High Five Friday
AL Wild Card revisited

As you may have noticed, I have been on a bit of a hiatus from my column as I have settled into my class schedule and my jobs. Hopefully, I'll have enough time to complete two columns per week for the rest of the year, as there is plenty in baseball to write about over the last few weeks. In the offseason, I will work on putting up one column per week with more of an analytical research base. With that said, I have five headlines into which I would like to delve.

First, I am most interested in the AL wild card race right now, with the Indians and Yankees emerging from the pack as the legitimate favorites. With Bobby Crosby and Rich Harden repeating their early season break down, the A's started repeating their early season swoon without two of their studs. Not to fret, the A's have a bright future and put up a pretty incredible run in their big rebuilding year. If nothing else, Billy Beane should face less unwarranted criticism after producing substantial results with more of "his guys."

But as the season draws to a close, the Yankees and Indians matter most. The winner will probably be the team that can overcome its biggest weakness: the Indians' lineup vs. the Yankees' rotation.

The Indians got in a hole by hitting nothing early in the season, but Aaron Boone and Casey Blake have come back to respectability to join Travis Hafner, Grady Sizemore and Travis Hafner as legitimate producers. Before slumping in September, Boone hit .322/.372/.437 in August, his third straight month with an OPS above .775 (not great, but it's a lot better than the .400 OPS he had before that). After Blake's rough start, he has actually put up an OPS above .900 for the last two months. Coincidentally, Peralta is mired in a 1-19 slump, but he's been picked up by pitchers like Scott Elarton, pitching shutout baseball in a recent 2-0 win over Detroit, and CC Sabathia, Kevin Millwood and Cliff Lee all have a VORP between 23.9 and 41.7, and their league-leading save man, Bob Wickman, has only been their third best reliever by the same measure.

As for the Yankees, they have also found a way to overcome their rotational struggles, losing Carl Pavano and Kevin Brown to injuries and ineffectiveness, Mike Mussina to shoulder uncertainty (possibly due to years of throwing a splitter), and now relying on RJ, Jaret Wright, Aaron Small, Shawn Chacon and Chien-Ming Wang. The bullpen is no great shakes either, with pretty much nothing behind Mo, Flash and Tanyon Sturtze. Jaret Wright remains below replacement level, but he has put up a couple of decent starts since coming off the DL. Even the bottom three have performed admirably. Must be the pinstripes. Or maybe Ole Mel's wonderful coaching.

Here's the difference, the Indians are progressing towards the mean (Blake, Boone and Victor Martinez are not bad players, but had atrocious starts) while the Yankees are improving on long track records with smoke and mirrors. Even with the homefield advantage of The Stadium in September, the Indians are playing at a similar level with better players, so I think their performance is more sustainable. The Yankees have the flexibility to eat salary at the trade deadline, and this year they chose not to do so. Remember what Steinbrenner said when they traded for Arod? Yeah, the Yankees must be embarrassed that they couldn't get better pitching for their fans. They should also be embarrassed that the D-Rays beat them like a rented mule.

Later this weekend, I'll update the NL Wild Card race, but I'll tell you this much now: after seeing the Nats give up on John Halama after 2/3 of an inning, they don't look like much of a contender.