Baseball 2007 Archives

I've been writing on the web since 2000 and blogging since 2002, and in all those years, 2007 has been perhaps the toughest in terms of being satisfied with my ability to produce consistently new and interesting content for my readers - so with things a little quiet here over the past week or so and probably staying that way for the next few days, I hope you will indulge me here if I run a retrospective look back at my best work from this year, or at least the posts I enjoyed the most. For newer readers, it's a chance to catch up on things you may have missed. Posts are grouped in three subjects and listed chronologically within those. As you can see, the 2008 presidential election is somewhat overrepresented here, while the baseball postseason is underrepresented.

Sports

A look at Hall of Fame and Hall of Fame candidate middle infielders.

Critiquing Baseball-Reference.com's translated statistics.

Review of Michael Lewis' The Blind Side.

Taking a victory lap on the BALCO leak.

EWSL review of 2006 and EWSL age analysis.

EWSL previews for the AL East, AL Central, AL West, NL East, NL West and NL Central.

A brief history of the rise of lefthanded pitching.

Assessing Scott Boras.

Is Billy Wagner the best lefthanded reliever ever?

That high-flying Mets defense, before it collapsed down the stretch, and after.

Baseball's most impressive records. Probably my favorite post of the year, and definitely my favorite baseball post.

Tom Glavine's 300th win, and the career path of the average 300 game winner.

My BBC Radio debate with David Pinto on Barry Bonds.

Michael Vick and the NFL players union.

Reviewing The Bronx is Burning (the book).

The role of pitching in the history of the Detroit Tigers.

Willie Randolph: the motivational poster.

The home run imbalance between the leagues.

The greatest late-season runs of all time, including the 2007 Rockies.

The horrible almost Yorvit Torrealba signing.

The Milledge deal.

The Cabrera/Willis deal.

The Hall of Fame ballot: Yes on Gossage, No on Dawson.

Isiah Thomas: the most hated figure in NY sports history?

Tim Raines and the Tablesetters.

Politics, War and Law

The wrong way for Rudy to argue about abortion.

Why I'm with Rudy.

Obama's plan to withdraw from Iraq beginning May 1, 2007.

Mike Huckabee: the right man for the wrong job.

The Iranians in Iraq.

The case against a national minimum wage.

John Edwards' amnesia on Iran and Israel.

Barack Obama, pandering to cannibals.

Bill Richardson, sucker for tyrants.

A culture war roundup from the courts.

On Imus and the Rutgers press conference.

A look at campaign finance laws through the lens of Torii Hunter's bat.

Those tax hiking Democratic governors. More here and here.

Eliot Spitzer's pro-abortion zealotry, and the Seven Stages of Liberal Legal Activism.

Tax amnesty for illegal immigrants.

John Edwards' fantasy foreign policy.

Obama's health care plan.

The elements of a third party presidential run.

Harry Reid, the Insult Comic Senate Majority Leader.

The Libby pardon. I'm not even sure if I still agree with this post, but I did put a lot of thought into it.

A satire on the (then-)sinking McCain campaign.

Trying to nail the Hillary jello to the wall on Iraq.

Two cheers for the hypocrites.

John Edwards doesn't want to know.

A taxonomy of the presidential candidates.

Why Fred Thompson needed to get specific. (He since has).

Uncivil litigators.

The Spitzer/Hillary posts on drivers licenses for illegal immigrants, here, here, here, here, and here.

The Trouble With Mitt Romney, Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

Smearing John Edwards.

Expanding the battlefield.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Michael Gerson.

Yes, Hillary will win the nomination.

Pop Culture and Other Fun Stuff

The Star Wars prequels as they should have been.

Predictions and a wrapup on the end of The Sopranos.

Reviewing the fifth Harry Potter film and the final Harry Potter book.

Pennsylvania Travelogue.

I have a long-in-the-making column up at The Hardball Times this morning on the Hall of Fame candidacies of Tim Raines and similar players - the tablesetters.

FYI, I left Amos Otis out of the article because I wasn't sure where to classify him. Otis was sort of neither fish nor fowl, not exactly a slugger or a tablesetter but, as Bill James has noted, one of the most well-rounded players in the game's history, doing well at almost everything. Anyway, Otis' translated stats for the 10 years of his prime (age 23-32, 1970-79) rates him at .285/.477/.351* in 623 plate appearances for a "Rate" of 104.1, with 30 SB and 7 CS and 11 DP per year.

* - The THT folks switched all my Avg/Slg/OBP numbers to Avg/OBP/Slg, which still looks wierd to me but has become the convention in the last 10 years or so, I guess.

The grittiest ballplayers ever, proven statistically! Thanks to a couple of readers for passing this along, it's really a must-read.

*Studes says Jose Reyes' problem down the stretch last season was not hitting too few ground balls.

*TIME Magazine looked into Vladimir Putin's heart, too, and named him their Man of the Year for discarding the remaining constitutional breaks on dictatorship in Russia. Unlike President Bush, TIME can't excuse this as diplomacy.

*You'll shoot your eye out! Mike Huckabee may have a serious problem with granting too many clemencies to violent criminals, but Mitt Romney's refusal to grant any pardons or clemencies at all took him to the ridiculous length of refusing to expunge the conviction of a decorated Iraq War veteran who was convicted at age 13 of shooting a friend in the arm with a BB gun.

*Britney Spears' 16-year-old sister, who was supposed to be the responsible one, has announced that she is pregnant. At least she's keeping the baby.

*Businesses that should exist but don't.

This goes rather too far even for dedicated Clemens-haters.
To say nothing of the mental image.

In other news, somebody needs a hug.

I'm traveling on business today and so can't blog at length, but just to chime in quickly: we've all had a lot of amusement with the various unofficial and then official blacklists of steroid users circulated through the good offices of one of my all-time least favorite U.S. Senators, George Mitchell. It's natural to have some schadenfreude - or angst, depending on whose ox is gored and how much you enjoy German - over this, but at the end of the day, we've ended up with various lists circulated that were not officially sourced, plus lists that were and may not have been the result of a particularly fair or thorough process* and thus aren't necessarily the final word that both the accused players and the fans deserved.

Which is a shame, just as the shoddy and tendentious Dowd Report was a shame even though it was ultimately proven to be correct in its core conclusion. Fans and the game's posterity do deserve an accounting, not least because an unfair cloud of suspicion has hung over many players who likely did nothing wrong.

Maybe we will learn more - and I'll learn more when I have time to get a longer look at what has come out - but for now I'm not ready to hang anybody for their having been named on George Mitchell's list.

* - To the surprise of nobody who remembers Senate investigations from Mitchell's days as Majority Leader

I participated in a roundtable discussion of this year's Hall of Fame ballot over at Armchair GM, arguing in favor of Gossage and against Andre Dawson. David Pinto, Dayn Perry, Matt Sussman, and Rich Lederer also participated (no points for guessing who Lederer argues in favor of). Go check it out, along with the other fine submissions.

Barry Bonds wants only the best legal representation - but only at a discount.

Of course, this begs the question of who is familiar with these negotiations that is blabbing them to the press.

A few thoughts on the big Marlins-Tigers trade of Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis for Cameron Maybin, Andrew Miller, Mike Rabelo and minor league pitchers Eulogio De La Cruz, Dallas Trahern and Burke Badenhop:

1. Is This A Good Return For These Two?

It's a good package - Maybin and Miller are high-upside prospects; Rabelo seems like a typical backup catcher type who will hit .250-.270 but do little else. It's tough to get a read on Miller, who has thrown 74.1 innings in the majors and 83 in the minors after a storied college career, but he could easily be an ace in the making, and Maybin is just 20 and has tremendous tools and a fine minor league record. Trahern has thrown over 500 minor league innings striking out less than 5 men per 9, so he's a non-prospect. Badenhop seems to have great control, but really I don't know much more about him or De La Cruz.

Straight up for Cabrera, as huge as Cabrera's value is, this seems like a solid package of prospects. Still, it has to be a sign of how far Willis' market value has fallen that you couldn't get more by dealing them separately.

2. Is This A Good Deal For The Tigers?

Absolutely. They're a contending team and they surrendered no proven major leaguers and got one of the three or four best hitters in baseball in return, who is young and durable and still reasonably priced. Cabrera presents challenges given his weight and poor glove, but if Renteria holds up at short, they won't have the same problems the Marlins had of Cabrera's weaknesses being exposed by combination with Hanley Ramirez. And Detroit can move him to DH in a year or two if they have to. As for Willis, you have to think there's at least a chance that a change of scenery and better defensive support could help him, but I'd bet on him spending some quality time with Dr. Andrews before long; his downward spiral seems more likely the result of injuries leaching his effectiveness than just a funk.

3. Does The Marlins' Business Model Make Any Sense?

If you start with the assumption that you had to deal these guys because they were getting expensive and needed to get prospects in return, this trade makes some sense. But I question the underlying assumption that Florida can't bring in enough revenue to afford keeping a home-grown superstar like Cabrera - an assumption that also implies that three or four years from now, they will be dealing Maybin and Miller as well (in fact, if that's your business model, Maybin being 20 years old is a minus, since it means he'll be free agent ready before he hits his prime). Granted, the Marlins have managed to win two championships, but the frustration of these continual firesales probably costs them more in fan loyalty than it saves in salary. It's not like South Florida is a sparsely populated area or filled with people unfamiliar with baseball, after all; a commitment to building a consistently competitive team that hangs on to its players would stand a fair chance of being rewarded. With the death of the Expos, the Marlins have become the prime example of what Joe Sheehan has called anti-marketing, i.e., a franchise that is more interested in convincing the fans that they can't afford to compete - so as to panhandle for a new ballpark - than in doing the contrary to put fans in the seats.

The Mets' deal of Lastings Milledge for Brian Schneider and Ryan Church is a pretty classic example of a deal I didn't love but didn't hate at first glance, but quickly started hating the more I thought about it. Let's go through the lessons of this deal:

1. There's no such thing as a mistake you only pay for once. This deal is the wages of Omar letting Jesus Flores go in the Rule V draft; Flores now becomes the Nats' starting catcher, and had the Mets still had Flores, they would not have felt that the catching position was a need to be filled.

2. Short term, this deal may not hurt the Mets that much, as it brings in two everyday players of some use. Schneider is a great defensive catcher, probably the best in the game; he's probably good enough to be worth carrying his weak bat, which at 31 isn't going to get better. And Church is a solid player, a career .271/.462/.348 hitter (.279/.484/.355 on the road), albeit one who doesn't hit lefties real well; he's 29 and could have a bust-out year getting out of RFK. My guess is that Chuch will still be a better hitter thah Milledge in 2008. Then again, I'm not sure I want the inevitable Alou injury being the only thing standing between us and Church/Chavez/Gomez holding down the corners.

3. However, dealing Milledge, one of the system's crown jewels, for this pair almost certainly means no deal for a top starting pitcher, as Milledge was constantly mentioned in potential packages for the likes of Danny Haren or Johan Santana.

4. More to the point, long term, we could easily regret this big-time. At 23 next season with great athletecism and no real weakness other than immaturity and sporadic glovework, Milledge still has definite star potential. Add him to the list of young hitters abandoned by the Mets - sometimes for something of value, sometimes not - and while he is less accomplished than some, he's moreso than others and among the youngest:

PLAYER	Age	AB	AVG	SLG	OBP
Amos Otis	22	152	.178	.224	.238
Lastings Milledge	22	350	.257	.414	.326
Kevin Mitchell	24	342	.275	.456	.340
Ken Singleton	24	496	.252	.387	.369
Carl Everett	26	924	.250	.402	.326
Lenny Dykstra	26	1686	.278	.413	.350
Jeff Kent	28	1831	.279	.453	.327

I don't think you could really say Milledge has less upside at this stage than any of those guys at the time they left the Mets.

5. I assume this also means the Mets will non-tender Johnny Estrada. Estrada's not as much better as Schneider with the bat as he seems, given that Scneider gets on base more and has also suffered from RFK, but he's a pretty useful guy to just give away for nothing.

6. Along with the departure of Lo Duca, Glavine and Mota, this smacks of housecleaning, although actually we have not seen as many guys cleaned out as you might expect.

*The Cubs re-signing Kerry Wood as a closer candidate makes all sorts of sense; Dempster was just terrible for much of 2007, and Wood clearly can't stay healthy unless handled very, very carefully; the steady, manageable workload of a closer may give him the chance to finally unleash his nasty stuff without hurting himself, while keeping super-effective Carlos Marmol in the setup role.

*Mark Prior for sale - well, now, that all depends on the price, doesn't it? The Cubs now have the pitching depth to prefer to cash in Prior and put the era of waiting on his and Wood's return to health behind them, and certainly Prior has upside. I'd think the best match would be someone like Tampa that can afford to wait on a guy who could still turn it around someday, though if I'm Prior I'd like to go to an organization with some track record for reviving injured pitchers (Cincinnati? St. Louis?).

*The Torii Hunter signing is fairly convincing evidence that Arte Moreno has turned into the late-70s Gene Autry or mid-90s Angelos, with more money than he knows what to do with. Sure, Hunter can probably marginally help the Angels in 2008; he's a good player, an excellent glove man with power. But 5 years and $90 million? Hunter is 32, he's never had a .340 OBP in his career, and his value is in his range as a CF; he's a terrible bet to hold his value in his mid-30s. Plus, they spent too much money last year on Gary Matthews for no other reason than his ability to play center field; I suppose you could deal Matthews and eat his contract (he's 33 and fell off the cliff in the last two months of the season after a solid enough first half, batting .180/.324/.269 from August 2 through the end of the year). I had thought the smart play for a team seeking a center fielder, especially a non-desperate team like the Angels, would be Mike Cameron, although after 2005 and 2007, Cameron will probably refuse to sign with any team that wants him to play alongside another center fielder.

The Hunter signing presumably sends Reggie Willits to fourth outfielder status, where if he plays his cards right he could have an Orlando Palmeiro-style career with his good OBP and speed; Willits' total lack of power doomed him as an everyday player, and from what I saw this season he's a terrible outfielder.

*It should surprise nobody familiar with the last decade and a half of Kansas City baseball to see the Royals pursuing Jose Guillen. At age 32, Guillen is essentially the same offensive player as Hunter, maybe a slightly better hitter for average, but without Hunter's good attitude, durability, consistency and glove. That's exactly the guy you want to pay millions to add to a young rebuilding team. Icing on the cake? "Guillen faces a possible suspension next season after being linked to the purchase of steroids and human growth hormone earlier this month in a story appearing in the San Francisco Chronicle."

*No, I can't see how anybody but the Yankees gets Johan Santana. The loss of Hunter probably means that Melky Cabrera would be a logical way to make a deal happen without the Yanks parting with both Hughes and Chamberlain. But that's a deal I'd make in a heartbeat if I'm the Yankees; there's no pitching prospect in history who had a better than 50/05 chance of becoming as good as Santana is now, and Santana's lefthanded, still reasonably young and healthy.

The Mets ... I just don't see what they offer that gets a deal done without Wright or Reyes, and they're not dealing one of those guys.

*The Daily News has a long profile of Duaner Sanchez's comeback trail (from the pictures, Sanchez looks skinnier) and an interview with Randy Niemann about Sanchez's rehab, both of which are necessarily inconclusive about how much the Mets could count on Sanchez this season; he would be a big help.

*The Mets appear to be pondering cutting newly acquired Johnny Estrada, who is coming off elbow bone spur surgery and - like nearly every catcher the Mets have had lately - is coming off a terrible year throwing out baserunners. I'm not wedded to Estrada, but he's an adequate enough alternative that I'd be skeptical of making a deal for Ramon Hernandez unless it can be done cheaply; Hernandez would be an upgrade, but hardly a huge one, as he's 32, coming off a season in which he slugged .382, and has caught 110 games just once in the past four seasons.

*The Reds' signing of Francisco Cordero seems like the classic move that hurts the Brewers more than it helps the Reds; Cordero is a solid but hardly a great closer, despite a gangbusters start to 2007 (he had a 4.66 ERA from June 9 through the end of the season, although his 51/10 K/BB ratio and 4 HR in 38.2 IP in that stretch suggests that he wasn't really throwing that badly), and his absence probably leaves the Brew Crew to trust to the erratic Derrick Turnbow again, but the Reds are far from being in a position to really take advantage of an upgrade at closer, and you'd think they would focus their efforts on other positions. Then again, given the bandbox they play in, Cordero's career 0.64 HR/9, even after spending much of his career in Texas, may have been irresistable.

*I'm still convinced that Tom Glavine is going to completely hit the wall next season. If he gives the Braves 95% of what he gave the Mets this season, they'll be happy, since they are desperate for someone to come in and eat innings, and Glavine can always do that. But I'm fairly certain that his bag of tricks has run dry, and it was only his tremendous savvy and experience that let him paper over that for much of 2007.

*Cerrone quotes Dayn Perry on Bartolo Colon:

Colon has some near-term upside. He’s coming off injury and his conditioning habits leave much to be desired, but he's still got excellent stuff, and his performance down the stretch last season proved he’s still got something in the tank. He makes sense provided he's willing to sign a low-base, incentive-laden contract. If the market is such that he commands a multi-year deal, then consider him no longer worthy of this list.

I agree with that in the abstract - Colon was horrendous last season, but if you look at the numbers his 76/29 K/BB ratio in 99.1 IP indicates a guy who may not be entirely finished, though I don't trust him further than I could throw him (which is not far). But "down the stretch"? He threw just 13.2 innings after July 23, and his 3.95 ERA in three starts is way too little to draw any conclusions from. If anything, the season trend indicates a guy who came back solid but ran out of gas, as his ERA was in the threes into mid-May. Anyway, I agree with a number of the guys on Perry's list as being potentially low-profile signings who could help a team.

The Onion nails this one.

Via Pinto, you really have to go read Phillies blog crashburnalley's email exchange with Bill Conlin (you may remember Conlin as the dumb, obnoxious, loudmouthed guy from ESPN's The Sportswriters Sports Reporters, which is saying a lot in that crowd). Honestly, I was surprised to learn that Conlin had email. This is a highlight:

The only positive thing I can think of about Hitler’s time on earth–I’m sure he would have eliminated all bloggers. In Colonial times, bloggers were called “Pamphleteers.” They hung on street corners handing them out to passersby. Now, they hang out on electronic street corners, hoping somebody mouses on to their pretentious sites. Different medium, same MO.

Leave aside the familiar forms of statistical illiteracy that gets Conlin to this point in the argument, let's consider an analogy in which Conlin:

1. Praises Hitler for the very thing that made him Hitler
2. Wishes for mass murder of bloggers

and

3. Somehow paints the pamphleteers who called for American independence as the bad guys.

It's a depthless hole.

The abortive Yorvit Torrealba experiment at least made me a lot happier to see the Mets deal Guillermo Mota for Johnny Estrada. Mota, of course, had to go, and I was surprised they didn't have to pay someone to take him - but then, he has a good arm and OK control, so there's always someone who thinks they can get a good year out of him.

As for Estrada, who's 32 and in the last year of his contract, the danger sign is his declining plate patience - 25 walks in two years, a .296 OBP last season - but he batted .278 and slugged .403 last year, and did better than that (albeit in Arizona) in 2006; if that's your #8 hitter, you could do worse. (As a switch hitter he might be available to platoon with Castro, but Estrada hits lefties just fine).

Matthew Cerrone, always the best source for compiling all the Mets trade/free agent rumors, notes word here and here that while the Mets were focused for some time on David Eckstein, and while Tadahito Iguchi - who I had thought might be a reasonable, inexpensive option - is asking for a 3-year deal, the team may now be on the verge of a 4-year contract for Luis Castillo.

Save us from such options. Iguchi is a solid enough bat, though he has benefitted from playing in hitters' parks, but he's 33 and coming off an off year; Eckstein's 33, has no power, hasn't played 130 games since 2005, and his value depends entirely on hitting singles and getting hit by pitches. And Castillo, who is still a useful player and was once a very fine one, is 32, has less power than Eckstein, and most of all has such bad knees that a 1-year contract is a risk, let alone 4.

I understand the need for stopgaps, but this is ridiculous. I really like Castillo, but there is no way you are going to get more than two good years out of him. At some point you might be better off taking the offensive hit to get a glove wizard like Anderson Hernandez out there. All in all, this offseason has been a frightening reminder of how slim the pickings are these days at C and SS.

Best news of the week: Mets have not signed Torrealba after all, and have broken off negotiations. Somebody - apparently his agent - obviously screwed up big time by leaking this as if it was a done deal.

Pushing driver's licenses for illegal aliens, gay marriage, extremist legislation on abortion and having his top aides investigated for perjury is one thing; but going after Derek Jeter over back taxes...that would definitely be too far.

So, the Mets have apparently located $14.4 million they don't need and given it in a 3-year deal to Yorvit Torrealba, who backed into the Rockies' starting catching job this season when rookie Chris Iannetta wasn't ready to hit major league pitching; Torrealba thus cleared 225 at bats for the first time in his career. ESPN notes:

The Mets . . . are signing Torrealba mainly for his defense. Rockies pitchers gave Torrealba a lot of credit for how he called a game, though he did not have a high success rate when trying to throw runners out.

Torrealba only caught 13-of-74 base-stealers, while the man he replaces, Lo Duca, nailed 17-of-89.

So, he's here to call games for Pedro Martinez? You'd think when you sign a defense-first, catch-and-throw catcher, you'd at least get a guy who can throw. The money here is bizarre; good catchers are scarce, but it's not like Torrealba's skill set is at all hard to find cheap. Certainly he's a lesser player than Ramon Castro, who will be signed far more cheaply to back him up (granted, Castro's not physically up to playing every day). I suppose I could understand skimping on the catching position - deciding that it's not worth spending a fortune on guys who are not really stars, like Michael Barrett - but if that's your goal, why plunk down $14 million? Why not just beat the bushes for some other guys who can hit .240 for peanuts?

Torrealba will be 29 in 2008, and is a career .251/.391/.313 hitter, .242/.377/.299 away from Coors Field; there's no reason to think he is due to make a big step forward as a hitter, and those numbers are poor even for a #8 hitter. Despite batting less than 400 times in 2007, he managed to finish in the top 10 in the league in GIDP. There is no possible explanation for this deal.

