Extra Long Final Edition of End of Season Awards

“Morning came and morning went. Pick up your money and pack up your tent. You ain’t goin’ nowhere.” –You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere

If some teams start slow and end fast, there have to be teams whose strong starts were quashed to make up for the lost ground. In a year where unusually many teams rebounded, two teams in the mid-Atlantic region took the brunt of those recoveries. After encouraging starts, both the Nationals and the Orioles crashed, burned, rotted, and then were used as fertilizer before the season was over.

Many have used Nick Johnson’s injury as the reason for the Nationals’ collapse, but it was more of the collective coming back to Earth that coincided with Johnson’s R&R that disheartened them so completely. For all the talk of their record in one run games early in the year (23-7 at one point), the Nats gave new meaning to regression toward the mean, finishing 30-31 in one run contests. If it’s any consolation, the team finished .500, outperforming their Pythaganport projection pretty substantially (outscored by 43 for the year), but they still finished last in the NL East, just as it was supposed to go.

Baltimore’s fall was even more dramatic, going from first place in the NL East in July to 4th place, 14 games under .500, and 21 games out of first/playoffs. It seems like just yesterday that they were trying to pick up Phil Nevin for a playoff push, but soon thereafter, Lee Mazzilli was fired, leaving Sam Perlozzo with the unhappy business of packing in the losses (22-33). Even though the team tried to distance itself from this second instance of Raffy Palmeiro dabbling in performance enhancers, I can’t help but thinking it had at least three profound effects on them. First, they lost his performance, as Palmeiro put up a pretty solid line of .269/.337/.463 line before the ASB. After his suspension, Palmeiro was completely ineffective. Jay Gibbons hit well in his place, but he would have been better used in the OF, where Sammy Sosa, Eric Byrnes and B.J. Surhoff all failed to get on base at a .275 clip. Second, Palmeiro’s situation had to hurt the team’s chemistry. There is no way to measure how he hurt them, but there’s no way everyone was exempt from the turmoil, especially when he dragged Miguel Tejada under the bus with him. Finally, I think they actually benefited from all of Palmeiro’s negative press, as it functioned as an excuse and a distraction from a downfall that was happening anyway. Perhaps it would not have been as severe if Palmeiro avoided his misdeeds, but the team was due for some slippage, and nobody bothered mentioning it with a couple of Palmeiro stories coming out each week.


“The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone causes Galileo's math book to get thrown at Delilah who sits worthlessly alone, but the tears on her cheeks are from laughter” –Tombstone Blues

For the success of teams who fancy themselves “small ball” teams over those the media calls “Moneyball” teams. Look first at the late pennant races in the Majors, the A’s lost out to the Angels, the Red Sox blew a lead in the AL East and ended up losing the division title, and the Dodgers never even made a run. Also, the final four contained three teams that have pretty old-schools lineups, strategies and managers, along with Tony LaRussa’s raking Cards. Yup, Tim McCarver and Joe Morgan can smile now that Ozzie Guillen is attempting four steals a game and Vlad Guerrero swings at 59’ bouncers. Yessir, Chris Burke and Mike Lamb not only need rings, they need to play long enough that casual baseball fans think they’re stars and they cash in for $5 million a year next time they hit the open market. Too bad we didn’t get really lucky, getting to see Scott Podsednik steal home in the World Series so we can really understand good baseball strategy.

I’ll admit, I was being a bit facetious. First, the divide between numbers and eyes isn’t as sharp as some people think it is. Most teams play to their strengths, running more with fast players, pitching around hitters less with Roger Clemens, and so on. Even the concept of Moneyball as a strategy gets misconstrued in this sense, as Billy Beane identifies his team’s relative strengths and fills holes with players that best complement them. Moneyball is not a monolithic set of rules or strategies, but an approach that privileges adaptability and staying ahead of the curve. Anybody who watched this year’s iteration of the A’s could clearly see that the team had changed from plodding station-to-station thumpers with lead hands to plodding station-to-station glovesmen with great K/BB ratios. Newer A’s, such as Jason Kendall and Mark Kotsay have extremely low K-rates. In games, there might be a more noticeable difference in strategy between a team like the A’s and one like the White Sox, but it isn’t nearly as profound as analysts would have you believe, and they consist mainly of small ball teams mathematically wasting outs. At very least, the resurgence of the out-wasting strategy could swing back away from the OBP plodders, giving the sabermetrically minded GMs a shot at some cheapies but goodies.

