TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Saturday, October 16, 2004

Doing The Rotation Math

It's unclear whether this will matter the way the Yankees are teeing off on the Boston staff right now, but this has to be the somewhat improvised plan for the rotation, which the guys at Fox just can't seem to figure out. Assuming the Red Sox need to press Wakefield into service AND that he can go on two days rest, Boston would most likely be looking at:

Game 3 - Arroyo + Wakefield + the entire Red Sox bullpen the way things look now.
Game 4 - Lowe
Game 5 - Martinez
Game 6 - Wakefield
Game 7 - Arroyo or Schilling

I gotta ask, is this really that hard to figure out? Why is it such an earth-shattering revelation that Martinez can pitch on Monday after pitching last Wednesday? Wakefield relieved in Game 1 as the scheduled Game 4 starter, which would have been three days rest. Is two days rest that much different for a knuckleballer? Come on, guys.

Now Wakefield is in there and it doesn't seem to matter that much. Sierra just touched him for a two-run triple for an 11-6 Yankees lead. If Wakefield can hold the Yankees there through the 6th, that's about as much as you can hope for as a Red Sox fan, I'd guess. So much for that deep Red Sox bullpen, I guess.

posted by Tom Renbarger 7:07 PM

So, there may or may not be technical difficulties in communications between David and myself, so I've posted the ALCS update with a couple of bonus addenda here in The Bullpen for the moment.

Lieber Keeps Series Unpivoted in Game 2

The Yankees head to Boston with a two games to none lead over the Red Sox, thanks largely to the mastery Yankee starters Mike Mussina and Jon Lieber have displayed their first two times through Boston's lineup. But if the manner in which the games unfolded is any reflection on how the series will progress, the Red Sox still have some life in them as they head home.

It was clear from the start that the Curt Schilling we saw in Game 1 was nowhere near the one who helped carry the D-backs to their 2001 title or threw seven solid innings against the Angels. While the two runs Schilling surrendered in the first might be laid partly at the feet of BoSox LF Manny Ramirez, the second time through the lineup was pretty much the Yankees dismantling the struggling ace in the third, as Schilling gave up four runs in the final inning of his shortest postseason appearance. New York then touched scheduled Game 4 starter Tim Wakefield for a pair of runs in the sixth, a less than encouraging sign for Red Sox Nation.

Meanwhile, Mussina was dominant, carrying a perfect game into the seventh inning. Mark Bellhorn broke up the perfecto bid with his one-out double, and at that point the Red Sox projected to have a total of five hits in a Yankee sweep, but they managed to log that many hits by the time the inning was done, capped by Jason Varitek's two-run shot off Tanyon Sturtze to make the game 8-5 Yankees. Tom Gordon had his troubles in the 8th, and a debateable decision to leave him in to face David Ortiz as the potential tying run, and Ortiz nearly did tie the game, winding up with a two-run triple before being stranded there by Mariano Rivera. The Red Sox managed to get the tying run to the plate after the Yankees pushed their lead to 10-7, but Rivera coaxed a 1-6-3 double play to end the game.

Jon Lieber was nearly as good as Mussina in Game 2, and was more economical in his pitches, getting through the first 5 1/3 innings having thrown only 47. Johnny Damon had an epic 16-pitch at-bat that culminated in a whistler to Bernie Williams that he had some trouble handling. Lieber made it all the way to the eighth, giving way to Gordon after a leadoff single. Gordon permitted that runner to score, but Rivera again stranded an inherited runner at third and worked a solid ninth, giving up a one-out double to Ramirez but flashing the form we're all accustomed to seeing from him as he struck out Ortiz and Kevin Millar to end the game. Pedro Martinez's parentage remains somewhat in doubt after his effort, six innings of work that went from good to just so-so after John Olerud's two-run homer in the sixth.

Now in Game 3 the matchup will be Kevin Brown vs. Bronson Arroyo. The Red Sox roughed Brown up in his first start back off the DL, knocking him out in the first inning on Sept. 26 at Fenway. Brown has rebound with a pair of solid efforts in the Yankees' season closer against Toronto and in his Game 3 start against the Twins in the division series. Arroyo was 2-7 through the end of June but rebounded to get his record to 10-9 by season's end, settling in as the Red Sox's second most dependable starter down the stretch, and offering a good six innings of two-run ball against the Angels in the division series clincher. The Red Sox desperately need to do some damage before the third time through their order, but if the Brown who showed up in his last two starts appears again on Friday, the Sox will be in big trouble.