UPDATE: Cerrone talks to a Denver writer who calls Torrealba a "clutch hitter." In 2007, Torrealba batted .201/.254/.270 with men in scoring position and .205/.298/.277 with two outs. His career batting line in the postseason is .238/.357/.298.

BOTTOM LINE: I would score this signing as being similar to the contract the Phillies gave Adam Eaton. Honestly, if they were going to sign a guy who can't throw, they may as well have brought back Piazza.

Breaking: Records in hand, Barry Bonds has just been indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice:

Baseball superstar Barry Bonds was charged Thursday with perjury and obstruction of justice, the culmination of a four-year federal probe into whether he lied under oath to a grand jury investigating steroid use by elite athletes.

Um....wow. I don't really know enough yet to say more.

UPDATE: The short answer here is, perjury and obstruction are serious crimes; at the same time, they - and their close cousin, lying to federal investigators - can sometimes be all too easily resorted to by overzealous prosecutors. The key issues in these cases, at least as far as the debate over whether charges should have been brought, comes down to the degree to which the defendant (1) blatantly misrepresented some fact and can't reasonably be said to have just forgotten, misunderstood the question, or shaded the truth, and (2) placed, at least for some period of time, a genuine roadblock in the way of a legitimate investigation or lawsuit (i.e., the difference between hiding a fact and merely offering a strained characterization of known facts).

Although I thought it was just more hilarious Boras-driven smoke-blowing at the time, in retrospect we should have recognized Friday's report that the union was claiming to be concerned about collusion in the event that A-Rod did not get his $350 million contract as a signal that things were not going as planned. So the news that A-Rod has apparently all but finalized a deal to return to the Yankees after all, and done so without Scott Boras after Boras hopelessly alienated the Yankees (and probably at a mutual savings by cutting out Boras' fee - what, Boras is gonna sue?) is an occasion for some schadenfreude all around, even if it does make the Yankees that much stronger again: the Yanks and A-Rod are now stuck in an unhappy marriage neither can afford to leave, and Boras is publicly humiliated, out a whole boatload of commission, has had his bridges burned by his best-known client, and best of all fails miserably at the one thing that people have been forced to respect him for, i.e., his ability to judge the market.

Of course, this saga has had its twists and turns before, so stay tuned to see if the early reports on this all pan out.

Apologies for the general lack of content and specific lack of baseball content - it's been crazy in a couple of ways, and I admit that the baseball stuff has been crowded out a bit from all the work that has gone into the Romney series, of which two installments remain. Hopefully I can return soon to the hot stove league and postseason awards beat.

I wasquite unhappy to see the Phillies swing a deal to get Brad Lidge (with a couple of other useful players changing sides in the deal), who I had sort of been hoping the Mets might pursue. Lidge wore out his welcome for good reasons in Houston, and even after winning back the closer job he pitched badly down the stretch, with ERAs above 5.00 each of the last two months. So the Phillies get a quality arm, but one who may or may not be a reliable closer; it still improves their pen. But a team with an established closer could probably have put Lidge in the setup role where he has seemed more comfortable since 2005's fiasco.

The other major deal so far is a depressing one all around - for the Braves, who dealt a quality player in Edgar Renteria to replace him with a cheaper youngster, and for the Tigers, who made final the admission that Carlos Guillen has gone from a top-hitting shortstop to a first baseman whose bat will be unremarkable for the position.

Since the Tigers were dealing from need, the deal has little upside for them, and instead fixes a hole, upgrading offensively - though not dramatically, in the long term - from Sean Casey to Renteria. The Braves could well end up with a great deal if 25 year old shortstop Yunel Escobar and the two prospects they got for Renteria - Gorkys Hernandez and Jair Jurrjens - pan out (from what I gather, Moff Jurrjens is the better prospect of the two). Or, they could just like players with unusual names.

The papers have been full of the rumor that the Mets may pursue Jorge Posada:

Industry sources are becoming increasingly baffled at the sluggish pace the Yankees have taken with the five-time All-Star catcher. Even though Posada has filed for free agency, the Bombers are in an exclusive 15-day negotiating rights period with the catcher but apparently have not presented an offer since the end of the season.

It appears inevitable that Posada will not sign a deal with the Yankees before Nov. 13, the date that other teams can get involved in the bidding, so the Bombers run the risk of another club blowing the catcher away with a huge offer.

The Yankees are believed to have internally discussed an offer of three years and $40 million, but one source believes it will take more than that to bring Posada back to the Bronx, most definitely if he gets out into the open market.

Mets sources say GM Omar Minaya has identified Posada at the top of the team's list of free agent targets. Like he did with Pedro Martinez before the 2005 season, Minaya might be willing to go above and beyond to secure the rights of a possible Hall of Famer.

If the Mets offer Posada four years - or possibly five - it would leave the Yankees in a difficult spot, as they would be committing more years than they wish to a catcher who will turn 37 next summer.

Bidding against the Yankees always involves a high probability of failure, especially when you are talking about them re-signing a veteran who's been in their organization his whole career. Cerrone notes that some reports are, wisely, suggesting that Posada may just be getting the Mets' name in the mix to improve his leverage.

That said, what's the downside? There are few big-money free agents that the Mets would otherwise pursue - I don't really see them getting A-Rod - and there's no question that, given their current roster, Posada would help the Mets more than anyone else on the market, especially since there are really no other quality catchers out there - the Tigers picked up Pudge's option, Lo Duca and Kendall are basically just singles hitters, and Damian Miller is 38 (other than Posada, Michael Barrett, at 31 coming off a single bad year, may be the #2 guy on the market, and perhaps I should not be so quick to write him off). So, it's worth a try.

Would he be worth a 4-5-year deal in the $50-70 million range? Well, after some of last season's contracts, it's hard to know where the market is, and you can't evaluate dollars in a vacuum. Posada's not young - he's the same age as Lo Duca and only three years younger than Piazza. He's a year younger than Javy Lopez and a year older than Mike Lieberthal, and both of those guys are finished. When I looked at comps for Piazza two years ago, I did not find the most encouraging signs even for the most elite catchers in their late 30s. Posada was not worked that hard in his youth, catching 110 games in a big league season for the first time at age 28, but he's now caught 1360 games (not counting the minors and the postseason - he's probably caught in nearly all 96 of his postseason games), and that takes its toll. He's also not the greatest defensive catcher, although his arm is stronger than Lo Duca's (faint praise, I know).

As with any free agent, it comes down to what the Mets are willing to lay out financially. The Mets have no significant catching prospects on the way, and short of waiting and hoping for Joe Mauer to go on the market, they aren't likely to get an elite catcher any time soon. I'd make a run at him.

Thoughts and observations on what is certain to be the #1 headline story of the offseason:

A. Yeah, announcing his free agency in the middle of Game Four was a totally classless move, and seemed uniquely designed to peeve the Red Sox, who would be one of the likely bidders...but it may be that Boras had a significant conversation that day with another owner and felt the need to make the announcement to avoid any suggestion of tampering.

B. Nobody can be happier about how this worked out than Texas, which gets off the hook for $21.3 million at a stroke. A-Rod should get a standing O next time he comes to town.

C. For the most part, A-Rod should and will be remembered in NY roughly the way Clemens is in Toronto - he came, he played well, he took the money and ran - but of course his postseason failures will overshadow the two MVP seasons.

D. Where does he go from here? An awful lot actually depends on whether A-Rod is regarded as a credible shortstop. He was a good defender at short and keeps himself in good shape, and in the post-Ripken era, big men are no longer discounted at the position...still, at 32 years old, after 4 years away from the position, I don't know how many teams are willing to gamble $25-30 million a year on him being able to play short again. Let's review the main options, understanding that there's only so much credibility we can give to public reports that various teams are or are not interested, given especially that (i) Boras likes to use the media to drum up a belief that 45 big-market teams are pursuing his player and (ii) the teams, presumably growing wise to this tactic, have every reason to publicly downplay their interest. This list is not really in order:

1. The Angels do look like the main suitors - they're a contender, A-Rod could stay in his comfort zone in the AL, their third baseman (Chone Figgins) can easily move to any number of other positions, and ownership has shown a willingness to lay out big bucks.

2. The Cubs are a large-market contender that could use the buzz, but (1) their ownership situation remains unsettled (that didn't stop them last winter from signing Soriano, but A-Rod will want a lot more money than Soriano), and (2) with Aramis Ramirez signed comparatively cheaply, they would only interested in playing him at SS.

3. The Red Sox, if they re-sign Lowell, will similarly be more interested in supplanting Lugo. They have the money and the audacity, and with Manny entering the last year of his deal, they could do it, but they have been publicly coy.

4. The Yankees. I actually don't see this happening - A-Rod just stiffed them publicly and took their $21 million subsidy from Texas off the table. Particularly if the point of hiring Girardi is to take a harder line in the clubhouse, it would be a bad precedent for the team to go back on the public pledge that the deal was take it or leave it. Also, Yankee fans will pretty much universally blame Rodriguez, not the team, for letting him walk. That said, they don't have a Plan B at third base (Wilson Betemit would have the job if the season opened tomorrow).

5. The Giants have a gaping hole at pretty much every position, and they certainly won't let A-Rod's unpopularity and postseason failures deter them. But after the Barry Zito debacle, they may not be eager to take Boras' calls again.

6. The Dodgers would actually make a huge amount of sense giving their crying need for a power bat (they were next to last in the league in HR), but I don't know about their willingness to spend money. Certainly they have the resources if they decide to get in the game.

7. The Mets. Minaya has the budget and the daring, but with Reyes and Wright in place on the left side of the infield, A-Rod simply isn't worth as much to the Mets as to almost any other team - one of the three would need to be relocated to 1B, 2B (where Reyes was already a failure) or LF (where they just re-upped Alou).

8. The Phillies have no credible 3B and could probably swing the money, plus an A-Rod signing would give them the best infield in the game's history. But the Phils are another big-market team that hasn't gone big in the free agent market. They probably need to be chasing a closer so they can get Brett Myers back in the rotation, but the list of options isn't extensive, with Joe Nathan re-upped by the Twins and Rivera unlikely to leave NY (that leaves Isringhausen, Francisco Cordero and some risky or low-quality closer candidates like Wickman, Todd Jones, Jorge Julio or Kerry Wood).

9. The Orioles are a stop of last resort for free agents with no real rationale for going anywhere else, and they could use an upgrade from Melvin Mora.

10. The Rockies, like the Mariners, are something of a stealth big-market team - their payroll has gone as high as $71 million in the past, and coming off the high of 2007, a big splash with a new marquee star could help give them ongoing credibility. Many of their players are still young and signed cheaply, so they could afford it. But Garret Atkins is 28 and a solid player at third - also signed cheaply - and they may be focused instead on planning ahead at first base, although Todd Helton sounds like a man who is no longer contemplating retirement.

11. Finally, what about the Nationals? They've got the new ballpark, no real payroll and the need to make a splash and prove they won't be Expos Part Deux. But they, too, would need to play him at short, given that their best young player is a third baseman (Zimmerman had some defensive struggles this season but he's still very young and a highly talented defensive player).

On the whole, I'll be surprised if A-Rod ends up with a significant upgrade compared to what the richest team in baseball could offer him with the added advantage of a $21.3 million subsidy - but there are enough possible bidders out there that he will probably end up with at least a few more years at a salary similar to what he was getting.

It's really amazing quite how much has happened in the baseball world in a few days, to the point where I am already behind the curve on the offseason - I have a bunch of half-written posts that keep getting overtaken by events.

First up: the managing exchange that appears, at least for now, to be landing Joe Torre in LA and Joe Girardi back with the Yankees.

For Torre, this is something of a homecoming as well as an opportunity to prove himself away from the Yankees, Cashman, Rivera, Jeter, etc. Torre spent 36 years in the NL as a player and manager, coming away with one division title (managing the 1982 Braves) in those years. That said, with the successes he has had with the Yankees, he's got to be an upgrade on Grady Little. Either way, the current Dodger management seems bent on loading the team with AL East refugees. The good news for the Yankees is that the Dodgers already have a catcher and a closer, so Torre's presence on another team won't tempt Rivera and Posada to consider going elsewhere.

As for Girardi, it's an interesting choice, more interesting than Don Mattingly - a Mattingly hire would have made running Torre out of town pointless. On the surface, Girardi is what you would want in a manager replacing an older, low-key manager who'd held the job for over a decade, if you were worried about the team growing too comfortable: an aggressive, hard-nosed up-and-comer, a guy who is clearly comfortable playing youngsters and did a great job with the Marlins, taking an exceptionally green team deep into the pennant race only to see them collapse without him this year.

There are two major drawbacks, though. One, of course, is that Girardi is a young guy who was a teammate of many of the senior Yankees, who may not treat him as an authority figure and may resent him if he picks a fight with them just to establish who is boss.

Second is the issue that triggered his departure from Miami: the charge that he overworked Florida's young pitchers. Josh Johnson and Anibal Sanchez were brilliant under Girardi in 2006, hurt this season; Dontrelle Willis continued his downward slide; Scott Olsen fell off dramatically. Some of the fault for that lies with the Marlins' abysmal defense, and you could argue that Girardi's absence is why they faltered, but certainly the notion that he pushed Johnson and Sanchez too far too fast could raise concerns in how he will handle Phil Hughes, Joba Chamberlain & co. Those are the two subplots worth watching in Girardi's first year in the new Bronx Zoo.

Congratulations to the Red Sox, and also to the Rockies, whose run was one for the ages even if the coach did turn to a pumpkin at the end.

Of course it is possible that some year will yet see a Boston team losing a world's championship.

For the record, I think that 2-run bloop to right by Ellsbury in the top of the 8th to make the lead, after shrinking from 6-0 to 6-5, back to 8-5, looks for all the world like the Sox putting this Series away.

UPDATE: And Pedroia makes it 9-5. By the way, Brad Hawpe reminds me a lot of Shawn Green, the same type of gangly lefthander at the plate.

Baseball fans everywhere have to be hoping we get a Rockies win and a real Series tonight at Coors, although that may depend on the shaky pitching matchup of Lord Fogg vs how Matsuzaka adjusts to high altitude. Two of the last three Serieses have been complete duds (at least 2005 had some heart-stopping games, notably the 14-inning marathon Game 3); we have not had a six-game Series since 2003, a Game Seven since 2002.

If you haven't already, you should definitely read Jeff Pearlman's profile of Wally Backman and his apparently doomed quest to get another shot at managing inthe big leagues. (I have had multiple people send me this link). Of course, for Mets fans Backman will always be remembered fondly for his role in the 1984-88 teams, but that won't help him get a managing job.

The really nasty thing in Backman's record that seems to be holding him back is this:

[H]e didn't tell the [Diamondbacks] about his Oct. 7, 2001, domestic violence arrest because, according to both Wally and Sandi, it was merely a heated marital moment overblown by police involvement. ("People think I'm a battered wife in denial," Sandi says. "That makes me laugh. The idea of Wally hitting me is comical.")

Now, we all know that ballplayers get away with things as bad as wife-beating (Brett Myers and Wil Cordero come to mind, as well as Elijah Dukes), but the simple fact is that proven or promising major league players are harder to replace than a manager who has yet to manage in the big leagues. And it's hard to sympathize with a guy who loses his job over beating his wife.

That said, the problem is this: it's entirely plausible that Backman and his wife are telling the truth - lots of married couples have arguments, and some of them end up making a lot of angry noise and breaking stuff and getting the cops called. It's more than possible that Backman is getting blackballed over basically nothing.

But it's also true, if you know anything at all about domestic violence, that battered wives very often brush things off and make these kinds of excuses after the fact, so facially plausible pleas of innocence can't be taken at face value. The frustrating thing is that you or I, from a distance, can't know. And neither can teams that might hire Backman. Which is why, guilty or not, when you put this together with a guy who has made trouble controlling his anger in other situations, Backman is going to be radioactive pretty much permanently.

On the whole, I'm in favor of the Hall of Fame memorializing Buck O'Neil with a Lifetime Achievement Award named in his honor. Given that we have little reason to believe that O'Neil was actually a great ballplayer, it would have been something of a sham to elect him to the Hall as a player solely on the basis of sticking around a long time and telling a lot of good stories. But given the relative paucity of written records of the Negro Leagues, O'Neil's tireless charm in keeping the oral history of the Negro Leagues alive was surely worthy of a special place in Cooperstown as a service to the game.

What's a shame is that the Hall couldn't have found the time somewhere during the 94 years of O'Neil's life to give him this honor.

Jayson Stark:

Did we just say "the hottest lineup ever to march to home plate in the annals of 103 Octobers?"

Yep. We sure did. Which means ... hotter than the '27 Yankees. Hotter than the '36 Yankees. Hotter than "The Big Red Machine." Hotter even than the 2004 Red Sox.

Seriously. We can say that because this makes three straight postseason games now that these Red Sox have scored in double figures: 12 runs in Game 6 against Cleveland, 11 more runs in Game 7 against Cleveland, and another 13 runs in Game 1 of the World Series.

So let's see now. How many other teams have ever rolled up more than 10 runs in three consecutive postseason games? That would be . . . exactly . . . zero.

That's true, but while the Sox have scored 36 runs in their last three games, it's actually not even the club record for scoring over 3 postseason games. In 1999, they scored 44 runs over the last three games of the ALDS against Cleveland. They missed Stark's list only because the first of those games they scored 9 runs rather than 10.

After last night's thrashing, the Red Sox served notice that the Rockies' hot streak will most likely not, all by itself, decide the Series. But with David Ortiz cracking a single and two doubles and Colorado batting its 0-for-2 DH ninth, the issue of the home park DH rule - on top of the fact that Colorado and Boston traditionally are unique parks that lend significant home-field advantages (the BoSox were 6 games better at home this season; the Rockies were 12 games better, and had a losing road record, as they almost always do) - may be bigger than it has been in years. I'd say there are pretty strong odds that the Rockies will win the Series if and only if they take all three games in Colorado.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure there really is a better answer as long as the two leagues are playing by fundamentally different rules. The irony is that in almost every other way - especially with the advent of interleague play - the lines between the two leagues has been blurring in recent years, the sense that there are separate league offices, different umpiring styles and a real rivalry between the leagues' players and fans all having evaporated.

As I have said a number of times, while I'd like to see the DH eliminated (I don't hate it as much as older traditionalists do, but we can do better without it), the problem with the split DH system is economic: an everyday DH makes more money than an equivalent bench player. Thus, the NL owners won't budge on adding it; thus, the Players' Union won't budge on removing it from the AL.

UPDATE: Cheer up, Rockies fans! The Red Sox became the fourth team to win Game One of the World Series by 10 runs or more, joining the 1959 White Sox (11-0), the 1982 Brewers (10-0), and the 1996 Braves (12-1). None of them won the Series.

The stage is set...it would be a fool's errand to try to predict this series; Boston is clearly the stronger team, but the Rockies' hot streak is just impossible to project one way or another, plus we have no idea what late-October baseball in Colorado will look like.

Most relieved yet disappointed person tonight: Indians' third base coach and managerial prospect Joel Skinner, whose inexplicable decision to hold Kenny Lofton cost the Indians what could have been a game-tying run; the lopsided final score probably mooted that.

Most unhappy: umpires, writers, and anybody else who is indifferent to the teams and ratings but who will be attending a series in Boston and Denver in late October. Brrr.

Does JD Drew still suck?

Besides last night, there's the fact that Drew batted .289/.468/.384 from May 27 through the end of the year, .297/.477/.398 from June 15 on, .322/.523/.416 from August 6 on. I know there were a lot of disappointments, and certainly Drew's price tag is ridiculous, but he's spent a lot of the season getting blamed for having a bad first two months. The man can still hit.

PS - And tonight, we find out whether Red Sox Nation will pick "love" or "hate" for Dice K.

So, Joe Torre leaves the stage, having been offered a pay cut as a way to get him to quit. (You don't cut the pay of a man in Torre's situation if you expect him to stay).

Torre's record: two fifth place finishes, three sixth place finishes, and a high of 67 wins...no wait, that's the Torre I will always remember. In fairness he learned a good deal about managing over the years in addition to getting better players, but this isn't Earl Weaver we are talking about.

Torre didn't deserve to be fired any more than Casey did after losing the 1960 World Series in 7 games, but cutting him loose is defensible - he'd been at the Yankee helm for over a decade, and after 7 straight seasons of postseason failure, it's a fair question whether a fresh face would shake things up and be more effective. Then again, promoting coach and long-time organization man Don Mattingly, the rumored frontrunner for the job, seems unlikely to change much other than symbolizing another marker of the end of an era in the Bronx (granting that there is a long franchise history of one era being pretty much like the last).

Here's a trivia quiz for you: three men played first base for the Yankees in 1925. One was the long-time regular, 32-year-old Wally Pipp, who famously exited the lineup on June 2. One was the 22-year-old rookie who took his job, Lou Gehrig.

Who was the third man, who made a few starts for Gehrig against lefthanded pitchers (Gehrig kept his streak alive either by late inning appearances or playing the outfield, it's not clear which) until Gehrig settled in? Hint: his name is well-known and he was a starting player in five World Serieses for three franchises.

The answer can be found in this excellent Snopes essay on what really happened on June 2, and you can read the player's bio here.

In the process of the last post I looked at the 1974 Orioles' pitchers down the stretch run (starting August 29, 1974) and went to compare them to major league pitchers at large ... looking at the 86 pitchers who threw 35 or more innings over that stretch (during which Baltimore played 34 games), I was struck even more than usual by the pitcher dominance of the era. Of those 86, for that period:

*Pitchers with ERAs of below 2.00: 18

*Pitchers with ERAs of below 2.50: 28

*Pitchers with ERAs of 5.00 or higher (mind you, this only requires a bad month): four.

*Pitchers who allowed one home run or more per 9 innings: 15.
*Pitchers who allowed no home runs at all: 5 (including Bert Blyleven in 55.2 innings).
*Pitchers who allowed more than a hit per inning: 17

*Pitchers who threw between 4 and 7 complete games in a little over a month: 22
*Starting pitchers who threw no complete games: 9
*Starting pitchers who threw 65 or more innings: 8
*Relievers who threw 40 or more innings: 2

In light of my earlier post on great multi-round postseasons and Mike Carminati's on a similar theme, Jonathan Last asks: "Do the Rockies need to win the World Series, or does what they've done already count as the greatest streak in baseball history?"

