 |  |
 |
| Monday, May 20 Updated: May 21, 3:16 PM ET Baker's Dozen: The week in preview By Jim Baker Special to ESPN.com |
||||||||||
|
1: Best Matchup of the Week Hey, would it kill anybody to gerrymander a Roger Clemens versus Pedro Martinez duel? Huh? Come on! Let's get it on!
2: The Best Man-to-Man Matchup of the Week Except that, so far, it has not been much of a matchup. Bonds has a career .619 OPS against Johnson. That's not surprising, though. Of the eight Giants who've faced him more than 20 times, only Rich Aurilia (1.069) has an OPS over .649. Bonds has two doubles, four singles and two walks in 31 plate appearances in his career against the Big Unit. This is a stunning testimony to Johnson's talents. Against most everyone else, Bonds is basically unstoppable, but against Johnson, he's Rey Ordonez. Amazing. Maybe Bonds should turn around and bat right-handed against him.
3: The Old School Matchup of the Week It's a busy week for the Old Originals -- those teams who began the 20th Century in the cities in which they still reside. They've got 17 games scheduled this week. For starters, there is this matchup -- Boston's Old Original season opener -- then, there's Cleveland at Detroit, Detroit at Chicago White Sox, Cincinnati at St. Louis, Pittsburgh at Chicago Cubs and St. Louis at Pittsburgh. Here are the standings of all Old Original Only games. (That is, intraleague games pitting these teams against one another.)
American
National
4: The Biggest Mismatchup of the Week I present the following for two reasons. The first is that I wanted to prove to you that there is such a thing as a Devil Rays fan and the second is that I much prefer an optimistic world view to a pessimistic one. With that in mind, here is the take of a very dedicated and optimistic -- but still well-grounded -- Tampa Bay follower on his team's trip to visit that 70 Percent Monster, the Seattle Mariners. Dear Jim: I presume you'll call out Tampa Bay-Seattle as next week's Mismatchup of the Week, and I couldn't argue. However, the Rays have a great chance to take two of three in this series. In Game 1, Seattle will go up against Joe Kennedy, one of the better lefties in the league right now. The M's will be coming off a tough set against Boston, they hit marginally worse vs lefties (maybe a bit more than "marginally" with Edgar out), and they've never faced Kennedy before; if they don't bring their 'A' game, they are in trouble. Meanwhile, in Game 3 of this series, the M's will face Paul Wilson. In two late-season starts last year, Wilson gave up only 1 run in 14 IP vs the M's (13 H, 3 W, 0 HR). Bottom line, Seattle should be favored, but it's no cakewalk.
Gus Papadopoulos
5: The Personal Services Matchup of the Week Did you ever wonder how some pitchers rate their own personal catcher? And I don't mean difficult pitchers to catch -- like knuckleballers -- but guys who throw the ball with all their might. Matt Morris has one in Mike DiFelice. The two of them will be the battery in this game against the Astros on Thursday afternoon. The first time I rememeber this was when Tim McCarver was Steve Carlton's guy in Philadelphia. I'm sure it went on before then. As you can imagine, it's the pretty good guys who get to demand one. None of us can imagine Ryan Rupe going to management in Tampa Bay and demanding his own backstopper, can you? Personally, I'd like to start having all sorts of personal lackeys. I'd like my own guy at the car wash, at the barber shop, at McDonald's ("No, I only work with Phillip -- he knows how I need my fries done") and, of course, at the city dump (someone who can show me just the exact spot that would make a final resting place for my refuse). The Cardinals have a three-way battle going for their catching job right now. It's between these gentlemen: Catcher (age) '02 OPS Career OPS Eli Marrero (28) .746 .661 Mike Matheny (31) .721 .621 Mike DiFelice (32) .626 .646While catchers don't always have to contribute the way other players do on the offensive end of things, it would be nice if they showed up with a bat in their equipment bags once in a while. On that end, Marrero is probably the best bet here. He is 6 for 6 in steals this year, but he is no center fielder, although Tony LaRussa actually started him there earlier this season. Matheny gets the nod on defense, and is actually 100 points over his startlingly low career OPS at the moment. Before teams started carrying 16 pitchers or so, having three catchers on hand was never a big deal.
6: The Bargain of the Year Matchup For you younger readers, this is a called a "doubleheader." Like the Tasmanian Tiger, the last of which died years ago, doubleheaders are just about extinct. Only acts of God can cause them now. So rare are they, in fact, that the Cubs marketing department reports that they have nothing planned for the slack time between the games. No Shriners in miniature cars. No sack races between local drunken, corrupt politicos. No cow-milking contests between players. No Harry Caray look-alike contests. Nothing. But that's OK. You still get to see two major-league baseball games for the price of one. What else could you want out of life?
