Why the Giants Model for Success is Impossible to Replicate

If it’s your desire to build a winning baseball team (and why the fuck shouldn’t it be?), there are a few different roads you can take:

 

1. The Yankee Model

– Develop a couple of homegrown stars, mix in a shrewd trade or two, but mainly just spend like fucking lunatics. In this century alone, the Yanks have signed the following big ticket free agents: Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon, Mike Mussina, Mark Teixeira, CC Sabathia and AJ Burnett. The total cost? Oh, something like 684 million dollars. And that’s not including the $275 million they gave A-Rod when he opted out of his original deal following the 2007 season. In less than ten years, the Yankees committed nearly a billion dollars…to seven players.

 

Other teams have tried to use this model, with varying degrees of success: the Phillies and Red Sox have succeeded more often than not, while the Mets, Dodgers and Cubs have generally fizzled. But it’s certainly an excellent way to make your team competitive….if you’ve got the cash.

 

2. The Oakland Model

– Find new and interesting ways to recognize talent in areas where other teams aren’t looking for it. At a certain point, as immortalized in Moneyball, this meant zoning in on sabermetrics, which most teams were reluctant to embrace. Now that the rest of baseball has caught up, Billy Beane and company have ostensibly figured out another method, because they took a team that appeared to be in the earliest stages of rebuilding, and turned it into a division champion.

 

3. The National Model

– This is a combination of futility and dumb luck. Basically, it requires sucking just a little bit more than your contemporaries, but arranging it so that you save your uber-suck for years in which there’s a clear consensus on the best available player in the Draft. This is how the Nats ended up drafting two guys who could very well prove to be the best arm (Stephen Strasburg) and bat (Bryce Harper) of their generation.

 

While all of these are fine examples on how to go about building a winner, there’s one model that, as the title suggests, is one hell of a tall order: that of the San Francisco Giants. And the biggest way they’ve morphed into a team on the verge of a mini-dynasty is by hitting on high Draft picks. Every. Fucking. Time. Let’s look at the Giants first round picks, starting in 2002, up through the 2010 season:

 

2002: Matt Cain-RHP, 25th overall

2003: David Aardsma-RHP 22nd overall

2004: No 1st round pick

2005: No 1st round pick

2006: Tim Lincecum-RHP 10th overall

2007: Madison Bumgarner-LHP 10th overall

2008: Buster Posey-C 5th overall

2009: Zack Wheeler-RHP 6th overall

2010: Gary Brown-OF 24th overall

 

That’s seven choices over a nine year stretch, four of whom made massive impacts upon the 2010 championship run, and who are continuing to contribute toward what’s looking like a second title in three years. That just doesn’t happen. 

 

Lincecum, his recent struggles notwithstanding, has won two Cy Young Awards, and without him getting the better of Roy Halladay in the NLCS and Cliff Lee (twice!) in the Series, that 2010 title never happens. Cain is a legit ace, with a perfect game and several dominant October outings under his belt. Bumgarner has come up big again and again, most recently last night in Game 2. And Posey is the likely NL MVP, handles the pitching staff beautifully and is one of the best hitters in the game.

 

As for the guys listed who haven’t contributed, it’s not because they’re not quality players. Aardsma was on his way to elite closer status until he was derailed by injury. Wheeler was dealt to the Mets for Carlos Beltran and is currently rated the #6 overall prospect in all of baseball. Brown, meanwhile, is the Giants top prospect, and could start making an impact as early as next summer. 

 

To make this achievement all the more shocking, three of the pitchers they selected (Cain, Bumgarner and Wheeler) were high school guys, who are notoriously difficult to project. The year Cain went 25th to the Giants, the third, fourth and fifth picks were high school pitchers- Chris Gruler, Adam Loewen and Clint Everts. Who? Exactly.

 

In short, the Giants haven’t whiffed on a first round pick in more than a decade. That’s impressive by NBA or NHL standards, where evaluating talent is exponentially easier. By MLB standards? It’s nothing short of amazing. Don’t believe me? Take a gander at your favorite team’s high picks over the same timeline, and tell me what you think.

 

Lest you conclude that the future is all sunshine and lollipops for San Francisco, it’s worth noting that they lack minor league depth. The aforementioned Brown, while he’s the Giants top minor leaguer, is not even among the top 50 or 60 prospects in baseball. This suggests that the Giants have been every bit as bad at finding value in later rounds as spectacular at finding it in the first round.

 

Taking this into consideration (and added to the fact that the future of Lincecum is uncertain), it’s hardly a given that the Giants will be big time players for years to come. Hell, they could potentially be a last place team in two or three years. That being said, if you got (presumably) two championships out of one crop of guys, you’d take it, wouldn’t you? I’m a Mariners fan, so you bet your ass I would!