But the biggest problem I have with giving credit to small ball teams is that they are given credit for all of the wrong things. The White Sox were fourth in the AL in HRs, but only ninth in runs scored, meaning they did an extremely bad job getting runners on base in front of their mashers. With such an offensively generous home field, it would seem easy to outscore the D-Rays, but not so. In total, they only scored 56 more runs than Minnesota, bad as their offense was. The decidedly non-small ball Paul Konerko was the only Chicago regular with an EqA above .290. Chone Figgins was a revelation for the Angels, giving the team versatility, speed and decent on-base skills, but Vlad added about 34 more runs to the offense in 125 fewer plate appearances. More importantly, both teams were excellent at run prevention. It’s easy to credit Scott Podsednik for the White Sox improvement, but their success has a lot more to do with the improvement of Jon Garland and Mark Buehrle to go with the Jose Contreras redemption party. In Los Angeles, Bartolo Colon had perhaps his best season, and Earvin Santana had an exceptional rookie season to go along with solid campaigns by Paul Byrd, John Lackey and Jarrod Washburn. Bottom line: Moneyball or small ball boils down to scoring more runs than you allow. The teams that supposedly succeeded due to their offensive “smart ball” really got by with exceptional pitching.

“I’d do anything in this God Almighty world if you’d just let me follow you down.” -Baby, Let Me Follow You Down

To Red Sox Nation which seems to have doomed the 2005 season and possibly the next few seasons as a result of some undue sentimentality. Lots of factors go into constructing a winning team, but memories of past glory should not be one of them. Consider, for a moment, what would have happened if the Sawx didn’t come back from that 3-0 deficit, if the Yankees didn’t spend the better part of a week with their hands firmly affixed to their own throats. Would the Red Sox look anything like they do now? Jason Varitek would not have received a guaranteed four year deal as a catcher in his 30s. Mark Bellhorn would not have lasted well into the season. Kevin Millar would be gone. I have trouble believing Bill Mueller and Gape Kapler would have stayed on the team on the basis of their intangibles. Curt Schilling would not have had his contract automatically extended through his age 41 season for winning the Series, although that option year might not look so grim if he hadn’t pitched those extra games on his paper mache ankle. They would have had much more roster and payroll flexibility to restructure the bullpen and plug their holes.

Still, I expected the Red Sox to win close to 100 games and take the division this year based on the changes they made. I didn’t like the signing of Renteria at the price, as he’s a below average player against righties, which, if you haven’t noticed, is most PAs. I liked that they brought in Wells and Clement, but thought the Varitek contract was mostly a PR job for the fans. Maybe Kelly Shoppach will never pan out as a starting catcher, but $40 mil is a lot to pay in order to avoid finding out. Bottom line, if they had not won the World Series, they probably would not have resigned Varitek and they would have done a much better job patching up the bullpen than Jeremi Gonzalez and John Halama. A few games in October should never have that much of an impact on the team’s future.

This off-season, the fans should pose much less of an obstacle between the front office and a good team. They can trade for a Troy Glaus to play first base, promote Kevin Youkilis and Dustin Pedroia to starting IF status, and trade Manny’s burdensome contract for flexibility at the cost of a few runs against an otherwise improved offense and defense. The most recent rumors I’ve heard include Ramirez for Beltran straight up, which seems like a great deal for Boston, swapping an aging hitter who has the benefit of a great park inflating his numbers for a stud whose value will never be lower. Another rumor includes Mike Cameron and prospects. Either way, they need not overpay for Johnny Damon. Let him be New York’s mistake; maybe not next year, but soon, and for the rest of his contract.

Thanks for staying with me through all of that. I'll be back early next week with a column on the best WS champions of my lifetime (hint: the '05 Sox are not the best).