Six Car Pileup

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)

Stat Breakdowns of the Day

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.

A Matter of Trust

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.

The Little Black Raincloud

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.

Power Imbalance, Part II

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.

Lamentations, O Lamentations

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:

Continue reading Lamentations, O Lamentations

Anathema

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!

Phiasco

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.

Splitting Delgado

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.

Declawed

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 Driver’s Seat

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.

Maybe Not The Natural

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.

Past His Expiration Date

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.

No Salary Drive

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 at the Breakdowns

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.

The End of the Beginning

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.

Making It Look Easy

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.

Lost at Sea

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.

BASEBALL/ When The Bronx Was Burning

cover.bronx.jpg 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.

The Big 3-0

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.

Heartstoppers Stop

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.

Pennsylvania Travelogue

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.

Bonds. Barry Bonds.

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:

Continue reading Bonds. Barry Bonds.

Yankeez Rool

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.

More Than His Shares

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.

Charging

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.

Apple of My Eye

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.

The Average 300 Game Winner

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.

300 For Glavine

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.

Good News, Bad News

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.

Quick Links 7/30/07

*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?

No O

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.