The one thing that might give pause before crowning the Yanks as AL champs is the fact that in the two games where they've taken big leads, Game 3 vs. the Twins and Game 1 vs. Boston, the bullpen surrendered enough of the lead to force Joe Torre to use Mariano Rivera. That means the rallies are there for the taking, even against guys like Sturtze and Gordon who've been so good down the stretch. In the five trips to the bullpen that Torre has made, only once has a Yankee reliever managed not to give up an extra-base hit, and in that inning the Red Sox still managed to get the tying-run to the plate against Rivera. I look for a desperate Red Sox club to claw their way to victory in Game 3, and then a wild showdown between Javier Vazquez and Tim Wakefield to be the fulcrum of the series. A 2-2 standing after four makes it a race, a 3-1 Yankees lead means doom for Boston given a gauntlet of Mussina, Lieber, and Brown to run for a trip to the World Series.

Update!

Well, I got this piece out so fast I didn't know about Schilling's more-or-less season-ending injury. That's big trouble, unless it was really Derek Lowe pitching in a Curt Schilling costume all along. The Red Sox are looking to be a slight underdog to even make it back to Yankee Stadium at this point. The Sox better bring their boom sticks to the plate this weekend. Maybe with a scratched out win on Friday and El Duque, who's just been named the Game 4 starter for New York, not quite back to top form, the Red Sox can still get it back to a best-of-3 situations. Stay tuned, sports fans.

Bonus Update!!

Tonight's rainout has kind of a complicated effect on the series, in my view. In the short term, it definitely favors the Yankees -- an extra day's rest for Brown and especially El Duque has to help, and the back end of the Yanks' bullpen will be ready to go. The Red Sox, by contrast, have a deeper pen and a Game 4 starter in Wakefield that don't really need the extra rest.

Having said that, the longer the Red Sox can stretch the series, the more the rainout will help them. The big thing is getting Pedro to pitch at home in Game 5 on Monday with full rest. I keep seeing that Derek Lowe is slated to start Game 5, but I'd slip him back to Game 6 myself, particularly if it's 3-1 going into Game 5. And that bullpen depth will come into play if the Red Sox can force a return to the Bronx. There's even the possibility of a Dramatic Return for Curt Schilling in Game 7, and if not, then we could see an Arroyo + Wakefield 5 + 2 inning sort of deal if the series actually makes it to Wednesday night.

posted by Tom Renbarger 1:04 AM

Friday, October 15, 2004

Baseball-Reference.com Adds 2004 Stats

Our friends at baseball-reference.com have posted the 2004 stats into their database. Of course, the first guy I looked at in his new all-time contexts was Barry Bonds. Something remarkable jumps out at one everytime one takes a fresh look at his jacket, and today I was noticing Barry's similarity scores by age. He's now most similar to Willie Mays and Babe Ruth by career, and the top ten of his similarities area ll Hall of Famers (save Rafael Palmeiro). (His similarity scores to anybody, however, are going down -- he's only a 797 (79.7%) to Willie Mays -- because his uniqueness as a hitter is making him more of an outlier.) But if you look at it by age, Barry started out similar to Tom Brunansky at age 22, Jack Clark at 23, Bobby Bonds at 27, Greg Luzinski at 28, and Shawn Green at 29. Only at 30 does he compare up to a Hall of Famer, Duke Snider, and then he compares to Frank Robinson, Ken Griffey Jr, Mickey Mantle, and finally Willie Mays at age 39. I truly hope Bonds can be exonerated from any potential taint of this record by allegations of steroid use, because interpreting the arc of his career since age 30 is going to be an extremely difficult task otherwise. We know he's demographically an utter outlier now. Why? is the question. Baseball is already one of the few sports where its star athletes bloom "late", starting at age 27, in part due to the fact that the central skills of the sport must be supplemented by knowledge, insight, experience -- wisdom. Part of that wisdom, of course, is tuning one's body to the sport, and Bonds has clearly done that even while he's developed the greatest batting eye since Ted Williams. Since Ted Williams? Williams led the AL in walks eight times (he surely would have done it more without his military service intervening), with a steak of seven ending at age 32 and one last time at age 35. He led the league in OPS at age 39, like Barry -- but by only 7 points over Mickey Mantle, with Rock Colavito close behind. This year, with a seasonal age of 39, Bonds was nearly 350 points ahead of his trailers, Todd Helton and Albert Pujols. There seem to be more players than ever 40 and older playing at star levels. Is Bonds the first of a new kind of ballplayer, or just the most unique (hitter) ever? Time on all these counts will tell, of course.