There's no real way to define the answer to that question so as to resolve it with mathematical precision, but Rob Neyer and Eddie Epstein, at pp. 176-81 of their 2000 book Baseball Dynasties, lay out their "Ten Greatest Stretch Runs," and it's a good place to start in putting in context the Rox winning 13 out of 14 games to close the regular season to force a tie for the wild card, then winning the 1-game playoff (in extra innings, natch), then sweeping the NLDS in 3, then sweeping the NLCS in 4, with their only loss in 22 games coming at the hands of Brandon Webb, arguably the best pitcher in the league. Looking more broadly, the Rox are 33-10 over their last 43 games.

Here's Neyer and Epstein's list, with links and my comments; the 2002 A's' 20-game win streak and overall 43-12 run to take the division by 2 would also make the list, although Oakland went down in the first round of the playoffs. A commenter's suggestion of the 2004 Red Sox gets honorable mention for the greatest-ever playoff comeback, but that was only 7 games, whereas the 1916 Giants' 26-game win streak began and ended with the team in 4th place:

10. 1974 Orioles, 28-6 to come from 8 games back of the Red Sox lead and win the division by 2 over the Yankees. Impressive, but they then lost the LCS 3-1.

9. 1977 Royals, 38-9 including a 24-1 run to come from 4th place back to win the division. But the Royals put it away too early; they won the division by 8, ended the season losing 5 of 8, and blew a 2-1 lead to lose the LCS with a disastrous bullpen meltdown in game 5.

8. 1930 Cardinals, 39-10 including a 21-4 September to win the pennant by 2 after being 12 back of the Cubs, followed by winning the World Series 4-2 after dropping the first two games to the Foxx/Grove/Cochrane/Simmons A's. That's pretty impressive.

7. 1969 Mets; the Mets were 10 games back after August 13, but went 38-11 the rest of the way, then swept through the postseason on a 7-1 tear, thus doing a better job than the 1930 Cards of keeping the momentum straight through. The main difference is that the Mets won the division by 8, so unlike the Rockies they had a breather from playing high-pressure games before embarking on the postseason.

6. 1993 Braves, 39-11 to erase a 9.5 game lead and win by 1 over a 103-win team. The Braves, however, then dropped the NLCS 4-2.

5. 1978 Yankees, 53-21 including the Bucky Dent game to erase a 14-game lead, including a 30-9 finish, followed by going 7-3 in the postseason to win it all. One of the great extended comebacks, but never got into quite the same "can't possibly lose" mode.

4. 1935 Cubs, 2.5 games behind the Cards in third place on September 2, won 21 in a row to put the pennant away and seize a 6-game lead before losing the season's last 2 games. (Ronald Reagan, then doing remote radio broadcasts of Cubs games from a ticker in Iowa, described this as his greatest thrill in baseball). Cubs lost the World Series 4-2, but winning 21 in a row with 23 to play in a tight race is way up there.

3. 1914 Braves, 15 back and in last place on July 4, finished 68-19 and swept the World Series against the defending champion A's, including a 30-5 run from late August to early October. But the Miracle Braves won the pennant by double figures, so about half of that 30-5 run was after the lid had been blown off.

2. 1942 Cardinals, finished 43-8 to roar from a 10-game August deficit to beat a 104-win team by 2, and proceeded to win the World Series 4-1 over the defending champion Yankees. Probably the closest parallel to what the Rockies have accomplished in terms of the 1-2-3 punch of (1) playing incredible regular season baseball (2) needed to win a close pennant race and then (3) continuing the streak into the postseason.

1. 1951 Giants, 39-8 including the famous best-of-3 playoff to erase a 13-game mid-August deficit. Got squashed 4-2 in the World Series.

More teams worthy of mention, off the top of my head (links to the stretch drive records): 1973 Mets, 1908 Cubs (40-9 to win the most famously close pennant race of all, plus the World Series 4-1), 1934 Cardinals (20-5 and won a 7-game World Series), 1999 Mets.

So I'd answer that yes, the Rockies can lay claim to the greatest pressurized run of great baseball ever. If they take the World Series they can formally claim a spot at the head of the line ahead of the 1942, 1930 and 1934 Cardinals, 1969 Mets, 1908 Cubs and 1914 Braves.

Last night's Sox-Indians game was at least interesting for the one inning in which all the scoring took place. The people who wanted Beckett over Wakefield were pretty much vindicated when Wakefield, having started the game like a house afire, abruptly ran out of gas in the fifth, and Manny Delcarmen let the game get away. Now it's down to Beckett to beat Sabathia Friday night at the Jake to save the season.

Random thought: am I the only one who thinks Travis Hafner looks like a burlier version of John Krasinski from "The Office"?

I have to admit here that I simply have not been able to generate enough enthusiasm to watch a lot of the postseason. I mean, I've tuned in and caught at least pieces of most of the games, and seen large chunks of some of them, but I haven't really gotten into them, to the point of not being able to turn the game off and do something else. A big part of that, of course, is the sour taste left by the gruesome end to the Mets' season, and part as well is the lack of drama, with all three series in the NL ended in sweeps and the Red Sox and Indians looking like perhaps the first truly competitive series. (The focus in the NL on expansion teams with few real marquee established stars hasn't helped, but that alone would not turn me off otherwise).

Of course, it often only takes one game to suck you back in. There's still time.

The Rockies steaming to a 6-0 record in the postseason thus far is an extremely impressive feat for a team that won 90 games in the regular season and only got over .500 to stay on the 28th of July. The ability to win in the postseason is, famously, unpredictable, and often seems to bear only a mild relationship to regular season success. But the ability to avoid losing games at all in the postseason is almost exclusively the province of outstanding teams. Since the introduction of divisional play in 1969, only 6 teams have won the World Series while losing just one game, and only 1 had gone undefeated:

Year/Team	Post W-L	Reg W-L
1976 Reds	7-0	102-60
2005 White Sox	11-1	99-63
1999 Yankees	11-1	98-64
1989 A's	8-1	99-63
1970 Orioles	7-1	108-54
1984 Tigers	7-1	104-58
1969 Mets	7-1	100-62

Interestingly, four of these teams - the 99 Yanks, 89 A's, 70 O's and 76 Reds - were coming off seasons in which they won even more games in the regular season.

The Rockies still have a high mountain to climb to match these teams; history is not on their side, even if they do manage to go all the way.

In the quest to identify the real killer of the Mets' season, Ryan McConnell links to a Tim Marchman analysis that aptly demonstrates that the Mets' bullpen problem was not - in the aggregate - overwork caused by starters not going deep enough in games, although Marchman (1) doesn't address the extent to which individual relievers wore out and (2) doesn't deal at all with the bullpen's actual performance. McConnell also breaks out the abysmal performance of fifth and spot starters used by the Mets this year.

There are always multiple causes of failure, of course. Reyes certainly rode off the bridge in the last two months of the year. But the offense as a whole can't be blamed; despite struggles at Shea, the Mets finished 4th in the league in runs scored and just a hair (5.46 R/G to 5.40) behind the Phillies for most runs scored on the road.

Anyway, one culprit (I'll return if I get a chance to look at individuals) was the decay of the team's previously spectacular defense in the season's closing months. Let's break out the decline of the pitching staff by its component parts: homers, walks (excluding intentional walks, but including HBP, which are the pitcher's fault), and strikeouts (the parts entirely under the pitchers' control) per 600 plate appearances month by month, vs. four elements more under the fielders' control: opponents' batting average on balls in play, extra bases (1 for a double, two for a triple) per 600 balls in play, batters reaching on errors per 600 balls in play, and double plays turned per opportunity (a rough measure of DP divided by (singles + walks + HBP + ROE). All sourced here.

Month	HR/600	UIBB/600	K/600	BABIP	XB/600	ROE/600	DP/OPP
Apr	13.0	70.9	113.2	.266	47.8	8.0	.114
May	18.5	55.0	105.3	.238	47.8	7.7	.078
June	15.8	46.2	102.9	.285	47.3	5.0	.048
July	17.6	50.6	102.3	.286	43.0	9.9	.058
Aug	16.1	57.3	107.1	.333	59.8	7.9	.065
Sept	13.3	59.4	117.7	.328	59.0	11.3	.054

As you can see, while the trendlines do show some negatives, especially in the walks/HBP column, the overall picture does not show a dramatic change in the pitching staff over the course of the season, and even shows some improvement (largely Pedro-driven) in HR and K in September. But the trendlines for the parts that are more the responsibility of the defense do show a drastic decline over the season, especially the final two months - hits on balls in play way up, doubles and triples way up, errors up sharply, double play balls never recovering the April-May levels when Valentin was in the lineup. Reyes is doubtless responsible for some of this as well (possibly Wright too, who played spectacular defense early in the year) but I have to think a lot of the blame for the doubles and triples figure in particular comes from two sources that were simultaneously responsible for keeping the offense in the game: the return of Alou in place of the fleet-footed Gomez and Chavez in left, and a hobbled Carlos Beltran in center (the Mets' defense in right was bad all year).

I know there's a couple ways to slice this data but it's still striking: by ERA+, Joe Borowski is the only pitcher to save 40 games with an ERA worse than the league. As you can see from the list, Randy Myers with 38 saves was the prior record holder. September was the only month of the season when Borowski had an ERA below 3.38, and the 3.38 mark was in June when the league hit .370 against him.

If you are going to shoot at the king, you better kill him. I have a bad feeling that the Indians will live to regret not putting away the Yankees after Clemens went down, and the torch officially passed from Clemens to Phil Hughes.

I guess it is too late for my NLDS predictions (which, for the record, would have been Chicago and Colorado, FWIW). I have been gradually licking my wounds enough to start paying attention again.

TBS can't be happy with the prospect of as many as four sweeps in the first round, nor with an Arizona-Colorado series (they don't have the ALCS). Of course, I will not shed a tear if Roger Clemens goes out today the way Glavine did against the Marlins.

For the NLCS, I'm inclined to take the Rockies, who won the season series 10-8 and have now won 17 of their last 18. I have not been a believer in the D-Backs all season; their poor Pythagorean record (they may be the first team ever to have the best record in theleague while allowing more runs than they scored) reflects the fact that they have neither a dominant offensive player nor a deep offense, their defense aside from Orlando Hudson is nothing special, and their pitching, while improved in depth over the second half (especially Micah Owings and a deep bullpen) is not, other than Brandon Webb, spectacular enough to overcome that. By contrast, the Rockies seem to be the ideally constructed team for their park - an outstanding bullpen (there may be no more pivotal figure in the league than Manny Corpas), good defense at key positions, a deep lineup and at least an adequate starting rotation. Not that Colorado is a 95-win type of team, but when a team has Kaz Matsui hitting grand slams in key games, you can't give the other guy extra points for momentum and luck and a better bullpen.

That said, I'd have to expect a long series, as neither team has the starting pitching to just put the other away consistently, and with two good, deep bullpens, a lot of extra inning games are easy to imagine.

It may be midnight, but Cinderella's slipper still fits. Now that is how you play a deciding game. One for the ages.

PS - I will pretend I did not just see Kaz Matsui trigger a pennant-winning rally.

If you will excuse me, I have some bitterness to wallow in...

Seriously, more analysis will be required in the weeks to come, but a few quick thoughts on a couple of the big questions:

1. Sack the Brain Trust?

While I'm not always on the same page as Omar Minaya, Willie Randolph or Rick Peterson, I wouldn't can any of them just yet. Randolph's position would be the most tenuous; unlike Minaya or Peterson, it's hard to identify his successes to set against his failures, but the simple fact is that the team has won 55% of its games for Randolph, compared to 42% for Art Howe and 53% for Bobby Valentine or, historically, 52% for Gil Hodges (Davey won 59%). Willie deserves one last chance to get this team over the hump next season.

2. Will Glavine and LoDuca Return?

At this point, I'd rather see Glavine go. He was, until yesterday's meltdown, still helping the team, but it's been clear for a while that the smoke and mirrors is all he has left, and time is running short - his K/9 plunged from 5.95 to a hair under 4, which is a serious red flag for a pitcher who will be 42 next season. Let him pursue his 200th loss elsewhere. Much as I hated Glavine in Atlanta and objected to his signing, I won't be bitter about the Glavine Era; he did, after turning the corner in 2004, manage to give the Mets a few solid years and some great postseason performances in 2006, and win his 300th game in a Mets uniform. But he's still always a Brave to everyone. Let him go back there.

As for Lo Duca, well, his falloff with the bat this season was perhaps predictable; whether he returns or not should depend heavily on the weak market for alternatives (there are a lot of free agent catchers this offseason but little quality) and whether the Mets are content to just pick up a guy to split time with Castro.

3. What Is Reyes Missing?

Reyes' fadeout over the second half was dramatic and at times marked by listlessness, and he probably needs more days off next season to recharge his batteries, mentally if not physically - in contrast to Jimmy Rollins, who just broke Lenny Dykstra's single season plate appearances record. Face it, while Reyes can be a flashy player he lacks the arrogant, in-your-face braggodocio of Rollins or Hanley Ramirez, that drive to insult the other guy and then make him eat your words.

4. Whither Delgado?

Other than Wagner, who simply had a mild off year with his usual bad timing, the Mets' 35-year-olds (Lo Duca, Delgado and Pedro) suffered precisely the collapse (in Pedro's case, a long injury respite) that my Established Win Shares projections suggested for the typical 35-year-old before the season. Delgado started the season with arm surgery and ended it with a broken hand after being drilled by Dontrelle Willis...I'd really be very concerned about his ability to bounce back from that next year. But the Mets will have few alternatives.

Well, the Mets today played pretty close to the theoretical best game they could possibly play under the worst possible circumstances: they set a season high for hits and tied their season high for runs scored while allowing 0 runs on 1 hit. John Maine came within 4 outs of the first no-hitter in franchise history and set a career high in strikeouts, while throwing 115 pitches to allow everyone in the pen besides the rawest rookies (Muniz and Collazo) to take the day off without even warming up. Lastings Milledge had his first career multi-homer game. Carlos Gomez made a spectacular diving catch in center field, dodging a collsion with an onrushing Ruben Gotay, to preserve a 13-run lead. Even Sandy Alomar Sr. got into the act, taking a punch to the head that was intended for Jose Reyes, while agitated Mets generally avoided taking the bait of consecutive bench-clearing incidents to avoid engaging in conduct that could lead to a suspension. Only a few instances of baserunning vapor lock by Reyes and Milledge marred the afternoon.

Meanwhile in Philly, Chico was the man for the Nationals and the Phillies played some horrible defense (for all the guff the Mets took for blowing a lead they held for more than 130 days, the Phillies' lead lasted just one day before they gave it back), Tony Gwynn jr. robbed his padre's Padres of their chance to put the Wild Card away, and suddenly tomorrow will dawn with two teams tied in the NL East, and possibly three teams tied a game behind the Wild Card leader. On the bright side, the Mets last night finally maneuvered themselves into a situation where they had to play some championship baseball to win a championship, and now they send Tom Glavine, veteran of more big games than you or I could count, against Dontrelle Willis tomorrow with the season in the balance, while Glavine's senior, Jamie Moyer, faces Jason Bergmann, and Jake Peavy faces Jeff Suppan. The Mets will presumably hold back only Maine and Pedro (the likely 1-game playoff starter, on 3 days rest for his surgically repaired shoulder); "staff" will be available.

For one night, Tug McGraw can cease spinning in his grave. Time to Believe.

Was at Shea tonight. Don't want to talk about it.

Attending Mets games at this point is like visiting a terminally ill friend or relative; it doesn't get better, you feel worse, but you somehow feel obligated to be there.

Another morning, the sun rises, I get out of bed...the Mets' efforts to kill me having failed for another day. My head hurts even contemplating the effort that goes into David Pinto's daily calculations every September of the possibilities for a massive tie for the wildcard; you can check out today's here. Bottom line:

So with five days left, we have a long shot at a six-way tie, and two possibilities for a five way tie. On top of all that, the Brewers gained a game on the Cubs, so we could end up with a tie in the NL Central as well. There is a very small chance that the regular season ends with half the National League teams still in the playoff hunt. . .

+++

[A] six-way tie results in two days of playoff to determine the division winners, then two days of playoffs to determine the wild card. Who doesn't want seven extra single elimination games?

(Raises hand)

For a player who has long combined an explosive temper and an improbable injury history, I guess tearing his ACL in a fight with his own manager really should not surprise anyone.

Then again, even this hilarious Catfish Stew post didn't see this one coming.

1. For Jose Reyes' career, he is batting .353 and slugging .547 when putting the first pitch in play, .336 and .491 on an 0-1 pitch, and .302 and .450 on a 1-1 pitch, and .353 and .545 on a 2-1 pitch, and .287 and .418 overall after falling behind 0-1, but just .259 and .393 after getting ahead 1-0.

Most players have huge splits based on the count, and many hit well on the first pitch, but Reyes is extremely rare for hitting better when the first pitch is a strike than when it's a ball. Of course, his OBPs are much better when he's ahead in the count, and like nearly all hitters he hits poorly (in absolute terms) with two strikes on him, but it is perhaps a sign of some benefit to Reyes' overall aggressiveness as a hitter that getting one strike up on him doesn't get you far (the same trend can be seen in his 2007 stats but less dramatically, perhaps reflecting his maturation to a more conventional hitter).

Anyone who has watched him over the last six weeks or so knows that Reyes has been swinging at some bad balls again, but when he is on, he does have tremendous plate coverage.

2. If Josh Beckett's season ended today, he'd be the third pitcher in baseball history to win 20 games while throwing fewer than 200 innings, the other two being Pedro Martinez in 2002 and Bob Grim in 1954. Note that Pedro and Jamie Moyer are the only guys to appear twice on the list of 20-game winners throwing 220 innings or fewer. Unsurprisingly, 13 of the 20 guys on the list are from the past ten seasons.

I'd mark Thursday as the point at which I officially switched from being annoyed that the Mets were making this race much closer than it needed to be to being convinced that they will go nowhere in the playoffs. While the other parts of the team have had their hiccups, the entire reason for that is the pen. I mean, coming from behind to build a 3-run lead in the late innings and then blowing it to a last-place team is once thing; doing it twice in a 4-game series is just indescribable. You do not need a great bullpen to win in October, but you need an adequate one; a team that can't protect any lead against anyone just can't win.

For the record:

Heath Bell: 77 games, 80 IP, 2.17 ERA, 93 K
Chad Bradford: 75 games, 62.1 IP, 3.47 ERA
Brian Bannister: 164.1 IP, 12-9, 3.61 ERA
Royce Ring: 15 games, 15 IP, 3.60 ERA
Henry Owens: 22 games, 23 IP, 1.96 ERA, 4 SV

To be fair, Owens - like Ambiorix Burgos - is down for the count, having required rotator cuff surgery, and Ring hasn't worked more because he walked 14 guys in 15 innings. And I wasn't for re-signing Bradford at the price he commanded, except that the team spent almost as much on Schoenweis.

If there is a silver lining for the bullpen from yesterday's debacle - other than the fact that the offense saving their bacon increases the odds of getting a few days' breather at the end of the season - it's that Joe Smith pitched well; Smith has been totally ineffective since his return, but I'd still rather try him in big situations than Mota and Sosa.

Of course, on a macro level the schedule may be the Mets' salvation, as over the next four days they face Washington at home three times and the Cards once, while a still-not-mathematically-eliminated Braves team rides into Philly.

UPDATE: Of course, the bullpen might look a whole lot better right now if we had Duaner Sanchez, Burgos and/or the elusive Juan Padilla. Realistically, the Burgos deal was still a sensible gamble that just didn't pan out because Burgos was hurt (this being the Royals rather than the Braves, I assume they didn't know he was hurt). What's really inexcusable is the Bell deal, since the Mets never really had a basis to believe that Jon Adkins was going to help them.

SECOND UPDATE: It should be noted that Heilman and Feliciano have both passed their career high in games pitched, Smith is in his first season as a pro ballplayer, and Mota has made 50 appearances in just 105 games on the roster.

I'm trying to pry the sky off my head after the Mets had to take Beltran out tonight with a leg injury of undetermined severity, with the announcers discussing the possibility that if Billy Wagner's not ready to go tonight the team may use a guy who arrived from AA this morning to close.

Now, it's raining. Ideally, the rain will end the game after 5 with the Mets up by 4, but more likely all it will do is guarantee that Pedro doesn't pitch the sixth and thus the Mets need four innings of relief work.

UPDATE: Apparently it was a knee injury. Beltran walked off the field under his own power, but we have seen in the past that he does not play well through injury.

Following up on a point from last week - on the whole, home runs are down in both leagues this year, but far more dramatically in the AL, to the point where NL hitters are going yard more frequently than their AL counterparts for the first time in this decade. Of course, as the following chart shows, when you take out NL pitchers and AL DHs, the NL's power output has been ahead all along, but is dramatically further ahead this season:

Year	AL-AB	AL-HR	AL-DH-AB	AL-DH-HR	NL-AB	NL-HR	NL-P-AB	NL-P-HR	AL-HR/600	NL-HR/600	AL-w/oDH	NL-w/oP
2007	73752	2120	7640	298	84208	2550	4505	26	17.2	18.2	16.5	19.0
2006	78497	2546	8035	392	88844	2840	4832	29	19.5	19.2	18.3	20.1
2005	78215	2437	8099	327	88120	2580	5025	18	18.7	17.6	18.1	18.5
2004	78731	2605	8146	328	88622	2846	4932	24	19.9	19.3	19.4	20.2
2003	78311	2499	8094	327	88426	2708	4981	29	19.1	18.4	18.6	19.3
2002	77788	2464	8159	316	87794	2595	4939	27	19.0	17.7	18.5	18.6
2001	78134	2506	8137	337	88100	2952	5007	26	19.2	20.1	18.6	21.1
2000	78547	2688	8178	352	88743	3005	5177	32	20.5	20.3	19.9	21.3

The last four columns are expressed in terms of home runs per 600 at bat. Of course, you could slice the numbers more finely if you had time, to take out the small number of AL pitcher and NL DH at bats and correct for Coors Field, but what's interesting to me is the dramatic change in one season in the AL, much more dramatic than in the NL. I'll leave you for now with the data but I may do a little more thinking about whether there is a plausible cause here beyond random variation.

