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| Monday, July 22 Updated: July 30, 2:59 PM 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 Steinbrenner's Lament
Was I born to suffer
If that is their purpose
All are in conspiracy
So if I die before I wake
2: The Second-Best Matchup of the Week As a preview to Ozzie Smith's induction into the Hall of Fame, Ken Dayley of the Dallas Morning News presented the thesis that much of the acrobatics we see from current shortstops on Sportscenter and Baseball Tonight are the result of them having seen Ozzie when they were young. In other words, Ozzie raised the bar on fielding the position. I've often wondered if the kind of trickery he displayed on the field (and it was not gratuitous trickery, either -- it was all done in the name of making the best play possible) had any kind of antecedent. Smith, it seems was cut from whole cloth -- a rare thing in an age of television. I've always loved that his childhood obsession of spending hours throwing a ball off a stoop and fielding the bounce-back grounders (as well as tumbling practice on a sawdust pile) stood him good stead in his career. There is something especially satisfying about the closure that story provides.
3: The Closest Matchup of the Week When one writes about sports, one is expected to make predictions. People love to hear the damn things. When I do radio interviews, I am always asked what I think is going to happen. It is fun to speculate but I don't particularly enjoy it because I'm not really all that good at it. But then, who is? Is there one writer or pundit who is consistently right or, failing that, right overwhelmingly more than the others who venture prognostications? I bring this up now because I made some rather ambitious noises about the Padres at the beginning of the season. I didn't do it in print or on the air, thank goodness, but to friends and acquaintances. They have been bought off with the necessary hush money and are now sworn not to divulge what I predicted in the specific. Let's just say it was a far cry from what has actually transpired with the Pads. (Who, in honor of hometown hero Ted Williams, have scored a league-low 406 runs, mimicking the Splinter's 1941 batting average.) Whenever I get down on myself for not being able to foresee the future, I just turn on the financial news and watch the latest shenanigans from Wall Street. Doris Day was right: the future is definitely not ours to see.
4: The Biggest Mismatchup of the Week The Brewers head into this series having won four straight, raising their winning percentage to .362. Sub-.400 winning percentages have become quite rare in the National League. In fact, here's the list of those who have managed to reach that nadir since 1993 (there have been eight in the American League in the same time frame):
1998 Marlins That's it -- and the Marlins finished under .400 on purpose. The Brewers need to go 27-30 the rest of the way to avoid being added to this short list of shame. That doesn't sound too preposterous, does it?
5: The Playing Out the String Matchup of the Week This headline from this morning's St. Paul Pioneer Press article says it all: LONELY (AND DULL) AT THE TOP But don't go craving excitement, Twins fans. That's the last thing you want right now. Once in a while, Torii Hunter might chuck a ball at a pitcher, but aside from that, stay the course.
6: The Worst Matchup of the Week I say this a lot, but, here it goes again: if you're going to be bad, go all the way! The Devil Rays begin the week with a .320 winning percentage. That sounds close to .300, but it really isn't. They would have to lose eight games in a row to drop below that magic number. So, it's probably too much to hope for that they would become the first team since the 1962 Mets to play sub-.300 ball. Chances are, they'll rally like they did last year and finish in the .350 range. But if they don't, and they play at this level from here on out, how will that set them in terms of post-'62 Mets ballclubs?
1965 Mets .309 So, at their current rate of exchange, they would be the third-worst team since the '62 Mets. Or they could be the worst team since 1965. Neither title is especially sexy. How about this, then: "Worst Team of the Multi-Division Era." I'm afraid that will have to do.
7: The Return of Renteria Matchup of the Week If you were watching ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball last night (and I know you were), you saw Edgar Renteria end the game with a walk-off home run. Now, fresh on the heels of that, he gets to return to the site of his greatest walk-off triumph -- Miami, Florida, home of the greatest audience in the world, as Jackie Gleason used to say. Was it really only five years ago that he ended the 1997 World Series with a Game 7, 11th-inning base hit?
8: The Something's Gotta Give Matchup of the Week Two teams desperately clawing their way back to where they were supposed to be in the first place collide head on in the greatest city in the world! In last week's column, I suggested that the Astros needed to take charge in the upcoming week if they wanted to get back into the race. I laid out a simple plan for them: sweep the Brewers in three games and win three of four from the Pirates. They didn't do that to the letter but went 6-1 anyway, losing their lone game to the Brewers. They picked up one game on the Cardinals and two on the Reds in the past week. Now that doesn't sound like a great amount, but it sure beats the alternative. Besides, if they can gain just one game per week, they'll be in first place by the middle of September.
9: The Scott Rolen Say Goodbye to Philly Matchup of the
Week What would be really cool is if he could be traded to the Giants between innings of Tuesday night's game. They could just yank him off the field and send him to the other dugout where he could start getting acquainted with his new teammates. He could watch the rest of the game in a new uniform. Not that the two teams are even talking. It would just be interesting. Rolen hasn't been much better than Giants third baseman David Bell this year, but he would be a step up. When Jeff Kent and Barry Bonds mixed it up a while back, some proposed a Kent-for-Rolen trade then. Don't expect Rolen to bring any bacon of that quality at this late hour.
10: The C.A.D. (Contraction Anxiety Disorder) Matchup of
the Week This is not meant to start a debate on the death penalty, but its practice does seem germane to the contraction question. All moralizing apart, the best argument against the death penalty – to my mind – is that if a mistake is made in prosecution, there is no way to apologize to the executed prisoner and send him on his way with a new suit and some pocket money. The same can be said for the contracted team: once they're gone – they're gone. You could say they could be replaced by an expansion club, but how long would that take to happen? I would say ten years, at least. So, before contraction becomes reality, baseball owes it to itself to exhaust every other avenue to fixing its problems – just as in capital crimes every possible avenue of inquiry must be made before guilt is determined. The decision is far too undoable for either to be handled otherwise.
11: The We're Cool in the House Matchup of the Week I think we've discovered Montreal's weakness: people. They play better when they're not around. The Expos are 13½ games better at home than they are on the road. What follows is a list of the teams whose home records have the biggest dichotomies between home and road with the home record being superior. The number expresses the amount of games their away record is behind their home record in a two-team standings:
Colorado: 16.5 San Diego is at the opposite of where they finished last year, when they wound up 10 games better on the road. It stands to reason that teams in this list would come from the middle to the bottom of the standings, although a first place team could play .500 on the road and pull off a big dichotomy at home.
12: The Road is My Home Matchup of the Week Now this is freaky! (Or just mildly interesting, depending on your personal threshold of freakitude.) Only five teams in all of baseball have better road records than they do home records and, as of this morning, four of them are in second place. Here is the converse of the standings above:
Boston: 5.5 This is the second year in a row the Reds have been better on the road. Last year, they flirted with having one of the worst home records in history before they finished up with a 12-game home deficit. Seattle, too, is on their second consecutive year of being better on the road. Boston is the real home underachiever. This is the third consecutive year they've done better away from Fenway The most even-keeled teams are these:
Pittsburgh: .5 All except Pittsburgh (as mentioned) and Los Angeles have their slightly superior split coming at home.
13: The Return of Bonds Matchup 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. He can be reached at jimbakerespn@yahoo.com. |
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for the details on Barry Bonds' MVP chances despite missing several games this season.
