Twins Notes

Tying up some of 2006’s loose ends before we head into the off-season in earnest.

Gardenhire Extension

Immediately after their elimination from the playoffs, the Twins decided to give Ron Gardenhire a two-year contract extension through the 2007 season. If the Twins had continued on their early season trajectory to 75-80 wins, Gardenhire’s future may have been somewhat in doubt. As it stands, Gardenhire took part in a tremendous turnaround that resulted in a fourth division title under his watch. Even if the Twins had narrowly missed the playoffs, the reversal would have been plenty enough to secure Gardenhire some stability. Terry Ryan is not enough of a risk-taker to go into Gardnehire’s last contractual season with no security, so the extension should not come as much of a surprise.

Even though I have been critical of Gardenhire for much of his time as manager, there are worse things the Twins could do than to extend him for another two years. Sure, he has his faults: he willingly gives up too much offense to ensure a decent glove, he gives up on young players too quickly, and he loses his temper with umpires and players pretty frequently. On the other hand, he has proven through four seasons that he is able to get more out of a team than what is expected, from individual players to teams. On the macrolevel, he has overseen the successful maturation of one-time prospects like Justin Morneau, Johan Santana, Joe Mauer, Jason Bartlett, and Francisco Liriano into big-time contributors. Roster management has also become a strength, as he spent 2006 squeezing value out of former rejects like Jason Tyner and Dennis Reyes. Along with Ryan, Gardenhire continually builds outstanding bullpens on the cheap, freeing up resources for more productive uses. Even his in-game managerial skills have progressed to being above-average, including his judicious use of sacrifices and his ability to get good matchups late in games. I do not believe that Gardenhire had all of these skills when he became the Twins’ manager in 2002, but I think he has matured into one of the ten or twelve best managers in the game.

Hunter Option-Year

Torii Hunter played a big part in keeping the Twins hot down the stretch, joining Justin Morneau in the exclusive 30-HR club and playing acceptable CF defense- aside from one notable postseason exception. While Hunter’s 2007 option was an open question for most of the year, his red-hot finish made the investment a much easier decision. Hunter continues to lobby for an extension that will keep him around into the 2010 opening of the new stadium, but the current one-year deal minimizes the risk while giving the team some flexibility.

Consider this train of logic: the Twins will most likely be in the race for the AL Central title and the AL Wild Card in 2007, barring any disastrous occurrences. With four solid teams in the division, they can ill afford any regression; every win has a huge impact on a team’s overall prospects. Therefore, if the Twins are going to let Hunter go, they would need to find an adequate replacement for him in center field, and that does not currently exist within the system- Lew Ford’s bat simply cannot play, and Denard Span will need until 2008 or later if he is ever going to be ready. The free agent market features Jim Edmonds, Mike Cameron, Dave Roberts, and Juan Pierre, all of whom will probably be two wins worse than Hunter, and it is unlikely that any of them will sign contracts for less than $12 million over the life of the deal. Sure, there is something to be said for cost certainty, but would you want to mortgage your future on Edmonds or Cameron considering their recent injury histories? Me neither.

Hunter will not be worth $12 million in 2007, but he is far enough better than the alternatives that the price tag is easier to swallow. The risk is minimal, since the team can cut ties at the end of the season if Hunter’s health or defense deteriorates to an unacceptable level. Factor in the notion that the difference in salary of a couple of million dollars could also be the difference between making and missing the playoffs, and it is almost a pleasure to pay him. The most important consideration is whether each move will help the team get closer to a championship, and this deal will help the Twins work toward that goal next year without hamstringing them with an old, $12 million LF who cannot get on base on 2010.

Liriano’s Arm Trouble

I have said it before and I will say it again: when evaluating pitching injuries, always expect the worst. In Liriano’s case, that means that we should not expect anything at all from him in 2007. Even a modest contribution would be gravy, because anything more ambitious would encourage the team to push him back too soon.

His current status is not unlike it was after his late-season comeback; he has continual disconcerting pain in his throwing elbow. Essentially, he has a great deal of scar tissue in that elbow left over from a surgery a few years ago, and that scar tissue refuses to hold up. Scar tissue is weaker than the usual tendons and ligaments, so it tears and re-tears, causing discomfort in the arm, but not causing any new damage to the arm. In that sense, Liriano is not getting more injured each time, but he continues to be just out of reach of his normal level with no desirable end in sight. It is not even an issue of pain tolerance, since he clearly fails to perform up to his usual level when trying to pitch with his current condition.

As I understand it, the Twins basically have two options with Liriano. The more conservative option would be to continue to rehab his arm, hoping that it will eventually become strong enough that his regular throwing motion will not rupture the scar tissue, which was his status during his dominant stretch in the middle of the season. Since this approach has already failed two or three times (depending on how fully healed the scar tissue was after his first down period), it is hardly a comforting solution, even if it is the only possible way to have him ready for Opening Day.

The other option is more aggressive, but it may be the only long-term solution. Since the ligament in question is Liriano’s MCL- the Tommy John ligament- he could have surgery to reinforce the ligament, just like a regular Tommy John surgery. In this case, the scar tissue would be replaced by a new ligament, a risky proposition, but one that could get him back to full strength in the long run. Because I have already pushed Liriano’s 2007 possibilities out of my mind, I am willing to advocate the second option, unless a new examination reveals different information. In either case, I do not believe he will contribute much in 2007, and I think the second option offers more hope for all years after that.

Not Dark Yet

2006 in Lyrical Retrospect

In keeping with a short-lived tradition, I would like to proceed with my seasonal awards by paying homage to Bob Dylan- Minnesota’s great cultural export besides the Twins, Prince and Mitch Hedberg. Rather than boring you with the laundry list of accomplishment stemming from my birthplace I will jump into the start of my second annual non-traditional award dispersal. Instead of re-hashing MVP ballots and Cy Young races over which you and I have no power, I will convey some aspect of my Minnesota roots to you, the reader, by expressing some of my favorite storylines through the mercurial lyricism of the Iron Ridge’s own Robert Zimmerman.

