And Down the Stretch They Come

Yesterday someone asked me who I thought would make the World Series, which made me realize just how little I've thought about the postseason only a month and a half from its outset. Just a couple of weeks ago, the buzz was that there were so many playoff contenders that it would surpress the trade activity since everyone thought they were still in it. What a difference a few games makes, as many of those teams holing out as contenders have no given up. Take the Orioles, for example. It seems like last week (because it was) that they were waiting on Phil Nevin to accept a trade for Sidney Ponson so they could fortify their lineup for a stretch run. They were in and out of the A.J. Burnett sweepstakes, and there was talk of a run after getting Javy Lopez back from the DL. A few more losses, a little more distance between them and the Red Sox, and they have fired manager Lee Mazzilli and replaced him with bench coach Sam Perlozzo in a move that sets a record for most Z's in the names of consecutive managers.

Watching the Twins struggle through an electric A's squad and hearing the ESPN broadcasters allude to Old Man Mulholland's "venerability" a half dozen times made me realize that even the Wild Card is almost certainly a two-horse race. All things considered, here's how I see it, division by division:

AL East: Boston seems to have hit their stride. After back to back three-run homer games for a rejuvenated Manny Ramirez, they came back from a 5-0 deficit to post 9 runs on only 3 hits, including a Varitek granny, through 4 innings against Kansas City. More generally, the pitching has been bad, but should not get any worse, as Papelbon and Delcarmen promise to outdo the sub-replacement level performance of John Halama and Matt Mantei. I'll talk more about New York in the Wild Card section, but the Red Sox are the least flawed of the several flawed AL East contenders.

AL Central: 2001 Seattle Mariners. Excuse me, Chicago. Two thoughts here: first, the White Sox have benefitted from lots of players hitting their peak at the same time. They probably won't win 90 games next season, as Joe Crede has been the only regular who has really struggled, but he has not shown a proclivity for success in any season, so there's no surprise there. Hometown media types tend to see best-case projections at the start of the season, saying things like "If Podsednik hits for a high average, if the pitching staff collectively realizes all of its potential, if everyone stays relatively healthy (expcept The Big Lost Cause Frank Thomas), if Dustin Hermanson goes from average to dominant at the end, and if Iguchi becomes one of our best offensive players, we could really be onto something here." It isn't that these scenarios can't play out, they do. It happened in 2001 with Seattle and it's happening again here.

Second, I have an intution that their unique style of play contributes to their low run-scoring variance, but not in the way one would think. Instead of small-ball allowing them to score 5 runs in most games while infrenquently dropping below, I think it may actually do more to prevent them from scoring more. Yes, they score consistently, but as the Weaver adage goes, if you play for one run, you'll score one run. This team is unique in that they give away a lot of outs through sacrifices, but continue to be near the top of the league in HRs. The unusually high OBPs bolstered by upswining BA fluctuations at the top of the order, especially for Podsednik, ahead of boppers in the middle like Konerko, lay the groundwork for a very good offense. Instead, their sacrifices have made them an average offense with lots of extreme dynamics: near the league lead in HR and sacrifices, which seemingly don't go together. It's as if they have combined good offensive play with bad offensive strategy, the result putting them somewhere in the middle of the league.

AL West: Sometimes totally arbitrary statistics can still be remarkably telling, such as the one from Wednesday's Sportscenter where they listed all of the teams, including this year's A's, that had something like 37 wins in 43 games. Obviously, any team with that sort of hot streak will have a good record overall, because bad teams don't win 86% of their games for two months. But the A's are an outlier, as they had been extremely weak for a while before hitting stride. It would be interesting to see if Bill James' new mini-study on hot and cold streaks can generalize to whole lineups, because it certianly seems that the A's collectively started believing in themselves, or benefitted from some other foggy factor. Certainly, getting Crosby back from the DL helped, but everyone else stepped up too, so someone else should probably get some credit. It's hard to imagine that they could keep up such a remarkable run, but they have already almost caught the Angels. Neither team faces a particularly difficult schedule the rest of the way, and neither team is missing too many players due to injury. A forthcoming injury or hot streak will probably determine the division, and the front office and management does more to determine how these factors play out, so I'll go with Oakland to win the division.

Wild Card: If Boston, Chicago and Oakland win their divisions, that leaves NY and LAA as the likely WC contenders with Tex, Min, Cle and Tor in the running. For most of the season I reserved dismissal of the Yankees assuming they would make some big deadline moves to alleviate the drain on their lineup at CF and shore up a little bit of the pitching staff. Instead, they added Shawn Chacon, continue getting nothing out of Tino Martinez and Bubba Crosby, and have an eating-disorder thin bullpen. As long as they continue starting Aaron Small, Shawn Chacon and Al Leiter, they have a lot of problems in 60% of their games. Arod, Sheffield and Jeter make up a daunting offensive core, but Vlad, Garrett Anderson and Orlando Cabrera aren't that much worse, and the Angels have much better depth and pitching. If Kelvim Escobar can return from his biannual elbow surgery to give them any productive innings, I'll take the Angels in a tight race. Unfortunately, these teams will not play in the last couple of weeks of the season. My darkhorse candidate here is Toronto, as they have started to play very well, and stand to gain some run prevention with the retun of the AL's best first-half pitcher in Roy Halladay. One hot stretch could get them back in the race.

In all likelihood, this postseason lineup would yield Chicago-Anaheim and Oakland-Boston in the first round. I'll have more tomorrow on the National League and the Postseason.