The Mariners’ Latest PR Disaster

A few days ago, the Seattle Mariners announced that ticket prices for the majority of Safeco Field’s sections will increase somewhere between four and ten percent for the 2013 season. As this move was announced several days ago, mine will be roughly the 900th piece written on the subject. But what I lack in originality, I hope to make up for in surliness and indignation. The specifics are somewhat complicated- they involve, among others things, condensing eight sections into four new ones- but the fact remains watching baseball in Seattle, which the on-field product has made difficult enough, just got a little more expensive. Now, if that were the extent of the bullshit, it would be another matter entirely. If the M’s were coming off a playoff appearance, hell, even a winning record, this might be justifiable. If there was a commitment to make major payroll additions, I could probably understand. Unfortunately, neither of these things are true.  The Mariners just finished off their third consecutive last place season. Rather amazingly, 2012 represented the M’s seventh last place finish over the past nine years. Can you guess how many teams, over that same timeline, have finished last as frequently? None of ’em. Not the Royals, not the Pirates, not even the (until recently) lowly Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals, who have made a whopping two playoff appearances in their 44 seasons as a major league franchise. Part of the reason the Mariners hold this rather dubious distinction is their status as (until 2013) a member of the only four team division in baseball. But blaming that is a cop-out. The only real sustainable presence in the AL West from 2004 to the present has been the Angels. The Rangers didn’t pull themselves out of their A-Rod-induced tailspin until around 2009, and the A’s have endured about 65 rebuilding cycles and work with a payroll of, like, twenty bucks. No, finishing last in the West seven times in nine years is quite an accomplishment, four team division be damned. As far as payroll goes, even if the Mariners add a very expensive free agent like Josh Hamilton, they may still have a team payroll lower than the one they started the 2012 season with, since Ichiro‘s $19 million is now off the books. And even the most unrealistic fans seem to doubt the M’s will target multiple big money players. Maybe the M’s will start winning as soon as next season, but it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe they’ll dramatically increase payroll at some future date, but it’s probably not gonna happen this winter.  To recap, they’re still losing, and the purse strings are still pretty tight, so naturally, they increase ticket prices. Seems as rational as anything else Mariners management has done for the bulk of the current century. There are reasons beyond the lack of investment and team success that lead many to believe this spike in prices is in poor taste. For one, season ticket holders weren’t even notified that there would be a price bump. The M’s subsequently issued an apology for this, claiming they intended to “personally” inform season ticket holders of the change, but didn’t get around to it in a timely manner. To make matters worse, this bullshit excuse wasn’t even accompanied by some sort of compensation. In the past, when ticket prices increased, ticket holders were given vouchers for in-stadium merchandise. Not the greatest gift there is, but it was something. This time? Not a damn thing. Other than a half-hearted apology of course. But that’s not where, as Vice President Biden might say, the malarkey ends. If you’ve been paying attention to the Seattle sports scene over the last year or so, you’d know that an arena that will hopefully house NBA and NHL franchises has been given the green light to be built in the SoDo neighborhood that also houses Safeco and CenturyLink Field. Other than the Port of Seattle, and perhaps the Seattle Times editorial board, no one has voiced a stronger objection to this than the Mariners organization. The main objection cited by the M’s is that, on nights where the newfangled Sonics and Mariners both play, traffic will be unmanageable.  A few reasons why that assertion is ridiculous: 1. The basketball arena will probably have a capacity of 16 or 17 thousand. The Mariners averaged about 21,000 fans per game in 2012, which is a little under half Safeco’s capacity. Meaning that, the way the M’s are going, the combined M’s/Sonics crowds would still be smaller than the 43,000-plus the ballclub was drawing on their own in their 2001-2002 heyday.  Sure, if the Mariners ever reach another period of sustained success, nights where both they and the Sonics have home games will cause some congestion. But those are the kinds of problems you want to have- people falling all over themselves to spend money in town. Something tells me that, should things turn out that way, all the black ink in the M’s ledger will do wonders for alleviating their traffic concerns. 2. Whether they want to admit it or not (and obviously they don’t), the fuss the M’s are putting up is all about insecurity. It’s like when a shitty boyfriend doesn’t want his girlfriend to even fraternize with other men- he fears that if she does, she’ll be reminded of how much he sucks and how easily she could do better. The M’s don’t want more competition because they know that if they don’t drastically improve, people will continue to seek out alternatives to the shitty product they’ve provided for the past nine years. 3. If anybody should be worried about traffic affecting their bottom line, it’s the Seahawks, who have been supportive of the arena deal. The Hawks actually sell out their home games. And chances are, the majority of those games could conflict with Sonics games, as both franchises will be playing games between October and December. Including potential playoff games, the Hawks and Sonics could quite easily be playing on the same days for the overwhelming majority of the NFL season.  The M’s, meanwhile, would only be affected for about half the season (April through June), and that’s only if the Sonics were to make deep playoff runs. Unless, of course, the M’s are playing games in October, but again, that hasn’t really been a problem since the first year of the George W. Bush Administration. As troubling as these issues are, they speak to a greater reality- that Mariners ownership and management suck. It’s not necessarily that they’re incompetent; they’re just not fully invested in winning. Until the people calling the shots change, things will probably stay pretty much the same. Perhaps the M’s will luck into a playoff run or two, but if they do, it will be just that- luck. We deserve better.

World Series Preview

This isn’t the World Series I planned on writing about. (Though it is the one I was hoping to write about, because my love for the Giants is exceeded only by my love of the Mariners and Mets.) I never doubted the resilience of the San Francisco Giants, but….well, winning three straight elimination games against the Reds was one thing. The defending champion Cardinals? I didn’t see it coming, especially since every Giants pitcher not named Ryan Vogelsong was been anywhere from inconsistent to incompetent. But here we are: Tigers versus Giants. So how do they stack up???

 

Starting Pitching

– It’s difficult for me to believe that I would have more confidence in any rotation that squares off with the Giants arms, but that’s where we’re at. Vogelsong has been great, and the man who now passes as the ace, Matt Cain, seems to have rebounded. After that though, it’s anybody’s guess. Tim Lincecum has been great out of the bullpen, but struggled considerably in his sole postseason start. Barry Zito was money in Game 5 against the Cards, but was shit in the Division Series. And Madison Bumgarner, SF’s second most dependable starter in 2012, has not looked good at all.

 

Of course, the Giants could have the 1993 Atlanta Braves rotation and this would still be a challenge. Why? Justin motherfucking Verlander. The best pitcher in the world is playing his best baseball, possibly ever. If we’re being honest, Verlander wasn’t really any more dominant against the lifeless Yankees in the ALCS than Doug Fister, Max Scherzer or Anibal Sanchez, so his eight plus innings of work in Game 3 might not be the best evidence that he’s rolling. But lest we forget, he flat-out owned Oakland in his two Division Series starts, and was brilliant throughout September. 

 

The only potential roadblocks for Verlander and company are the long layoffs following the ALCS sweep, and the Giants freakish ability in recent years to push across enough runs to beat unbeatable hurlers (Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay, Chris Carpenter, etc.) Bottom line though, it would be foolish to bet against JV.

 

Advantage: Tigers

 

Bullpens

– Both ‘pens have been terrific. A quick look at the Tigers’ postseason stats reveals that, other than broken closer Jose Valverde and iffy setup man Joaquin Benoit, none of their pitchers has a playoff ERA above 1.35. That’s damn impressive. It’s worth pointing out, however, that due to the dominance of Detroit’s starters, only lefty Phil Coke has exceeded the four innings pitches threshold. 

 

The Giants ‘pen has, by no means, suffered from a lack of work. For one thing, San Francisco has played a dozen playoff games versus Detroit’s nine. Moreover, shaky starts by Bumgarner and others, coupled with the lack of DH’s, have led to much greater use of relievers than the Giants AL counterparts have required. Jose Mijares and Guillermo Mota have been lousy in limited roles, but everybody else has been sterling, led by lefties Jeremy Affeldt and Javier Lopez, along with Lincecum and closer Sergio Romo. So sure, both bullpens have been excellent, but if I had to go to war with one or the other, I’d choose the Giants by a nose.

 

Advantage: Giants

 

Catcher

– Likely NL MVP Buster Posey hasn’t exactly been great this postseason, but he delivered at least once when everything was on the line- a series altering grand slam in Game 5 of the Division Series. He’s not an incredible defensive catcher, but he handles the Giants pitching staff beautifully. And, for better or worse, he’s SF’s most imposing bat.

 

Detroit has favored a platoon of Alex Avila and Gerald Laird, with even more humbling results: Laird has one hit in 13 at bats, and Avila has struck out 10 times in 22 AB’s.

 

Advantage: Giants

 

First Base

– Prince Fielder vs Brandon Belt? That’s easy, on paper. While Belt is the better defender, his seven regular season home runs aren’t exactly intimidating for a second baseman, much less a corner infielder. Still, facing a Tiger rotation comprised entirely of right handed pitcher, Belt has a chance to make a difference. If you’re looking for a dark horse hitting star, Belt is as good a candidate as anybody. But still- Prince Fielder….

 

Advantage: Tigers

 

Second Base

– On balance, most would probably favor the Tigers Omar Infante over San Francisco’s Marco Scutaro….but Scutaro has been playing out of his mind lately, compiling a record-tying 14 hits in the NLCS.

 

Advantage: Giants

 

Third Base

– Pablo Sandoval has been arguably the most productive guy for the Giants this October. His average is a tick lower than Scutaro’s, but he’s been their biggest run producer, clubbing three home runs and driving in nine runs. But Miguel Cabrera is Miguel Cabrera.

