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| Monday, August 5 Baker's Dozen: The week in preview By Jim Baker Special to ESPN.com |
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1: Best Matchup of the Week What we have here is a golden opportunity for one of the best pitching matchups of the year and we aren't getting it. Curt Schilling goes for Arizona on Tuesday while Greg Maddux pitches for Atlanta on Wednesday. I believe it is in the best interests of baseball that they duel this week. Doesn't the commissioner have some kind of mandate to do things in the name of "the best interests of baseball?" Therefore, can't Bud Selig give some kind of edict to make this happen?
2: Best A.L. Matchup of the Week There was a story tease on this website over the weekend titled "Rocket Extension." Let me be the first to apologize to anyone who was offended by this. In these trying times, we must all be ever-vigilant to keep such things away from the tender eyes of our nation's most precious resource: its baseball fans.
3: The Overachiever vs. Underachiever Matchup of the Week The Twins are playing six games above expectations and the Red Sox are playing seven games below. Boston is the most extreme in either league in either direction. (This is derived from Bill James' Pythagorean theorem of baseball: Runs scored [squared] / (Runs scored [squared] + runs allowed [squared]).
Twins +6 (22-14) The numbers in parenthesis are their records in one-run games. As we have discussed, teams playing above expectations usually have a plus-.500 record in one run games and teams not playing to expectations are usually below. This certainly holds true in the American League. Blowouts will usually skew the number as well, but, as the season goes on, the blowouts will get lost in the mix and even out.
4: The N.L. Overachiever vs. Underachiever Matchup of the Week Once again, the Brewers are performing poorly against expectations, just as they did in 2001. The Expos are slightly above. Three games is not really a significant number, but, as they also often say about working, it beats the alternative.
Expos +3 (24-18) If you'll notice, San Francisco is the only team out of the 12 listed from both leagues that doesn't follow form in the one-run game records.
5: Biggest Mismatchup of the Week Older fans in Kansas City may feel like they've seen this before. The Royals run of misfortune from 1996-2001 is, en toto, much like that of the hapless Kansas City Athletics of 1958-63. In the six years previous to this one, the Royals have gone 420-548 for a winning percentage of .434. The A's of the '58-'63 period went 403-544 (.426). Those A's finished a combined 189 games out of first place. The Royals have fared better at 136 games back, but only because they play in a smaller cell. If you compare their record to not just their division winner but to the league's best team, they've finished 181.5 out. If you take the six seasons and match them up in order, you get these pairings:
K.C. Royals K.C. A's 1997 .475 .474 1958 2001 .466 .451 1963 1999 .447 .444 1962 1998 .429 .429 1959 2000 .416 .379 1961 1996 .401 .377 1960 Furthering the coincidences, in both of these periods, the pennant winner in five of the six years was this week's opponents, the New York Yankees. The 2002 Royals are back under .400. If that were to hold, then the 1997-2002 period would compare even closer than the '96-'01.
6: The C.A.D. (Contraction Anxiety Disorder) Matchup of the Week The poor Twins. They're running away with their division and bud.com still won't drop the contraction talk. According to Selig, the Twins success is a small-market aberration and their execs are worried they won't be able to afford their best players next year. In other words, they have no future. Speaking of the future, what does it hold for baseball? Sadly, Criswell –- one of our finest psychic minds -- is no longer with us; at least on our plane of existence. That does not mean we can't carry on his great work of foreseeing future events. Prediction: By the year 2025 umpires will hover above the field. It's time to face the fact that automation and instant replay are not coming to baseball anytime soon. If the umpires so vehemently oppose the automated system used to monitor the quality and consistency of their calls, imagine how hard they will any incursion of non-human elements into the calling of games. So, if umpires won't allow cameras, autronic eyes and robots to do or share their jobs, they will just have to enhance their own performance with the use of new technologies. Personal hover vehicles (or PHVs) are not practical at this time, but in the not too distant future they will be. A base umpire floating four to five feet above the playing field would make for much better play calling, I believe. What if an umpire could look down at a ball as it and a baserunner converged on first base. Wouldn't he have both in his line of vision, something that being on ground level does not afford him? And imagine the advantages of a tag play at a base. As the ball comes into the base, the umpire can float up and position himself directly over the play without being in the way. He could look right down on the tag -– the perfect vantage point. These PHVs would be quick, too. Therefore, when a batter hits one to the outfield, the appropriate base umpire can be on top of the play in seconds. He could follow the ball all the way down the line and be practically on top of it as it zoomed past the fair pole. Prediction: By the year 2005 you will be able to click on any play on the ESPN Game Log and see the video of that play on your screen. This is not a bold prediction as the technology to make it reality already exists. It's just a matter of server space and the time required to do this for every single game. Oh, and copyright concerns. I predict it will start in an upcoming World Series as a test case. Prediction: By the year 2003, players will button their shirts wrong as a fashion statement. It seems like a logical extension of the silly long pants thing that has permeated baseball. Inside-out and backwards jerseys are a possibility. Now that the word "uniform" has lost all its meaning, the sky is the limit. As Criswell said, "God help us in the future."
