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| Monday, May 27 Updated: May 28, 9:58 AM ET Baker's Dozen: The week in preview By Jim Baker Special to ESPN.com |
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1: Best Matchup of the Week Much was made of the fact that last year, without Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling on the mound, the Diamondbacks were something quite less than ordinary. This year, the dichotomy in success in the games they start is even more pronounced. The two are pert near a sure thing at this point, while the rest of the staff struggles along about where they were last year:
2001 Arizona winning percentage in games Johnson &
Schilling started: .743
2002 Arizona winning percentage in games Johnson &
Schilling started: .905 The Giants, lucky them, will miss the Johnson dosage in this series, but it is not possible to miss both of them in a four-game set, and they'll have to deal with Schilling.
2: Worst Matchup of the Week Has it already been 15 years since these two teams fought to the death in the final weeks of the season for the right to lose to the Destiny-bound Minnesota Twins in the ALCS? That 1987 race remains one of the unheralded great races of all time. The two teams met in seven of their last 11 games and each contest was decided by one run. That's some high drama right there. That the Blue Jays lost their last seven games (four to the Tigers) to lose the pennant by two games also seems lost in the dust of time as one of the more apparent chokes in history. After that race, the teams went off on divergent paths. The Tigers managed a better record than Toronto the next year, but have only done so twice since, and then by only four games in the strike-shortened 195 season and by three in 1997. On average, the Jays have been 10 games better per year in the post-'87 race era. The Jays won two World Championships while the Tigers have finished over .500 just three times, the last coming in 1993. In 2002, we find them both out of the running before Memorial Day, fighting to stay out of the basements of their respective divisions. One thing that is fun to do -- and highly speculative -- is to ponder which team has the better season in store for next season. Both of these clubs have new GMs with some cachet in Dave Dombrowski and J.P. Ricciardi, so it is likely that they will both be better in 2003. In the meantime, just remember that this is still big-league hardball and therefore bears watching.
3: Biggest Mismatchup of the Week How about reader and Rays fan Gus Papadopoulos using this space to speculate about the unthinkable last week? And how about me having the foresight to use his letter? Huh? For those of you who missed it, Gus thought the Rays had a pretty good chance of going into Seattle and taking two out of three – which is just what they did. As he points out in a follow-up letter, though, they will probably have a tougher time of it in the return matchup for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the Mariners are roadmasters of the highest order and that Joe Kennedy will not get a shot at them this time around.
4: The Annual Gathering of the Cleanmouthed Sporting Fans
Association: Outfield Bleachers, Yankee Stadium The Yankee Stadium bleachers: where porn stars blush.
5: The K-Mart Matchup of the Week So named because they are one-two in team strikeouts in the National League. While neither is on pace to break the record set by Milwaukee last year, they could both end up with over 1,200. Which, in this day and age, almost doesn't qualify as news. As we have all learned by now -- ideally -- offensive strikeouts are not the end of the world. Both teams are in the upper half of the league in runs scored.
6: The Crime Doesn't Pay ... or Does It? Matchup of the Week The Pirates are back to their old ways, melting what few runners they have in failed steal attempts and busted hit and run plays. They are currently 29 for 53, the worst success rate in the National League. Their opponents this week, the Cubs, are an amazing 30 for 33 so far. For an entire team to be stealing at the success rate of my ESPN colleague, Joe Morgan, it is most incredible. Only Mark Bellhorn, Alex Gonzalez and Roosevelt Brown have been caught so far. Despite the dichotomy in basestealing antics, neither team is scoring worth a damn, ranking 14th (Cubs) and last (Pirates) in the NL in runs scored.
7: The Those Who Do Not Learn From History Are Doomed to
Have to Take It Again Next Semester Matchup of the
Week These teams meet at an interesting juncture. Their won-loss records are fairly comparable, yet the preseason expectations for each were polarized. In spite of the loss of Jason Giambi, most thought the A's were a lock for the Wild Card (I capitalize it because I respect the institution so much) and the Orioles were ticketed for a hoboes with broken fortified wine bottles duel with Tampa Bay for last place. Let us not forget, though, where these two found themselves at this time last year. Oakland had battled to get to .500 and was spinning its wheels in the mud and the Orioles were, once again, surprising the baseball world by being just below .500. With the clear-eyed vision of hindsight, we know that both eventually went off to their predetermined fates: the Orioles finished at .391 and the A's soared to .630.