 

Advantage: Tigers

 

Shortstop

– Giants shortstop Brandon Crawford is in the lineup for his defense, while Detroit’s Jhonny Peralta is in theirs for his bat. As good as Crawford has been in the field, Peralta has the Tigers highest playoff batting average. At this stage of the game, chances are hitting will make a bigger difference than infield defense. Heh.

 

Advantage: Tigers

 

Outfield

– For Detroit, Austin Jackson and Delmon Young are the regulars, while Avisail Garcia and Andy Dirks platoon in right field. Both will have a chance to impact the Series, because the Giants will throw two lefties and two righties at the Tigers. The Giants have started the same outfield in each of their 12 games- Hunter Pence, Angel Pagan and Gregor Blanco. If Pence were playing up to his abilities, this might be an easy nod to the Giants, but he isn’t. Jackson and Young have been terrific at the dish this October, so it really comes down to playoff results vs regular season output. The former favors Detroit, while the former gives the Giants hope.

 

Advantage: Even

 

Managers

– We’re talking about two bad-asses here. Tigers manager Jim Leyland is in the twilight of what could be a Hall of Fame career. He’s guided three teams to league championships, won the 1997 World Series with the Marlins, and won three straight NL East titles in Pittsburgh. He’s perhaps the only guy in my lifetime worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as LaRussa, Lasorda and Torre.

 

Over by the Bay, the Giants have a skipper that’s no slouch himself- Bruce Bochy has won 1,454 games as manager of the Giants and Padres, compared to Leyland’s 1,676 in 21 seasons with Pittsburgh, Florida, Colorado and Detroit. Their career winning percentages are virtually identical- .503 for Leyland, .502 for Bochy. Each is making his third World Series trip as a manager, and each has one win and one loss to show for it.

 

Both Leyland and Bochy, victories aside, are considered among the elite of their profession. This presents the most even matchup of the 2012 Fall Classic, so…..

 

Advantage: Even

 

Final Analysis:

– It’s either a huge advantage or something of a detriment that the Tigers have been sitting at home for a week. Will those extra three days rest cause Verlander to be a little rusty? Rusty enough to be out-dueled by Zito? Will the Giants home field advantage prove to be an advantage? Can Bumgarner snap the fuck out of it, or is something very wrong?

 

Aside from the Verlander factor, this series might be determined by which side’s biggest bats are able to get going- Cabrera and Fielder or Posey and Pence. The Giants have proven me wrong again and again this month, so I’d be a fool to bet against them, right?

 

TIGERS IN SIX.

Versus the BBWAA Part Two: The Wrath of Steve

If memory serves, I teed off on the Baseball Writers’ Association of America at least once before. I believe it was in reference to their rigid standards for Hall of Fame induction- how, for example, players like Edgar Martinez and Jeff Bagwell have been unfairly maligned (for different reasons, of course). This one is gonna be a little different.

 

As many of you know, election to the Hall requires a player to be named on at least 75% of ballots cast by BBWAA voters. That’s not what I have a problem with- I think that’s as fine a criteria as anything I could conjure. No, what I take issue with is that nobody has ever been impressive enough by BBWAA standards to be named on 100% of ballots.

 

The record for highest percentage was set in 1992, when Mets legend Tom Seaver received the support of 98.84% of voters. And even that is fucking ridiculous. Don’t get me wrong, Seaver was a tremendous pitcher, worthy of induction by any legitimate metric. Furthermore, the fact that he received such a high percentage had far more to do with who else was on the ballot that year than anything else. Simply put, Seaver was far and away the most qualified candidate on that particular ballot. So it makes sense that he received so much support. What doesn’t make sense is that no one ever received more support.

 

There have been so many of these absurdities that I feel I couldn’t do my point justice unless I only discussed a few of them. So here are, in my opinion, some of the most sinful votes, listed in order of the degree of my unbridled rage…..

 

1974: Mickey Mantle (88.2%; named on 322 of 365 ballots)

– A bit of background for the novice baseball fan: The Mick played 18 seasons for the New York Yankees and, all things considered, had a pretty respectable career. He led the Bombers to seven championships, won three AL MVP awards, played a very good center field and swatted 536 home runs, which, at the time he called it quits, was good for third best in history. So of course, 43 writers left him off of their ballots.

 

The only thing I could think of is that Mantle’s history of drinking and carousing cost him some votes. Except that doesn’t make a damn bit of sense. In spite of Mantle’s weaknesses as a human being, he was a great teammate, and wasn’t nearly as much of a dirtbag as Ty Cobb or even Babe Ruth, who received 98.2 and 95.1% support respectively. (What’s even more eye-opening about those figures is that Cobb and Ruth were members of the inaugural Hall class, meaning that the voting included all the players in the history of the game!!)

 

1966: Ted Williams (93.4%; named on 282 of 302 ballots)

– This seems like as good a time as any to mention that BBWAA members are permitted to include up to ten players on each Hall of Fame ballot they submit. It’s not like they can just pick one dude every year. If that were the case, all would be forgiven, and I would be writing about something else this afternoon. But it isn’t the case, and all is not forgiven.

 

The put it mildly, Williams did all right for himself- 521 homers, 2,654 hits, a .344 career batting average, and a best-ever .482 career on-base percentage. Let me repeat that: In a game called “baseball”, no one in the 150 year history of the sport got on base more often than Williams. Yet 20 dumb motherfuckers (motherfuckers who wrote about baseball for a living) ostensibly decided that Johnny Vander Meer or Arky Vaughan were more deserving of enshrinement that year than Teddy fucking Ballgame. 

 

Oh, right, one more thing: Upon his death, Williams’ head was cryogenically frozen, so once they figure out how to put that noggin on another body, he might reach 800 career home runs…though his OBP might take a dip.

 

1982: Hank Aaron (97.8%; named on 406 of 415 ballots)

– Oh, man. I’m not sure I even no where to begin on this one. I guess you really can’t please everybody. I can’t imagine what was insufficient to the nine writers that left Aaron off their ballots that year- his record 755 home runs? His record 2,297 runs batted in? His record 6,856 total bases? Well hey, maybe Aaron was a one-tick pony, huh? Maybe all he was good at was hitting home runs. Nope- he had a .305 career batting average. He never struck out more than 97 times in a season. He was an excellent all-around talent.

 

You know, I feel like there’s something else; something I’m forgetting….oh, yeah. Now I remember. As Aaron approached Ruth’s all-time home run record, he faced a degree of racism that would have made Jackie Robinson pity him. Aaron received heaps of hate mail and numerous death threats. (As an aside, though I cannot prove this, history suggests that at least a smattering of those death threats and pieces of hate mail came from southerners. You’ve gotta be pretty damn racist to want to preserve a fucking Yankee’s home run record, when the guy chasing it plays for the only MLB team in the south. Jesus.) People hurled the n-word at him like it was his last name. It was, suffice to say, a difficult time for Hammerin’ Hank.

 

Not only did Aaron persevere, he maintained his class and dignity all the while. Yes, nine voters left him off their Hall of Fame ballots. But in their defense, it may have been difficult to see whose names they were writing on their ballots with those big white hoods covering their heads.