How many leads must a man throw away
Before you won't give him the ball?
How many times must he throw the same way
And watch it go over the wall?

The pennant race, my friends, is being blown again
The pennant race is being blown again

How many times must a manager do
The same thing that cost him last night?
And how many games must the lead dwindle down
Before he can see he's not right?

The pennant race, my friends, is being blown again
The pennant race is being blown again

And how many arms must a man trade away
Before you can give him the blame?
How many dollars can go to a man
Who can't show to close out a game?

The pennant race, my friends, is being blown again
The pennant race is being blown again.

UPDATE: I have added a visual representation of Willie Randolph's handling of the bullpen:

Read More »

Add to the list of people I never want to see in a Mets uniform again Brian Lawrence, Aaron Sele, and, if he wasn't already, Jorge Sosa (note that the list already included Guillermo Mota and Scott Schoenweis, as well as Chan Ho Park).

Joe Smith was no prize yesterday either.

UPDATE: Since August 26, Pedro, Glavine, Maine, Perez and Pelfrey are a combined 9-3 in 102.2 IP with a 2.81 ERA, averaging 8.50 hits, 0.61 HR, 3.86 BB and 7.10 K per 9 innings.

In the same period, Wagner, Heilman and Feliciano are 0-2 with 6 saves in 26.1 IP with a 3.42 ERA, averaging 8.20 hits, 1.03 HR, 2.73 BB and 8.89 K per 9 innings.

In the same period, the rest of the staff is 0-2 in 22.2 IP with a 10.32 ERA, averaging 14.69 hits, 2.38 HR, 5.16 BB and 3.97 K per 9.

I demand that you shoot me now.

UPDATE (Tuesday night): Let's go Mets!

What an utter disaster this weekend was for the Mets, the only compensation being that the Phillies are still 4 back in the loss column and the Mets' last 14 games include one game with a team that's 8 games under .500 (the Cardinals), 6 with a team that's 17 under (the Nationals), and 7 with a team that's 19 under (the Marlins), whereas the Phils have three games with Atlanta, three with the Cards, 7 with Washington and none with the Marlins.

It's bad enough to lose to the Phillies on their strength - the offense really is hard to stop - and the exposing of the Mets' weakness, their middle relief. But much of the past 8 straight losses to the Phils has been the result of the Mets failing to capitalize on the Phillies' weak points (not scoring even adequately on their weak pitching staff, especially the bullpen) and being betrayed by their own strengths - the best defensive team in the league making 6 errors in a game (at one point yesterday Jimmy Rollins had induced an error or botched defensive play on five consecutive plate appearances), Billy Wagner blowing games, the best base stealing team in the league repeatedly running themselves out of innings (as Gotay and Reyes did in the pivotal sixth inning on Saturday, including Reyes' boneheaded caught stealing at third to end the inning, while Carlos Gomez failed to take a key extra base Friday night, costing the Mets the chance to win in regulation).

At this point, I'm counting El Duque out of the postseason picture until we see him make a healthy outing again; it's ironic (or worse) that after all those years of postseason glory in the Bronx he may be out or effectively useless in October two straight years with the Mets. Some of that may be that the Mets have actually expected him to hold down a rotation slot all season rather than just giving him weeks off in midsummer to stay fresh, of course.

What does that leave for the October staff? Pedro and Glavine are definitely in the rotation; Glavine has righted the ship recently after some doldrums and while Pedro hasn't been as dominating as 17 K, 4 BB and 0 HR in 16 IP and a 1.69 ERA would suggest (it's not an accident that he's allowing more than a hit an inning), he looks plenty crafty enough to deserve a rotation slot in October. For now, that suggests a rotation of Pedro-Glavine-Perez-Maine, and the bullpen would include Wagner-Heilman-Feliciano . . . but after that, who? I hate the idea of using Mota and Schoenweis in a postseason game (even Randolph has to be out of patience with Mota after yesterday), and Sosa has been in a tailspin lately. Sele has been growing cobwebs in the pen, and he's really done nothing to make me trust him. I'd like to see Joe Smith get a shot if he is completely healthy, but he needs some appearances in the majors again. Collazo and Humber are totally unproven and at this point unprovable commodities. About the only other option is Pelfrey, who has finally been putting things together lately. Pelfrey at least doesn't give up home runs, but while he's never terribly wild, he still needs to show more consistent ability to put the ball where he wants it if he is going to pitch important innings in big games.

Via Ryan McConnell, a good point about Jose Reyes from Tim Marchman:

[O]nly 23% of his 93 attempts have come when the Mets were either ahead or behind by more than two runs. Sixty-eight percent of the time, he's run when the Mets were tied, up one, or down one, and he's 19 for 23 in the latter two situations -- the most crucial in the game.

Top 3 AL outfielders in Home Runs:

Torii Hunter (28)
Magglio Ordonez (27)
Jermaine Dye (26)

Top 3 NL Second Basemen in Home Runs:

Brandon Phillips (29)
Dan Uggla (29)
Jeff Kent (20)

Since Willie Randolph took over the Mets helm in 2005, not only have the Mets led the NL in steals three years running, but - headed by the trio of Reyes, Beltran and Wright - they have a team stolen base percentage of 80.9% in that period, including 82.5% this season.

If you drill down in the splits on Carlos Delgado, some interesting things appear, some of which mitigate his rough season, but some only make him look worse:

*Delgado is, as I have previously noted, hitting just fine since July 1 (.282/.465/.374) in the second half.

*Even more than Beltran, Shea is killing Delgado, who is batting .292/.513/.355 on the road but an anemic .213/.365/.299 at Shea.

*Delgado is batting .322/.592/.402 with no outs, but .170/.327/.255 with two outs, and it's all those inning enders that have really made him look helpless. Relatedly, he's batting .224/.388/.326 with men in scoring position.

*Delgado is hitting .285/.492/.352 against the Mets' NL East foes, including .328/.638/.403 against the Phillies. That matters, a lot.

*Consider Delgado's problems at Shea, which is notorious for its poor visibility. Consider that he is hitting .289/.510/.379 in day games and .317/.512/.429 indoors, but .241/.418/.307 at night. Consider that he is hitting .283/.532/.342 against finesse pitchers, but .212/.349/.296 against power pitchers.

Does Delgado need his eyes checked, and that's why he's having trouble at night and at home? Or is it that - like everyone - he just sees the ball a slight bit better by day and away from Shea, and that that extra microsecond to react is where his declining reflexes, at age 35, are becoming a problem? Perhaps the struggles with power pitchers suggest the latter.

Further to my note on Jeremy Bonderman the other day, yesterday's Tigers-Mariners slugfest - featuring a poor pitching performance by 21-year-old Felix Hernandez and yet another meltdown by the 24-year-old Bonderman - was a fine illustration of the difficulties of bringing along young pitchers these days, especially in the AL. You could scarcely find two more talented young arms than these two, and both have great stuff and good control and have been generally healthy (Hernandez' balky elbow earlier this year notwithstanding) while pitching in the two best pitcher's parks in the league. Yet, Bonderman's now sporting a 4.78 career and 5.01 season ERAs, has never had an ERA below 4.00, and had never won more than 14 games; Hernandez (let's not call him "F-Her") has a 4.03 career and 4.17 season ERAs, and his career high in wins is 12. Either or both could still become major stars as soon as next season, but the point is the struggles they have required just to become slightly above-league-average pitchers. Meanwhile, the most heralded young pitcher in the AL, Joba Chamberlain, has pitched the grand total of 14.1 major league innings and has yet to start a game.

For the Tigers, this portends a larger problem. They are in the unusual situation, for a Detroit team, of being awash in young arms - Bonderman, Justin Verlander, Joel Zumaya, Andrew Miller, Zach Miner, Jair Jurrjens. Yet their pitching staff has been awful, 9th in the league in ERA.

This got me thinking about the historic role of pitching in the Tigers franchise. If you look at the real ace seasons, 200+IP and an ERA of less than 3.00, only the Red Sox of the original 8 AL teams have had fewer such seasons since 1920 than the Tigers (the numbers: Red Sox 27, Tigers 29, A's 34, Twins/Senators 36, Orioles/Browns 37, White Sox 39, Indians 44, Yankees 61). Here's Detroit's list.

I also looked at the role hitting and pitching has played in team success, broken out by the team's winning percentages. I included the 2007 season, in which Detroit is 2d in the AL in Runs Scored, 9th in ERA, and has a .538 winning percentage. "Runs High" is seasons where the Tigers have ranked higher in the AL in Runs Scored than in ERA, "ERA High" is seasons where they ranked higher in ERA than in Runs Scored, and "Tie" is where they finished the same. The "Avg" figures show their average finish in each category in seasons when they posted winning percentages in that category.

W%	Runs High	ERA High	Tie	Avg R	Avg ERA
All	64	33	10	5	6
.500+	42	16	6	3	5
-.500	22	17	4	7	8
+.600	8	1	1	1	2
.550-.599	12	4	4	3	5
.500-.549	22	11	1	4	6
.450-.499	11	9	1	5	7
.400-.449	7	3	2	8	9
-.400	4	5	1	10	10

First of all, we have a reminder here that, the 1994-2005 period notwithstanding, the Tigers have been an exceptionally successful franchise over the years. Of course, this is more a descriptive table than a predictive one; if there's a reason why the Tigers have far more frequently built winning teams around offense than pitching it's Tiger Stadium, which is no more. Still, historically there has been a very pronounced tendency for Detroit's teams to rely more on their bats, and that tendency has only been more pronounced in the years when they have had their best seasons.

The Mets may not be in clinch mode, but they sure are looking like they have the NL East well in hand. Yet again today, Pedro was not dominating, but showed he could turn the dials when he needed to, and had that one inning with the three strikeouts when he made the Astros look like amateurs. Between him and Wagner getting back on track, I'm feeling pretty good about the next 4-8 weeks.

Guillermo Mota is another story. I know Randolph is basically playing the elimination game right now to see which pitchers to give roles to in October, but Mota sure is not making a good case for himself.

Rick Ankiel under investigation for using HGH. According to the New York Daily News' report on an ongoing investigation

Ankiel has not been accused by authorities of wrongdoing, and stopped receiving HGH just before Major League Baseball officially banned it in 2005, The News reported.

Of course, HGH doesn't work, or at least doesn't work other than in conjunction with steroids.

Is there a worse stretch drive pitcher in baseball than Jeremy Bonderman? For his career, Bonderman has a 4.30 ERA in the first half, 5.34 in the second, including a lifetime record of - I'm not making this up - 5-18 with a 5.81 ERA in August. This season, Bonderman went from 9-1, 3.48 ERA in the first half to 2-7, 6.72 in the second. Last year, 8-4, 3.46 in the first half, 6-4, 4.87 in the second. 2005, 11-5, 3.99 at the break, 3-8, 5.61 in the second half, including a 6.64 ERA after August 1.

Consider Bonderman's innings totals at the break each season: 121.2 in 2005, 119.2 in 2006, 106 this year. It may be that he just isn't up for carrying a #1 starter's workload (at least not yet; he's still just 24), but then the same thing happened this year after paring back his innings a bit. The second-half flops are the main reason why Bonderman, who has as much talent as almost anybody in the game, still has a 4.72 career ERA.

Since signing his 5-year, $91 million contract August 17, Carlos Zambrano is 0-3 with a 9.56 ERA. Maybe the Cubs should have kept him hanging a little longer.

I was on vacation when they signed the deal - assuming Zambrano's just slumping and not injured, it's still a good deal; Zambrano is in rare company (along with Barry Zito) in terms of his consistency and durability, he's younger and better than Zito and it's a shorter contract for less total money.

Looking over the batting comparisons since July 1, a few things spring to mind:

*David Wright has been the toughest out in baseball, batting .356/.580/.449. Wright is not so much the kind of hitter who goes on weeklong tears as the kind who gets in a groove and stays there for half a season, as he did the first half of 2006 and the last two months of 2005. But Wright's not the only Met - consider Beltran (.287/.622/.385), Delgado (.297/.500/.383), plus Alou, who doesn't have the at bats but is batting .336/.568/.400 over the same period.

*Pat Burrell, just behind Wright in OBP and slugging .650, has also been a monster and should have quieted a lot of doubters.

*If you are looking for guys who really broke out in the past two months, Jeremy Hermida should be at the top of that list, batting .335/.555/.411 and thus answering those who wondered if his minor league plate patience would translate into an unduly passive, punchless major league hitter.

*By contrast, the jury is out on whether Jeff Keppinger, batting .362/.546/.426 with just 8 K in 152 at bats, is showing he's a legitimate major league hitter or just riding a crazy hot streak. The Royals somehow managed to deal Ruben Gotay for Keppinger and let the latter go in time to get nothing from either of them, although with Grudzielanek hitting .350 they have at least covered the short run.

*I really didn't expect Mike Lowell to be hitting .370 over this stretch.

*Hanley Ramirez has also only gotten hotter (.354/.650/.403, 21 steals in 26 attempts) - Jose Reyes (.262/.404/.322 but 35 steals) will only beat out Ramirez by being a better defender. And even now, as well as Josh Beckett is pitching, the Red Sox have to be hurting over that one.

*The Yankees hitters, of course, are just murder up and down the lineup.

*Freddy Sanchez batting .331/.568/.387 with 24 doubles (!) should resolve concerns that his batting title was a 1-year fluke. Sanchez isn't a great player but if you hit for a high enough average with enough doubles you can be valuable without doing a whole lot else.

*Billy Butler has been a breakout in the second half, hitting .321/.495/.385 at the tender age of 21. Teammate Alex Gordon has come alive as well but is still a work in progress at .267/.476/.303, having slowed his early-season pace for hit by pitches.

*Two other youngsters building on initial successes: Matt Kemp (.325/.558/.358) and Ryan Braun (following up an insane June by batting .326/.644/.373).

*Reggie Willits at .234/.266/.348 seems to be answering in the negative the question of whether he can do anything besides draw walks and run. And his 7 for 13 base stealing leaves the latter in question as well. Teammate Casey Kotchman has also hit pumpkin time (.271/.387/.333), as has Dan Johnson in Oakland (.185/.344/.301).

*Frank Thomas at .300/.493/.368 may, perversely, be bad news; if Frank can't slug .500 even when he's in a .300 hitting groove, he's old. Frank has helped the Jays but 2006 looks like his last hurrah as a star.

*Kevin Youkilis really cooled down: .237/.407/.356. But of all people, Julio Lugo has picked up the slack: .304/.435/.348. On the other hand, the combination of Crisp and Drew both slugging below .400 over that stretch doesn't inspire confidence in Boston's lineup entering October.

*Delmon Young continues to look like a talented kid who has no clue what he's doing - .322/.411/.350, 18 doubles but only 1 HR and 1 steal, 11/46 BB/K ratio. Young's high average and doubles numbers suggest that the power will come, whereas you generally don't learn to steal bases at the big league level, so the key factor will be whether he learns some plate discipline. Speaking of which, Alfonso Soriano has regressed (.277/.447/.295, 35/5 K/BB ratio).

*Travis Hafner has only gotten weaker as the season progressed: .256/.431/.344. Hafner's decline is a serious problem for the Indians.

*Sometimes, a player who hits above his head in his mid-30s is Barry Bonds. Sometimes, though, they come back to earth with a crash like Ray Durham (.169/.262/.270).

*Seattle's baserunner deficit in a nutshell: Sexson (.202/.356/.292), Lopez (.238/.291/.251), Betancourt (.291/.458/.311) and Johjima (.278/.433/.303). Even with Jose Vidro reclaiming his glory days (.337/.437/.412), that won't cut it.

I am pretty sure Billy Beane regrets trading Aaron Harang for a few months' rental of Jose Guillen.

Nothing is certain in pennant races, but I think we saw the end of the Braves' chances of winning the division yesterday, with the Mets pulling 7.5 games ahead, as well as the confirmation of my sense from Day One of this season that the Phillies were the greater threat of the two even despite the residual toughness of any team helmed by Bobby Cox and led by John Smoltz and Chipper Jones. Of course, Philly's pitching staff is still a horror show, as yesterday's latest Adam Eaton fiasco showed - today's Philly starter is Jamie Moyer (5.08 ERA), yesterday's pitchers had ERAs of 6.28, 6.00, 5.96 and 2.11 (JC Romero being the odd man out), the prior day 6.27, 5.09, 5.74, 6.04 and 5.36.

At the same time, today feels like Opening Day at last, with Pedro beginning anew in the place(Cincinnati) where he started his Mets career 2 1/2 years ago. Hope springs anew even in the Fall.

PS - Remember, Pedro needs only 2 Ks for 3,000, so he doesn't have to be highly effective for today to be a career milestone.

UPDATE: Pedro's fastball rose from 82-83 mph at the beginning of the first inning to 88-89 by the end. Not the Pedro of old, but whether he can get up consistently around 90 will be hugely important to whether he will be an asset over the next two months.

And Aaron Harang becomes #3,000. Meanwhile, Ichiro is 2 runs scored from his 7th consecutive season of 200 hits and 100 runs scored.

Well, Pedro does about the best you could realistically hope for: 5 innings, 76 pitches, 4 Ks, 3 runs (1 unearned), hit 90 mph on the gun in his last inning of work, pretty good control, working his fastball, change, curve and to a lesser extent slider. We'll have to wait and see where he goes from there.

Clay Buchholz's no-hitter in his second major league start puts me in mind of this.

UPDATE: Note that that list should now be updated - Scott Erickson did pitch for the Mets, Pedro Martinez threw 9 no-hit innings in 1995 before losing it in the 10th, plus the list of Mets relievers to participate in a combined no-no went to 3 when Billy Wagner joined the team.

Well, I've been waiting since early July for the Mariners to come back to earth in light of their pitiable starting pitching, batting average-dependent offense, and mismatch between their record and their runs scored and allowed (also noted here), and their 8-game losing streak seems to have done the trick. One thing I will grant Seattle is incredible durability. 133 games into the season (entering today), 7 regulars have played 120 or more games, all 9 on pace for 500 at bats. As I discussed after the 2002 Angels won the World Series, if you can pull that off, you can paper over less-than stellar offensive talent simply by not having to use much in terms of bench players, who tend to be offensive weak links. The downside is that when you have 6 regulars 31 or older and nobody takes days off, that's not a recipe for a strong September.

You may, if you wish, discuss today's Mets game. But you can't make me join you.

Boy, if LaRussa and Dave Duncan can turn Joel Pineiro back into a usable starting pitcher, they really do have the touch with washed-up veterans. Going into today's start, so far, so good.

The NL Central is 56 games under .500 on the road. The Cubs are 33-32 on the road and they are the only team in the division that isn't at least 6 games under.

I recently finished reading Jonathan Mahler's book The Bronx is Burning, the companion piece to ESPN's miniseries of the same name concluding tonight (which I have not had the opportunity to watch). The title comes from the final collision between Yankee mayhem and civic disorder, when Howard Cosell intoned "There it is, ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning," as a massive fire raged in view of the TV cameras during Game Two of the 1977 World Series at Yankee Stadium.

The book is well-done and a brisk read, and successfully weaves together the story of Reggie Jackson's first year with the Yankees with a series of portraits of the political scene and atmosphere in New York City in 1977. Since I was five years old at the time I remember a lot of this stuff only in an impressionistic fashion, but the 1977 Yankees were really the first baseball team I hated - the first baseball team that was really bought on the market in the fashion that is at least partly true of all successful teams since - and the summer of 1977 was about the time I started to understand that there was something seriously wrong with the City of New York. Mahler does a fine job of bringing both to vivid life.

The key storyline, though told in large part from Reggie's point of view (Billy Martin and Thurman Munson are dead, and Steinbrenner's old and not talking), is as much Billy's story as Reggie's, and in some ways is more sympathetic to Martin than to Jackson, who comes off as even more of an insufferable egomaniac than I had remembered, which is saying quite a lot. Reggie hadn't really started to feud with George yet, so the battle lines are Reggie vs Billy, Billy vs George, Reggie vs Thurman, Billy vs himself, and Reggie vs the press and his own big mouth. At the end, Reggie's 3-homer game to win Game Six and the World Series is Reggie's triumph, but merely a respite for Billy, who suffered the same constant threat of being fired the following year until George finally sacked him in July.

If Mahler's treatment of the baseball side can be faulted, it's for an unduly narrow focus; whether out of a desire to avoid re-covering ground previously trod in many other books or due to a drive to produce a quick and compact book, he leaves a lot of famous one-liners on the cutting room floor and focuses so entirely on the Reggie and Billy stories that he either ignores or relegates to a single supporting anecdote many of the colorful characters on that Yankee team - Mickey Rivers, Sparky Lyle, Graig Nettles, Lou Piniella, Mike Torrez. You would never know from reading the book that Nettles led the team in homers and Lyle won the Cy Young Award. (Fran Healy gets more ink in the book than Nettles). He also inexplicably leaves out the single best line of 1977 for tying the action on the field to the city's meltdown, Lenny Randle's crack after the blackout of '77 cancelled a Mets home game a month after the trading deadline: "I can see the headline now: Mets trade Kingman, call game for lack of power."

Since Mahler's subject is the Yankees he skips quickly through the other huge New York baseball story of 1977, the Mets trading Tom Seaver, and it's also where Mahler (who I presume is a liberal) makes his most tin-eared gaffe of the book, referring to Seaver's nemesis Dick Young of the New York Daily News, the Lavrenti Beria of the New York baseball press corps, as "the press box equivalent of a neoconservative," proof if any were needed that Mahler (like many on the left) has no clue what that word means.