“I go to catch your monkey and I get a face full of claws/ I ask ‘who’s that in the fireplace, you tell me Santa Claus/ The milkman comes in wearing a derby hat/ You ask why I don’t live here/ Honey, why do you have to ask me that?”

-On the Road Again

For Bud Selig, who will not seem to let up on his extortionist bent against every major league city. Certainly a former owner will show his colors from time to time, but Selig’s blatant one-sidedness never leaves any open questions regarding which side of his bread is the more dairy-prone. Selig continually insists that teams need new ballparks to remain competitive no matter how many teams prove him wrong in different and constantly changing ways. Consider the teams in this year’s playoffs: Selig successfully lobbied the cities of Detroit, St. Louis, and San Diego for new stadiums, and Minnesota, the Yankees and the Mets have their own mallparks in the pipeline. Still, the New Yorks, Minnesota, Oakland, and the Dodgers have found ways to be very successful in sub-optimal parks despite widely varied surroundings.

Apparently, the recent 6-year run of contention from the Twins has been an aberration that does more to hurt the competitive equity of the game by setting a bad precedent of competent management and player development. Forget about demonstrable or tangible effects of new stadiums, which may or may not have any meaningful impact on competitiveness, and think of how much money has been wasted by all of these cities due to Selig’s threats of abandonment. Selig is like an abusive spouse who mooches off of his excessively needy spouse, and when her friends finally get her to make a stand, Selig threatens to leave for some unrealistic alternative (a young blonde, the Starbucks barista, or, in this case, Portland), causing a sentimental cave-in and monumental relapse.

Think of what he has done in Oakland, a team already extremely competitive and consistent on a reasonable payroll in a park built by a tyrannical football owner. Despite continual proof to the contrary, Selig insisted that, "Clearly for this club to be competitive in the future it needs a new venue.” And like any good demagogue/salesman, Selig extended his pitch to imbue anxiety and fear in what should be a position of confidence: Once people around you start getting new ballparks and generating more revenue, it becomes hard for that particular franchise to compete.” Not only do the A’s need a new stadium, but so does everyone else! What happens when every team has a new retro-park? The regime will probably start over with the top of the alphabet, condemning Arizona’s Chase Field as an imminent fire hazard, or some such thing.

The truth is that deft management at every level- from scouting, to player development, to player acquisition, to on-field tactics and strategies- has more of an impact on a team’s success than the revenue itself. In fact, revenue is one factor out of many that implicates each of the listed variables. Obviously, the Yankees derive an advantage in player development by taking in such a girthy stream of revenue, but the rules of baseball are written such that this action has an opposite (though not necessarily equal) reaction. Specifically, their free agent signings force them to surrender draft picks, which can make for a good source of cheap talent for other teams, giving teams pre-arbitration depth and potentially home-grown stars in their youthful prime. It is no surprise that players often disappoint once the get to New York: they play through their physical peak, leave for New York as free agents, and play at a slightly diminished level in their 30s, such as most of 2006’s pitching staff. Smart teams manipulate these rules, like the A’s by stockpiling their draft picks.

But I digress. Ultimately, we have to remember that Selig is a bold deceiver, but that his ruse is never so thick that the intelligent baseball fans will miss the obvious evidence against his suggestions.

“Your temperature is too hot for taming/ your flaming feet are burning up the street.”

-Spanish Harlem Incident

To Ryan Howard, who was absolutely too hot to handle for about three months. As far as I see it, there are three threads running through the Howard storyline in descending order of importance: his approximation of the 2002-2004 Barry Bonds level of performance for half of a season, his role in the rejuvenation of the Phillies after the Bobby Abreu trade, and lastly, the fact that every sportswriter immediately anointed him the King of Clean Urine.

The first two accomplishments would be interchangeable if the Phillies had made the playoffs, but without a flag, Howard’s historically high level of performance is more of an individual achievement than a group effort. Even though he set the record for most games stuck on 58 homeruns (a small and select group, I assure you), Howard milked the take-and-rake train for all it is worth. Without exceptional spray-hitting ability or any speed whatsoever, Howard’s offensive value comes from his ability to hit the ball a very long distance, and the ensuing on-base skills derived from pitchers’ collective fear of those long balls. With only two discernable skills, the room for error in such a skill set is more like a walk-in closet- see Mark McGwire’s rapid and complete degradation once his bat slowed just a little. Nonetheless, there is no substitute for a masher mashing, and Howard was truly mashtastic.

Howard’s year was a long time coming after he proved himself a viable batsman in 2003 by coming up 7 RBI short of the AA Triple Crown. He sat on the shelf in 2004, spending time at AAA while Jim Thome put up crooked numbers in the inaugural season of Citizens Bank Park. In 2005, Thome went down with all sorts of injuries, and Howard never looked back. He has been on a tear ever since, improving constantly. In the first half of 2006, he hit .278/.341/.582 with 28 homeruns, a solid line that will yield no complaints, except maybe some concern about the OBP on the corner (though it was pedestrian enough to make his overall line worse than that of Albert Pujols, a better MVP candidate with comparable offense and more defense for a playoff team). He overcompensated for that concern in the second half, squashing the Homerun Derby jinx to the tune of .355/.509/.751 with 30 more bombs. Sure, it is a half season, but a 1.260 OPS is a 1.260 OPS, and pitchers feared no one more than Howard over that stretch.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of Howard’s run was the way it jumpstarted a Phillies team that was dead in the water. At the trade deadline, GM Pat Gillick decided to start refashioning the roster along his lines by dumping Bobby Abreu, and his considerable contract/talent on the Yankees for filler. The logic behind the lopsided move followed from the assumption that the team was out of contention for 2006 and could use the extra flexibility going into 2007, maybe to supplement that thin pitching staff. About that time, Howard started channeling Babe Ruth, and the rest of the NL was mediocre enough that his performance alone brought the team close enough to the playoffs that they made waiver deals to enhance the rotation and had a hope going into the last weekend of the regular season. Make no mistake, the turnaround came from Howard. Chase Utley continued his strong play from before, David Dellucci had a few great weeks in Abreu’s stead, and Jon Lieber and Cole Hamels started to pitch more consistently. On the other hand, counterbalancing factors weighted these improvements down, like the attrition of the bullpen, Brett Myers’s struggles, and the loss of Abreu’s production, even in a down year. The real difference between the Phillies as a pretender and a contender, while not all that large in the wins column, came down to Ryan Howard becoming a true superstar.