 

In a few months, voting for the 2013 Hall class will be revealed, and at that time, I have this sneaking suspicion that I’ll feel a ripple of outrage yet again- though nothing of the magnitude discussed in this piece. If you don’t believe Mantle, Williams and Aaron are Hall of Famers, I can only conclude the following: you either don’t understand the significance of the Hall of Fame or, worse yet, you just don’t understand baseball. Take your pick, bitches.

The Alternate Reality World Series

Expansion has done wonders for Major League Baseball. It’s brought the game to places Asa Brainard and Jim Creighton probably couldn’t have imagined. It’s made stretches of dominance, like the Yankees 16 titles in 31 years, much more difficult. It’s also, by virtue of leading to expanded playoffs, fucked a lot of teams out of potential championships. To be fair, without expansion, many of these teams wouldn’t be teams at all, much less champions. But it’s interesting to note which teams would have squared off in the Fall Classic, if the old formula of best record in your league equals World Series berth were still intact. 

 

This thought occurred to me because it now appears exceedingly likely that two 88 win teams will be opposing one another in this year’s Series. The Tigers are in, and the Cardinals are just one game away from joining them. In addition to a Tigers-Cards matchup being a nightmare scenario for television executives, it’s immediately obvious that these two teams wouldn’t be there if this were 1968. I’m not saying the Tigers and Cardinals are unworthy- far from it. They’ve each defeated (or are in the process of defeating) two supposedly superior teams apiece. But it’s still interesting to think about.

 

I think I’d go bonkers if I explored all the possibilities for every season from 1969 onward, so to preserve what’s left of my sanity, I will now juxtapose, from the year 2000 up until this one, the World Series we had, versus the World Series we would have had if there were no divisions- just two big ol’ leagues.

 

The Actual World Series’

 

2000: New York Yankees vs New York Mets

2001: Arizona Diamondbacks vs New York Mets

2002: Anaheim Angels vs San Francisco Giants

2003: Florida Marlins vs New York Yankees

2004: Boston Red Sox vs St. Louis Cardinals

2005: Chicago White Sox vs Houston Astros

2006: St. Louis Cardinals vs Detroit Tigers

2007: Boston Red Sox vs Colorado Rockies

2008: Philadelphia Phillies vs Tampa Bay Rays

2009: New York Yankees vs Philadelphia Phillies

2010: San Francisco Giants vs Texas Rangers

2011: St. Louis Cardinals vs Texas Rangers

2012: Detroit Tigers vs St. Louis Cardinals???

 

 

The Alternate Universe World Series’

 

2000: Chicago White Sox vs San Francisco Giants

2001: Seattle Mariners vs Houston Astros

2002: Oakland Athletics vs Atlanta Braves

2003: New York Yankees vs Atlanta Braves

2004: New York Yankees vs St. Louis Cardinals

2005: Chicago White Sox vs St. Louis Cardinals

2006: New York Yankees vs New York Mets

2007: Boston Red Sox or Cleveland Indians vs Arizona Diamondbacks

2008: Los Angeles Angels vs Chicago Cubs

2009: New York Yankees vs Los Angeles Dodgers

2010: Tampa Bay Rays vs Philadelphia Phillies

2011: New York Yankees vs Philadelphia Phillies

2012: New York Yankees vs Washington Nationals

 

To recap, of the 26 teams over this span that would have made the Series under the old model, only five actually got there: the 2003 Yankees, 2004 Cardinals, 2005 White Sox, 2007 Red Sox and 2009 Yankees. The Yanks actually got screwed pretty hard, because they would have made the Series six times versus the four that happened in real life. Conversely, the Red Sox actually made out pretty well- they were only the best AL team once (and that was a tie with Cleveland, so who knows how that would have ended up), yet they have two championships to show for their efforts. But nobody got fucked harder than the 2001 Mariners and the 2012 Nationals- two franchises, the only two franchises, that have never been to the World Series, but would have been there under this system. Except maybe the 2008 Cubs, who would have won their first pennant since the first months of theTruman Administration. Sorry, Cubbies.

 

In some cases, even though the best teams generally failed to make it, things sort of evened out: in reality, the Phillies made consecutive Series trips in 2008 and 2009. In the “no divisions” model, they would have missed out both times, but would have made it the following two seasons. Spoooky!!

 

You might argue that none of this matters, because the playoffs are where you put up or shut up. Clearly there’s some truth to that, but there’s also some bullshit to it. Do you mean to tell me that because Team X outperforms Team Y over a five or seven (or one!) game series, they’re the better team? Is that stretch of time, a week and a half of baseball at most, a better indicator than a team’s performance over six months? Are the 2012 Tigers really that much better than the 2012 Yankees? I’ll go ahead and answer my own questions: Probably not. It would be a little like saying whichever two teams win by the widest margins in Week 17 of the NFL season are most worthy of playing in the Super Bowl. (OK, fine- it’s nothing like that. Whatever. You know it’s free for you to read this shit, right?)

 

Look, I’m not saying I feel strongly about this one way or the other. Frankly, as we inch closer to the end of Baseball Version 2012, shit’s gonna get a little weird around here- there’s just not as much to write about. Chances are, my entries will be fewer, and the subject matter might be more of a reach than what you would see in the middle of the year, when there are 15 games a night going on. So just roll with it. Or stop reading my stuff. No, no, wait- come back!!