8: The It's Not As Easy As it Looks Matchup of the Week My ESPN colleague, Tony Gwynn, has a great answer to an often-asked question in his recent chat. A reader, querying for a "friend" (a tact often used by people asking for love-life advice), wonders if a typical guy off the street could hit .100 in the major leagues, given a year of training and 500 at-bats. This gets to the root of what most of us are thinking when we watch major league baseball: "How hard can it be?" Two things have occurred in the last 24 hours that reinforce for me just how dead on Gwynn's answer to the question is. First of all, I was at a Texas League game in Round Rock last night. A sort of everyman type won an opportunity to win a house if he could hit a pitched ball over the fence. He got to see 10 pitches at which he could take three swings. Sadly, this chap didn't even lay the bat on the ball -- and the pitcher wasn't even throwing off the mound. The speed looked to be around 50 mph. In the contestant's defense, his bat was much too big (think of Babe Ruth's tree trunk-like instrument) and he was clearly not athletic. The second thing was that just before sitting down to write this, I happened to visit the local batting cages. (As a side note, if you really like baseball -- I mean, love every aspect of the game -- you should be able to find enjoyment at a batting cage just watching people taking cuts.) I took a few cuts at some massive 60-mph fastballs and congratulated myself for blasting a couple. I'm sure that, if I went there every day, I could probably get the same results by working up to 80. At 90 I think the wheels would come off the cart, because that is where light begins to bend for the normal person. Of course, these are straight balls. There is no chicanery on the part of the pitching machine. They come out of the same spot and come to the same spot every pitch. Batting cages are fun and good exercise but they are nothing like a virtual reality toy that simulates major league game conditions. As Gwynn says: "I can't explain how difficult it is to hit a baseball at 90 mph. Just getting over the fear factor is No. 1. If you take the softest tossing pitcher in the league, he'd still have trouble because it won't be straight." Perhaps the best evidence we have for what it would be like for somebody like you and me to go up against major league pitching would be the experience of country music star Garth Brooks and his stint with Gwynn's Padres during spring training of 1999. Brooks managed one hit against spring training-caliber pitching: a slow roller off Mike Sirotka of the White Sox on March 21. Frank Thomas, who greeted Brooks at first that day, said of the bleeder, "It's hard to get a hit at this level. The fans are coming out in droves (to see him), the same way they did for Michael." Thomas was referring, of course, to basketball legend Michael Jordan, another leading indicator of the skill required in hitting major league pitching. If Jordan -- one of the greatest team sport athletes ever birthed out by woman -- failed at the task, the rest of us are better left gripping our remotes than a thin-handled Adirondack if we want to see base hits. Keep all this in mind when watching Pedro Martinez on Tuesday.
9: The Ongoing Compression of the NL East Matchup of the
Week The Met Fan's Lament
Who's that out there on the lawn?
My, he's moving like a snail
In March I dared exert a squeal
10: The Be Nice on the Way Up Because You'll Meet Them
Again on the Way Back Down Matchup of the Week This in reference to the Expos, of course, who were charming us all just a few weeks ago with their improbable rise through the mire of near-oblivion and fan apathy to challenge for the lead of the National League East but who are now, inevitably, cascading back to reality. Is it just me, or have the 2002 Braves gotten less media attention than any Braves team in the last 15 years? Even those wretched entries from before the Great Rising to the Plateau of Unending Competitiveness (as it is known in Braves-friendly households) in 1991 got more ink and screen time than this bunch.
11: The Do Whatever You Want to Us, Just Please Don't Hit
Us Matchup of the Week The Rockies beat up on the Padres last week in Colorado. They hit them every way imaginable except when they were in the batter's box. In fact, nobody much is hitting any Padres when they're in the batter's box. While the rest of the league is averaging nearly 18 batters plunked by pitches this year, only three Padres batters have taken one for the team. They were last in the league in 2001 as well, when their mark of 41 was only about two-thirds the league average. At the rate they're going in 2002, they'll be lucky to crack double figures. It's not as though San Diego pitchers have been especially genteel. They've hit 13 men, just a little below the league average.
12: Another Mismatchup of the Week Yes, it's a stupid stat, but it's still pretty amazing that the Royals only have two "holds" all season. I'm actually kind of grateful for that, not being a big fan of frivolous pitching changes. The Royals and Angels pitching stats are not all that different, really. Their strikeout and walk totals are very similar and the Royals have only allowed about an extra hit every three games. True, the Royals have given up a few more home runs, but come on, does that add up to a full run higher in ERA?
13: The Randomly Selected Matchup of the Week I think Barry Bonds is correct when he speculates that Mark McGwire may well be back to renew the home run chase. (Bonds just passed him to become fifth all-time on the career list.) He was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle by Henry Schulman saying that, "Mark could shock the world and come back. When he walked away from the game he was far from done playing baseball, in my opinion." It's happened before with Hall of Fame-caliber players. A few have left the field and come back, although never to lasting good effect. Jimmie Foxx: Was coaxed out of retirement by the war-depleted Cubs in 1944 and Phillies the following year. Oddly, the slugging first baseman became that rarest of sights in a Phillies uniform: an effective pitcher. Yogi Berra: After retiring at the of the 1963 season to manage the Yankees, Berra was fired winning the pennant and stopping there. He was hired as a coach by the Mets for 1965 and was reactivated for active duty, which was limited to nine at-bats. Ryne Sandberg: Took advantage of the strike in 1994 to retire from the game. His return lasted two years, neither of which approached his more storied earlier career. Jim Palmer, you may recall, also attempted a comeback that was both improbable and short-lived. Somehow, though, I think a McGwire return would deliver a different result than these precedents. Jim Baker's 'Baker's Dozen' column appears on Mondays during the baseball season. He also writes Monday through Friday for ESPN Insider. |
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