With his superstardom came additional media scrutiny for Howard, resulting in his exaltation as the messianic figure in baseball’s transition out of the Steroid Era. This designation is so silly and misguided that I have difficulty deciding where to start criticizing it. For one, Howard is every bit as quantitatively guilty/innocent as Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, or Mark McGwire. Like the others, he has never failed a test for performance enhancing drugs. Some like to point out that Howard has always been big and has big family members. Well, have you looked at Barry’s gut recently? If body fat absolves him from the scarlet “S,” then there are a lot of football linemen who would probably like to appeal their suspensions and judgments in the court of public opinion. And the argument about his large brothers is complete hogwash- I have a brother who is considerably smaller than me. Does that make me a PED suspect? How about Ozzie and Jose Canseco, who both got huge on the juice? Finally, it seems odd that everyone is so comfortable that we are now heading out of the Steroid Era. There is now better testing and a fairly credible deterrent, but the biggest change seems to be the boom in mudslinging based on purely subjective opinion. I do not mean to say that any individual is or is not on PEDs, nor do I mean to comment on the effects of PEDs on baseball, since I think a lot of work is left to be done on the balance between pitching and hitting. I mean only to say that I have grown weary of idle speculation and condemnation for no purpose other than generating headlines. I do not know and I do not care. I hope I am allowed to enjoy the Ryan Howard Era in spite of this caveat.

“Come you masters of war/ You that build all the guns/ You that build the death planes/ You that build the big bombs/ You that hide behind walls/ You that hide behind desks/ I just want you to know/ I can see through your masks”

-Masters of War

The award for the most tumultuous and explosive team of the year goes to the Toronto Blue Jays, who easily made more noise off of the field than on it over the last twelve months. Tracing our memories all the way back to last winter, the Jays made plenty of headlines for their free agent/trade bonanza, including acquisitions of A.J. Burnett, B.J. Ryan, Funky Ben Molina, Lyle Overbay, and Troy Glaus. Early in the season, the Jays hovered around .500, generating little interest outside of constant injury reports regarding the shark in A.J. Burnett’s elbow. As the season wore on, the Jays endured remaining decidedly average, highlighted only by Roy Halladay’s fourth consecutive season of Cy Young-caliber rate stats- if not playing time. Finally, the also-ran status became too much to tolerate, and both Shea Hillenbrand and Ted Lilly had violent runs-in with manager John Gibbons.

Indeed, Canadians love hockey, and hockey’s primary attraction may be violence, so it comes as little surprise that Canada’s largest baseball story of the year revolves around incivility and fisticuffs. Sure, these encounters were not of the caliber of a Miami Hurricane brouhaha, but baseball is different than football. In baseball, hypermasculinity, overtly excessive testosterone, and utter insanity are at least nominally discouraged. Going back to stars of the ‘70s, we can see that players like Vida Blue did not benefit from playing on a perpetual cocaine high. Baseball lunatics are eccentrics or hams, not Lawrence Taylor or Bill Romanowski. Lattimer from The Program would not make it as a closer, regardless of the intimidation. When Kenny Rogers goes Ron Artest on a camera, it is more appalling than when Ron Artest pulled the same stunt, because we expect different things out of baseball players- if not better ones.

Maybe one fracas would be excusable, but for the same manager to have two violent incidents with his own players during the same year shows a tremendous lack of order. It is no wonder that Vernon Wells relishes the thought of free agency; even if the Blue Jays do not lose 90 games every year, the stress of playing in such a whirlwind would diminish the genuine enjoyment that some players seem to get out of the game. The second-place finish is little consolation, and I do not intend to convey the sort of patronizing moralism that such protestations usually suggest. Instead, I feel sorry for fans of the Blue Jays, whose fortunes have dramatically reversed from the early ‘90’s dynasty. I am reminded of my Minnesota Vikings fandom: most of the time, the troubles and disappointments are small and predictable, but the nagging unhappiness of following a team with little hope for improvement, and almost none for a championship wearies a fan tremendously.

“Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats/ Too noble to neglect/ Deceived me into thinking/I had something to protect”

-My Back Pages

Living with a real Red Sox fan- one who is actually from Boston and who frowns upon the pink-capped bandwagon ladies and their Papi-loving frat-boy counterparts- brings about a harrowing exposure to the withdrawal and depression so deeply engrained in the franchise that a season’s success cannot uproot it. The folly of many Boston fans after the 2004 World Series was the logical train that led them to believe that a ring could undo 86 years of heartbreak and despair. More directly, the Sox had a great postseason run, but did not magically surpass the Yankees as the preeminent franchise in the sport. Eighty-six win seasons happen to good teams, especially when struck with a spat of unfortunate injuries at the same time, forcing into service fatefully inadequate reserves who are far down the chain.