posted by The Crank 8:42 AM

Monday, October 11, 2004

How to Honor Ken Caminiti:

SUSPEND FURCAL

It's extremely sad to see a man with a family die at the age of 41, no matter what the cause, no matter how preventable. Ken Caminiti ultimately had to take the responsibility for his spiral into drug abuse. But baseball gets a little bit of the blame, for not having a steroids-testing program, for not working harder to eliminate the culture of artificial aids, and most of all, for not eliminating the idea that success in the game matters more than anything else.

I am so very sorry to report that MLB continues its wretched ways. Rafael Furcal, following the Braves' elimination tonight, will report for a 49-day jail sentence for his second DUI violation. Why a judge let Furcal continue to defer this sentence so recently after the violation itself took place is something the citizens of Georgia will have to take up. (I don't see Martha Stewart's sentencing judge, for example, giving her another few weeks off before reporting for jail so she can help her company's bottom line during the all-important end of the quarter.)

But MLB has a long history of taking its own action on players' behavior when it chooses to, and it did nothing to prevent Furcal from playing. Mr. Selig's powers are such that he could have simply suspended Furcal until after his sentence was complete. But he chose, through inaction, to send the message that having a competitive Braves' team in the playoffs was more important than Justice.

This is not an idle infraction. Drunk driving is a serious crime, and results in tens of thousands of fatalities every year. You can say "well, he's a young man, he just made a few mistakes," but anytime you make a mistake like that you're taking somebody else's life into your hands. Milton Bradley almost certainly has an anger problem, and his on-field conduct the last week of the season merited a five-game suspension. Jose Guillen's childish antics got him an indefinite suspension from the Angels. Rafael Furcal was on the verge of killing innocent people, and his punishment from baseball is -- nil.

If baseball wants to make something of Caminiti's memory, it's by not tolerating illegal abuse that presents a danger to others. By all means, get the guys who have this problem help. Most employers who have this sort of progran for their employees immediately remove them from the workplace and get them into treatment, or if they're convicted of crimes, they're removed to serve their sentence.

Baseball suspended John Rocker because he shot his mouth off. Maybe that was appropriate. Rafael Furcal, getting behind that wheel and speeding off, was engaged in the moral and actual equivalent of randomly shooting off a loaded, deadly weapon. I, for one, am happy for the people of Atlanta that the Braves lost, because it got one more drunk driver off their roads that much quicker.

Why Mr. Selig could not bring himself to take Furcal off the diamond is a question that must be answered. Until baseball is willing to sacrifice competitive play -- and ratings, and money -- for the sake of doing the right thing, whatever paeans paid by the sport to one of its fallen tragic heroes, Ken Caminiti, will be hypocritical and hollow.

posted by The Crank 8:59 PM

Sunday, October 10, 2004

Ken Caminiti 1963-2004

Ken Caminiti died of a heart attack in New York this weekend. There will soon be a media frenzy where most of the talk will surround steroids and cocaine.

The irony is that I remember there was a time when Caminiti was held up as a model of clean living. When he won his MVP the buzz was that he was able to turn his career around by kicking a drinking habit that was masking his true talent. Only that wasn't the real story, and he never seemed to be able to kick other habits that were even worse.

The picture that goes with this article was shot at the last game at Jack Murphy Stadium. There were many big cheers for returning players. Of course, Tony Gwynn got the loudest ovation, but the locals certainly let Caminiti know that their memories of him were fond ones, and that he was welcome to come home. One of the other large ovations was for Mike Darr Jr., who went into right field with Phil Nevin and Gary Matthews Jr. Darr's father was a Padre who died in a car accident. And now, a little over a year later, another life that was just cut too short.

posted by David 11:16 PM