7: The Closest Pitching Matchup of the Week
Burnett Oswalt Starts 24 23 Won-Lost 11-7 12-6 ERA 3.40 3.32 Avg. IP 6.2 6.2 Team W-L 13-11 13-10 Scratch a little deeper, though, and you'll find that they've arrived at this similar place by somewhat diverse means. Oswalt gives up a lot more hits while Burnett has walked twice as many batters. Burnett has four shutouts and Oswalt has yet to complete a game. (Oswalt is clearly on a shorter leash, averaging 10 fewer pitches per game). Both strike out nearly a man per inning, with Burnett having a slight edge.
8: The Respite for the Weary Matchup of the Week Detroit will seem like a safe harbor for the Rangers after butting heads with the Yankees and Red Sox last week. And what a wild and funky week it was for Texas, what with them either scoring runs by the bushel or giving them up with equal generosity. Last week featured the kind of games everyone assumed the Rangers would be playing all year with their slug-heavy offense and barren pitching staff. In going 3-4 against the two monsters from the East, the Rangers outscored them 63-53, for an average of more than 16 runs per game combined. The lowest scoring game of the week came last Monday when they lost to the Yanks 9-2. (The Oakland series, which preceded these two, featured 15 runs per game.) In the middle of all this were 17-6 and 19-7 back-to-back wins over New York and then Boston. How many times in the history of baseball has a .400-range team beaten two .600-range teams on back-to-back days scoring a minimum of 17 runs in both games? Chances are it has happened because, baseball, with its voluminous amount of games, is now getting to be like that room full of typewriting monkeys. While one of those chimps is bound to type "Hamlet" at random (or, failing that, a script for an Adam Sandler project), just about any scenario you can come up with has probably been played out in baseball at some point. Alex Rodriguez, the man having the best season in the American League this year, drove in only three of those 36 runs. Excluding those two games, A-Rod has driven in one out of every 5½ Ranger runs. Fantasy players fortunate enough to have him on their teams must have seen those scores and mentally penciled him in for six or seven RBI.
9: The Mystery Matchup of the Week You'll have to guess this one for yourself: Team A: once changed its name and is on its third stadium. Team B: took their name from the minor league team that preceded them in that city and once experienced one of the greatest won-loss dropoffs from the previous season ever.
10: The Worst Matchup of the Week Do you think it's possible that the Devil Rays are ... um ... how do I put this diplomatically ... over-enthusiastic when they count their crowds? They have not reported a single attendance under 10,000 in the past three seasons. Do you ever watch the Devil Rays (when they're not playing the Yankees)? 10,000 is a stretch on many, many nights in that place. Clearly, they don't want the sub-five-figure stigma. In that same time frame, they've played in some road games that have announced four-figure crowds. Minnesota, Montreal and Florida all failed to fill 10k seats when these rampaging D-Rays came into town. Frankly, I'm shocked that more people didn't want to come out and see them rip it up.
11: The Does He or Doesn't He? Matchup of the Week Have you seen the new movie "Signs"? Don't worry, I won't give the ending away. Since its writer/director, M. Night Shyamalan, is the best out there at coming up with nifty endings, I wouldn't dream of revealing anything. I bring it up here because in the film, Joaquin Phoenix plays an ex-baseball player who had great power. Given Phoenix's narrow-gauge physique, that is only explainable if Shyamalan had him uttering the line, "after I left the game, I got off the juice and reverted to my normal size." Joaquin Phoenix is a great baseball name, by the way. It would seem perfectly natural to have a player with that name in the Giants' starting rotation, wouldn't it?
12: The Inevitable Move to the Middle Matchup of the Weekk The D-Rays began play last week with a .320 winning percentage and this, as you'll recall (and I know you do because I'm certain you commit my every sentence to memory), got me all excited about them posting a ridiculously bad record. My enthusiasm was dampened by my knowledge that we are all governed by the laws of competitive balance (it's what keeps me from being rich -– at least, that's what I tell myself) and the universal will to move toward the middle. In fact, right in the middle of my D-Rays funky record hype, I paused for this realistic assessment: "Chances are, they'll rally like they did last year and finish in the .350 range." And wouldn't you know it. That's just what they're doing –- spoiling our fun. They went 4-3 last week and raised their record to a .337 clip. With another game against Chicago and three apiece against the Indians and Royals, they could easily go 3-4 or 4-3 again and continue that irresistible drive to the center.
13: The Beginning and End of an Era 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 why the Angels are always on a roller coaster.