To be fair, the Red Sox front office has made its share of mistakes. Matt Clement has been an unmitigated failure, even if not on the same level as Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright a little further down the seaboard. Orlando Cabrera has walked away and been a more productive shortstop than anyone imagined, while the Sox were left with Alex Gonzalez and his wet noodle at the dish. And the fans experienced far too many first-hand reminders of the institutional stinginess in the case of Johnny Damon. Still, consider the fates of the important players from the 2004 team who have walked away or been sent away in the title’s wake:

-Kevin Millar- Part of Baltimore’s 1B/LF/DH logjam, not a productive member of the baseball society.

-Mark Bellhorn- Utility vagabond of marginal usefulness at the bottom of a roster.

-Bill Mueller- Injuries once again keeping him off of the field, little value going forward.

-Orlando Cabrera- A true missed opportunity. Three good months could have been turned into a few good years.

-Johnny Damon- Again, still useful, but the sting lingers due to his replacement’s failings

-Pedro Martinez- Refusing to guarantee that fourth year seems more reasonable now that he is a Sunday starter at best.

-Derek Lowe- Serviceable, but consider the context: great pitcher’s park, National League, strong infield defense.

-Bronson Arroyo- A great season, but it is hard to believe he would have done the same for Boston.

In total, Cabrera and Damon are the only players the have really missed. I find it curious that the front office chose to hold the older players- Schilling, Wakefield, Foulke, Varitek, Ramirez- while letting many of the younger ones walk. Moreover, Theo Epstein needs to abandon this notion that he can turn every available piece of coal and squeeze it into an Ortiz-carat diamond. Clement, Pena, Crisp, Tavarez. Not every unexpected failure is available due to a lack of market efficiency, and the Sox have enough resources to occasionally buy high and get the value.

And that is exactly the point. The Red Sox are very marketable and have the potential to be very good. Their resources do not extend into the $200 million range, so they cannot buy sure things at every position every year. Thus, the difference between the Red Sox and the Yankees is that the Red Sox will have the occasional failure, and nobody needs to get up in arms over it. This season’s failings were a result of some gambles that did not pay off, and a handful of badly timed injuries. Again, 86 win seasons are within the scope of variance. Calm down, everyone.

“Although the masters make the rules/ For the wise men and the fools/ I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.”

-It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding

Explicit or implicit, there is a set of rules that most baseball teams seem to follow when building their rosters and planning for the future. Some of the rules make sense- such as the value embedded in starting pitching and up-the-middle players and the preference for cheap, homegrown talent. Others are a bit less sensible, like the notion that any team needs veteran leadership to win, or that big-name players necessarily fill a void better than journeymen who can produce similarly and more cheaply. Everyone lives up to these rules to a certain extend: evidence can be found in the Pirates’ signing Jeromy Burnitz, or the continual employment of lefty-specialists whose cost per out is through the roof.

Certain teams are bad enough that they can test these rules to see what happens when they are broken. Therefore, this “award” goes to the potential for experimentation for Gerry Hunsicker and Andrew Friedman in Tampa, and for Dayton Moore in Kansas City, two places where failure is so pervasive that the traditional rules do not apply.

In KC, Moore has committed himself to a meme of player development, and has a decent start with baseball’s best prospect, Alex Gordon, coming rapidly down the pipeline. Moore will likely take the knowledge gained from his extensive time in Atlanta and try to replicate the Braves’ success to some degree, creating an odd bit of reflective symmetry, from Schuerholz-and-Cox in KC to Schuerholz-and-Cox in Atlanta, to their professional offspring returning to the Show Me state. The Royals do not currently field depth at those traditionally important up-the-middle and pitching spots, so they will have to butter their bread with some other instrument. It will be interesting to see if Moore commits to the suboptimal and conventional option of Joey Gathright, Angel Berroa, etc, or experiments with some different options. Remember, tall shortstops were thought to have too little range until the Orioles experimented with Cal Ripken Jr., and were handsomely rewarded. Today, the strong arms of guys like Jeter and A-Rod are allowed to outweigh range questions, catapulting the shortstop position into a new class of offensive integrity.

Tampa has even more openings, since they have even less to lose in terms of organizational history and prestige. With 53 exciting prospects jammed into the four corners, the front office has all sorts of transactional and positional difficulties with which to experiment. Rather than try to prescribe what needs to be done without knowing many details about the skills of players like Elijah Dukes, I will patiently wait to see if the critical thinking skills of a highly-regarded front office team can prevail. As with the Red Sox and Blue Jays, overtaking the Yankees may not be a tenable goal. On the other hand, small victories will be tolerated, especially for a team that has had such little success in its short history.

“To know that some other man is holdin' you tight,/ It hurts me all over, it doesn't seem right.
All of those awful things that I have heard,/ I don't want to believe them, all I want is your word./ So darlin', you better come through,/ Tell me that it isn't true.”

One subplot started the season as a pressing and relevant issue, but slowly faded out of the news cycle and public consciousness, even though the impact seemed to remain throughout the year. While I do not know why or how, pitchers who participated in the World Baseball Classic suffered a disproportionate number of injuries through the 2006 season as well as underperformance. One could go so far as to make a case that a few teams’ seasons hinged on players who lost time or effectiveness to a few exhibition games in the early spring. Although I loved the WBC, watched most of the games, followed the strategies, and enjoyed the fan participation, I have to acknowledge that quite a few very good players did not offer their full contribution, and the correlation with participation in the event is alarmingly high.