As for the political side, I didn't count pages but Mahler actually appears to spend less than half the book on baseball. While he takes in a lot of different threads in the City's horrible summer as well as the cultural ferment beneath (from Studio 54 to punk rock to the development of SoHo), there are two major episodes in the book (the July blackout and the Son of Sam manhunt), one major running theme (the 1977 Democratic mayoral primary) and one minor theme (January 1977 was the beginning of Rupert Murdoch's ownership of the NY Post). On the latter, Mahler is unsparing on the Post's reckless tabloid attitude towards the truth and towards its readers, but seems to recognize that the introduction of a right-wing tabloid into a liberal city with liberal papers was nonetheless a very healthy development. One detail I had forgotten, that Mahler discusses in the course of the transformation of the Post back to its Hamiltonian roots and away from its more recent incarnation as a sleepy liberal paper: its film critic when Murdoch bought the paper was Frank Rich.

The dramatic high point of the book is Mahler's treatment of the chaos that surrounded the slightly more than 24-hour blackout in July, the looting and arsons that did for New York's image (and self-image) what Rodney King did for LA in 1992 and Hurricane Katrina did for New Orleans in 2005. It's all here, concentrated in his account of the blackout from the streets of Bushwick: the wholesale destruction of local business, the cops arresting more people than the system could process and having to resort to just beating guys until their nightsticks broke to keep a poor substitute for order, the collective suicide of whole communities. I was actually amazed, on reading this, that the blackout wasn't longer; we've had longer ones since 1977 but without the same social meltdown. In that sense, as in many other ways, the book is an inadvertant campaign commercial for Rudy Giuliani, just as is Tom Wolfe's novel Bonfire of the Vanities, set a decade later; Mahler's portrait of a city whose social structure and self-confidence were wrecked by liberalism stands in stark contrast to the city as it has been since the mid-1990s.

As for the mayoral race - which was entirely determined by the Democratic primary - Mahler traces the improbable rise of Ed Koch and the self-destruction of Bella Abzug as the city began to rebel against the hapless liberal status quo.* Most notably, Mahler returns again and again to the opportunities handed on a platter to Mario Cuomo - endorsements he could have had, themes he could have pressed, voting blocs he could have wooed - and how Cuomo frittered them away in his pride, arrogance and stubbornness. As in 1994, a major contributor to his downfall was his insistence, even obsession, with martyring his political career over his determination to impose his moral objections to the death penalty on an unwilling populace (a stance ironically at odds with Cuomo's later claim to be morally opposed to abortion but unwilling to impose his own morality).

All in all, not by any stretch a comprehensive history of the period or the Yankees, but a fine attempt to bring together all the elements that created the mood of the city in which Reggie, Billy and George made headlines.

* - New York in 1977 had a Democratic Mayor, City Council, Governor, State Assembly, President, Senate and House, plus a U.S. Supreme Court dominated by liberal Republicans (Brennan, Blackmun, Stevens), a liberal Democrat (Marshall), moderate Republicans (Burger, Powell, Stewart), and a moderate Democrat (White), with only one conservative (Rehnquist). Only the Republican-led State Senate was any sort of counterweight.

All three Alomars have played for the Mets (none of them especially well). Name the other major league team for which all three have played.

Read More »

Mike Carminati (who I really should link to more often) lists the other occasions before Wednesday night's massacre when a major league team scored 30 or more runs in a game, the most recent being the Cubs in 1897. Not surprisingly, 15 of the other 23 occasions were in the National Association between 1871 and 1874, the dawn of professional organized baseball and before fielders wore gloves, including the lone 40+ game, a preposterous 49-33 affair between Philadelphia and Troy in 1871. Only four of the games came after 1883 and two of those were in weakened leagues in 1890 & 1891.

Still, when you look at the 1893 Reds and 1897 Cubs next to this Rangers lineup, you see the randomness of single-game batting records. The Reds were a relatively weak-hitting team for their era, and the Cubs were fourth in the league in runs scored. Nor was Louisville, the victim on both occasions, an especially bad pitching team, although I would infer that in 1897 the game got out of hand in the hands of Jim Jones, making the first of two Flavor-Aid tasting major league pitching appearances (the second was four years later) and allowing 22 runs in 6.2 innings of relief on the way to finishing the game.

As for the Rangers, you might have expected something like this from Juan Gone, Raffy and Pudge or from Teixeira, Soriano and A-Rod. Instead, the greatest damage was done by four players - three of little note (Ramon Vazquez, David Murphy and Marlon Byrd) and the fourth (Jarrod Saltalamacchia) very young and not yet come into his own. But they were swinging the bats well that day, and ran into a pitching staff in a downward spiral.

Sad fact: the Orioles are still underperforming their Pythagorean record even after losing a single game by 27 runs.

Tonight's Mets game was crisp and well-played and quite a break from the drama of the Padres series, although Wagner's troubles continue. It's rare that you see Wagner and Hoffman both blow a game in the same night, let alone the same game, let alone in the same game twice in one series - and now Wagner got touched up tonight. Better now than October.

For a while now, Wright and Reyes have quietly been having their best seasons and carrying this team (among other things, as of a little earlier in the week they were #2 & 3 in the league in times on base - while that's partly durability as well as performance, it's the durability this team has otherwise lacked), although in Wright's case that's no longer so quiet. A funny thing is the contrast between the two: on the field, Reyes is a flashy player, kinda cocky, very demonstrative in the dugout, while Wright is more buttoned-down; off the field, it's Reyes who is the quiet, soft-spoken family man and Wright the swinging single Mr. Popularity who is always quotable. In each case, they complement each other well.

It's been great to see Beltran back; I have said for some time that this team will go only so far as Beltran can take them, although Alou has also been huge in recent weeks; they said Saturday that the Mets were 24-12 with both Beltran and Alou in the starting lineup, which is, after tonight, 27-14.

It's also encouraging to see the news earlier this week that Pedro Martinez is throwing well in A ball, even if he is topping out at 89 mph. The velocity is what gives him that extra edge, but Pedro without a 90+ fastball is Tom Glavine, and the Mets could do worse. The interesting question, if Pedro can't sustain his velocity over 6+ innings, is whether you would try him in the pen for the postseason (the Mets need more help there), although more likely you would just convert one of the others to relief - Perez, I guess, although Glavine has actually been the least effective.

Name the longest-tenured member of the Mets.

Read More »

I have returned from my travels to exotic Pennsylvania. Thanks to Dr. Manhattan for filling in (the other planned guest blogger proved to busy to post).

Citizens Bank Park

We kicked off our trip to Pennsylvania by hitting Citizens Bank Park for a Saturday night game against the Braves (which offered a rare reason to root for the Phillies). We had bought tickets for the Sunday afternoon game, on the theory that a night game would be too late in particular for my 17-month-old daughter, but ESPN decreed that the Sunday game had to be moved to 8pm. Fortunately, the Phillies were very accomodating in exchanging our tickets, and we were able to get a row of six seats even though Saturday ended up being sold out.

It's a beautiful ballpark in the Camden Yards style, with large open-air walkways behind and under the seats. We took the kids to a Build-a-Bear in the lower level before the game, in which you could build a stuffed Phillie Phanatic (note: this was somewhat more of a summary process than your typical Build-A-Bear). We sat in Section 414 on the first base side of the upper deck (from the map you can see the view), which despite the height were good seats except that the steep angle of the upper deck puts you at the mercy of the good sense of the people in the front row to sit down and avoid blocking the view of home plate. Of course, the Phillies fans were not exactly shrinking violets about letting people know to sit down. We were sitting behind a rather indecently vocal collection of Braves fans (the guy in front of us was nice, the others were unwisely loud) and as for the Philadelphia fans, well, the reputation of Philly as the toughest park in the big leagues for the home team is well-deserved. The next day's paper didn't headline the game "Drunk on Boos" for nothing. The phans there hate Pat Burrell almost as much as Mets fans do, and they really hate Adam Eaton, the latter with good reason. I shouldn't laugh since the Mets have Brian Lawrence in the rotation and he is basically the same pitcher, but at least the Mets aren't paying Lawrence $8 million a year. Eaton was terrible, put the Phils in a hole they almost but couldn't quite get out of even against Lance Cormier.

Also on the stadium: the food didn't impress me. The Liberty Bell that lights up for hometown homers was OK but no Magic Apple. The out of town scoreboard along the fence takes some getting used to but is tremendously informative. There are too few places to get the count; I didn't love the layout of the big CF scoreboard. There were a preposterous number of moths in the air for the upper deck. The jerseys? Chase Utley jerseys were definitely the dominant theme. I did see one old-school fan wearing a Doug Glanville jersey. That said, the sign of a baseball town is the proportion of fans wearing the hometown colors, especially the female fans, and the Phillies phans don't disappoint (there were a very large number of young women and teens wearing the identical uniform of colored Phillies T-shirts and very short white shorts).

The racial makeup of the phans is a shock: I know in most towns your baseball crowds are largely white, but to get to Citizens Bank Park you drive through miles of all-black neighborhoods (what looked to my eye like working-class neighborhoods with clean, respectable houses, not slums), but in the park and the parking lot the only black people you see are ticket scalpers.

The Phillie Phanatic comes out at the 7th inning stretch, but unlike Mr. Met he fires hot dogs rather than T-Shirts into the seats. And lemme tell ya, Mr. Met is badly outgunned; while he uses a light shoulder launcher to fire shirts into the crowd, the Phanatic uses a hot dog shaped cannon mounted on a jeep.

Also on the game: I have never seen more dropped third strikes in my life. The Mets bullpen may be a mess but at least we don't have Jose Mesa. And Jeff Francouer has a freaking gun in right field; he uncorked one throw that had my jaw dropping before it was more than two feet out of his hand.

DUKW Tour

On Sunday, we took the "Duck Tour" of Philadelphia, which is cheesy but entertaining (we had always meant to take those tours in Boston and DC but never got around to it). One thing that made me think when we got off: they mentioned that the amphibious DUKW bus/boat you ride around in was manufactured during WWII and that they had sat dormant for years until the idea came to refit them for tourism...it made me wonder: were we riding on a piece of history? I guess that the DUKWs they use for these tours have been extensively refitted from military to civilian uses, but the idea that any part of the vehicle we were riding may have been used in the war gave some additional meaning to a tour that touched on everything from colonial Philadelphia to Rocky.

King Tut

Born in Arizona, moved to Babylonia....sorry, couldn't help myself. On Sunday evening, we went to see the King Tut exhibit at the Franklin Institute. On the whole, the exhibit was interesting, indeed, riveting, just knowing you are looking at things made - in some cases, of wood - multiple thousands of years ago. We went as well to the IMAX film about the excavation of the bodies of many pharoahs in the 1880s. Unfortunately the staff misinfored us about the starting time so we not only missed the beginning but ended up sitting in the front row. The baby's eyes nearly rolled out of her head trying to comprehend an IMAX screen from the perspective of the front row. The film, narrated either by Saruman or Count Dooku, talked about how the pharoahs believed that they would be immortal as long as their names were said, in which case I suppose thy succeeded, but then it also talked about how they were using the mummified bodies of Ramses the Great and other pharoahs to study disease, like they were hoboes who gave their bodies to science for a few bucks. Somehow, I can't imagine they would have approved.

The exhibit starts with relics from tombs other than Tut and works its way up to his immediate family (interesting note: the Egyptian royals may have been primitive but they found time to remember unborn fetuses of the royal family), and then escalated to Tut's own burial chamber and the things on his body...but I was disappointed when it ended with the diadem that crowned his head - and no sarcophagus, no death mask. I guess it's perhaps a politically difficult time to get that stuff out of Egypt but the whole iconography of the exhibit - including the repainting of the museum's steps - is in the image of the sarcophagus. It was a big letdown when nothing of the sort was there.

Instead, after you leave the Tut exhibit, you enter...the gift shop. Which sold, I kid you not, a Tut tissue dispenser modeled on the head of the sarcophagus (you pull Kleenex out of the nose). I guess being donated to science isn't the worst of it. (My son got a Tut baseball - I was disappointed not to see Cap Anson at the Pyramids).

After the gift shop, the next room has a glass case containing Bobby Abreu's #53 Phillies uniform. Talk about being put on metaphor alert.

Hershey

By coincidence, I was vacationing the same place Dr. Manhattan was this week - Hershey, PA. And lemme tellya, Milton Hershey could have taught the pharoahs a thing or two. His name is on the town, it's on the candy company, it's on the amusement park, it's on a school he endowed with $60 million in 1918, there's a statue of him at the amusement park and biographical filmstrips, there are even Kiss-shaped streetlamps on Chocolate Avenue (which intersects with Cocoa).

OK, out of time - short takes on some things I may or may not have time to revisit later: we saw more Amish people at Gettysburg than we did in Amish country; we saw Ratatouille in the theater, and it was no Incredibles but still very entertaining; and Jesus must have a good press agent in Central PA because He has one heck of a lot of billboards in the area.

Posted by Dr. Manhattan

I guess I need to discuss Barry Bonds, who - as you may have heard - recently broke some record.

I have a few thoughts on why his record-breaking inspires such controversy:

1) Overcompensation amongst the media for not having aggressively reported the growth in steroid use throughout the 1990s.

2) An aesthetic revulsion in the media towards big muscular guys hitting lots of home runs - being so different from the way the game was played when the members of the media were younger, it doesn't fit their idea of the way the game "should be" played (which is part of why they assume the entire impact of steroids on the game is in the increase in home runs);

3) Bonds' long-standing reputation as a lout generally and particularly to the media (with the latter, of course, being far more important);

4) Bonds' career path, plus the incredible detail unearthed by the authors of "Game of Shadows" as to his drug use, provides the most obvious example of "but-for" causation likely to be found outside of a double-blind lab study.

Regarding point #2, it is clear - if only from the number of pitchers who have failed steroid tests - that steroid users are not restricted to cartoonishly built power hitters. In fact, steroid rumors (never proven) have been associated with the baseball player who would probably win a poll as "least likely steroid user." Who is that player? A hint: he recently broke a long-standing seasonal hitting record. Click below:

Read More »

Posted by Dr. Manhattan

Notwithstanding their three-game losing streak culminating (hopefully) in tonight's beat-down by Detroit, I remain confident that the Yankees will win the wild card. I never really lost hope this season, in large part because - as David Pinto pointed out - even at their nadir, the Yankees were never playing as badly as their record indicated. Their blistering streak in July and August was a combination of reversion to the mean and a long stretch against the AL's dregs.

A few items on the team:

1) I don't believe there is anything wrong with Mariano that a few days off won't cure. Historically, he often has a streak in July or August where he blows a number of games in quick succession, before reverting to normal. (Yankee fans will have a hard time forgetting this one, for example.) I believe it's a software bug.

2) Check out this Hardball Time piece comparing the mechanics of Phil Hughes and Joba Chamberlain. I have no capability to judge pitchers' mechanics, but this is a nice argument to be having.

3) For all Met fans or Yankee-hater readers of this blog: Regardless of your pinstripe aversion, make sure to watch Chamberlain's appearances as often as you can. The excitement over each next great fireballer is something that transcends team-specific loyalties. I speak from experience: notwithstanding his role in knocking the Yankees out of the playoffs last year, if you don't like watching Joel Zumaya pitch, you just don't like baseball. Chamberlain may be in the same category.

(Permit me to channel Bill Simmons for a moment: shouldn't the title of baseball's hardest thrower should be a recognized championship, like the heavyweight champion in boxing? Prior to his tendon injury, Zumaya was the unquestioned champion. Shouldn't this be tracked regularly?)

4) I have no patience whatsoever for the constant (thankfully, less so in the last couple of months) "is-he-or-isn't-he" speculation as to A-Rod and his contract. This is a matter for a much longer post, but the way A-Rod has been treated over the last several years by the media is nothing short of shameful.

If the Yankees don't make the playoffs, the season could follow one of two historical tracks. One would be 1979 - an off-year in the midst of a championship-level run. The other would be 1965 - the permanent collapse of a dynasty. There is nothing that could make the Yankees more likely to follow the 1965 pattern than allowing A-Rod to leave after the season. (The Yankees' resurgent farm system has not yet produced any position-player prospects likely to help in the next few years.) I believe the Yankee front office is smart enough to realize that and to calculate the value of the Rangers' money offsetting A-Rod's over the next three years. Absent an early Yankees playoff exit and a media lynch mob, I expect an extension to occur with relatively little fanfare.

If you are wondering how the heck the Win Shares formula lists Eric Byrnes as the best player in the National League this season, I'd suggest you look at the fact that the Diamondbacks are playing 10 games ahead of their Pythagorean projections. In other words, when you are handing out credit for 63 wins on a team that's scored and prevented enough runs to win only 53, you wind up having to hand out a lot of extra credit. Arizona's offense has been dreadful, 14th in the league in scoring with only Byrnes and Orlando Hudson with anything like good numbers on a full season (Byrnes has also done the little things well - 28 steals in 34 tries, only 3 GIDP). Even with good pitching, they've been very, very lucky to surge into first place.

UPDATE: I should note that the AL and major league leader in Win Shares is Ichiro, whose team is likewise 6 games above their Pythagorean record.

On yesterday's topic, Lyford looks back at past predictions of the extinction of the 300 game winner.

With the Yankees 41-21 since May 30, the folks who wrote them off completely look pretty bad right now. They are probably still dead in the AL East race, but it's hard to pick anybody else for the Wild Card.

Looking at their batting and pitching numbers over that stretch, in which they have scored a staggering 6.56 Runs/Game while allowing 4.44 (good, but would be tied for fifth in the AL if they did it all season):

1. Are Johnny Damon's days numbered? I guess with Abreu's contract up after this season and the club option a prohibitive $16 million, maybe not, but Abreu (.333/.550/.412), Matsui and Melky (.343/.510/.389) are all killing the ball while Damon (.249/.359/.344) continues to struggle, yet neither Damon nor Melky - and, some would say, Abreu - has the power for a corner slot or DH. I could see the Yanks souring on Damon and deciding to slot Melky in CF next year.

2. A-Rod is still the MVP - they would have fallen hopelessly out of the race without him.

3. Cano hitting .356 pretty much puts to bed the concern that last season was some sort of fluke.

4. The starting rotation has escaped the reality-show feel of the early season, but it's still soft - only Wang (10-1, 3.15 in this stretch) has pitched like a guy you would want to send out in a big game in October. Man, this staff gives up a lot of hits.

5. Shelly Duncan has taken over for Shane Spencer in the role originated by Kevin Maas.

6. While Mariano has been Mariano again (1.16 ERA, 32/1 K/BB ratio, no HR), it's really Vizcaino who has provided the crucial role with 6 wins and a 1.36 ERA in 33 appearances. The lefties have done well, too, though, Villone and Myers.

Via Ryan McConnell, City Councilman Peter Vallone jr. weighs in on the pressing issue of whether the Shea Stadium Magic Apple will be installed in CitiField.

I'd very much like to see the Magic Apple continue, and of course there is a lot of nostalgia in the old Apple, although I'd agree with Ryan that it would not be a tragedy if they put a shiny new Magic Apple in rather than the dilapidated monument to the 1981 Mets' failed pursuit of Roger Maris that currently sits in right center field.

I'll be on BBC World Today radio later tonight debating David Pinto about Barry Bonds. Details to follow.

UPDATE: Pinto has the audio here. They edited it down a bit.

Following up on this morning's post, here's the year-by-year average wins and career win total, by age, for the twelve 300-game winners to start their careers in the post-1920 era (Spahn, Clemens, Maddux, Carlton, Ryan, Sutton, Niekro, Perry, Seaver, Glavine, Grove and Wynn):

Age	Wins	Total
21	3	4
22	7	11
23	10	21
24	10	32
25	12	44
26	16	59
27	19	78
28	16	94
29	17	111
30	19	129
31	17	147
32	19	165
33	17	182
34	19	199
35	18	217
36	16	232
37	15	247
38	14	262
39	16	277
40	13	291
41	11	302
42	8	310
43	5	315
44	3	318
45	2	320
46	2	321
47	1	322
48	1	323

Note that I left off age 20 - Maddux won two games at age 20, and he's the only one, although a couple of these guys made their debuts as teenagers. As with other parts of the chart, those two wins show up only when rounding off the averages.

Among active pitchers, Pedro was ahead of the pace until this season, Mussina and Hudson are about a year behind, Pettitte a little further behind, Santana, Oswalt and Zito should be ahead of the pace by season's end, Buehrle is ahead, Zambrano is a year ahead, Sabathia two years ahead. Of course, history shows that the important thing for 300 is consistency through the thirties and pitching well past 40; these 12 guys combined for eight seasons of double figures in victories between age 43 and age 47 and six seasons of 21 or more wins between age 39 and age 42, with Carlton and Grove the only ones who didn't win at least 12 games in a season in their 40s. By contrast, Maddux and Seaver were the only ones to win 15 games in a season before age 23.

Well, thankfully the chase for the capper in Tom Glavine's pursuit of 300 wins didn't take too long....I'm not feeling too good about Pedro Feliciano right now, though, let alone Mota...the further Wagner's ERA goes below 1.50, the more overdue he is for a meltdown; just glad it wasn't last night...Hey, was Glavine's family at the game? You could tell his wife knew they were on national TV, they showed a clip of her at the Milwaukee game earlier in the week and she wasn't nearly as glamorously made up...I can't remember the last time I saw the home plate ump knocked out of a game - you could tell he wanted to finish a big historic game like this...Alfonso Soriano's injury looked like a Keith Hernandez or Kirk Gibson hamstring pull, one of those ones where he suddenly looks like a leg has been taken out by a sniper...I know Luis Castillo used to be extremely fast and can still steal some bases (two last night alone including a steal of third), but he looks more like Ramon Castro than Jose Reyes running the bases...Kerry Wood's return doubled the drama - alternating between the high heater and that off-the-table slider, he made Reyes look like a rookie seeing his first big-league breaking ball. Wood coming out of the bullpen is a scary sight. He also looks like he's lost a lot of weight - I don't know that that will help him, but with that slingshot motion of his, it's not likely to detract from his velocity...Rickey Henderson keeps looking like he's about to take a lead from the first base coaching box; one of these days we'll look up after a pitch and he'll be standing next to Alomar...when Lou had them walk the bases loaded the second time to pitch to Green, I think he was telling us something.

