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| Monday, June 17 Baker's Dozen: The week in preview By Jim Baker Special to ESPN.com |
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1: Best Matchup of the Week This is not a week for great matchups. The only other contenders were Anaheim at St. Louis and Seattle or Oakland at Cincinnati. In fact, that is going to be the tone of the Dozen this week: The It Doesn't Look Good on Paper Week.
2: The Return to the City of Brotherly Love Matchup of
the Week You know, I'm not the only one with the cynical, anti-interleague attitude. Check out this preview from Bob Ford of the Philadelphia Inquirer, hyping the Phillies upcoming week: "The Phils continue to wallow in the thrill of interleague play tomorrow when the Chicago White Sox come to town ... (they) will make their first appearance in Philadelphia since facing the Athletics on Aug. 28, 1954. ... If that's not enough excitement, the Minnesota Twins will play here next weekend. When the Twins last played in Philly, they were the Washington Senators. So, hold on to your hats for that one." See? I'm not the only anti-interleague curmudgeon around. In an unrelated story, Phils' manager Larry Bowa thinks the fans in Philly have improved since he was a ballplayer. "They're not as critical as they have been in the past," he told Ford. "They're more forgiving now." Not another great baseball institution lost! Has the obnoxious Philly fan gone the way of Tiger Stadium, doubleheaders and complete games? What do we lose next, AstroTurf?
3: The Randall Simon Revenge at Last Matchup of the Week Well, not really. This game barely missed being the Mismatchup of the Week and I'm sure everyone involved is a little put out by that. We found room for it though, by suggesting that Simon wants some sort of vengeance for being dissed by the Braves. Matt Franco was playing first base for Atlanta the other day, so perhaps the Braves regret letting go of Simon. Well, they shouldn't be too broken up about it. He's really not hitting that well – just a .573 OPS on the road. In fact, he's one of the few Tigers who seem to excel at Comerica. There, he's damn near a four-figure OPS monster. If he played all of his games in Detroit, he'd be challenging Jason Giambi for the league lead in OPS. But no, they make him get on planes and play for strangers in three time zones. While on the road, he's Rey Ordonez in a fat suit. In five of his past six games he's had two hits. The trouble is, nine of them were singles and the 10th a double. If only he could walk more, he'd have a real purpose as a high-average, get-on-base kind of fellow. But he doesn't, which leaves him as one of the bulkiest singles hitters in history.
4: The I Fight Alone Matchup of the Week
Brian Giles is at it again. He is fifth in the National League with an OPS of 1.054. Next on the Pirates is one of the game's great secrets, the under-utilized Craig Wilson at .891. Then ... nothing. Nobody else is over .742. Giles should be used to this by now. Using Bill James' Win Shares method, here are the percentages of the Pittsburgh offense and fielding he has supplied since arriving prior to the 1999 season:
1999: 18.8% It's actually getting worse. In each of those years, he had someone else to help pick up the slack. Kevin Young played way over his head in 1999 and contributed 21 Win Shares. Jason Kendall played great in 2000 and got 24 and last year, Aramis Ramirez chipped in 27, almost matching Giles' 29. All three of those supporting players are off the radar screen this year, leaving Giles to battle the elements practically by himself. Another Pirate left fielder had it worse. Hall of Famer Ralph Kiner went through a similar stretch in Pittsburgh from 1950 to 1952:
1950: 20.1% Giles has actually played a little better over the three-year patch, but had a little more help than Kiner.
5: The Ted Williams Matchup of the Week So named because Williams came of age in San Diego and made his name in Boston. How many people can say they have major transportation arteries named after them on two coasts? Williams can: a tunnel in Boston and a highway in San Diego. In my mental construct of the American landscape, there would be more things named after ballplayers. Every hamlet that produced a big-league ballplayer would have a sign on the outskirts of town saying as much. Baseball would infuse the roadside much more so than it does.
6: The Discount World Series Redux Matchup of the Week Always with the negative waves, Moriarity. I am really being a thrill-killer this week, aren't I? This was the .551 World Series -- the combined winning percentage of the two teams. There has only been one World Series where the participants had a worse winning percentage and that was in 1973 when the Mets barely finished over .500 but managed to beat the Reds in the NLCS. There have been but seven World Series played under the three-division/wild-card formula and they have already managed to produce two of the four worst matchups in history:
.545: Mets vs. A's, 1973 Now, if one is up for debating me on the wonders of having three rounds of playoffs, one should point out that the best combined winning percentage of a multi-division era World Series was posted by a post-1995 entry:
.654: Yankees vs. Padres, 1998 Of course, it should be pointed out that, too, that prior to the splitting up into multi-divisions there were no less than 13 Series that had better combined winning percentages than the very best of the multi-division format. Here are the 10 best:
.686: Red Sox vs. Giants, 1912 Which isn't to say we should return to having but one team from each league making the postseason. There are, obviously, competitive balance issues at work here as well. But a return to two divisions in each league would be just the thing.