Spring training routines do not conform to a scientific or medical ideal, but they have developed over time to get players ready for the season. Even if the players do not take on a particularly strenuous alternative, the change in environment and the alteration of the body’s expectation could be enough to tweak a fragile pitcher’s musculature. If you disagree with my thinking, and still believe that the WBC injury plague is a media myth, consider the list of above average pitchers who were either particularly ineffective or injured after participating in the Classic:

Missed Time/Ineffective:

Daniel Cabrera

Bruce Chen

Rodrigo Lopez

Julian Tavarez

Mike Timlin

Freddy Garcia

Javier Vazquez

Todd Jones

Brad Lidge

Dontrelle Willis

Bartolo Colon

Kelvim Escobar

J.C. Romero

Scot Shields

Odalis Perez

Francisco Liriano

Carlos Silva

Duaner Sanchez

Victor Zambrano

Esteban Loaiza

Houston Street

Jake Peavy

Gustavo Chacin

Tony Armas

Gary Majewski

And here is a list of pitchers who performed up to or above a reasonably high level of expectation after participating:

Carlos Zambrano

Jeff Francis

Byung-Hyun Kim

Fernando Rodney

Francisco Rodriguez

Jae Seo

Joe Nathan

Chad Cordero

My methodology is admittedly sloppy, choosing players by my own expectation and impressions. Nonetheless, one list is quite a bit longer than the other. Think about your morning routine: when you have to get up early in the morning, you do not want to face surprises. If you are used to showering, sipping coffee, then driving to work, your body responds to those stimuli. If one morning features a water main break, a spilled cup of coffee, and a car accident, then you probably will not function well. Even if the routine is altered slightly, it has an effect on your behavior, just as it did on these pitchers’ bodies.

The strangest aspect to me is the fact that the discussion about the WBC disappeared almost entirely after about May. Gary Majewski complained about it briefly after the trade to the Reds, but few other pitchers even mentioned the word “Classic” after it was an early-season whipping boy for every injured player. Could it be that MLB got tired of hearing such discouraging words about its little promotional venture and kindly asked the journalists to call off the dogs? I have no special knowledge, except that my powers of observation make the disappearance seem odd.

“An' here I sit so patiently/ Waiting to find out what price/ You have to pay to get out of/ Going through all these things twice.”

-Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again

“May you always be courageous,/ Stand upright and be strong,/ May you stay forever young.”

-Forever Young

I have given two lyrics for the polarity of this year’s Florida Marlins, my favorite baseball story of 2006 outside of Minnesota. The first lyric gets at the despair present throughout the diminished fan base before the season and through the first rough stretch of games. The second reminds us of how dramatically and surprisingly the team was able to turn around its fortunes. Sure, the Marlins finished under .500, easily outscored by the opposition, fourth in the division, and 10 games out of the Wild Card. None of their final stats seem so incredible for the average baseball team. The average baseball team does not play dozens of rookies, though, and the average baseball team does not have a marginal payroll within shouting distance of the minimum allowed by the league.

The truly inspiring and incredible aspect of the Marlins season is how many wins they piled up with such low expectations. No stat typifies their value as much as the marginal dollars they spent per marginal win: less than $200,000. By comparison, the A’s, Twins, and Rockies were the next best teams, all spending approximately $1 million more per marginal win. On the other end, the Yankees spent over $3 million per win, and the Cubs over $4 million. Naturally, the huge separation comes from Florida’s nearly inconceivably low payroll, which is only $5.8 million more than what a team would pay for a collection of all rookies. As a result, their 29 wins above the theoretical replacement level came as gravy, as the team was built with the cheapest talent available.

Maybe there will be some regression from this squad next year. They have experienced turbulence at the top, with manager Joe Girardi facing an early dismissal over disagreements with ownership. They also outperformed expectations so far this year that there is bound to be some return. Still, the Marlins have built a solid core of players for next year, and they will stay cheap for a few years after that. Hanley Ramirez, Dan Uggla, Josh Johnson, Scott Olsen, and Anibal Sanchez are all young, improving, cheap, and extremely valuable. Miguel Olivo, Joe Borowski, and Wes Helms are probably worse than they were this year. Still, finding an above-average center fielder to go with their collection of talented arms in the rotation and the bullpen, their strong up-the-middle talent on its way up, and their already present star power in the form of Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis, and the Marlins could remain legitimate contenders for several years without pricing themselves out of the NL East.

To me, the Marlins are exactly the type of team for which a fan would want to root. The players and manager seemed to be on a mission all season to prove that they deserved to considered a real professional team, much less a contender. Their struggles were akin to the Indians’ in Major League, with a villainous owner seemingly trying to doom the team to disappoint a fan base that would not buy him a new toy to make themselves more money. Instead of folding up and resigning themselves to the second division, the Marlins learned on the fly, becoming not only a Major League team, but one successful enough to be considered a contender. That, I believe, is truly award-worthy.

Help Wanted

Two years ago, the Mets disappointed everyone, winning only 71 games and failing to even sniff the playoffs under Art Howe, the big ticket manager handpicked out of Oakland a couple of seasons before. After replacing Howe with Willie Randolph, the Mets have completed their first back-to-back winning seasons since 2000-2001, and spent most of 2006 as the class of the National League.

Last year, the Tigers also won 71 games, finishing fourth in a competitive division, leaving little reason for hope going into 2006. Enter Jim Leyland, and the Tigers surprised everyone, leapfrogging the rest of the division to make it to the ALCS after a 24-game improvement. It was the team’s first winning season since 1993, and their first playoff appearance since 1987.

I do not mean to say that Randolph nor Leyland possesses some special moxie or pixie dust that turns a bad team into a good team. I also do not mean to say that either manager’s positive attitude redefined a culture of losing that stood in the players’ way. What I do believe is that a good manager puts players in the right positions to play to their potential, optimizing the value that they provide by utilizing platoon and individual match-ups. Furthermore, they identify players who are cresting or bottoming out, and adjusting playing time accordingly.