As a corrective to the idiocy of Joe Morgan and John Miller (to be fair, Miller's not usually an idiot; Morgan, however, is the Cal Ripken of idiots), it still amazes me to hear people say that Glavine will be the last 300 game winner. Let's review:

1. There are two active pitchers with 340 victories.

2. If you look at the decades when each 300-game winner won the most games, you will see that five decades produced no 300-game winners (1870s, 1920s, 1940s, 1960s, 1980s), and only three decades produced more than two - the 1880s, the 1970s, and the 1990s. 300-game winners have almost always been rare, but the evidence that they are a dying breed is entirely conjectural.

3. Randy Johnson has 284 wins and struck out over 11 men per 9 innings this year. Yes, there's an excellent chance he will never pitch again, but how improbable is it that he could come back and have one more good year next season? I'll run the charts again after the season, but it's still too early to count out a whole bunch of pitchers - Pedro, Mussina, Pettitte, Santana, Zito, Oswalt, Hudson, Halladay, Buehrle, Sabathia...individually the odds are poor for any of them, but 300 has always been an exceptional accomplishment; the odds that one of them will make it isn't that improbable. I'd bet on Santana first - he's behind the pace but he's healthy and gaining ground quickly - and on Pedro, who if he makes a recovery could still have a second act on guile and skill and who needs 94 wins to go. And even if nobody is now active, there's always the next generation of young pitchers, and the next.

Congratulations to Alex Rodriguez for hitting a big milestone home run today. A good day to make some history.

Well, Glavine will have to wait another start for #300, as it takes Guillermo Mota all of one pitch to blow the lead handed off by Glavine and held by Aaron Heilman and (less well) Pedro Feliciano.

Through five innings tonight five Yankees have homered - and Mr. 499, Alex Rodriguez, isn't one of them.

UPDATE: Seven Yankees have now gone deep, including Matsui twice. No A-Rod, though.

Terrible news on one front, as the Braves appear close to nailing down a deal for Mark Teixeira. The deal isn't coming cheaply, as they are apparently parting with their top 3 prospects, but few prospects turn into a guy as good as Tex, who is 27, a good glove and a career .264/.489/.358 hitter even away from Texas, plus the top guy in the deal is Jarrod Saltalamaccialalaimachalachaia, who was basically expendable with the presence of Brian McCann.

The good news (I think)? The Mets got Luis Castillo, cheap:

Minnesota gets catcher Drew Butera and outfielder Dustin Martin....Butera is batting a combined .231 with six homers and 26 RBIs this year at Double-A Binghamton of the Eastern League and Class A St. Lucie of the Florida State League.

Martin is hitting a combined .289 with five homers and 52 RBIs for St. Lucie and the Golf Coast League Mets.

Butera seems to be basically a light-hitting catcher like his dad Sal...Castillo's defense isn't what it was, nor his base stealing, and he never had any power, but he can still hit .300 and get on base a decent amount; he's batting .304/.352/.356 this year, .302/.368/.371 over the past six seasons. Acquiring Castillo is clearly a no-confidence vote in Ruben Gotay, at least in the short run, and he's likely an upgrade on Gotay's shaky defense and anybody else's offense.

For what it's worth, Castillo's Zone Rating is near the low end in the AL (and way below Damion Easley), and his Range Factor is well below the league average, supporting the idea that he doesn't cover much ground any longer. It may be worth asking whether Easley would have been a better option, although Castillo's bat is a good deal more reliable at this stage. Castillo is also well-suited to hit second, allowing Lo Duca to bat lower when he returns. Castillo's contract is up at the end of the season, so there's no extra obligation here.

48 players have appeared in 2,500 or more career games; only six of those have a career OPS+ below 100 (i.e., on base plus slugging lower than a park-adjusted league average). Can you name them? Hint: each of the six are either in the Hall of Fame, played as recently as 1990, or both.

Answers here.

*Pedro Feliciano's meltdown on Saturday can probably just be chalked up to nobody being perfect (Wagner, whose ERA is down to 1.39, is almost certainly overdue for one of those games), but with Joe Smith down in the minors, it's also a reminder that guys like Feliciano can go south on you in a hurry if overworked. The Mets don't have the juice for a Mark Teixeira deal at this point, so the deal they need to make is for another arm in the pen.

*Via Bob Sikes: Bill Robinson has died. Robinson always seemed like a classy guy, and as a ballplayer he was (along with Mike Easler) one of the guys rescured off the scrap heap in mid-career to help build the Pirates into a championship team in the late 70s and early 80s: Robinson was a 31-year-old .235/.386/.281 hitter and busted ex-prospect when he came to Pittsburgh, but batted .276/.477/.313 (114 OPS +) over 8 seasons at Three Rivers. RIP.

*David Pinto makes an excellent point about changing sizes of ballplayers: scrappy little Craig Biggio is the same listed height and weight as Willie Mays and Carl Yastrzemski.

*For all the guff David Wright takes, recall that in 2007, he is batting .295/.516/.423 with runners in scoring position and .333/.611/.400 in the late innings of a close game.

*I banged out a quick column on Spitzergate last week that I never got around to cross-posting here. Mindles Dreck and Prof. Bainbridge both point out that Spitzer would not have cared whether corporate executives claimed, as he does now, not to have known of their subordinates' misconduct.

*Ryan McConnell aptly sums up my feelings about Glavine:

I'll be honest: I hated when Steve Phillips and the Mets signed Tom Glavine five years ago. I thought it was a stupid, misguided attempt to steal away a rival's player and a complete waste of money. But, while Glavine's never been a personal favorite -- I'm Irish, grudges don't fade as easily for us -- he's far outperformed any reasonable expectations of him while behaving in the most professional, likeable manner possible. He may not be dominant any more, and he seems particularly prone to giving large leads away lately, but I'll always remember the tremendous performance he turned in during last year's playoffs. And I'll be thrilled to see him finally achieve his 300th win.

He also quotes this bizarre statement from Wallace Matthews:

Historically, he may be the best pitcher the Mets have had on their staff since Tom Seaver was run out of town 30 years ago...

How soon they forget. Has Matthews never heard of Pedro Martinez?

*Jaw, meet floor: Byron York notes Obama's pledge in last week's debate "to meet, one-on-one, in his first year as president, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashir Assad, Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and Kim Jong Il."

They never learn. They never, ever, ever learn.

*There are many reasons to doubt the veracity of TNR's formerly pseudonymous mil-blogger Scott Thomas Beauchamp, but Megan McArdle, as usual, cuts to the root of why the stories set off people's BS meters even beyond the parts (e.g., the Bradley dog-hunting tales) that seemed to clash with physical reality:

It beggars belief that 100 or more people silently watched some pottymouthed privates taunting a cripple who had acquired her injuries in the line of duty. I'm moderately well-versed in the stories about battle-hardened veterans committing atrocities in World War II. I've never come across a single story about making fun of your own side's wounded.

Atrocities, and just plain barbaric behaviour, do happen, even on the good guys' side. But the fact that they happen doesn't mean that anything can happen. AFAIK, the taboo behaviours soldiers engage in tend to fall into fairly well-defined patterns: rape, pillage, looting, revenge exacted on innocent but handy targets, graveyard jokes, taking trophies from the enemy dead. There's a kind of primitive logic to them that may sicken you, but still ultimate[ly] makes some sort of emotional sense. Beauchamp's stories defy that logic, which makes me distrust them.

*This study doesn't sound too promising by itself, but it is true that fantasy baseball is a great microcosm of how humans learn and adapt - getting your butt whipped in a fantasy league, and the desire to avoid doing so again, is a great motivator for not just gathering information but also learning how to sift between the useful and the fool's gold (similarly, I have crammed years of lessons about, say, the value of on base percentage into the past year by playing Strat-O-Matic with my son).

*John Kerry, Genocide Denier.

*Yes, Bush has been more stymied than Clinton in getting judges through the Senate.

*Who else but James Lileks would describe the young Hugh Hefner as being "built like a bag of yardsticks"?

*Bonobo apes: not so politically correct after all (somebody tell Maureen Dowd!).

*How Roger Clemens ruined Michele Catalano.

*Crazy Pooh.

*Hanson is back. I actually thought those guys had talent, if not much depth to them (unsurprising, at their age back then). I'll be interested to see if they've done anything useful with it now that they have grown up.

*Shockingly, Justice O'Connor's case-by-case approach to the law has left her jurisprudence with little influence now that she is not there to vote on particular cases.

*NCLB - hated on the Left, distrusted on the Right, but getting results?

I'm guessing we have seen the last of Jose Valentin for the year and probably in a Mets uniform after he broke his tibia tonight fouling a ball off it (it took a while for Jermaine Dye to recover from that, and Dye was a good deal younger).

Entering the bottom of the sixth in Oakland, no hits for the A's off Eric Bedard.

UPDATE: Yeah, I jinxed him. Homer by Mark Ellis ends it.

The Mets' season really comes to this: the infield, even with Delgado and Valentin scuffling, is strong. Lo Duca will be OK. The starting rotation is adequate, good at its best. Wagner is great, and the pen as a whole is solid despite Heilman's struggles and Schoenweis' self-immolations...but this team will only go as far as Carlos Beltran will take it. Somehow, I can't imagine the Mets winning the division with Beltran hitting as he did in 2005, or worse - or losing it if he hits as he did in April and most of last season.

It's not just Beltran, but he's the key guy in the outfield. The numbers - in April, the Mets outfielders (Beltran, Green, Alou, Chavez, Newhan and Milledge) batted a combined .343/.546/.400. Since May 1, the outfielders - those same six guys plus Gomez, Johnson and Ledee - have batted .231/.356/.296. As we saw vividly in the 2001-04 period, a major league team cannot win anything with that kind of production from its outfielders.

Beltran's 7-year deal looked lousy in 2005, brilliant in 2006...seven years is a long time, so the jury will remain out for a while yet. But there's no question that he's not earning his keep at this moment.

So the second half launches with a minor shakeup at Shea - Rickey Henderson replaces Rick Down as the batting coach, and Julio Franco is cut to make room on the roster for Lastings Milledge, who takes over for the injured Carlos Gomez replacing the injured Endy Chavez taking the place of the injured Moises Alou (remember him?). More stunningly, Scott Schoenweis is...still here. $10 million contracts will do that.

I have to assume that Down's departure is more of a backstage power struggle or personality clash than a simple scapegoating, but in any event unlike Rick Peterson I've never seen anybody credit him with any great success. Rickey seems like an odd choice for a batting coach - a great guy as a baserunning instructor, and certainly he can impart the value of plate patience, but as John Harper puts it

Hitting coaches put in countless hours these days, breaking down video of their own hitters as well as opposing pitchers, in addition to individual work with each player, and, well, Henderson still carries himself more like a superstar player than a blue-collar coach.

Of course, Rickey's hot dogging attitude as a player always belied his intense work ethic, so it's possible that he will be more of a workhorse than he lets on.

Franco says he's not done, though it's hard to see who will give him a job now. I like the guy and he was a great story, but it was time.

I didn't see last night's game (more on why next), but from the photos, it looks like Milledge has cut his dreadlocks, which is probably a wise choice for a guy trying to clean up his image long enough to get settled in a big league job (one he expects to have "for the next 20 years"). Hopefully, Milledge will give us better glovework than last season, which would make it a lot easier for people to wait out any batting slumps - the contrast with Chavez and Gomez will be a tough one.

Ruben Gotay's presence in the lineup subbing for the injured Jose Valentin suggests to me that the Mets aren't making any deals to upgrade at second - they are clearly going to hobble through with the two veterans while breaking in Gotay. Defense will be even more critical to the second base job - Valentin's unlikely to hit very much this season, so he'll need his glove to keep him in the lineup, while defense is likely to be key to whether Gotay is able to make himself the favorite for the job long term.

You often hear discussion of what are baseball's most unbreakable records; it's a hardy perennial of the barroom or talk radio debate (I recently got a marketing email from a company selling a video on the topic).

But "unbreakable" isn't really the yardstick for a great record. Let's use the most glaring example: in 1879, Will White threw 680 innings. By modern standards, that's almost beyond comprehension; pigs will fly before you see a pitcher throw 681 innings in a single season. But is it really that impressive? The previous record was 622, in a 66-game season (by 1879 the schedule was 80 games for White's Reds). Five years later, Old Hoss Radbourn threw 678.2 innings, and Guy Hecker threw 670.2. White deserves a tip of the cap for out-working his contemporaries, but his record was set at the best possible time - the historic high-water mark of starting pitcher innings - and narrowly survived a challenge just 5 years later.

No, what I'm interested in is the baseball's most impressive records. So I bring you this list. First, the parameters. No team records, just individual feats. No single-game records - if the name "Mark Whiten" doesn't remind us that anybody can have a great day, I don't know what will. No postseason records, since the opportunities to set those are very unevenly distributed. No fielding records, for a long list of reasons regarding the nature and availability of fielding stats. No managing records, although Connie Mack's 53-year managing career is impressive under any definition, as is Joe McCarthy managing 24 years with three different franchises without having a losing record once. And no negative records - Nolan Ryan's career walks record is perversely impressive, but not worthy of honor. All I looked at was career and single-season hitting and pitching records, and streaks.

Second, my criteria for choosing and ranking the records. I looked at three factors. One, how far the record stands out from the #2 (and for measurement I compared to the second-best by a different player, rather than, say, compare two Barry Bonds seasons). Two, the level of skill, consistency or exceptional endurance involved - winning games and hitting home runs is more impressive than at bats or hit by pitches. Relatedly, I gave more emphasis for higher-profile stats, and didn't look at really obscure records or metrics (no VORP record here). And three, I gave extra credit to players who - unlike Will White - set their records under less than the ideal conditions for setting that particular record.

Finally, in a few cases I consolidated in a single "record" multiple records a player set in a single season or career that basically flow from the same cause, such as Barry Bonds' walk and intentional walk records.

This doesn't claim to be a scientific list; I have my opinion, you have yours. But my justifications and the facts are provided.

Honorable Mention

A. Johnny Vander Meer, Consecutive No-Hitters, June 11 & 15, 1938.

Vander Meer's is more in the nature of a single feat than a streak, but the fact is, Major League Baseball has been around for 131 years, and in all of that time, only one man has pitched back-to-back no-hitters. The rarity of the thing, given that many opportunities, argues for its impressiveness.

B. Carl Hubbell's 24 Regular-Season Wins Without a Loss, July 17, 1936-May 27, 1937

Hubbell's win streak is impressive and tops the #2 on the list (Rube Marquard) by 20%. On the other hand, it's somewhat artificial because (1) it overlaps two seasons and (2) during the streak he lost Game 4 of the 1936 World Series. If the streak was longer (see below) I might have listed him, but either way it is still an impressive feat.

C. Ed Reulbach, two shutouts in one day, September 26, 1908.

Granted, doubleheaders have always been somewhat rare and it's been decades since anybody pitched both ends of one, so Reulbach, unlike Vander Meer, didn't have as much potential competition. Even so, it's a significant accomplishment to be the only one to do it.

D. The Consecutive Complete Games Record

The record for consecutive starts with a complete game is commonly thought to belong to Jack Taylor, variously attributed as 185, 187 or 188 between 1901 and 1906 (the most thorough examinations seem to support the 185 number; when I was younger I recall it being listed as 176). But back before they moved the mound in 1893, Jack Lynch seems to have thrown 198 straight in the American Association in 1883-87 and 1890, although the one in 1890 after a 3-year absence involved him absorbing 18 runs on 22 hits, and I have no idea what he'd been doing in the interim.

Even with the uncertainties and the prevalance of complete games in those days, though, finishing that many in a row over a period of 5-6 years is really hard work. So these guys get the Honorable Mention. Now, for the list - the number in parentheses is the percentage by which the record exceeds the next best total by another player:

20. Tris Speaker, 792 Career Doubles (6.2%)

Speaker's doubles record is a mountain few have approached. #2 on the list is Pete Rose, and he needed 15,000 plate appearances (a good 30% more than Speaker) to get within 50. Craig Biggio hits gobs of doubles, has been incredibly durable and is in his 20th season, and Biggio still needs 131 doubles to catch Speaker. Speaker did play the second half of his career in a good era for doubles, and played nearly his whole career in two great doubles parks - Fenway and League Park in Cleveland, which also had a high, close fence (60 feet high and 290 feet away in right) you could bounce doubles off.

19. Ichiro Suzuki, 225 Singles in 2004 (9.2%)

If you look atop the single season singles record list, you will find it dominated by 1890s hitters Willie Keeler and Jesse Burkett, from an era when league batting averages ranged from the .290s to as high as .309. Yet, in an age of the longball, Ichiro the Throwback left Keeler's record in the dust. Swimming against the modern offensive tide, and in an extreme pitcher's park no less (Ichiro that season hit .338 at home, .405 on the road) makes his accomplishment more impressive.

18. Nolan Ryan, 7 Career No-Hitters (75%)

The no-hitter is something of a flukey one-game achievement, or this record would rank higher, but only two pitchers have thrown 4 no-nos, and Ryan almost doubled the total of #2 man Sandy Koufax, throwing no-hitters in three decades.

17. Billy Hamilton, 192 Runs Scored in 1894 (8.5%).

Hamilton played in the best of circumstances for the scoring of runs - the highest-scoring season ever, a loaded lineup that set the all-time record by hitting .349 as a team and including three other .400 hitters. But then, he still scored 8.5% more runs than anyone else in his era, and his record has never been seriously challenged even though it was set in a 129-game season. And, of course, scoring runs is the whole point of the game, and you get a lot less help from teammates than with RBIs; this is the most prestigious sort of record.

16. Rickey Henderson, 130 Steals in 1982 (10.2%)

Rickey's single-season steals record stands out, but further than it did at the time; Brock had stolen 118 nine years earlier, and Vince Coleman would steal 110 three years later as a rookie, the first of three straight 100+ seasons. I'd rate Rickey higher but for the fact that he was caught a record 42 times; he would have helped his team more if he'd attempted 120-130 steals instead of 172. That said, the 1982 A's were a team that had rapidly collapsed from a contender, so Rickey gave a lot of excitement to fans who had little else.

Either way, the record was partly a matter of choice, and less impressive for being so.

15. Owen "Chief" Wilson, 36 Triples in 1912 (16.1%)

Not only did Wilson set the triples record by a comfortable 36-31 margin, but he finished 10 triples (38%) ahead of the nearest 20th century competitor. It's rare to see anybody reach mid-May anywhere near Wilson's pace. It's just a freakish accomplishment for a guy who played seven seasons as a regular and cracked 20 triples only the once.

14. Walter Johnson, 110 Career Shutouts (22.2%)

And note that Johnson is 39.2% ahead of the #3 guy, Christy Mathewson (Grover Alexander is #2). 110 shutouts is an astonishing figure, a shutout every six starts and more than a quarter of his 417 career wins (he needed them too - Johnson played for good teams and bad, but the latter were sometimes appalling, like the team where the team leader in RBI drove in 44 runs). Johnson did pitch in the best time for shutouts, the era when ERAs were low and unearned runs were rarer than in the 1880s, and when aces finished their starts. He did throw 24 shutouts in 8 years from 1920-27, though.

13. Cal Ripken, 2,632 consecutive games played, May 30, 1982-September 19, 1998 (23.6%).

Ripken's streak is commonly listed at or near the top of lists like this, but it's not by any means unbreakable - you just need to want it badly enough, be healthy and lucky and a good enough player not to get benched. Unlike the pitching workload records, it's not a feat of spectacular physical endurance, nor does it require any particular skill or accomplishment.

All that said, 16 years without missing a game - including several years of not missing an inning - is nonetheless an impressive feat of willpower and durability, and Ripken left Lou Gehrig three seasons in the dust. That deserves some recognition here.

12. Hank Aaron, 6856 Career Total Bases (11.8%)

Aaron's homer record may be under seige, but his career total bases record, held by a margin of some 700 over Stan Musial and nearly a thousand ahead of #4 Barry Bonds, remains safely out of reach. Aaron had 3771 hits, 98 triples and 624 doubles to go with 755 HR. To do that required durability (15 straight seasons of over 600 plate appearances, 19 straight of over 500, and the first year he fell short he still hit 40 homers), consistency, tremendous power and a good batting average, and he did it despite playing more tha half his prime years in a pitchers' park and running his career straight accross the low-scoring 1960s.

11. Old Hoss Radbourn, 59 Wins in 1884 (11.3%)

Unlike the innings record, winning a huge number of games in a season requires more than just showing up for work. Even at the height of the everyday starting pitcher's era, only three pitchers ever won 50 games in a season, and Radbourn beats the next closest (John Clarkson in 1885) by six wins despite having pitched, much unlike Clarkson, for a team that finished fifth in the league in runs scored. The man ended the 1884 season 47 games over .500 in a 112 game season, almost singlehandedly winning his team the pennant, and he did it the hard way, by posting a league-leading 1.38 ERA in a near-the-record 678.2 innings, and topped it off by winning all three games of the first-ever postseason 'world's series' without allowing an earned run.

1884 was the pinnacle of high-inning starting pitching (average innings started falling off sharply within two years), and talent was spread thin that year due to the upstart Union Association at a time when the two leagues barely had enough talent as it was. So, that counts against ranking Radbourn's feat even higher. But it's no exaggeration to say that he did more to help his team win that season than any player ever in any season.

10. Ty Cobb, .366 Career Batting Average (2.2%)

Cobb's margin over Rogers Hornsby is the narrowest of any record on the list, but he well deserves the high ranking. The lifetime batting average record is one of the game's most important and prestigious, and Cobb has held it wholly unchallenged for eight decades. I believe Hornsby and Al Simmons were the last significant players to crack .360 more than a season or two into their careers, and I don't believe anyone has actually been ahead of Cobb at the end of a season at any point since (Joe Jackson was above .370 through age 24, Willie Keeler through age 30). Plus, Cobb did most of his damage before the high-average 1920s arrived; at the end of 1919 he was a 32-year-old lifetime .372 hitter. Plus, unlike other percentage record-holders like Ed Walsh's career ERA record, Cobb held his pace over an extraordinarily long career, 24 seasons and more than 13,000 plate appearances.

