 |
| Thursday, May 1 Updated: May 2, 1:17 PM ET Believe it or not, April really does matter By Jayson Stark ESPN.com |
|||||||||||||||||
|
April comes. April goes. We never know what to make of it. Is what we've seen reality? Or is it more like a Saturday Night Live baseball sketch come to life? Are Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling really going to win fewer games this year than Seth McClung? Is Rey Ordonez really going to hit more home runs this year than Lance Berkman, Hideki Matsui or Paul Konerko?
Are the Royals' starting pitchers really going to win more games than the Astros' and Reds' rotations combined? Are the Braves really going to give up more runs than they score? Logic tells us no. Logic tells us it's time to say (you can all join in now): "There's a lot of baseball still to be played." And there is. History tells us some of the stuff we've seen will change. But history also tells us some things are harder to change than others. Like the standings. The Diamondbacks and Twins don't want to believe they've already dug a hole they can't climb out of. But history tells us that hole is deeper than they think. What history tells us, more powerfully than a Kerry Wood fastball, is that April matters. We've done this math three straight years now, and it's still hard to believe how much significance a team's April record can have on its entire season. We've looked at every full season since 1982. Here's the hard evidence:
If you're on the wrong end of that math, those can be scary, scary facts, friends. Just ask Joe Garagiola Jr., general manager of the still-staggering Diamondbacks. "All right, you've convinced me," Garagiola laughed. "We quit. Why waste everyone's time by playing the rest of the schedule? We quit." Fortunately, his tongue was boring a hole in his cheek at the time. So his season -- and everyone else's -- will march on. But even with five months of baseball yet to be played, the pressure is already on. For his team. For all the teams that have bumbled and stumbled out of the gate. The facts are the facts. No matter what those facts show, though, not everyone is convinced. "How much has our game changed since 1982?" asked Toronto GM J.P. Ricciardi. OK, it has changed. A lot. Baseball in 1982 was a time of balanced schedules, two divisions in each league, no wild cards, four fewer teams. Much of that changed with the dawning of the wild-card format in 1995. So we've looked at that post-1995 period, too. Surprisingly, the song remains very much the same.
But what gives everyone hope is that the Angels were in both of those predicaments last year -- and came back to win the World Series. The A's were in both of those predicaments in 2001 -- and came back to win 100 games. And of the 10 teams that had losing Aprils and rebounded to make the playoffs, five did it in the last two years. "I think the biggest thing that has changed is the schedule," Ricciardi said. "The unbalanced schedule makes things a lot different."
And that's also true. For the 2001 A's and 2002 Angels, escaping April also meant escaping a month in which they got pounded by the teams in their own division. The 2001 A's were able to recover by going 58-28 against the AL Central and AL East. The 2002 Angels had exactly the same record against those two divisions. So it's possible that back before the unbalanced schedule (which began in 2001), the first month was a more accurate indicator of how good (or bad) a team was compared to its league as a whole. "I also think," said Ricciardi, "that it's easier to get off to a fast start than it is to have a big finish. Everyone comes out of spring training with hope. You know you have some question marks, but if your question marks hit, you start to say, 'We're better than we thought.' " OK, so we looked at that, too. What about teams like the Royals, Giants and Yankees? What does a really big April say about a team?
But unlike the Giants and Yankees, the Royals didn't get off to this start after making the playoffs. They got off to this start after losing 100 games. So baseball people continue to have their doubts about the Royals' ability to avoid joining those '88 Indians in the Fast-Start, Losing-Finish Club. Among the reviews of K.C. we've heard just in the last few days are: "They've caught every break." ... "They haven't played the real good offensive teams yet. We'll see how their pitching holds up now." ... "They don't have enough pitching depth. I'll be shocked if they end up with a winning record." ... "You just don't see teams jumping from losing 100 games to going to the playoffs." It's that last point that rings especially true. No team has lost 100 games one year and played in the postseason the next. And that brings us back to the 1988 Indians. That team and these Royals are the only teams in history to start a season 16-4 coming off a 100-loss season, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. Since we know what happened to the '88 Indians, the Royals will have to pick and choose what history to believe in. But what about a team like Arizona, coming off four straight winning seasons and three trips to the playoffs since 1999? No wonder Garagiola sees hope in the history of the players he's running out there. "Is it reasonable to expect that Steve Finley, Junior Spivey, Danny Bautista and Tony Womack are all going to hit .200 or worse," he asked. "And the answer is no. That's not reasonable to expect, based on history." Nor is it reasonable to expect that Schilling (who returns Saturday) and Johnson (who will be sidelined for three-to-six weeks after he undergoes arthroscopic knee surgery on Thursday) will win one game a month all year. In fact, assuming Schilling and the Unit straighten themselves out, the Diamondbacks could have their deepest rotation ever. That's what they believe, anyway. But what should we believe? We've got a study of the last 21 years that says they're in trouble. "The numbers are pretty staggering, I'll admit," Garagiola said. "The numbers are what they are. But I look at our guys' history and say that should be a good predictor of what they're going to do. But I realize what I'm doing here. I'm saying look at that history -- but ignore this history." We have a motto in life that goes: Make the stats work for you. And that one always applies. But we have another motto, too: April matters. It always matters. And we bet, come September, we'll find that this one was no different. Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com. |
| ||||||||||||||||