Take, for example, the turnaround of the Minnesota Twins this season. The team went from an afterthought in the AL Central to the eventual division champion when Ron Gardenhire substantially altered the everyday lineup by putting Jason Bartlett and Nick Punto in places to succeed. He found a position where Mike Cuddyer could get his hit on without doing too much defensive damage. He and his coaching staff put together a cheap and exceptionally useful bullpen. Mid-season injuries did not stop the stampede, as Gardenhire found situations where players like Jason Tyner and Rondell White could make positive contributions. He even pressed a lot of the right buttons in the rotation, which did not get effective full seasons from Brad Radke, Carlos Silva, Kyle Lohse, Scott Baker, or Francisco Liriano, their preseason 2-6 starters.

Jim Leyland is a similar case. Set aside the grizzled ballplayer exterior, the unnecessary dugout cleats, and the fact that he hits batting practice to his team every day- his image is not on trial. The accomplishment for which Leyland deserves credit is the way he managed his roster. Like Ozzie Guillen last year, Leyland put together a pitching staff that has exceeded everyone’s expectations by having the right guys on the mound at the right times. By committing to youngsters Justin Verlander and Joel Zumaya, he defied the notion that high-leverage pitchers have to be proven veterans, and he was rewarded for it with almost 85 runs of VORP and some great postseason performances. Kenny Rogers, a notoriously slow finisher, did not suffer down the stretch, and has pitched 15 incredible innings so far in the playoffs. Leyland has even got a lot out of a little in the lineup squeezing more out of Marcus Thames and Craig Monroe (30 combined runs of VORP) than anyone would have reasonably expected. Forget about station-to-station or one-run strategies for a minute. A manager has the extremely important job of filling out the lineup card every day, and a lot more goes into that calculation than most of us realize.

With that notion in mind, let’s look at the managerial vacancies around baseball, along with a few of the premier candidates who could occupy those vacancies in the near future.

Oakland A’s

After dismissing Ken Macha, some journalists predictably criticized Billy Beane for his egotism and lack of personal accountability. After being swept by a comparably talented team, I wonder what other course of action Beane would take- fire himself? Truthfully, Macha competently managed the rotation and lineup all year, but for a team with title hopes and lots of difficult injury or personality cases (Milton Bradley, Frank Thomas, Rich Harden, Bobby Crosby), adequacy does not cut the mustard. Throw in a near mutiny from the players, and the decision was practically a no-brainer.

For next year, the A’s would be best served by a manager who knows how to utilize the ample platoon advantages Beane has given him on both offense and defense. More importantly, after seeing Guillen and Leyland magically keep injury-prone players in the lineup, Beane has to find someone who understands usage patterns well enough to keep the top players in top form. In-game tactics may not be as important, as a slow team who draws lots of walks does not have may offensive options. For all of those reasons, cross Dusty Baker off of the list right now. A better fit might be Buck Schowalter, a manager with experience managing pitching staffs and temperamental players from his time in Arizona, and a good track record across three stops.

Texas Rangers

Two previous Schowalter dismissals preceded titles in New York and Arizona, so Texas has to feel superstitiously good about their chances for next year. The Rangers have different issues than the A’s, trying to develop and optimize young arms rather than plugging in more mature ones. On offense, the new skipper will have to find a way to replace the unexpected surges of Gary Matthews Jr. and Mark Derosa. With Hank Blalock’s and Mark Teixeira’s futures uncertain, the team the Rangers will put on the field next year is hardly a sure thing.

Even with the confusion, it is fair to say that the number one job of any new manager will be to find a way to make the pitching trio of DVD (Diamond, Volquez, and Danks) healthy and productive major league arms, perhaps stemming the tide of offense-only baseball in Arlington. Thus, Angels’ pitching coach Bud Black deserves a look, if only because he knows more about pitching than any other major candidate. If Jon Daniels still has Orel Hershiser’s phone number, he might as well call him, too.

San Francisco Giants

A great deal of the Giants’ future depends on what happens to Barry Bonds in the next few months. Apparently, Bonds is not walking away, but reports out of Frisco indicate that ownership may not want him back, recognizing that the current version of Barry is not enough to carry a band of retreads into contention. Even so, Bonds’ drawing power is probably great enough that the imminent rebuilding process should wait for another year, since they have no chance of winning without him, but that is another debate for another day.

For now, I will assume that Barry leaves next year, and that the Giants become the post-Jordan Bulls, only without the championships coming on the front end. In that case, the Giants below-average farm system and aged roster paints a dire picture for the next manager. My advice to Brian Sabean would be to pick someone who will not make big mistakes in terms of injuring the few prospects the Giants have, or sticking with useless veterans when younger players could be developing. In other words, the Giants need a fall guy, someone to do what Allen Trammel did for the Tigers for three years, someone to keep the seat warm for a real manager once the team has a chance to contend again. And who knows, maybe this organizational soldier will pan out to be good enough to keep the job once it means something.

Washington Nationals

The Nats have a less certain direction than any of the previous three teams. While the Rangers and A’s will obviously try to win the division right away, and the Giants have to take a couple of years to fashion a new team out of a ball of clay, the Nats’ future may depend on the unpredictable whims of Jim Bowden’s fancy. Signing Alfonso Soriano will do nothing but get the team back into the mid-70’s in wins while failing to address the persistent need for pitching depth and cheap talent across the board. Washington is one bad signing away from becoming real competition for Baltimore, but not in the revenue-stealing way Peter Angelos fears, instead by stealing the perpetual mediocrity for a team with one big-name star and little else.

In my mind’s eye, the best path for the Nationals to follow would be to try to built Atlanta North. With Stan Kasten at the top, the team could devote itself to player development, supported by enough of a revenue stream to patch up the lineup through free agency, much like the operation Kasten oversaw with the Braves. Since Bobby Cox is not available, I would go a cheaper route, finding a fairly young manager, no previous managerial experience required, who knows how to use young players and stresses fundamentals like a lunatic. Perhaps Joe Girardi deserves a look.