9. Eric Gagne, 84 Consecutive Saves, August 28, 2002-July 3, 2004 (39.2%)

Gagne's streak, like Hubbell's, was sort of interrupted, albeit by a blown save in the All-Star Game. And yes, saves are somethingof an artificial stat. But still, Gagne's whole job was to close out wins, and for nearly two years he did that every time he was asked without fail, surpassing the prior record (Tom Gordon with 54) by a margin of 30 saves.

8. Pedro Martinez, 0.737 WHIP in 2000 (4.3%)

Baserunners per inning, or WHIP, is a bit of an obscure stat - or was until the dawn of rotisserie baseball - but it's a real measure of pitching excellence to hold the all-time record for it. Pedro's also third on the career list, surrounded entirely by a top 10 of deadball-era pitchers like Walsh and Addie Joss and Three Finger Brown. His single season record is 4.3% ahead of #2 Guy Hecker in 1882, but Hecker pitched just 104 innings; he's 5.8% ahead of Walter Johnson's 1913 season.

I rate Pedro this highly because, while other players on this list reached their accomplishments under less than ideal conditions, nobody else set one so much in the teeth of hostile conditions. Pedro did this in Fenway Park in 2000, in a hitters' park (Pedro's road WHIP was 0.680) in a league with a 4.91 league ERA; he led the league in ERA by a margin of two runs and Mike Mussina at 1.187 had the only other WHIP in the league below 1.200.

7. Barry Bonds, .609 OBP, 232 Walks, 120 Intentional Walks in 2004 (10.2%, 36.5%, 266.7%)

All three of these records are integrally related, so I rate them as a single accomplishment. Bonds busted Ruth's walk record by 63 and Ted Williams' OBP record (set in his .406 season) by more than 50 points, and he did so in good part because he surpassed the second-highest non-Bonds IBB total (Willie McCovey's record) by a margin of 120-45. (Note that they didn't keep IBB in Ruth's day, he almost assuredly beat that in the years before Gehrig came up).

Yes, steroids. But still, taken on its own merits, those are mind-blowing margins on a couple of records I'd never thought would be broken.

6. Babe Ruth, .690 Career Slugging Percentage (8.8%)

Only 34 times in the game's history has anybody but Ruth slugged above .690 in a season; aside from Albert Pujols, who is still early in his career, only five other players have career figures above .600. Bonds is 82 points behind Ruth. The Babe sustained this pace over a 22-year career, leading the league 13 times in 14 years and only once having enough at bats to qualify and finishing lower than third.

5. Joe DiMaggio's 56-Game Hitting Streak, May 15, 1941-July 16, 1941 (27.2%)

Joe D's streak - unlike Gagne's - would be 57 if you counted the All-Star Game. What makes it even more amazing, as you probably know, is that he started a 17-game streak the day after this one ended. Another player could get hot and break this one, and I don't list it quite as high as the season and career records that follow, but it is nonetheless a sustained accomplishment of consistency, and the margin compared to the next-closest streak (Keeler and Pete Rose at 44 apiece) places it very high on this list.

4. Mike Marshall, 106 Games and 208.1 Relief Innings in 1974 (12.8%, 23.8%)

Unlike White's innings as a starter, Marshall's workload passes the "wow" test - it was recognized as a jaw-dropping accomplishment at the time it happened, and nobody else has tried anything like it since. The innings is the real whopper here (if you are wondering, the #2 non-Marshall total is Bob Stanley; the Steamah threw 168.1 innings in relief in 1978). Some LOOGY may yet challenge the games record a third of an inning at a time, but that relief innings record, though not set really so long ago, will never again be approached.

3. Nolan Ryan, 5714 Career Strikeouts (23.3% and falling)

Ryan's margin is being eaten away by the #2 man, who as of this morning is Roger Clemens, 17 Ks ahead of Randy Johnson. But both are ancient - Clemens is 44, Johnson is 43 - and more than a thousand strikeouts behind Ryan. Ryan maxed out the record in every direction - he started very young (19), set the single-season record at his peak, and pitched until he was 46. He threw heavy workloads at a very high strikeout rate. Yes, Ryan pitched in a great era for power pitchers, but he buried the record far from his most impressive contemporaries and way out of reach of anybody before or since.

2. Rickey Henderson, 1406 Career Steals (49.9%)

Rickey's record is just preposterous - nobody could have imagined when Lou Brock set the career steals record that somebody would not just blow by Brock but get halfway to lapping him. Like Ryan, Rickey started early, peaked above everyone else and stayed ridiculously late, and ended by putting his record so far out of reach that nobody will even talk about it again.

1. Cy Young, 511 Career Wins, 7354.2 Career Innings, 749 Career Complete Games (22.5%, 22.5%, 15.9%)

I'd be disinclined to rate Young at the top for mere durability, but first of all he ran off and hid with the career wins record, and hardly any record is more significant or prestigious; he did that in part by having the ninth-best career ERA relative to the league (by ERA+) of anybody with more than 2500 career innings, sixth-best among anybody with 3,000 innings, and he threw more than twice that. And second, while it's true that plenty of guys carried heavy workloads in Young's day, and while it's true that by the end of his career Young was facing guys who would have long pitching careers, Young and Young alone was able to do both, which is why his records stand so far and away beyond anyone in his era, before or since.

Consider this illustrative chart. Among all the pitchers who threw 400 innings in a season even once, only 12 of them managed to stay in a rotation (100 or more innings or 20 or more starts) for more than ten seasons, and everybody but Cy hit the wall by 14 seasons. I list each pitcher with their number of seasons throwing 400, 200 and 100 innings:

Pitcher	400 IP	200 IP	100 IP
Cy Young	5	19	22
Pud Galvin	9	13	14
Kid Nichols	5	13	14
Tim Keefe	7	11	14
Bobby Mathews	7	9	14
Vic Willis	1	13	13
Adonis Terry	1	9	13
Mickey Welch	6	11	12
Tony Mullane	6	11	12
Old Hoss Radbourn	6	11	11
John Clarkson	6	9	11
Gus Weyhing	5	11	11

Note: Pud Galvin threw about 100 innings in the National Association; if you discount that, Young's margin for Major League innings expands. The chart includes as well Bobby Mathews' NA experience. Also, Kid Nichols, Young's nearest contemporary, won 20 games twice in the minor league Western Association in mid-career and then returned to be a top major league pitcher without missing a beat, so he would be closer to Young than anyone else, but still far behind.

This is why Young stands alone at the top. Nobody can match his ability to carry those huge 19th century workloads and keep going into his 40s.

Apparently Felix Hernandez listened to this USS Mariner post about mixing up his pitches in the first inning. Great work by Dave Cameron.

After Saturday night's marathon - the players and the ballparks may change, but the extra-long extra-inning games go on for the Mets and Astros - yesterday was pretty much a burnt offering; there was no way to get Dave Williams out of there before the game got out of hand. 5-6 on this road trip wasn't terrible under the circumstances, but it really should have been better - the Colorado series shouldn't have gotten that badly out of hand. The Mets are going to need better starting pitching to get through the second half.

Tomorrow is the 70th anniversary of the worst All-Star Game in National League history. The NL lost 8-3 to an AL lineup with seven Hall of Famers (Gehrig - who drove in 4 runs - DiMaggio, Gehringer, Averill, Cronin, Dickey and Lefty Gomez), but that's not the issue.

First, there was the famous injury to Dizzy Dean. Dean wasn't just one of the two best pitchers in the game (along with Carl Hubbell), averaging 27 wins and 8 saves a year the prior three seasons; he was also, at 27, 7 years younger than Hubbell and the biggest drawing card and outsize personality in the game with the retirement of Babe Ruth. Dean had his toe broken by an Earl Averill line drive in the third inning, tried to come back too quickly, and hurt his arm. By the following year, the once-flamethrowing Dean was a broken-down finesse pitcher wiling his way to a 7-1 record for the Cubs, and that was the last time he was a useful pitcher.

The game's toll didn't end with Dean, though. The hardest thrower in the NL in those days, and its premier strikeout pitcher in 1935-36, wasn't Dean but the eccentric Van Lingle Mungo. Mungo, 26 years old in 1937, hadn't enjoyed Dean's success, but seemed perennially on the verge of a big breakthrough for the struggling Dodgers, winning 16, 18, 16 and 18 games the prior four years (albeit with high loss totals) and posting ERAs well better than the league, including a 2.91 mark in 1937. He led the league in K/9 in 1935, 1936 and 1937, and his 238 K in 1936 was a very high total for his era. Had Mungo stayed healthy long enough to master his control, he may well have become a big star. Instead, he too suffered an injury in the All-Star Game that year, hurting his arm; Mungo went 4-11 the next year and was also effectively done, except for a brief comeback during the war. (Hubbell also had his last star season in 1937, not due to the All-Star Game, but his decline at age 35 made the loss of Dean and Mungo more of a loss for the Senior Circuit).

Remember 1937, next time you see players, particularly pitchers, beg out of the Midsummer Classic.

Jerry Crasnick's list of top free agents to be doesn't include much in terms of pickings for the Mets to play for a deadline deal; Ichiro's not likely to get traded (he means too much to Seattle for the franchise to let him go without a fight), and most of the others are at positions (notably center field) where the Mets are already taken care of. Of course, the Mets were always more likely to pursue pitching help.

One omission I'd wondered about was Ken Griffey, but apparently his contract runs through 2008 with a 2009 option, and only Atlanta, St. Louis, LA and Houston are exempted from his no-trade clause. Even if you could get him at a reasonable price, I'd hate to be on the hook beyond this year for Griffey; he's not even a great bet to be healthier than Moises Alou come September. Adam Dunn is actually more likely to get dealt, although as Baseball Digest notes he's a career .238/.482/.362 hitter away from Cincinnati, so his value should be downgraded accordingly. Given his youth, Dunn is likely to be an expensive option.

The Cubs seem disinclined to deal Carlos Zambrano, though it can't hurt to ask. I'm iffier about Mark Buehrle, who is clearly on the block; Buehrle's low strikeout rates give him a fairly slim margin for error, as we saw in grisly fashion last season. Still, he's been durable and shown good control, and long term the Mets may no longer be in an extreme power pitcher's park.

Actually, the guy who might be a bargain pickup is Brad Lidge; coming to a team that already has Wagner would remove any issues about closing and let him slide back into a setup role, in which he has pitched outstandingly well this season.

Last night's Mets game reminded me of nothing so much as the fight scene in Anchorman: "Boy, that escalated quickly . . . I mean, that really got out of hand fast." Such is life in Coors Field, even in these post-humidor days. For a team that had picked itself up and started cruising again, the All-Star Break can't come fast enough for this pitching staff.

UPDATE: What humidor? The Rockies as a team are batting .284/.444/.358 at home, .259/.383/.333 on the road. Look at the regular lineup (source):

PLAYER	H-Avg	H-Slg	H-OBP	R-Avg	R-Slg	R-OBP
Yorvit Torrealba	.290	.410	.343	.207	.287	.281
Todd Helton	.320	.484	.474	.300	.444	.414
Kaz Matsui	.350	.525	.381	.280	.400	.321
Troy Tulowitzki	.307	.487	.370	.263	.388	.347
Garrett Atkins	.298	.523	.359	.223	.382	.308
Brad Hawpe	.303	.606	.401	.287	.449	.364
Willy Taveras	.331	.415	.374	.309	.346	.361
Matt Holliday	.405	.702	.454	.301	.472	.356

I'd agree with Jim Caple that the most logical explanation for Mike Hargrove's sudden resignation as Mariners manager while riding an 8-game winning streak is that there's more we don't know - probably something in his life off the field he prefers not to get into publicly (an impression only underlined by his players professing to understand better once they taked to him).

On the other hand, it's easy to feel depressed and unmotivated when the team is losing; when you are on a hot streak and you still don't feel like coming to work, that should tell you something. It's like when the Pirates started winning in the late 80s and early 90s, and they still couldn't sell tickets.

Anyway, while the Mariners may be hot, I'm still skeptical of them. Their record is 45-33, but their Pythagorean record is 40-38. They are more dependent on high batting averages than any team in the majors. They've drawn 199 walks as a team; the Cardinals are second to last in the majors at 225. Only one guy on the roster, Richie Sexson, has more than 10 home runs, and he's batting .211. They are next to last in the league in doubles and triples. Their pitching staff is second only to the Yankees for fewest strikeouts in the AL, and besides the mediocre Jarrod Washburn, their only halfway-reputable starting pitcher is Felix Hernandez, who hasn't been right since his DL stay in April. The team's defensive efficiency is next to last in the AL, ahead of only the Devil Rays. Pitchers who don't strike people out and fielders who don't catch the ball are a bad combination; only an AL-best, Safeco-aided 56 homers allowed has saved them from ignominy.

That's not to say the Mariners have no assets. Hernandez and Sexson could contribute tremendously in the second half, and of course the Safeco caveat applies as well to Beltre and Jose Guillen, who aren't as punchless as their raw numbers suggest. Ichiro's .365 batting average is not exactly a fluke. The team's success is hugely dependent on closer JJ Putz (0.92 ERA) and a corps of setup/middle relievers whose Putz-less names are little-known outside Seattle - George Sherrill (1.48 ERA), Eric O'Flaherty (2.28), Sean Green (2.70), and Brandnon Morrow (3.68) - although you have to wonder how long those guys will be that lights-out, especially since the latter three had thrown a combined 43 major league innings before this season.

Bottom line: the Mariners are already overachieving and I don't see where they have a whole lot to fall back on when the hot parts of the team cool off. Hargrove's successor may end up deciding he got out at just the right time.

It seems pretty obvious that the latest Paul Lo Duca story is about Lo Duca ripping the media for being too lazy to talk to the Spanish-speaking platers, not his Spanish-speaking teammates. I don't know that that's accurate...either way, Lo Duca's fuse has gotten awfully short.

In any event, reading it underlined one conclusion: Billy Wagner is awesome.

An argument about what may be driving down signing bonuses. I think it's unsurprising if a shorter negotiating window gives more leverage to the teams.

If there were any remaining doubts, last night's 11th-inning debacle, with Scott Schoenweis surrendering a game-winning home run to a rookie with zero career home runs, should make clear that it is time for the Mets to cut bait on Schoenweis. Extra inning games have a way of clarifying the fact that there's nowhere to hide bad pitchers on a major league roster.

Look, I know they spent good money on him, but Omar has shown a willingness in the past to cut his losses. And I know he is lefthanded, but with Wagner and Feliciano the Mets aren't exactly starved for lefty relievers. And I know that it would be easier to cut him if they could slot in Burgos, Sanchez or Padilla, none of whom will be available again for some time.

The fact is, not only is Schoenweis not pitching to anything like his usual standards, but those standards aren't any good anyway; he entered this season with a 5.01 career ERA and career rates of 9.56 H/9, 0.98 HR/9, 3.56 BB/9, and 5.12 K/9, none of them great numbers. You could replace him with a number of options: Jon Adkins had a 3.98 ERA last season and a 3.68 ERA at New Orleans; Adkins hardly inspires confidence but he has to be an improvement on Schoenweis. There's also Jason Vargas, who is as lefthanded as Schoenweis, although I'm not a Vargas fan either, and Steve Schmoll. Any one of these guys could come in with a decent chance of getting a few more outs than Schoenweis, plus they're all younger than he is.

(This would be the part where it is worth considering whether Heath Bell, Royce Ring or Henry Owens would come in handy, though Owens is still hurt. With the odd exception of Jorge Sosa, nearly none of the Mets' offseason moves this year worked out well, even ones like the Bannister-Burgos deal that looked really savvy at the time).

We've all been in this kind of situation with a long-in-the-making post. Go read the chart, it's still hilarious. (H'T)

Another dramatic ending at Shea last night; this is exactly what the Mets needed, two blowouts and two walk-offs (at least Shawn Green could walk off; I had to leave the park on a dead run to get to the LIRR). I have to admit, I was still thinking that the Green of a few years ago would have put the game away with the drive he sent to left in the bottom of the 8th.

I was also very impressed yet again by Carlos Tres, as Gomez hit a bomb to left field for his first major league homer.

By the way, I was wondering Sunday, looking at Johan Santana's number 57 on the scoreboard, if his would someday be the highest number ever retired. According to Wikipedia (see also here for a list of NL retired numbers, and here for a list of AL), there have been four retired numbers 50 or higher: Jimmie Reese - Angels (coach), 50; Don Drysdale - Dodgers, 53; Carlton Fisk - White Sox, 72; and August Busch, Jr. - Cardinals (owner), 85.

The big story of last night is Jorge Sosa and his 3.79 ERA, from a pitcher who has finished a season below 4.62 only once. Coming into this season, Sosa's career averages were 1.38 HR/9, 4.22 BB/9, 5.81 K/9, and (by the back of the envelope measure) a .267 average on balls in play. In his one prior good year, 2005 in Atlanta under Leo Mazzone's tutelage, the numbers were 0.81, 4.30, 5.71 and .258, suggesting a combination of good defensive support and success keeping the ball in the park. This year, those figures are 0.76, 3.03, 5.16, and .242, suggesting much the same, albeit with better control. (His AAA numbers showed across the board dominance, 0 HR, 4 BB and 29 K in 32 IP). I can't predict whether that will continue - it's not likely, but it's not implausible that he could keep the homers under control for the remainder of the year.

But is that balls-in-play average just luck? The larger story is that the Mets defense has been quietly amazing. According to Baseball-Reference.com, only three major league teams have converted 71% or more balls in play into outs - the A's and Cubs, both at .714 (and two unlikely candidates, if you were guessing) and the Mets at .726. Amazingly, the Mets are first in the NL in batting average (a doubly impressive feat at Shea) and first in fewest hits allowed, despite unimpressive team pitching totals in walks (11th in the league), strikeouts (10th) and homers (9th). It's the defense, along with the league lead in batting and (by a large margin) steals holding them up.

But whose defense? If you look at range factors to see plays per game, the Mets are noticeably below the league average at two positions (first and left field) and way below at one (shortstop), but noticeably above average at two positions (right and center) and way above at only one (second). But range factors can be distorted by where the ball gets hit; ESPN's Zone Rating, which seeks to measure the number of plays compared to balls hit into a fielder's "zone" of the field, rates Jose Reyes second only to Omar Vizquel and way above the rest of the competition, rates Wright third in the majors at his position, Beltran fifth, Easley near the top half of the league and Valentin the bottom half, Delgado (!) above average, and Green near the league average.

As to Reyes in particular, I would not be surprised to see real progress - his defensive stats have lagged behind his reputation for a while now, but his quickness and one of the best shortsop arms in the game have to be somehow a part of the team's exceptional defensive play.

UPDATE: I have to say, I need a primer on how Zone Rating fits against team DER - I mean, ESPN is listing Zone Ratings of .885 for Delgado, .848 for Easley, .792 for Valentin, .903 for Reyes, .830 for Wright, .858 for Green, .906 for Beltran, and .804 for Alou - if those are percentages of balls turned into outs, and the team percentage is .726, then ESPN must be rating an awful lot of balls as not being in anybody's zone, which seems methodologically unsound.

A Hardball Times zone rating-based runs-saved analysis rates only one Mets defensive player among the top 3 at his position, rating David Wright as the best defensive player in baseball this year. Four Mets rate as having compiled at least 2 fielding Win Shares through June 15: Reyes (3.3), Beltran (2.8), Wright (2.2), and Lo Duca (2.1), with Reyes rating second only to Troy Tulowitzki among NL shortstops, Beltran trailing only Andruw Jones among NL outfielders and Wright trailing only Pedro Feliz among NL third basemen.

Baseball Prospectus rates the top 3 in team defensive efficiency as Mets .732, Cubs and A's .722, so they are obviously using a slightly different measurement but reaching the same conclusion.

Am I missing something? For an additional sanity check I went to look at Baseball Prospectus' individual defensive stats, and couldn't find them.

Three awards are given annually to Major League Baseball players for some combination of merit and good character on and off the field. The Roberto Clemente Award, handed out since 1971, is given the player combining good play and strong work in the community. The Hutch Award, in honor of Fred Hutchinson, has been given out since 1965; it is "given to an active player who best exemplifies the fighting spirit and competitive desire to win" and for displaying "honor, courage and dedication to baseball, both on and off the field." The Lou Gehrig Award, presented since 1955, "is presented annually to the Major League baseball player who both on and off the field best exemplifies the character of Lou Gehrig."

Although a number of players have won two of the three, six players have won all three. Without clicking the links above, can you name them? Answers below the fold.

Read More »

The Mets certainly righted the ship in a hurry this weekend. I was out at Shea yesterday for the first time this year (job + kids makes it difficult, though I will be there tonight as well). A couple of thoughts:

1. The Mets absolutely ran the A's off the field with their speed. The place was electrified from Jose Reyes' game-opening inside-the-park home run. Yes, I know it was scored as a double and a two-base error by Jack Cust in right field, but when a guy circles the bases on a ball that doesn't leave the yard, it sure feels like an inside-the-park home run, and the Mets could have been forgiven if they'd raised the magic apple. (Cust had the reverse of Travis Buck's Saturday in right field; where Buck made a game-saving throw to nail Ricky Ledee at the plate but then overran David Wright's game-winning single in the bottom of 9 rather than take his time to grab the ball and make any kind of throw on the glacial Ramon Castro, Cust botched the throw on Reyes' ball in the first but then made a fine running catch on David Wright's drive to the right field line in the 8th after the game was out of reach). Carlos Gomez was everywhere, albeit running with a variety of savvy (dancing off second to guarantee the cutoff of a throw on a sac fly that scored Valentin in the 2d) and recklessness (stealing third with two outs in the same inning). Gomez also beat out an infield single in the 6th that only a handful of players in the game would even have made interesting, and made a leaping catch against the wall in the 5th. Poor Jason Kendall had two passed balls on top of the steal of third, although he did nail Reyes in the 4th.

2. Good signs Valentin's 3-run homer to break open the game in the 8th; Beltran gradually defrosting, especially Friday night; brilliant pitching all weekend.

3. At the park: I don't know why, watching on TV, I really haven't noticed the gigantic Dunkin Donuts cofee in left field, but it really makes left field look like a miniature golf hole...you definitely don't get the full effect on TV of how much construction is going on at Citifield and how close it is behind the outfield fences...a scary moment: my wife got the baby (now 15 months) off to nap and was sitting at the end of the row, and she then handed her off to me to go get ice cream for the kids. Two minutes later (we were sitting in the loge under an overhang behind home plate), a foul ball slammed right into her now-empty seat. I never even saw it coming, since there was a guy standing up in front of us during the play.