7: The Best Barbecue Matchup of the Week Neither of these teams are going anywhere, so we might as well talk about what really counts: which geographic locale has the best barbecue? I've lived in both places and I will not venture an opinion at this juncture. (I would liken it to picking between Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle; even if you figure out which one was better, what you have left over is still better than everybody else.) Is it a matter of personal taste, or is there really a quantifiable way to figure this out? I will say this: I would like to die trying to figure it out.
8: The If You Don't Blow Your Own Horn The Valves Will
Stick Shut Matchup of the Week Two weeks ago, I wrote of a Randy Johnson versus Pittsburgh Pirates matchup: "In terms of pure probability of victory, tonight's game in this series has got to be the most lopsided." When Johnson lost to the Pirates and Josh Fogg, many of you wrote in to remind me of my failed prediction. Last Monday, I wrote this about the Atlanta at Colorado series: "Unleash that undernourished Braves attack on those humidified balls and I will gladly take the under to Mr. Adair's over in all three games," in reference to physicist Robert Adair's belief that it would take years to determine if the low scoring at Coors Field thus far this year was simply an anomaly or not. Well, look what happened:
Braves, 4-2 I believe the standard line at Coors remains 10 1/2. That would make me right on all three counts, would it not? So, where are the congratulatory telegrams? The Padres bring their broken spoke offense into the unforgiving heights this week and I think we'll see a continuation of the low-scoring antics of the Braves series. The Padres have only managed to score five runs 15 times in 44 games. If not for the courage of their fearless pitching crew, this minnow would be lost. And you can take that to (Bob) Denver, baby, where it will be more of the same.
9: The But Then Barry Bonds Shows Up to Really Test Out
the Theory Matchup of the Week Bonds, fresh off tangling with Randy Johnson at The Bob, will then fly up to really give the humidor conspiracy theory a workout. Doesn't The Humidor Conspiracy Theory sound like the name of a '60s San Francisco band? You know, the kind that would try to incite America's youth to "smell the colors" and "hear the sights." They would have been called a "poor man's Quicksilver Messenger Service" by Crawdaddy magazine. They'd all be dead by now, of course. Or insane. Or members of Congress. Or a little of all three.
10: The History Made While-U-Wait Matchup of the Week The moment you've all been waiting for: the major-league debut of Mark Prior, the so-called 'Greatest College Pitcher Ever.' (This is quite a coincidence, as I was once thought to be the 'Greatest College Student Ever. No, that isn't quite accurate. Now I remember! It was 'Greatest College Procrastinator Ever.) Through the auspices of the Cubs' wretched start, Prior has been moved up from the farm to the regular rotation. Not that he wouldn't have ended up there anyway, it's just that the door has opened a little earlier than if the Cubs hadn't already eliminated themselves from serious contention. Thinking about Prior's debut, I was suddenly struck with an idea for a book. The working title is "My First Game in the Majors." and it would chronicle the opening game of famous and not-so-famous careers. Of course, it would be about more than that. It would be a nice platform to discuss all sorts of baseball matters. The meaning of life itself would get some play. And there would be sex and violence, of course -- for the commercial upside.
11: The Battle for the Hearts and Minds of New Jersey
Matchup of the Week For Jerseyans, this rivalry should be like a more recent, more geographically compressed version of the Cubs-Cardinals thing they have going in Illinois. But it isn't. I blame the looming monolith of the Yankee Empire.
12: The Rookie or Not, Here He Comes Matchup of the Week When Ichiro Suzuki won the Rookie of the Year Award last year, there was a lot of carping that he wasn't a true rookie (while the real carping should have been about his Most Valuable Player Award). Now that another Japanese player, Ishii, is setting the table for some best rookie hardware himself, we'll hear more of the same. This brings up the question: Where would you rate Japanese baseball in terms of quality? If your argument is that these men are not truly rookies, then you must, therefore, also be stating that the top leagues in Japan are equivalent to the American majors, right? Are you ready to do that? Is anyone ready to make that case? I'm not. Someday, maybe. I say that Ichiro was a rookie the way that Earl Averill was in 1929 and Ishii is the way Lefty Grove was in 1925.
13: The Revenge of the Ubernerds Matchup of the Week Jim Baker's 'Baker's Dozen' column appears on Mondays during the baseball season. He also writes Monday through Friday for ESPN Insider. |
| |||||||||
for the details on the Indians and Blue Jays and their quest for .500.