The (Most Recent) Fall of Alex Rodriguez and the Perils of the 10 Year Contract

This is a piece about Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, but it isn’t the piece I set out to write last night. I intended to use this time and space to suggest that A-Rod should consider retiring. This was before I learned that it appears increasingly likely that the Yankees are willing to do almost anything to get him off of their team, even if it means covering the overwhelming majority of his remaining contract. While I was imagining A-Rod opting for retirement, there were two reasons I doubted it would happen: 1. He has five years and about $114 million remaining on his contract (not including bonuses for home run milestones). Who, in their right mind, would leave that kind of money on the table? I imagine it would be a tough call for anybody, much less a guy who isn’t exactly considered a “team first” type. Furthermore, can you imagine A-Rod telling his agent, Scott Boras, that he’s walking away from more than $100 million? I would love to be in on that conversation. 2. He’s within spitting distance of several career milestones: he’s 102 runs scored and 50 runs batted in shy of 2,000. He’s also just 99 hits shy of 3,000. (One might also point out that Rodriguez is 115 home runs away from tying Barry Bonds. The problem is, reaching that mark would require about four very good seasons, and right now, it doesn’t even look like he’s capable of putting together two or three kind of good seasons. I’m not saying it’s impossible for A-Rod to reach 762, but I sure as hell wouldn’t bet on it.) Taking into account that A-Rod is a little sensitive about his legacy, I imagine it would be very difficult for him to walk away when he’s so close to these achievements. I’m going to try and set aside my deep-seated bias towards Rodriguez. As many of you know, he’s one of my least favorite players in the history of Major League Baseball. Even when he was a Seattle Mariner, I never particularly liked the guy. As you would suspect, that indifference became a pretty intense dislike when he skipped town.    I never faulted him for a moment for taking such an insanely rich contract- it was the way he went about it that I found so irritating. He claimed his decision would be entirely about winning, yet he chose to sign with a last place team which, at that point, had no way to compete while paying a single player $25 million a year. Not surprisingly, the Texas Rangers finished dead last in each of A-Rod’s three years in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. (It might actually surprise you that I thought his hijacking of the Yankees in 2007 was far more offensive than his decision to sign with Texas seven years earlier.)   Rodriguez has been such a detriment to the Yankees’ success lately that he’s been benched multiple times. In the playoffs. On a team overflowing with slumping hitters. He’s been so bad that Joe Girardi no longer trusts him to hit against right handed pitching. And since about two thirds of all the pitchers in MLB are right handed, that’s a pretty fucking big problem.   If there’s anyone outside of Yankee Nation who should be shitting their pants at the thought of what A-Rod has become, it’s the stupidly named Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Albert Pujols just put up what was arguably his worst statistical season, and he was in the first of a ten year contract. It was still an excellent year, made even more impressive by the fact that he sucked for the first month of the season, but a dip is a dip. And unlike the Yankees, who at least had the foresight to front-load A-Rod’s contract a little bit, the Pujols deal gets costlier as it goes along (2012 was actually one of the “bargain” years of the Pujols deal- he “only” made $12 million; next year, it goes up to $16 million, then $23 million in 2014, and increases by a million every year thereafter, peaking at $30 million in 2021- at which point Pujols will be 41 years old).   It’s obviously too late for the Angels (and besides, fuck them), but the A-Rod deal should be a warning to teams looking to make a splash- if you need to commit a full decade to a player who’s already in his thirties, don’t fucking do it. Or at the very least, think on it long and hard, because when all is said and done, the money shelled out might be the least of your worries.   In a couple weeks, Josh Hamilton will become a free agent. There have been whispers that he might be looking at a contract in the neighborhood of 8 years at $20 million a year. That would be two years less than the A-Rod/Pujols contracts, but it might be even more irresponsible.    Not only is Hamilton the same age that the others were in their walk years, due to his history of substance abuse and difficulties staying healthy, he’s considered an “old” 31. The nice way of saying it is that he seems to lack the personal discipline that Rodriguez and Pujols have managed for much of their careers. Anyone paying Hamilton 20-plus million dollars a year when he’s 39 years old will live to regret it. (You gotta love making predictions eight years out- even if you’re wrong, there’s almost no chance anybody will remember you said it!) It’s absolutely possible, maybe even likely, Hamilton will be on the decline in two or three years, much less seven or eight.   As for A-Rod, as I mentioned earlier, the trade rumors have commenced. The early favorite is a deal with the Miami Marlins that would require the Yanks to pick up the contract of demoted closer Heath Bell, plus cover most of A-Rod’s remaining salary. This deal would make some sense- Rodriguez is a Miami native, and the Marlins are a team that appear more interested in making a splash than winning ballgames.    On the down side, they play in the NL, meaning A-Rod would have to play third every day. It’s conceivable other teams will get involved- the Angels love big contracts, and lately, so do the Dodgers. In any case, it’s difficult to imagine anyone agreeing to acquire A-Rod unless at least 75% of his salary is covered by the Yankees. The sad part is that the Yanks are probably willing to do that- that’s how badly they reportedly want him out of town.   Here’s, from my perspective, what it all comes down to: what’s happening right now shouldn’t be much of a surprise, because A-Rod is kind of a douchebag. This is what douchebags do- they leave most situations in a worse state than when they arrived. It’s the douchebag code. Yes, the Mariners had one incredible season (and a couple of very good ones) following his departure, but no one could honestly say the M’s were better off without A-Rod’s bat in the middle of their lineup. You think they would have lost 99 games in 2004 with him on the team? The Rangers needed nearly a decade to dig themselves out of their own A-Rod predicament. Yeah, it was their fault for overpaying for his services, but the fact remains the Rangers weren’t a competitive team until nearly a decade after the A-Rod signing.    Now the Yankees find themselves in a similar predicament. For the next five years, they’ll be paying A-Rod eight figures annually through 2017, to not play for them. They’re the wealthiest franchise in baseball, so they’ll survive, but this will still be a liability to the team.(I don’t yet know whether the A-Rod money the Yanks fork over will count against their payroll. If it does, Yankee fans will probably really fucking hate his guts, because the team seems reluctant to exceed the MLB luxury tax.)   The Yankees got one good thing out of the A-Rod experiement (their 2009 championship), but I have to believe they were hoping for a little more. Wade Boggs played third for one of their championship teams, while Scott Brosius manned the hot corner for three of them. Both players were a lot more cost-effective, and more importantly, they didn’t poison the clubhouse.   At this very moment, it would be virtually impossible to speculate on A-Rod’s legacy as a Yankee. We here in Seattle didn’t take too kindly to Ken Griffey Jr. holding us hostage in 1999, but those hard feelings didn’t last that long. And by the time he returned as a Cincinnati Red in 2007, the love-fest was so overwhelming, he was immediately talking about coming “home” someday. Which, of course, he did. Perhaps in a couple years, A-Rod will have a similar Yankee Stadium experience, sans the coming home part. Or maybe they’ll throw batteries at him when he steps into the batters box- wouldn’t rule that out.   This isn’t the most apt comparison, for a number of reasons. First, Griffey was the M’s first superstar, whereas the Yankees have had superstars coming out of their ass for the last 90 years. Second, while you could argue that A-Rod has been just as good, or, some would say, even better, a player than Griffey, he never inspired the kind of emotion that Griffey’s play did. Griffey was graceful- his swing and his play in center were works of art. A-Rod is/was a more workmanlike type of player- the stats are incredibly impressive, but he wasn’t as pretty in getting there. It’s sort of like the difference between standard, efficient, but kind of boring sex, and the wild, mind-blowing variety. The former is still fantastic, but you seldom remember it as fondly as the latter. With that said, I’m pretty sure I’m the first person in history to equate Junior and A-Rod to specific types of sex. I knew God put me here for a reason.   In a very general sense, I almost feel sorry for A-Rod. He was an 18-year-old millionaire, and that can be a treacherous ride. Moreover, he’s quite clearly a very insecure man, and those types of guys tend to overcompensate to such a degree that they end up pissing people off more often than pleasing them. (If you can look me in the eye and tell me that a man purported to have paintings of himself as a centaur hanging in his home is a secure, well-adjusted individual, you are one hell of a good liar.) But that’s where my sympathy ends: you’re worth a couple hundred millions of dollars, dude- get yourself a good therapist.   So many of the greatest players in this wonderful game’s history carry a “what if” tag: what if Griffey and Mickey Mantle could have stayed healthy? What kind of numbers could they have put up? What if Tony Conigliaro hadn’t suffered the horrible eye injury that essentially ended his career at age 26, and his life not so long afterwards? A-Rod’s “what if” is a little different, because it was 100% avoidable- what if he wasn’t such a selfish dick?