The rest of my All-Star ballot. Let's try, here, to vote in an outfielder at each position.

Rightfield

AL: Vladimir Guerrero (.353/.590/.439, 102 RBI). Sorry, fans of Magglio Ordonez (.334/.542/.398, 114 RBI), who might well be neck and neck with A-Rod for the MVP Award if the season ended today; Vlad is a superstar having his tenth straight great season. What would the All-Star Game be without him? Ordonez is a close runner-up.

NL: With the NL not exactly bursting with quality right fielders, I can't think of a more fitting honoree than Ken Griffey Jr. (.270/.533/.354, 79 RBI as a RF and CF the past year), third in the majors in home runs and having covered more than half the ground to his 600th homer before the end of June.

Center Field

AL: Ichiro (.344/.449/.393, 47 RBI as a CF, .323/.423/.372, 62 RBI overall) has the star power and is hitting .364, Torii Hunter (.296 .337 .555, 108 RBI) still has the great glove and the power bat, and Curtis Granderson (.259/.466/.314, 67 RBI) is having a wonderful year, but let's face it: the dominant center fielder in the league, and a guy who is highly likely to win an MVP over the next few years, is Grady Sizemore (.283/.499/.385, 74 RBI). I give Sizemore the nod, if only narrowly over Ichiro.

NL: When originally voting, my son and I were debating the merits of Carlos Beltran (.271 .367 .523 , 103 RBI) and Andruw Jones (.217/.458/.339, 106 RBI), both of whom have run off the rails since then. If I'm insisting on a center fielder, I still take Beltran. Mike Cameron (.273/.485/.347, 89 RBI) continues to be an unsung star.

Leftfield

AL: Manny Ramirez (.324/.549/.425, 86 RBI) doesn't really have the numbers this year, and at 35 he might not catch up to the competition, but you have to give a guy with his resume the benefit of the doubt, and he's up to .300 this season. Carl Crawford (.301/.487/.352, 87 RBI) is probably a year away from surpassing Manny; the rest of the AL features precious few quality left fielders, Hideki Matsui being an obvious exception.

NL: By any objective measure, you put Barry Bonds (.286/.585/.464, 75 RBI) on the team, as a recognition of an all-time great who is still a devastating hitter. That said, I couldn't actually bring myself to vote for Bonds, so Matt Holliday (.333/.589/.394, 119 RBI), is probably the best alternative even when you account for the Coors Effect. Narrowly trailing Holliday are a bunch of fine sluggers - Carlos Lee (.306/.509/.355, 104 RBI), Adam Dunn (.254/.505/.359, 96 RBI), Alfonso Soriano (.294/.576/.364, 71 RBI), and Jason Bay (.276/.485/.366, 102 RBI).

Starting Pitcher:

AL: Johan Santana (19-8, 2.81 ERA) is the best pitcher in baseball, period. Danny Haren's been the best this season, but as I said, I don't just consider this the April-June All-Star Game.

NL I'd be inclined to tab Jake Peavy (16-8, 2.95 ERA), who is leading the NL in Wins and Strikeouts and a close third in ERA. If you look at the numbers you will see that his teammate Chris Young is also on a great run, though.

I see Dave Stewart is picking his. I explained my philosophy on the All-Star Game back in 2000:

In theory, I prefer to see the All-Star Team populated by the best players in the game, regardless of whether they happen to be having the best year. After all, nobody looks back and says, "gee, Willie Mays shouldn't have been on the All-Star Team in such-and-such year because Jim Hickman had a great month of May." The opposite method leaves you with Jack Armstrong starting the All-Star Game. In practice, though, I look at this year's stats as much as anyone.

I guess we have to accept that the real question is this: Who would we pick if the All-Star Game were voted on in September? It seems wrong that guys like Albert Belle and Ken Caminiti (who wasn't on the team in 1996 when he was NL MVP) get punished for saving their best work for the stretch drive.

If Nomar is hitting .280 at the break and Mike Bordick is hitting .390, it's a safe bet that Bordick will wind up pretty close to Nomar at the end of the year, so we can fairly honor Bordick for being a better player in 2000. If Bordick is hitting .330 and Nomar is hitting .310, though, I'd rather have Nomar; let's be serious about which one of them will hit below .260 after the break and which will hit around .330 (we will get to the real numbers on the shortstops below).

+++

Before I fill in the lineups, let's start by making room on the roster for the guys the All-Star Game exists for: great players in their prime, having seasons that adequately reflect their greatness.

David Pinto's database gives a great way to put the early numbers in perspective because you can look back a full season at the press of a button, from today to this day last year. I'll use those numbers. I'm using his feature that isolates stats compiled at a particular position, which has the disadvantage of only listing RBI and not Runs. Let's cover the catchers and infielders now, get to the outfield later.

Catchers

AL: The AL has four catchers who leap to mind - Joe Mauer (.324/.480/.411, 64 RBI) is the best in the league, but injured a lot this season; Pudge Rodriguez (.299/.455/.323, 72 RBI) has had the best career; Jorge Posada ( .306/.522/.374, 91 RBI) is a close second to both of them; and Victor Martinez has the best hitting numbers over the past year (.330/.501/.406, 89 RBI).

You probably need Pudge on the roster somewhere, but I'd give the starting nod to Posada because unlike Mauer he hasn't been injured. Honorable mention to Kenji Johjima, plus John Buck's hot start might get him a crack at a token spot if the Royals need a representative.

NL: Last I saw, Russell Martin (.286/.446/.357, 82 RBI) was leading LoDuca (.320/.413/.359, 45 RBI) in the balloting, but I still think Brian McCann (.296/.521/.349, 106 RBI) was the clear class of the field.

First Base

AL: The balloting here is complicated by including David Ortiz (.316/.652/.450, 108 RBI) as a first baseman; you gotta pick Big Papi. Selecting solely from the first base menu, I'd go with the MVP, Justin Morneau (.325/.574/.388, 122 RBI).

NL: Albert Pujols (.327/.594/.413, 119 RBI), or Ryan Howard (.298/.631/.439, 127 RBI)? I still think of Pujols as the best player in baseball, but it was neck and neck between the two in last season's MVP race...I break the tie with the fact that Pujols has been less disappointing this season (he's batting .306 now, compared to Howard at .247; both have similar power numbers) and has been this good for longer. Room will need to be made on the team for Prince Fielder (.269/.529/.363, 95 RBI); honorable mention to Adrian Gonzalez (.310/.526/.377, 106 RBI).

Second Base

AL: Not a lot of competition for Robinson Cano (.310/.501/.342, 78 RBI), although Luis Castillo and Brian Roberts are both solid tablesetters.

NL: Orlando Hudson (.305/.489/.381, 82 RBI) is the best defensive 2B in the game and has come into his own with the bat - but there is only one best 2B in the National League, and his name is Chase Utley (.317/.554/.393, 115 RBI). Utley's 51 doubles and 31 homers are rare power indeed at his position. Still, it wouldn't be bad to see a little love for the long-underappreciated Ray Durham (.300/.529/.356, 103 RBI).

Shortstop

AL: Carlos Guillen (.337/.560/.411, 91 RBI) has the numbers, and Miguel Tejada (.322/.441/.372, 78 RBI) has the star power, but Derek Jeter (.346/.490/.412, 85 RBI) is still the obvious choice for the combination of the two.

NL: Jose Reyes (.317/.480/.380, 79 RBI), Hanley Ramirez (.317/.519/.374, 62 RBI), Jimmy Rollins (.288/.523/.339, 102 RBI), Rafael Furcal (.315/.463/.380, 62 RBI), and Edgar Renteria (.306/.467/.366, 76 RBI) are all fairly close on the numbers, with distinct advantages; Furcal may be the best glove, Renteria has the most good years behind him, Reyes is the best baserunner. I'm inclined to give the tie to the hometown Reyes, although I would probably pick Ramirez if pushed.

Third Base

AL: No contest, Alex Rodriguez (.306/.610/.402, 141 RBI). I just picked my fourth Yankee for five positions; shoot me now.

NL: Just as many good candidates as the shortstops - Chipper Jones (.342/.692/.425, 73 RBI - otherwordly numbers, but in fewer than 400 healthy at bats) and Aramis Ramirez (.307/.587/.365, 115 RBI) are serious contenders, and David Wright, Garret Atkins and Ryan Zimmerman also have good numbers. But the logical heir to Pujols as the league's best player, if he stays healthy and in shape, is Miguel Cabrera (.337/.583/.419, 117 RBI). Gotta be Cabrera, he's a monster.

They haven't said yet for who, but looks like it could be a great deal for the Padres snagging Michael Barrett from the Cubs once Barrett's feuds with Carlos Zambrano and Rich Hill made his position untenable with the Cubs. It's the 1980s Mets trick: swoop in when a player has some problem with his team that makes him available on the cheap.

Who would have guessed that this season would be more painful for Barrett than last year, when he suffered an intrascrotal hematoma?

The broadcasters on one of the Mets-Yankees games this weekend were discussing the fact that Derek Jeter entered this season with only 2 fewer hits than Pete Rose at the same age, 2152-2150. Which does, in fact, suggest that Jeter has an excellent shot to pile up a truly impressive career hit total.

But a few cautions are in order. First of all, Jeter is 32; Rose averaged 201 hits per year from age 33-39 and played regularly until age 42 and semi-regularly until age 45. That's a tall hill to climb. Second, look again at that list of comparables for Jeter - 10 players, 9 of whom (all but Gehringer) had at least 1900 hits at age 32, and only Rose made it to 3,000 hits; only Rose and Gehringer got 1,000 more hits. The one of the comps with the most hits is Roberto Alomar, who had 2196 hits through age 32, and not only didn't he make it to 3,000, but only one of his ten comparables did either, that being Robin Yount, who was basically washed up at 34. In fact, check out the all-time career hit leaders through age 32:

1. Ty Cobb 2713
2. Rogers Hornsby 2476
3. Hank Aaron 2434
4. Robin Yount 2407
5. Jimmie Foxx 2370
6. Mel Ott 2366
7. Vada Pinson 2320
8. Joe Medwick 2307
9. Willie Keeler 2301
10. Sam Crawford 2292

You will notice that only Cobb, Aaron and Yount made it to 3,000.

Jeter, of course, is batting .341 after hitting .343 last season; he's showed no signs of slowing down that way (maybe afoot, as his steals are way down and GIDP are way up this year), and I do still think he will probably get to 3,000. But just bear in mind that (1) just as with 300 wins, it's what you do in your mid/late-thirties that really matters to getting to 3,000, (2) middle infielders have a notoriously poor track record of getting that far even with a big head start, and (3) it will take a really remarkable run for anyone to get to 4,000 hits, no matter how many years they stay with the pace.

One final note my older brother recently pointed out to me: another guy on these lists is Pudge Rodriguez, who may well have an outside shot to be the first catcher to 3,000 hits, and will likely end with the career record for hits by a catcher (unsurprisingly, since Pudge started at 19, has always carried a heavy workload, rarely walks or gets hurt, and even in his declining years still hits for a good average).

After winning 2-0 on Friday night and at least putting up a fight on Saturday, the Mets just got steamrolled by Chien-Ming Wang last night. Which, even despite the game-and-a-half lead they still hold in the NL East, brings us to the core of the problem: Carlos Beltran. Yes, it's been (besides Wright) largely a team-wide struggle lately, and yes, the 35 year old Carlos Delgado and his surgically repaired wrist have been scuffling all year. But Beltran is THE guy who needs to step it up right now. He's still the team's best player, and by a fair margin its highest paid. He's a veteran but still in his prime. He had a monster April, and unlike two years ago there doesn't appear to be anything physically wrong with him (though you have to wonder). Yet since May 1, while Wright and Lo Duca are hitting well (.301/.589/.368 and .333/.420/.380, respectively), Reyes is at least getting on base (.294/.376/.376) and Delgado hitting for power (.247/.481/.307), Beltran is hitting like Rey Ordonez in a slump: .204/.299/.304. The Mets are going nowhere with a .299 slugging Beltran, period.

Study in contrasts tonight with the matchup between Oliver Perez and Roger Clemens; while the Yankees have tried to capitalize on Perez' weakness (deep counts), the Mets have had more success with Clemens' (complete failure to hold runners) with four steals through five innings (two for Reyes, one - leading to a run - for Carlos Gomez, and one for Wright).

The play of the game so far - and in its own way nearly as impressive as Endy Chavez' famous catch in Game 7 of last year's NLCS - was Carlos Gomez making a leaping catch against the left field wall in the fourth followed by doubling Hideki Matsui off second. First, Gomez had to battle a forest of Yankee fans looking to play Jeffery Maier, and then he needed the presence of mind and accuracy for the 21-year-old rookie to outwit the veteran Matsui, who had bolted off second with one out. Gomez may be seriously overmatched as a big league hitter at this stage but you can't help but like the guy's blazing speed and hustle.

Jose Reyes' massive homer to right was a sight as well, against a Clemens who has been racking up the Ks. It's been an unusually big night for Reyes, who has never hit the Yankees well.

Watching David Wright stealing second in the fifth I noticed that he had something in his hands - it still looks unnatural to me to see guys carrying their batting gloves on the bases.

Keith Hernandez is ripping Clemens for coming out of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. As I wrote seven years ago, Clemens gets a bum rap:

Roger Clemens was 23 years old in 1986. Prior to that season, he had never thrown as many as 140 innings in a major league season; I don’t have his minor league numbers, but I’d be shocked if he had ever thrown 190 innings in a year at any level. In 1985, his season was ended prematurely (after 15 starts) by an arm injury. Coming off surgery, Clemens had his 20-K game (a complete game) in late April, and McNamara rode him hard, finishing nearly a third of his starts. To the credit of Clemens' strong arm, he held up remarkably well, way, way past his career high to that point in innings, until he was hit on the elbow by a line drive in September.

It was obvious in the playoffs that Clemens was not the same pitcher. He looked tired. His pitched lacked any movement. By the time he got to Game Six, Clemens had (counting the All-Star Game) started 38 games -- completing 10 -- and thrown 284 innings. A 23-year-old coming off surgery, remember, who had been running on fumes for more than three weeks. When he started the game like a house on fire, my brothers and I - who had been discussing Clemens' struggles and anticipating that it would come to this - patiently waited for the Mets to wear him down. Get to the bullpen; any Mets fan who remembered 1985's 26-7 Phiasco in Philly wanted to see Schiraldi or Sambito out there.

And, come the fifth, sixth and seventh innings, the Mets' veterans started fouling off and fouling off and fouling off pitches. They didn’t get much off him at first, but they knew they would get to see the bullpen. I wish I had the pitch counts for those innings; as Bill points out in a related column, Clemens threw 135 pitches that night in seven innings, even though he was barely touched in the early going. 39 starts, 291 innings, 135 pitches. He was completely out of gas, and the Mets had a lot to do with it; proof that even a strikeout can be a valuable at-bat. If he stayed in the game, it never would have reached the tenth inning.

Given that Clemens is still pitching 21 years later, I think you have to give him credit for knowing his limits.

Mets announcers just reminded me that today is the 30th anniversary of the Mets dealing Seaver. I was 5. It was a dark, dark day.

Yes, I just kept calling Gomez "Carlos Perez" above - I'm getting old.

So the Yankees finally caught somebody - Gomez - but only after Clemens left the game. And frankly they caught Reyes next as well, but it was a bang-bang play and Reyes got the call.

Mets lead 2-0 - better get several more runs, Schoenweis is warming up in the pen.

Mike Bloomberg still there in the 9th inning. Good showing, for a Red Sox fan.

Boo-ya! Wagner smokes the Yanks in the ninth. 2-0 Mets.

Batting Cage Hero compares each of the Mets' starting pitchers to alcoholic beverages. Via MetsBlog.

Mike Pelfrey would be a wine that hasn't had time to age yet. Pedro, of course, would be a fine South American cabernet you had with dinner last week; you're really hoping that the last bit left in the bottle still has some taste. Aaron Heilman would be a non-alcoholic beer that really might taste better as a regular beer. Victor Zambrano would be whatever you were drinking when you lost your wife in a poker game; it really doesn't matter what it tastes like, you won't drink it again. And Steve Trachsel would be that cheap beer you drank in college - you had a lot of good nights with that beer, many of which ran very, very long into the night, but you got really sick of the taste after four years, and if you were having friends over now for an important party it would not be on the menu.

From a commenter at MetsBlog:

I guess Chan Ho would have been badly aged Sake?

I think Sake is Japanese, but, yeah, that's about right.

I was looking at Ichiro's career stats and noticing that over a third of his career walks were intentional, and wondered how unusual that really was. Intentional walks have been tracked since 1955, and David Pinto's database goes back to 1957, so using Pinto's source I quickly collected a table of the guys who have drawn 100 or more intentional walks since 1957. Here is the top ten who have drawn the most intentional compared to total walks:

Player	BB	IBB	IBB/BB
Garry Templeton	375	144	0.384
Vladimir Guerrero	584	212	0.363
Ichiro Suzuki	303	108	0.356
Tony Oliva	449	131	0.292
Ernie Banks	621	171	0.275
Roberto Clemente	590	162	0.275
Barry Bonds	2490	669	0.269
Orlando Cepeda	587	155	0.264
Tony Gwynn	790	203	0.257
Johnny Edwards	465	118	0.254

Ichiro is close, but not quite at the top. A second question: which hitters got the most intentional walk respect relative to their dangerousness? Here's the top 10 in IBB compared to Total Bases?

Player	Hits	2B	3B	HR	IBB	IBB/TB
Barry Bonds	2886	594	77	747	669	0.114
Johnny Edwards	1106	202	32	81	118	0.073
Mike Scioscia	1131	198	12	68	101	0.065
Vladimir Guerrero	1859	345	39	350	212	0.064
Willie McCovey	2211	353	46	521	260	0.062
Johnny Roseboro	1206	190	44	104	110	0.061
Ichiro Suzuki	1441	165	52	66	108	0.057
Tim McCarver	1501	242	57	97	120	0.056
Willie Stargell	2232	423	55	475	227	0.054
Garry Templeton	2096	329	106	70	144	0.051

Of course, number 8 hitters get walked a lot in the NL, and Templeton and Edwards both drew a disproportionate share of their career IBB while batting 8th. Note that Bonds, even with 747 career homers (he's now 4th on the career Total Bases list behind only Aaron, Musial and Mays), still dominates this list.

Bob Sikes remembers former (1986-era) Mets bullpen coach Vern Hoscheit, who has died.

I'm not even sure what else to say about the Mets lately, as they have barely been watchable. A dry stretch is inevitable now and then but aside from Wright and Delgado (and Jorge Sosa, of all people) they are really in a terrible collective slump. Fortunately the Braves have too, but that just means the Mets have missed chances to put some real distance on them, and at the same time have let the Phillies creep back in the race. The Braves are still the Braves, but it's Philadelphia that has the horses.

I hate to say it, and it's a small thing, but it may be time shortly to say farewell to Julio Franco. Of more pressing problems, Scott Schoenweis is just completely hopeless. And Glavine is starting to worry me, but there's nothing that can be done about that.

I suppose this is an especially inauspicious morning to be discussing this, since we could just as well be discussing whether Pat Burrell should be traded to Tampa, Texas or preferably Japan. But my son asked me the other day who the best lefthanded relief pitcher in baseball history was, I thought about it and realized that it may well be Billy Wagner.

When I looked more closely at the issue, the second thing that jumped out was that the Mets - and, other than the Mets, the Yankees - have had a disproportionate share of the best ones. Let's look over the list of serious or semi-serious candidates. I left off Lefty Grove, who was never used primarily as a reliever other than the 1929 World Series but who finished in the top 5 in the league in saves 6 times, including a league-leading 9 in 1930 while winning 28 games. I'm also leaving off a bunch of guys who are in the next tier, either because they never reached the heights or had only a moment of greatness or were never ace relievers - Mark Davis, Mitch Williams, Al Hrabosky, John Hiller, BJ Ryan, Eddie Guardado. That leaves the contenders. The key for the table - which is drawn from career totals:

"Y" is the number of seasons when each guy (1) was his team's #1 reliever and (2) had an ERA+ of 100 or better (i.e., an ERA equal to or better than the park-adjusted league average as measured by baseball-reference.com - for the uninitiated, the higher the ERA+ the better the pitcher was relative to the league); ERA+ is a career total, but the other numbers are based only on career totals as a reliever (Wagner, Franco and Lyle never started a game, and Perranoski started only one); walks per 9 innings are measured by excluding intentional walks, which are a major occupational hazard for relievers, especially situational middlemen; the last two columns are career innings and ERA as a reliever in the postseason (Righetti is the only guy here to start a postseason game, and pitched outsandingly as a starter in the 1981 postseason), in roughly what I think is the right order for the top 11 (stats are through last night's fiasco), though I suppose one could quibble about Plesac vs Hrabosky (not that I think a lot of bar fights will be started over that particular argument).

Pitcher	Y	SV	W	G-R	IP-R	ERA-R	ERA+	HR/9	BB/9	K/9	P-IP	P-ERA
Billy Wagner	10	337	37	679	729.0	2.36	182	0.85	2.79	11.95	10.1	8.71
John Franco	12	424	90	1119	1245.2	2.89	137	0.59	3.01	7.04	14.1	1.88
Sparky Lyle	10	238	99	899	1390.1	2.88	127	0.54	2.59	5.65	21.1	1.69
Randy Myers	8	347	42	716	814.1	3.17	122	0.71	3.43	9.16	30.2	2.35
Ron Perranoski	7	178	79	736	1170.2	2.78	123	0.37	2.66	5.27	14.2	7.98
Jesse Orosco	4	144	87	1248	1277.0	3.12	125	0.79	3.40	8.24	21.2	4.15
Tug McGraw	8	180	89	785	1301.1	2.86	116	0.51	2.57	6.74	52.1	2.24
Dave Righetti	8	252	46	629	827.1	3.38	114