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| Monday, June 3 Baker's Dozen: The week in preview By Jim Baker Special to ESPN.com |
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1: Best Matchup of the Week A Randy Johnson versus Pedro Martinez showdown is out of the question, but a Curt Schilling-Martinez matchup could occur as both pitch Monday night. We deserve as much out of life, don't we? The trouble is, Arizona has an off day on Thursday while Boston does not, so we might well be deprived.
2: The Best Matchup of the Week Between Teams
in the Same Universe One thing about playing your intra-division rivals 19 times: no one game seems like the end of the world. Having said that, is any one game the end of the world? Yes, but only if you finish the season one game out.
3: The Keepin' It Real Matchup of the Week It's the lone non-interleague series over the weekend. Therefore, it has symbolic value. I could crank out about 2,000 vitriol-filled words right now about the worthlessness of interleague play, but what's the use? I was not consulted when they started the inane practice in the first place and I don't think my input at this juncture is much desired either.
4: The Biggest Mismatchup of the Week You know you're going well when taking three out of four games in a series will worsen your road record. That is the situation Boston finds itself heading into Detroit this week: either the Red Sox sweep the Tigers or their road winning percentage will decrease. They are currently projecting for the best road record in major league history.
.815 -- 2002 Boston Red Sox (66-15 projected) Those are some class outfits right there, boy. Two of them actually managed not to finish in first place. The 1908 Pirates had a .545 home record that cost them the pennant. The 1909 Cubs played well at home but the Pirates were just awesome that year.
5: The Upstart Matchup of the Week The preseason consensus on these two teams was about 74 to 79 wins, and look at them, now: tearing it up like naughty schoolboys in a bra warehouse. Here's a fun bet you can make (donating the payoff to the favorite charity of the winner, of course): which of these two teams (the Reds are 33-23, the Angels 31-22), will finish with the better record?
6: The From the Sublime to the Ridiculous Matchup of the
Week In the first part of the week, the Tigers host a team projecting to the best road record ever. In the latter portion, they host a team projecting to the fourth-worst ever. Ah, the rich dichotomies of life!
.167 -- 1935 Boston Braves (13-65) The Tigers have not been pushovers at home (13-12), so it might not be as easy for the Phillies to break the pain cycle in Detroit as some might think.
7: The Rich But Flawed Matchup of the Week There are two ways to look at the New York Mets. The first is to say that they are an overpaid mediocrity, moments from total collapse. Or, you could look at the performances of their offseason offensive acquisitions and say this much: four player -- even chosen at random -- could not continue to underperform their career value for the rest of the season, so things are bound to get better for the Amazins'. And these are pretty amazing numbers:
Career OPS 2002 Decline
Alomar .833 .659 -.174
Burnitz .861 .669 -.192
Cedeno .735 .649 -.086
Vaughn .970 .674 -.296Couple that with the typical poor showings of Jay Payton and Rey Ordonez (remember how the talk in spring training was that his new, bulkier look was going to make him better? Surprise! He didn't.), a power outage from Edgardo Alfonzo, Mike Piazza playing somewhat below career expectations, dozens and dozens of baserunning and fielding gaffes and it's quite something they are going into this series within hailing distance of first place.
8: The Best Player to Visit Southern California Another MVP-caliber season and another award denied, no doubt. A-Rod is playing his brains out again but you wouldn't know it from the amount of press he gets. He might be the most obscured highest-paid player in history. Jason Giambi has the inside track on the MVP right now in my estimation. A-Rod is now playing in his seventh season and is on pace for his fifth top-three finish in Bill James's Win Shares. Time was, all a shortstop had to do was breathe on the top 10 and he'd be an automatic for the hardware. A-Rod was hosed completely on the 1996 award (which went to Juan Gonzalez) and could have just as easily been the recipient in 2000 and/or 2001. I don't get it: he's a shortstop!
9: The Worst Matchup of the Week
Close in the standings
10: The Most Glaring Illustration of the Utter
Pointlessness of Interleague Play Matchup of the Week Not that any of these make any sense either: Cubs @ Seattle, Philadelphia @ Detroit, Houston @ Oakland, Mets @ Cleveland, Colorado @ Toronto, Atlanta @ Texas, Los Angeles @ Baltimore, Florida @ Minnesota, Montreal @ White Sox ...
11: The 1962 World Series Rematchup of the Week As they get further in the past, most World Series are allowed one moment in popular memory. For the '62 Series, that moment is the final one: Willie McCovey lining out to Bobby Richardson with two on and two outs in the bottom of the ninth: Yankees win 1-0. That is probably the most dramatic final out in the history of the Series and deserves its place in our memory banks. What else of note happened? After almost sixty years, Chuck Hiller hit the first grand slam for a National League team in the World Series. There was also the Whitey Ford versus Willie Mays showdown, although neither had a particularly good Series. In fact, Mays and Mickey Mantle went a combined 10-for-53 with one RBI between them. No wonder we've distilled this Series down to one play! This time around we will get to see Roger Clemens facing Barry Bonds, so that ought to be a bit of good sport?
12: The 1985 World Series Rematchup of the Week Those who argue that baseball is a game of emotion and momentum have little to put forth to support their argument. They do, however, have Game 7 of the 1985 World Series. That is Exhibit A (in a series of exhibits that does not cover the whole alphabet) that an entire team can take itself right out of contention based on its frame of mind. I have never seen a baseball team comport itself so poorly as the '85 Cardinals did in that game. Their apologists can claim that they had the Series all but won the night before save for the infamous Don Denkinger call and that is a point well-taken. However, had they come out the next night and played with maturity and focus and beaten the Royals, they would now be a legendary ballclub. Perhaps we would know them as "The Team That Had to Win the Series Twice" or some such thing. Instead, they came out with a massive chip on their shoulders and let an inferior team beat them.
13: The 1966 World Series Rematchup of the Week
Check out ESPN Insider 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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for the details on the most lopsided World Series of all time.