Dynastic Demise

Take a deep breath, baseball fans; the weight has been lifted from our shoulders. The monkey has leapt from our collective back. The albatross hangs no longer from our weary neck. For the seventh straight year, the terrifying, borderline religious, hope for the fall of the Yankees has come to satisfying fruition. A prediction that many made earlier in the year, and even more abandoned with the slip-sliding of the Tigers’ rotation, has become a reality as Detroit’s dynamic pitching staff entirely stymied the most star-studded offense in baseball for three unbelievable games.

Even with Joe Torre reportedly down for the count, the Yankees will not be in the dumps for long. Lou Pinella, an eminently qualified skipper, has one hand firmly fixed on the baton, and a core of past and future all-stars will return. Considering the Boss’s easily predictable petulance and the uncertain status of the revenue sharing system heading into this year’s collective bargaining negotiations, we could see a spending spree in the Bronx paralleled only by Roman Abramovich buying most of Europe’s best footballers for Chelsea’s side all at once. Still, the track record for patience and development is a much more successful one than Steinbrenner’s penchant for reactionary rashness. Should they enter the bidding for Jason Schmidt or Barry Zito? Might as well nab both, lest the other come back to beat the in the playoffs. The bullpen will certainly be overhauled all the way up to Mariano Rivera. And who knows what will happen to Alex Rodriguez after another thorough playoff collapse.

Even the most indulgent shopping spree scenario comes with the caveat that the Yankees have been successful when Steinbrenner has taken his hands off and let the baseball people run things, making the possibility of another Dave Winfield situation something to expect rather than consider. Jeter, Rivera, Bernie, and Pettitte laid the groundwork for four World Championships, teams that did not lose to youthful exuberance or surprising resurgence. These teams had complementary talent, acquired by Brian Cashman to fit together in a World Series puzzle. They came through smart trades or deft pickups that did not cost the deed to the farm system, allowing them to develop their own core. Since that roster starting turning like a pig too late for slaughter, Steinbrenner was unwilling to commit to building another sustainable roster of balance across the board. John Kruk’s reaction was that, “You can’t pitch with money,” which makes sense if interpreted correctly. Pitching is unpredictable; injuries and collapses happen frequently and almost randomly; Carl Pavano, Jaret Wright, and Randy Johnson hovered far below expectations. Good pitching depth has to be developed, because good pitchers do not become available in free agency often enough to build a dominant pitching staff.

Pitching is not the Yankees only problem, although it is a major one. Their failings have manifested themselves in different ways through the last six postseason losses. So in a celebration of another Yankee loss, let us gleefully look back on each series since 2001 where New York has fallen to a team with less prestige.

2001- 7 Game World Series Loss to Arizona

A 95 win regular season masked a continued decline from the team’s 1998 peak. Knoblauch, Brosius, and Justice remained in the starting lineup past their primes with decreasing usefulness. With Mussina, Clemens, and Pettitte, the front end of the rotation had enough to win, and the team was within seconds of raising another flag. In all honestly, this Yankee team cannot fall in the failure category, since a broken bat single and the two best pitchers in the game reversed their fortunes quickly and stunningly from a 3-2 Series lead. It took a lot of luck for the D-Backs, but who can complain?

2002- 4 Game ALDS Loss to Anaheim

Adding David Wells and Robin Ventura put the team back on the rise, maybe as good as it had been since 1999. Still, the pitching staff gave up 31 runs the four games of the ALDS. Anaheim rode its slap-happy approach to hit .376/.406/.624 for the series. The Angels’ least productive regular was Funky Ben Molina, who still had four hits and two XBHs in only four games. Again, the Yankees can shirk the blame by blaming a white-hot opponent, but when your pitching staff can do nothing to stop Darin Erstad and Scott Spiezio, you have your own problems. Also, this was Jason Giambi’s first postseason series with the Yankees. The team’s record in postseason series since he arrived is 3-5, which is fine by me, since mercenaries do not deserve champagne.

2003- 6 Game World Series Loss to Florida

Another heartbreaking World Series defeat, another recent expansion team celebrating in the Stadium. If you had not figured it out by this time, nobody could miss the fact that this was not the same Yankee team that won four titles in five years. With Hideki Matsui now in the fold, Nick Johnson playing his best season in pinstripes, and Jose Contreras showing flashes of a young El Duque, the Bombers looked absolutely primed for a return to glory. They were on the doorstep, too, with a 2-1 series lead and the Game 4 winning run only 90 feet away after tying it at 3 in the top of the 9^th. The Marlins did not allow the run to score, though, and Alex Gonzalez hit the game winner in the 12^th. The Yankees would not win another game in the series.

2004- 7 Game ALCS Loss to Boston

We all know this story well enough. Dave Roberts, Johnny Damon, Curt Schilling, David Ortiz. I will spare the retelling, except to say that this disappointment was a year in the making after the Yankees only escaped the ALCS a year before due to the misgivings of Grady Little. A-Rod made “the slap” in this series, and it has all been down hill from there, even if he won the MVP the next year. It seems odd to me that he has spent as much time with the Yankees as he did with the Rangers, possibly because so much of his New York tenure has been very forgettable.

2005- 5 Game ALDS Loss to Anaheim

Anaheim deserves its reputation as one big Yankee-killer, not only for two postseason eliminations, but also for strong play during the regular season. The roster for this team is very similar to the one that just lost to the Tigers, and it happened in much the same way. The Angels held the Yankees to 3 runs three times out of five, getting good outings from Ervin Santana, Kelvim Escobar, and John Lackey. With an offense as good as New York’s, no team can expect shutouts night after night, but sending out an above-average starter every game, like Anaheim and Detroit have done, can at least keep enough games within reach.

