Marlins' defense come utterly unglued last night in the 11th inning of a game that - with the Padres winning and the Phillies handing the Braves another doubleheader sweep - they really needed to win. Like it or not, that's what usually happens to teams with a lot of young position players. Florida isn't done yet but the Marlins are now three games back and fourth in a five-team wild card race (I'm assuming the Astros are toast at 4.5 back), and while they still get to play the Phillies six times and the Reds three, they are done with the leader, San Diego, as well as with the Giants.

While we're at it, let's look at the remaining schedules of the five NL teams by two measurements - the average winning percentage of the teams they have left on their schedule (weighted by number of games) and the number of games remaining against the other four:

Team	Avg W%	Games vs 4
Padres	.486	1
Phillies	.466	6
Giants	.487	0
Marlins	.529	9
Reds	.441	4

The biggest problem here for the other teams is that after today's Padres-Reds game, the Pads have no more games left against the other contenders, and thus nobody can make them come back to the pack. The Marlins, with 4 games remaining against the Mets and 6 against the Phillies, have by far the hardest road, and last year's victory for the Astros reminded us of the value of a soft September schedule in a multi-team wild card race. The Giants, oddly, are the only NL team that will not play any of the wild card contenders the rest of the way.

What ails Tim Hudson? Yesterday's loss drops Hudson, once a premier pitcher, to 12-11 with a 4.95 ERA. Let's start by updating a chart I did at the end of the 2004 season of the major components of Hudson's game:

Year	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	GB/FB	GDP/9	SB/9	SB%
1999	8.71	4.09	0.53	2.27	0.92	0.92	73.7
2000	7.52	3.65	1.07	2.02	0.71	1.07	88.9
2001	6.93	2.72	0.77	2.26	0.69	0.92	77.4
2002	5.74	2.34	0.72	2.03	1.32	0.19	38.5
2003	6.08	2.29	0.56	2.26	0.86	0.26	53.8
2004	4.91	2.10	0.38	2.53	1.10	0.38	66.7
2005	5.39	3.05	0.94	2.50	0.98	0.47	58.8
2006	5.81	3.24	1.08	2.24	0.81	0.90	83.3

I noted in 2004 that Hudson had been plagued by a declining strikeout rate but had coped by relentlessly improving every other facet of his game. While the relatively low K rate compared to his early years may still signal a problem, Hudson has arrested that decline; the problem now is that all of his coping mechanisms have eroded or entirely unravelled - his remarkable control, his high groundball rate and low HR rate, his ability to strangle the running game and thus set up the double play. Of course, I strongly suspect that the hand of a declining Atlanta defense is at work in several of these. (As to balls in play, the Hardball Times notes that Hudson gets outs on 70% of balls in play, about average, and gives Hudson a fielding independent ERA of 4.43 or 4.14 (depending if you use the FIP or xFIP metric - the latter is more favorable because it assumes that luck is responsible for the fact that Hudson allows the highest percentage of home runs per fly ball of any pitcher in the National League)).

Another trouble sign I noted in 2004 was Hudson's difficulty with lefthanded hitters, who batted .298/.422/.352 against Hudson in 2004; it's only gotten worse, as this year, they're hitting .283/.505/.353.

A better defense and the confidence to throw more strikes might help Hudson, although if his problems with the running game can be ascribed to Brian McCann, he's stuck; McCann is the National League's best catcher and young, so he's not going anywhere. His HR rate probably will go down a bit on its own, but his troubles with lefthanded hitters may require him to take a new approach, something the intelligent and adaptable Hudson has shown the ability to do in the past. I expect Hudson to rebound a bit next year - there's nothing in his record that signals an imminent collapse to Russ Ortiz country - but his days as an elite pitcher are most likely behind him.

Freddy Garcia's got through 7 innings and the Angels have no baserunners. He just got Guerrero to ground out to end the 7th, so he could finish this without having to face Vlad again.

UPDATE: 4 outs to go.

3-2 to Adam Kennedy. Kennedy singles.

Francisco Liriano came out of his return start today after just 28 pitches and 2 scoreless innings, escorted by the trainer. Not sure what's up but the news can't be good.

UPDATE: As always, Pinto has more.