Casting the Remaining MLB Playoff Teams as WWE Superstars

I’ve been a pro wrestling fan off and on for most of my life. I watched religiously as a kid before losing interest when I was around 14 or 15. I stayed away until 2006, when my buddy Dave Banuelos burned me some DVDs of recent pay per view events. When I saw Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio squaring off in a ladder match for the custody of Rey’s son, I was once again hooked. The blend of absurdity and top shelf athleticism was too much to ignore. Now, this may not surprise you, but I am occasionally mocked for enjoying wrestling. But my defense is always the same: at its best, it’s damn entertaining stuff. When you get two guys in there who know what they’re doing, it can be great. I also get a kick out of this: although the guys in the ring are creating the illusion that they’re beating the shit out of one another, the goal is the complete opposite- to never ever harm your opponent. Bret Hart is considered an all time great, not just for his longevity and numerous championships, but because, over the course of 20 years and thousands of matches, he was so technically sound that he never injured an opponent.  For the past couple of months, I’ve been watching WWE Monday Night Raw with my sister. Clocking in at a whopping three hours, I wouldn’t recommend tuning in for an entire episode, but the beginning, middle and end of most shows are pretty solid. While looking into the remaining teams in this year’s MLB playoffs, I started thinking about how each club has at least some resemblance to a wrestler currently receiving a lot of screen time on Raw….. The New York Yankees are John Cena. – Considering Cena hails from Massachusetts, something tells me he wouldn’t be too thrilled with this comparison, but if the shoe fits… Cena is WWE’s most popular figure, and he sells the most merchandise. The Yankees are MLB’s most popular franchise and they sells the most merch. That, in and of itself, makes this comparison a slam dunk, but it goes a little deeper than that. Although in all but one case (the 1999 World Series against Atlanta), I’ve rooted against the Yankees in every situation for my entire life, only a fool would fail to see why they deserve our respect. The Yankees are a classy organization, and, for the most part, their players comport themselves as such. You can hate their success and their charmed history, but they’re worthy standard bearers for the game. Cena, while his character is often wildly irritating, is a pretty good guy. The main reason he hasn’t turned heel (wrestling terminology for a bad guy) is that he loves being an ambassador for the company, in particular he enjoys his tireless work on behalf of the Make a Wish Foundation. (There’s also the matter of WWE not wanting to lose out at the concession stands, but that’s another story.) And like the Yankees, Cena has tons of fans who hate his guts, but he’s a good sport about it.* The St. Louis Cardinals are CM Punk. – On October 28, 2011, the Cards became World Champions. Just 23 days later, Punk defeated Alberto Del Rio to become WWE Champion. The comparison is kind of weak, because there’s only one champion crowned per year in baseball, whereas in wrestling, title changes can happen several times in a given day. But the fact remains, both became champions at roughly the same time, and have maintained that distinction. While Punk is, in my view, the most consistently outstanding performer in the business, you could make the same argument for the Cardinals. They possess perhaps the best top to bottom hitting and pitching among the remaining playoff teams, just as Punk excels on both sides of the ball if you will, by being great in the ring and on the microphone. But they, more often than not, remain the underdog, because on paper, they don’t look so great. Well, the game isn’t played on paper, which is why both the Cards and Punk find themselves at the top of their respective professions. The Detroit Tigers are Ryback. – If you haven’t watched much wrestling over the past few months, you probably have no earthly idea who Ryback is. He’s a big brute of a man with a limited move set and no known mic skills, that basically destroys opponents within a minute or two by overpowering them. If you watched wrestling in the late 90’s, think Goldberg– they’re basically the same dude. And earlier this week, he was given a main event match against Punk for the WWE Championship. Unlike Ryback, the Tigers are actually deserving of their status. However, they’re also a top-heavy team that slithered into the playoffs on the strength of their two greatest assets.The Tigers’ best couple of hitters and pitchers allow them to mask some of their other deficiencies, namely lineup depth and defense. I’m not saying the Tigers winning the World Series would constitute an injustice- merely that they’re not quite as complete as many of the other good MLB teams. (However, Ryback winning the title would be an injustice, because fuck him.) The San Francisco Giants are Daniel Bryan. – In baseball, if you were going to pinpoint (in an extremely broad sense) the two most important factors, they would be hitting and pitching. In wrestling, though there are certain other intangibles, it’s also mainly about two things: in-ring work and what you can do on the microphone. Some guys are great at one or the other, yet a precious few can handle both.  Bryan is a guy who, for the better part of the past decade, has been considered perhaps the single greatest technical wrestler in America, if not the world. His mic skills? Well, those haven’t always been as highly praised. In fact, up until his heel turn earlier this year, he was about as bland as possible. As often happens, working heel brought out the best in Bryan on the mic- so much so that he’s clearly one of the best talkers in the business. The Giants are often considered one trick ponies as well- pitching is great, hitting is awful. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. If you look at the Giants march to the 2010 title, yes, the pitching was great, but the hitters stepped up when they needed to. So far in these playoffs, that’s also been the case (today is a terrible example, as the G-Men have stranded about a million base runners through the first five innings). Bryan, like the Giants, doesn’t get the credit he deserves for stepping up his game when it matters. *I have many complaints with the WWE product, but chief among them is my belief that the characters they present offer a pretty ridiculous interpretation of good and evil. If WWE is to be believed, every “good guy” is a pandering candy-ass. However, they frequently exhibit traits that shouldn’t exactly be considered “heroic.” Current World Heavyweight Champion Sheamus often resorts to bullying and name-calling as a means of attacking his opponents. This is especially embarrassing since WWE is deeply involved in an anti-bullying program. While I’m sure much of this strategy has to do with Sheamus’ limited mic skills, it’s still pretty weak stuff.  Also, Cena will occasionally revert back to his original white boy rapper gimmick. When he does this, a solid 75% of his disses are references to the men he’s feuding with being homosexuals. In others words, in WWE’s world, “good guys” are name-calling, homophobic bullies. Bad guys, meanwhile, are apparently morally complex and, um, gay. Alright then. This is why I increasingly find myself rooting for the bad guys- when you look at the big picture, they’re quite often not nearly as asshole-ish as the guys that get cheered.  Admittedly, some of these comparisons are stretches, but it’s just something fun to think about on a day that I don’t really have much to say. I have a piece on the Yankees that I wrote last week, but out of respect for my sister, I’m holding off on that one for a little while. No need to kick somebody when they’re down. That’s what I believe anyway…which means I would probably be a bad guy by wrestling standards. Oh well.

