A few days ago, the San Francisco Giants swept the Detroit Tigers out of the World Series. It was the 21st World Series sweep in history, out of the 108 played since 1903. (The was no World Series in 1904 or 1994.) When the Tigers swept the Yankees, it was the 19th total LCS sweep, out of 86 total since 1969.
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With their victory tonight, the St. Louis Cardinals are up 2-1 in the NLCS and in good position to defend their National League title from 2011. They are also, by far, the most farm-developed team in the hunt for the World Series. As John Sickels recently wrote, 64 percent of their roster was developed by their farm system, compared to 40 percent for the Giants and 32 percent each for the Tigers and Yankees. The Cardinals famously developed the first modern farm system, under Branch Rickey. They are still, clearly, ahead of the curve.
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I defended the Nationals’ decision to shut down Stephen Strasburg before the end of the regular season and prevent him from pitching in the postseason. Few outside the team were defending the decision publicly then, and even fewer are doing it now, with the team on the brink of elimination — they could be eliminated from the playoffs this afternoon, with Ross Detwiler pitching against Kyle Lohse. On Wednesday, Ken Rosenthal quoted an unnamed Nats player as saying, “If we had ‘Stras, we’d be up 2-0.”
So there are two questions being asked. The overt question is, would the Nationals be in a better position in the playoffs if they still had Strasburg? But that assumes an affirmative answer to this question: would the Nationals be in their current position in the playoffs if they had treated Strasburg differently — either skipping his starts, pitching him every sixth day, or simply holding him in extended spring training and starting him later in the year?
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As Bradley Woodrum wrote a week ago, Adam Greenberg finally got a second chance in the majors, thanks to a petition on Change.org. He struck out in three pitches against R.A. Dickey, but there’s little shame in that. He approached it like a big leaguer: “He beat me last night, but I’m really hopeful that last night isn’t the last night we’re going to face each other.”
Not a lot of people get a second chance at the big leagues. Few enough get a first chance. However, as it happens, Greenberg’s position is even rarer than that. In the history of baseball, since 1871, 17,941 players have made the major leagues for at least one game. But just 200 of them — 1.1 percent — only played one game. Just 74 players, 0.4 percent, received only one plate appearance. In other words, most players who are good enough to make the majors are good enough to get more than one bite at the apple.
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“Media who attend a USC practice are asked not to report on strategy or injuries that are observed during the course of watching that practice or result from that practice. … USC allows media access into all of its practices, and those practices are closed to the general public, and therefore USC asks that the media not disclose information that is observed or learned that could put USC at a competitive disadvantage to opponents.”
— Official media policy on football practices, University of Southern California, as of 8/26/2012“As a condition of entry to UW football practices, all visitors and members of the media are hereforth prohibited from reporting on strategy or injury-related news observed during practices.”
— Official media policy on football practices, University of Washington, as of 9/12/2012
Yes, we collapsed in the second half, but if we get some pitching help in the offseason, we could contend next year. #talklikeapirateday
— Ruben Bolling (@RubenBolling) September 19, 2012
We can fairly well predict that the Pirates are not going to make the playoffs this year, for the 20th straight season. They still have a fighting chance at their first winning record in two decades, as they stand at 74-74 after Game 148, but that looked almost like a lock before their 11-17 August and their 4-13 September.
So why do the Pirates always suck in September? If you look at the team’s win totals, month by month, from 1993-2011 — their record 19 straight losing seasons, you see a remarkable pattern emerge:
Welcome to the future. In the all-new, sleek and streamlined 2013 schedule that MLB just released, every division will have the same number of teams, every team will play the same number of intradivision and interleague games, and there will be “at least one Interleague game every day.”
The Astros’ move to the AL West makes all of this standardization possible. Every team will play exactly 19 games against each of the other four teams in its division (76 total), 6-7 intraleague games against each of the 10 teams in the other two divisions (66 total), and 20 interleague games. The season will begin right after the World Baseball Classic, on March 31, and will end on September 29. (No word on whether the playoffs will end before November.)
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The thing about Bobby Valentine: he has never finished first.
“I gave my heart, I gave my soul, and I gave every waking hour I had to the Texas Rangers organization and family… If anybody wants anything more than that, I just don’t have it to give.” — Associated Press, 7/9/1992
He’s been a manager for 23 years, 16 in the majors, two in the minors, and seven in Japan, managing five teams in total: the Texas Rangers, the Norfolk Tides, the Chiba Lotte Marines, the New York Mets, and now the Boston Red Sox. In those 23 years, he has a career record of 1817-1729-23 (there are tie ballgames in Japan). His teams have finished in second place seven times, and have gone to the playoffs four times. He took the Mets to the World Series NLCS in 1999 and the NLCS World Series in 2000, the only back-to-back playoff appearances in franchise history. He has won a championship, the 2005 Japan Series. But he has never finished first.
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Because he is a man who hates joy, Walt Jocketty said yesterday that Billy Hamilton would “probably not” be called up to the majors in September, as the Reds put the finishing touches on a first-place campaign. (Hamilton has been assigned to the Peoria Javelinas of the Arizona Fall League.) But you never know — as Lloyd Christmas might say, there’s a chance — so I think it’s still worth writing about Sliding Billy, the man who could reach the century mark in steals for the first time in a quarter-century.
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Stephen Strasburg is up to 145 1/3 innings, and the Washington Nationals are sticking to their guns: once Strasburg hits 180 innings or so, he’s done for the year, and that’s that.
There are two common arguments against this plan: 1) 180 is a number they picked out of thin air, and there’s no evidence that demonstrates that this type of shutdown will actually keep Strasburg healthier in the future; and 2) The Nats are a playoff team, and the Nats will be sorely hurt by depriving themselves of their fireballing ace. Most outside commenters (from Leo Mazzone to the Braves’ Chipper Jones to current Washington Nationals like Mark DeRosa) are displeased with the plan; everyone agrees that it’s risky. I will now attempt to defend the plan.
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