2006- 4 Game ALDS Loss to Detroit

Maybe it is too early to say anything definitive about this series, but it certainly seemed like Kenny Rogers made a season and career-altering start in game 3. If he walks away at the end of the year, everyone would forget about his miserable times in New York, his extended mediocrity, and his one-sided brawl with the cameraman. His legacy will probably derive strictly from that one incredible outing. I do not believe much in tangible effects of leadership or in “setting the tone,” but Rogers undeniably transitioned Detroit from thinking they could beat the Yankees to knowing they would beat the Yankees, and Jeremy Bonderman closed the book 24 hours later.

So here we stand, with the Yankees seven years removed from inviting Bud Selig into their clubhouse, and the prestige of their regime is fully intact. The Evil Empire will probably be back in business before long. In the meantime, let’s fully enjoy the fresh storylines that replace Derek Jeter’s clutchness and Joe Torre’s leadership. These are very good times.

Post-Season Pre-Mortem

(This article can alternately be found at www.WriteOnSports.com)

Here are my postseason predictions: analysts will incorrectly pick a huge number of the series from the MLB playoffs. Even the best analysts get caught up in game-by-game momentum swings, tactical decisions, and individual trends that ought not be generalized over a longer period. For instance, the main articles on Baseball Prospectus on Thursday dealt with manager moves and play execution from Wednesday’s games, and the three-week strategic implications of postseason rosters- the most significant one being Joe Beimel’s injury-induced exclusion from the Dodgers’ postseason roster. Another of my favorite baseball sites, Baseball Think Factory, linked to a handful of knee-jerk reactions about one or two games, making big claims about teams’ directions and fundamental essences. Here is the bottom line: the postseason usually features a bunch of really good baseball that is really fun to watch, but it does not provide meaningful statistical data for analysis, especially on the fly.

While everyone knows that short series are unpredictable, I think many fans tend to forget just how short the postseason really is. Consider the total number of games for a moment. If every series goes the distance by today’s postseason structure, you will see eight teams combining to play a total of 41 games- not that many more than an individual starting pitcher starts over the course of the year. Even so, most series do not fulfill their maximum length potential. Setting the averages right in the middle- 4 games in the short series and 5.5 in the longer ones- only about 358 games have been played in the 11-year history of the current format, compared to 2430 total games played over the course of a single major league regular season. Starting in 1993 and going backward, if the Majors had played the LCS-World Series format since its birth, you would have to go back to 1868, roughly the birth of truly organized baseball- to reach a single season’s worth of baseball games. Of course, the LCS did not exist until a few decades ago. Therefore, there were more Major League games played in the 2006 regular season than in all postseasons up to and including this one combined. Any good statistician will tell you that single-season data is unreliable. Thus, looking at all postseason games- from the Black Sox, to the original Bronx Bombers, to Stengel’s Yankees, to the Big Red Machine, to Torre’s current iteration of the Bombers- gives us the same overall perspective as the one we get from looking back to sometime in June 2006.

We constantly make two critical mistakes in evaluating players in the postseason. First, we speak of individual postseason performance as if it is somehow easily known even though there exists less than a full season’s worth of data on even the most experienced players. Secondly, we foolishly separate regular season and postseason ability, as if they are two separate skill sets. Think about a player like Reggie Jackson, a true postseason stud who everyone recognizes as a prime-time performer. Still, Mr. October played few enough October games that all of his stats could be easily skewed by variance. We tell and re-tell stories of Jackson’s three homerun game in the World Series as if some mystical event or unique psychological ability gave him the strength to perform at a supernatural level for a short while. In reality, players have three homerun games every now and then, and power hitters are more likely to do it than slap hitters. Eventually, someone was bound to hit three homeruns in a crucial World Series game, Reggie Jackson happened to be that guy. Because of that and a handful of other really strong games, the equivalent of a several very good weeks makes Jackson look like a legend. Chris Shelton hit like the postseason version of Reggie Jackson for a couple of months this season, but he had a larger sample from which to draw by the end of the year, and ended up being replaced by Sean Casey. I do not mean to say that Chris Shelton was ever on Reggie Jackson’s level as a player, but a 40 or 50 good games does not a legend make, no matter when those games were played.

Part of the misunderstanding comes from the logical fallacy that says that postseason games really are unique; that it would be one thing for a player to have a couple of hot months, but doing it under the bright lights and intense scrutiny of the postseason is a meaningful sample rather than a truly random one. Just because the games are not sequential does not mean that they are not subject to variance. If we selected every player’s career stats from a certain set of days, such as the 12^th-15^th of every month excluding August, some players would probably have .400 career BAs, others would have absurdly high numbers of HRs, and others would struggle more than one might anticipate. If you took a sample of only Tuesday and Thursday games, there would be a similar result. The better players would rise to the top, and the worse ones would go to the bottom, but some would look out of place by nothing more than completely random variance. The postseason is a little difference due to the level of competition, but the batters and pitchers are all better, and are all presumably trying as hard as they can, so there is no discernable advantage.

The same sort of knee-jerk reaction applies to the amateurish calculations of momentum. As I watch game two of the Dodgers and Mets from my couch on Thursday night, I hear commentators dooming the Padres and Twins to an early death. While the Cardinals and A’s certainly hold a meaningful advantage. On the other hand, I have a strong feeling that the artificially constructed storylines would change drastically if either series reached a game 5. If one of the teams down 2-0 comes back to win the series, the losing team will be condemned as a fundamentally flawed squad that never had a chance to win the title- “They didn’t have the lineup to survive,” “Their starting pitching was too average.” But being fundamentally flawed in a week means they are fundamentally flawed today, and that storyline certainly does not have legs today. Same with the Yankees, who are supposedly in trouble after losing game two, and having to win two out of three against a team that has played sub-.500 ball since mid-season.

So before we start the 2006 prognostication season, let’s take a deep breath and step away for a moment. Any team could beat any other team, and we have very little ability to predict the minute changes that really do have an influence from game to game. So let’s stop falling over ourselves talking about a single play or the 25^th spot on the roster, and enjoy the baseball.