Biggest Disappointments by Division

For every inspiring story of the team that overachieves, that improbably propels themselves to the postseason, there’s another story. For every little engine that could, there’s a bit engine that didn’t. That, my friends, is today’s focus- the great disappointments of the 2012 baseball season. Since there are always quite a few (and since they all make excellent cases for being the most disappointing of the bunch), I’ve selected one for each division. And the losers are…. AL West: Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (89-73; 3rd place) – There aren’t very many teams that should consider a season that resulted in 89 victories a disappointment, but the Halos are one of them. The team won 86 games in a somewhat lackluster 2011, finishing 10 games behind the eventual AL champion Rangers. You would think that retaining virtually every significant part of that team, coupled with signing Albert Pujols and CJ Wilson over the winter would lead to more than a three game improvement. You’d similarly think that adding rookie MVP candidate Mike Trout to the top of the lineup in late April, then acquiring Zack Greinke at the trade deadline would lead to more wins. Well, you’d think wrong. One could try to blame the Angels third place finish on their slow start, but that’s an oversimplification. Yes, they were 9-15 by the end of April, but that’s hardly an insurmountable deficit. By the All Star break, the Angels were just four games behind Texas, and actually leading the wildcard race by two and a half. Translation: they were only 41-35 in the second half, which was only a whisker better than the lowly Mariners were after the break. So you can blame their shitty start all you want, it was the mediocre finish that ruined them. For a team with so much talent, you’re damn right they were disappointing.     AL Central: Cleveland Indians (68-94; 4th place)  (“Honorable” Mention: Tigers, 88-74; 1st place) – Here’s a funny story: the Indians actually spent more time in first place than the eventual champion Tigers did. The reason that’s a knee-slapper is, by the end of the season, only the Minnesota Twins had a worse record among AL squads than the Tribe- and not by much.   At last year’s trade deadline, the Tribe dealt two solid pitching prospects to the Rockies for Ubaldo Jimenez. It was a gamble, as Jimenez was wildly inconsistent following a dominant first half to the 2010 season. As happens more often than not when you gamble, they lost. Jimenez made Tim Lincecum‘s nightmare campaign look like a wild success, going 9-17 with a horrible 5.40 ERA, and an even worse 1.61 WHIP. Oh, and he comported himself like a complete asshole to boot.   On offense, the Indians core guys, Jason Kipnis, Asdrubal Cabrera and Carlos Santana, were just OK, which seldom cuts it, even in the underwhelming AL Central.   It might be a little surprising to see that the Tigers, who begin play in the ALCS today, received some consideration, but there’s a method to my madness: the Tigers should have won the Central in a walk. They’re easily the most talented group in the division, so the fact that they finished with a mere 88 wins, and were chasing the White Sox for most of the year, seems a little silly. It took Herculean efforts by Miguel Cabrera and Justin Verlander down the stretch to finally put them over the top, but it never should have come to that in the first place.     AL East: Boston Red Sox (69-93; 4th place) – In my introduction, I asserted that the most disappointing team overall was a competitive category. Upon further reflection, that was a lie- the Sox fucking own that distinction.   Back when the season was still somewhat young, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that first year manager Bobby Valentine would become “only year manager Bobby Valentine.” But if you had money on the Sox being such a hopeless mess that they traded Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett and Carl Crawford, you must be a wizard or something.   The Sox were a perfect storm of dysfunction and ineptitude. If you had a Yankees or Rays fan map out their perfect scenario for Boston, it might seem mild compared to what actually happened. The 2012 season was a disaster of the highest order.     NL West: Colorado Rockies (64-98; last place) and Arizona Diamondbacks (81-81; 3rd place) (tie) – ,,,,aaaannnnd, we have a tie!! Wooo!!! Although they’ve turned the second half surge into an art form, very few believed the Rocks were October-bound in 2012. But….damn.   OK, look, it doesn’t help much when your franchise player (Troy Tulowitzki) misses 70% of the season. Or that Todd Helton is 80 years old. Still, things never should have unraveled the way they did. (Former) manager Jim Tracy didn’t exactly help by opting to go with an unpopular, and more importantly, unsuccessful, four man rotation.    If a tie is like kissing your sister, then tying the Rockies for most disappointing NL West team must be like blowing your great-grandfather. C’mon down, D-Backs!!   Arizona came out of nowhere to claim the 2011 division crown, them promptly returned to nowhere in 2012. It was probably unreasonable to expect Ian Kennedy to put up a repeat performance of his outstanding 2011 campaign, but expecting 25-year-old outfielder Justin Upton to continue to build off his breakthrough season should have been far more reasonable. He didn’t. While Upton’s batting average and on-base percentage weren’t too far off his 2011 pace, he hit 14 fewer home runs, knocked in 21 less runs, and had a slugging percentage a whopping 99 points lower. Earlier this year, there were whispers that the D-Backs might deal Upton to the Mariners for a package led by uber-prospect Taijuan Walker. No thanks. How does Danny Hultzen sound?     NL Central: Pittsburgh Pirates (79-83; 4th place) – This is by far my most unfair selection, especially since a lot of people would have found 79 wins to be a pretty solid result for the Bucs. But for much of the year, they were so much better for that. The story of the 2012 Pirates went from “Can they win the division?”, to “Can they win the wildcard?”, to “Can they even hang on for a winning record?”Well….“No”, “No”, and “No.”   I thought about choosing the Cubs or Astros, but while both were even worse than expected, it wasn’t by much. These teams were bound to suck hard, and they did just that.     NL East: Miami Marlins (69-93; last place)  (“Honorable” Mention: Phillies, 81-81; 3rd place) – I had a bad feeling about the Marlins from the very beginning. Actually, it was a good feeling, because I hate their guts, but the point is, I wasn’t at all surprised that they struggled. But I never thought they’d lose 93 games and be even worse than the Mets.   As the winter unfolded, the Fish received rave reviews for their signings of Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle and Heath Bell. But what these pundits failed to grasp was that the Marlins appeared to be spending money mainly for the sake of spending money. They signed a shortstop when arguably their best player (the since-departed Hanley Ramirez) manned that position. They inked Buehrle, an innings eater who hadn’t put up an ERA below 3.59 since 2005, to a $15 million a year contract.    (The one signing I can’t fault them for was Bell’s 3 year, $27 million deal. Bell was coming off three seasons of 40-plus saves- for the fucking Padres no less! They couldn’t possibly have known that Bell would turn in such a miserable performance. But hey, when things go bad, they tend to go, as my Uncle Guido might say, “Real bad.”)   When you combine these ill-advised signings with adding Ozzie “Walking Controversy” Guillen as your manager, well, what do you think is gonna happen? To top it all off, they failed to draw even 30,000 fans a game at their brand new (and deeply hideous) ballpark. Can we go ahead and call the MLB in Florida experiment a failure?   The Phillies failed to post a winning record for the first time in what feels like forever, but much of that was a result of losing Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Roy Halladay to injuries. Once they were back, the Phils put on a furious charge, and damn near made the playoffs. But as I learned from years of listening to wrestling announcers, “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.”

Fuckin’ A’s

Billy Beane‘s gonna have to wait at least one more year before he wins that last game. Though they exceeded literally everyone’s expectations by winning the rugged AL West, although they furiously fought back to win Game 4 against Detroit, once again, the A’s are going home early. October just isn’t their thing.

 

The Beane-era Oakland A’s have improbably made the postseason half a dozen times. Since 2000, they’ve won the AL West as many times as the big-spending Angels, and more times than the Rangers and Mariners combined. Nevertheless, they have exactly one playoff series victory to show for these efforts.

 

Figuring out why the A’s haven’t succeeded in the playoffs is a difficult task- so much so that I really haven’t been able to venture what I would consider a credible guess. Here are the best things I could come up with…..

 

1. Young Pitchers Wear Down

– No team has struck gold with pitching prospects more often than Oakland. They had their dominant Big Three (Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito) for several seasons, eventually acquired Dan Haren and Joe Blanton, then Gio Gonzalez and Trevor Cahill, before recycling them and ending up with a stellar group of young pitchers this year. But the downside to very young pitchers is that they lack the durability to carry a team through October.