7: The We Were Once Your Masters (or The Marv Throneberry
Memorial) Matchup of the Week When the Philadelphia Athletics moved to Kansas City in 1955, the Yankees lost one of their top farm franchises (although, as we all know, the A's continued to feed the Yanks players for the next few years). The Denver Bears of the American Association spent the late '50s as the Yankees' top farm team and won the Junior World Series in 1957. Future Yankee skipper Ralph Houk ran that team. His most famous players were Johnny Blanchard, Norm Siebern, Ryne Duren and, of course, Marv Throneberry, who launched 40 home runs into the thin air. Their third baseman, Rance Pless, hit four grand slams in a 33-day period. In a precursor of things to come, they won the first three games of the Junior World Series at home against Buffalo of the International League by scores of 16-5, 9-1 and 13-9. Ahh, memories ... well, not my memories, but somebody's ...
8: The C.A.D. (Contraction Anxiety Disorder) Matchup of
the Week Man, who thought this one up? With God as my witness I swear that I love the great game of baseball more than the very DNA of which I am comprised. However, the thought of this series makes me want to run in the other direction. Imagine if you had to pitch this series like it were a movie idea? What would that be like? "OK, here's the beauty part: no extras. None -- don't have to pay 'em, don't have to feed 'em because the place is always empty. It's a natural I tell you: everybody loves an underdog and this picture's got two of 'em so it will be twice as popular. And did somebody say sex? OK, we don't have any of that, but we could put some in -- nothing gratuitous mind you, just maybe one of the guys and his wife is trying to have a baby and can't. And you know, there's a lot of animosity between the two cities because they've both had teams called the Royals and that makes for bad blood and a lot of tension and you know where that leads -- action! Did I mention that we're gonna save a lot of money on the extras?"
9: The Worst Matchup of the Week Our biggest big-market failures on display in one convenient location.
10: The Immaculate Reception Redux Matchup of the Week Was it really just 30 years ago that these two teams met in the AFC finals and Franco Harris ... oh, sorry, wrong sport. Here's another matchup that brings to mind something entirely apart from the bright sunshine of summer: Tampa Bay at San Francisco. When they flash that score up on your screen Tuesday night, you are going to be shocked that it reads 5 to 2 and not 27-20. Tampa Bay at San Francisco ... falling leaves, frost on the ground, Christmas shopping, cheerleaders, John Madden -- not Barry Bonds and Greg Vaughn!
11: The Old School Matchup of the Week The oasis of sanity in the madness of the interleague play desert. John McCollister has written a recently published book called The Best Games Ever Played. He ranks various baseball games of the last 100 years based on the following criteria: Impact, Suspense, Pitching, Hitting, Defense, Manager Strategy, Dynamic Finish, The Unexpected, Memorable Moments and Extra Dimensions. Each category gets a score from 1 to 100. It's very subjective, but it gives him at least some basis for ranking the games. I won't spoil the book for you by saying what was the best, in his opinion, but at number 28 (out of 30 chosen) was the September 8, 1998 game between these two teams. That was the game in which Mark McGwire hit home run No. 62 to break Roger Maris' single season record. McCollister gave that game maximum pointage in the Memorable Moments and Extra Dimensions categories, for a total score of 629. (By comparison, the top game had 919 points.) Doesn't it seem longer than four years ago? There are three reasons for this, I believe. The first is that Barry Bonds breaking the record three years later deadens its freshness. The second is that the retirement of Mark McGwire has placed all of his achievements into the category of baseball history. The third is that so few of the players in that game are still with the Cardinals or the Cubs it now feels like a relic of a different era. Here are the participants in that game still playing for those teams:
St. Louis: J.D. Drew, Eli Marrero That's it: three guys out of 50 or so. Oh, Delino DeShields was in the Cards' starting lineup that day and now plays for the Cubs. So it's four, sort of. Such transience!
12: The Sweeps Week Redux Matchups of the Week These here teams played each other in recent World Series and there were sweeps in both. Who had the more convincing victory do you think: the 1998 Yankees or the 1990 Reds? The Reds outscored the A's 22-8 while the Yanks outscored San Diego 25-13.
Runs
Leads by losers
Team OPS
Saves The Yankees drew 20 walks. The Reds only struck out 11 times. It's very, very close. Perhaps too close to call.
13: The Biggest Mismatchup 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 Brewers -- the anti-Twins, the team everyone loves to hate.