 

The most glaring example is Game’s 1 and 5 starter Jarrod Parker. Before this season, his career high in innings was 130, in 2011. This season, between Oakland and Sacramento, he totaled 202 innings of work- in the regular season alone. That’s a massive increase in workload. And though Parker was decent in the Division Series, his numbers were the worst among A’s starters (0-2 with a 4.26 ERA). That doesn’t normally cut it this time of year, especially when you’re facing off against Justin Verlander in both starts.

 

The A’s other three playoff starters, AJ Griffin, Brett Anderson and Tommy Milone, actually put up excellent numbers in their sole starts. But they received very little help from the offense. What’s more, had Oakland managed to advance, it’s hard to imagine this staff holding up through the World Series, given that all of them except Anderson (who was coming off surgery and started only six times in 2012) had already exceeded their career highs in innings pitched. The A’s began the year with two veteran starters who might have been a huge boost to their playoff fortunes, but one (Brandon McCarthy) suffered a gruesome head injury over the summer, while another (Bartolo Colon) received a drug suspension.

 

You could make similar arguments for past Oakland teams that fell short- virtually all of them were front-loaded with young pitchers. The only exception might be the 2003 team, that featured the still young, but experienced trio of Hudson, Mulder and Zito. However, they had the misfortune of running into the buzz saw that was the 2003 Red Sox, a team that was probably a horrible managerial decision (“Grady‘s Boner, as Bill Simmons once called it) away from the World Series.

 

My point is that it’s probably not a coincidence that, when we think of pitchers who were World Series heroes, we recall guys like Curt Schilling, Randy Johnson, Andy Pettitte,Orel Hershiser. There are certainly exceptions (Bret Saberhagen in 1985, Cole Hamels in 2008), but they are few and far between.

 

2. Bad Luck/Bad Matchups

– I’ve already alluded to a couple examples of the A’s October misfortune- facing the Sox in 2003, and having to deal with Verlander twice in the series that ended last night. But those instances are just the tip of the iceberg.

 

In 2000 and 2001, they met the New York Yankees juggernaut, a team that was a couple outs away from winning four straight championships. To complicate matters further, that 2001 Yankees team was playing for all of New York (and truthfully, much of America), as those playoffs came on the heels of the September 11 attacks. As if a team as gifted as the Yankees needed something extra to play for! It should also be mentioned that, in 2002, they faced a Minnesota Twins team that was a whisker away from being contracted, and it doesn’t get a whole lot more desperate than that.

 

 

If you’re a glass half-empty type, the most recent A’s playoff ouster could prove particularly disappointing, due to the strength (and uncertainty) of the AL West going forward. The Rangers might decline, or they could be back stronger than ever. It’s a pretty safe bet that the Angels aren’t going anywhere, and even the Mariners have shown signs of improvement. (The new guys, the Astros, are terrible, but they play in one of the largest markets in America, so I doubt that will last forever.) Which is all to say that the 2012 A’s just might prove to be a flash in the pan. When the two time defending AL champs collapse, and an Angels team that features so many great players fails to meet expectations, that’s a gift- one that just doesn’t come along every season.

 

If the Yankees fall to the Orioles this evening, their season will be labeled a disappointment. And justifiably so- you don’t spend $190 on payroll to get knocked out in the Division Series. The A’s, however, would be mistaken to consider 2012 a failure. They battled the lowest payroll in the league, freak injuries to key players, disinterested fans, you name it. Yet they won their division, and took a Tigers team with three of the best players on Earth to the brink. If that’s not a success, I don’t know what is.

A Message to Tim Lincecum

Dear Tim,   It hasn’t escaped my attention that your manager, Bruce Bochy, announced that you won’t be starting in the National League Division Series against the Reds. I would imagine that while this news was humbling and frustrating, it wasn’t altogether shocking- you’ve had a rough go of it this season.   Actually, saying you’ve had “a rough go” is something of an understatement- you kind of sucked. In your first four-plus years as a big league pitcher, you compiled a record of 69 wins against 41 losses (which is more impressive than it sounds, since you’ve never had anything other than a limp-dick offense backing you up). Your first two full seasons ended in Cy Young awards, while your third, though not exactly dominant by your lofty standards, ended in a World Series championship that would have been impossible without you. You posted a losing record in 2011, but that was hardly your fault- your ERA was a sterling 2.74.  And then, 2012 happened. And while I doubt it will prove to be the end of the world, there may have been times when it felt like it to you.   The 2012 season was, let’s be honest, an unmitigated disaster from a personal standpoint. It started horribly, got a little better, then went south again. All in all, you went 10-15 with a miserable 5.18 ERA. You walked waaay too many batters, and, for the first time in a full season, you fell short of 200 strikeouts. Then you were passed over for a playoff start in favor of Ryan Vogelsong and Barry Zito. (For the record, Tim was brought in to finish off the fourth inning and just moments ago, pitched a scoreless fifth inning. So by the time you read this, he will have either held off the Reds to pick up the win, or blown a three run lead. So way to go, Timmy! Or, fuck you. One or the other.)   Well, I have something to say to you, Tim- you can bounce back from this. Oh, I’m not saying you absolutely will, but you can. And I hope that you do.   You’re Tim motherfucking Lincecum! The guy who several teams passed on in the Draft because you’re little and your mechanics are weird. (Sure, smaller pitchers are seldom as durable as bigger ones, but so what? Pedro Martinez may have been broken down at 35, but he was pretty fucking amazing before that. You think the Red Sox regret acquiring him? Me neither.)    We in Seattle remember that Draft all too well. You’re a local guy- born in Bellevue, a high school star in Renton and a collegiate star for UW. And we were eyeing a pitcher. Unfortunately, we opted for Brandon Morrow. Other than choosing Jeff Clement instead of Ryan Braun or Troy Tulowitzki, it was the dumbest draft day move in recent Mariner history. Though it’s worked out pretty well for you.   Although you’re roughly the size of a coat rack, you’re the only pitcher in baseball who can go get high, consume a four thousand calorie lunch, then go out and strike out a dozen batters. Entering the 2010 World Series, no one had ever beaten Cliff Lee in a playoff game- and you did it twice in the span of a week. You’re Tim fucking Lincecum!!   Though it pains me to say it, even though you’re only 28 years old, it’s conceivable that your best days are behind you. But maybe, just maybe, they’re not. Maybe there are more Cy Young’s in your future. Maybe there are more rings on the horizon. You have (knocks on wood), managed to stay healthy. And even though you’ve lost some velocity on your fastball, you’re still striking out more than a batter per inning. If opposing hitters decide to take you lightly now that you’ve struggled, they do so at their own peril. You can bounce back from this.   I’m not just saying this because you’re perhaps my favorite baseball player. I’m saying it because I’ve always had a soft spot for the underdog, and, as much as a 2-time Cy Young winner can be, you, sir, are something of an underdog- probably more so now than any time since you debuted.    Perhaps owing to the fact that the sun is only visible around 12 days a year, the Seattle area hasn’t exactly produced a ton of top shelf major leaguers- former Blue Jays, Mets and Mariners star John Olerud, and the great Ron Santo come immediately to mind. And you, Tim, could be the best of them all. You’re The Freak. You’re The Franchise. You’re Big Time Timmy Jim. And I’m rooting for you so damn hard, brotha.