June 25th, 2007
Joe Torre: Secret Agent of the Boston Red Sox
This weekend’s games showed why, for the remainder of the season, the Sox should worry about almost anyone before New York. While Francona continued to manage brilliantly down in San Diego — I almost jumped for joy when I saw Beckett go back out for the eighth this afternoon — Joe Torre continued the ritualized abuse he’s been heaping on the Yankee bullpen for years, guaranteeing that, should the Yanks somehow make the playoffs, they’ll have almost no arms to lead them to battle. (I’ve always said that it was Torre, along with Schilling, Ortiz, and Foulke, that played the biggest role in the ‘04 ALCS: had he not rode Tom Gordon that year like a cheap whore, Flash might have had an ounce or two of gas left in the tank in the eighth inning of Game 4.) The CW storyline coming out of this weekend will be how, once again, the Yankees’ bullpen failed when the game was on the line. But the CW is wrong. The story here is how Torre’s mismanagement is already crippling New York.
There are so many places to start this discussion, it’s hard to know where to begin. There’s Torre’s use of Mariano for five outs on Friday, the second time Genius Joe has pulled that move after swearing up and down in spring training he’d never use Mo for more than one inning. There’s his ass-backwards bullpen management last night, which pretty much guaranteed the Giants would break their eight-game losing streak. And there was tonight’s emergency relief appearance by Clemens (I’m just sure that’s what he signed up for), the first time in 22 years Roger’s come out of the bullpen.
But instead of harping on any of that, let’s just look at some numbers. The first one is IP so far this season; the second what that’s projected to over the full year.
Proctor, 41, 92 (Last year Proctor led all relievers in IP with 102.)
Vizcaino, 37, 81.2 (Pretty much in line with his career averages.)
Farnsworth, 32, 70.2 (Since becomming a reliever in 2000, he’s topped 80 IP only once, in 2001.)
Bruney, 32, 70.2 (His career average is 32.2.)
Myers, 29.2, 65.2 (The last time he topped 50 IPs was in 1998.)
Then there’s the Sox.
Okajima, 36.2, 80.1 (No MLB comps.)
Piniero, 30, 65.2 (He averaged more than 180 IP during his years as a starter.)
Papelbon, 27.1, 59.2 (He was shut down after 68 IP last year.)
I guess Torre figures that now that Dusty Baker’s no longer on the bench, someone needs to wrack up those pitcher abuse points…
June 24th, 2007
I won’t even bother saying his name…
I know, I know — I’ve been forsaking my duties. And I’m still behind on my work, so I’ll be forsaking some more. But I’ll duck back in for a couple of quick posts, the first of which…is about Murray Chass! Many of you will remember that it was less than two weeks ago when Chass wrote, “At the rate at which the Yankees are slashing into Boston’s lead in the American League East, they will pass the Red Sox in the standings by July 4.” At the time, the Sox led New York by a mere 7.5 games. After today’s Sox win/Yankees loss, the Yankees are back below .500, stuck in third place, and 11.5 games out of first. Oh, and the Sox have the best record in all of baseball. For the Yankees to overtake Boston by Independence Day would truly be miraculous: each team only has 8 games between now and then.
Murray so consistently displays an almost total lack of awareness about the game of baseball — how it’s played, what it means, how to write about it — that it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he remains one of the very few New York Times columnists the paper doesn’t make you pay for reading online. (I will admit that even I was somewhat surprised that the paper didn’t even put him on the front page of its sports homepage.) (Oh, and want a rich combo of delicious irony and total boneheadedness, check out today’s column, in which Chass bitchslaps ESPN for not bringing up steroids during a discussion of whether or not Sammy Sosa would make it to the Hall of Fame. Murray, the man has more than 600 home runs. The only reason they were even having that conversation was because of steroids!)
June 18th, 2007
Dice-K’s mediocre Saturday start…and this week’s readings
Quick thoughts on this weekend’s Giants series, of which I attended games two and three:
* Saturday was most definitely not Dice-K’s best game of the season; it was, however, an illustration of one of my favorite themes: the need to consider process vs. results. At points he had trouble locating his curve; he went to three balls a number of times; and only threw seven frames of zeros because of a gift-wrapped strike zone. The sixth inning, in particular, was a classic example of what we’ve seen when Matsuzaka struggles: with Bonds up third, he walked a batter and gave up a hard single before K-ing Barry. Another hard hit liner by one of the Flying Molina Brothers was, fortunately, aimed directly at short. After that gift, Dice-K hit Nate Schierholtz — who has now amassed a total of 41 big league at bats — loading the bases. He then proceeded to walk in a run in a 1-0 game…or would have, anyway, if home plate umpire Charlie Reliford had had his eyes checked before the game. That’s not to say I didn’t like what I saw…but this game might have been a blowout had the Sox been playing an AL team.
* Terry Francona finally seems to have realized that you never want to pitch Mike Timlin in any game in which the Sox are winning or losing by less than five runs. (I pray I’m right on this one…)
* Manny’s two home runs were great to see, but even better was the authority with which he was swinging the bat. He was back to the showing off perhaps the most beautiful swing in the game. Historically, when he finds that swing, he doesn’t lose it for a while. Ortiz, on the other hand, still looks like he’s swinging from his heels too much, and he’s also beginning to look over anxious. Yesterday’s two ground-rule doubles were great, don’t get me wrong…but they weren’t the kind of majestic drives we’ve come to expect from Papi.
* JDD continues to miss badly on some pitches, but the balls he is hitting, he’s hit squarely and with authority. All season I’ve been a guy who’s preached patience with Drew; you don’t put up the kind of track record he does and suddenly forget how to play ball. Coco looks much more confident at the plate too, and he continues to play good-to-great center field. (Lugo is a whole other story; he looked desperate and confused.)
* Following Murray Chass’s logic, the fact that the Sox gained a game on the Yankees this weekend means they’ll end the season 35 games up. That, of course, won’t happen. It’s not out of the realm of possibility to think Boston’s lead will stay within the 5-9 game range through September, but it’s also not out of the realm of possibility to think it’s going to get much tighter down the line. Both of these teams are good. New York’s not half as bad as they were playing in May, and Boston’s not the historically great outfit their record indicated. If both teams stay healthy, it’s going to be an interesting — and hopefully fun — summer.
***
Want to hear me talk about all of this, and more? (And whatever else you want to know?) This is your lucky week: I have a series of readings/signings/q&a’s in Boston this week: tomorrow night (at the Boston Public Library, 6pm), Wednesday lunch hour (12:30, downtown Borders), Thursday night (Winchester’s Bookends, 7 pm), and Friday night (Porter Square Books, 7 pm). Don’t miss out.
June 14th, 2007
Putting it all into perspective…
Several readers have written in to ask me why I haven’t used Tuesday’s typically ill-informed Murray Chass column as an excuse to take some more swings at my favorite punching bag. The story, “A Chance of Yankee Thunder at Boston,” posited that the Yankees could overtake the Sox before the All-Star break: “At the rate at which the Yankees are slashing into Boston’s lead in the American League East, they will pass the Red Sox in the standings by July 4.” To give you a bit of perspective of just how stupid a comment like this is, the Yankees were cutting into the Sox’s lead during a stretch in which they were undefeated and the Sox were playing below .500. That’s like saying after a night after a Devil Rays victory that Tampa should be projected to win every single game from there on out.
But logic has never been Murray’s strong point…and, indeed, after dropping another game at Fenway last night, even the natives are getting restless. The Sox are 5-7 in May, while the Yankees are 10-2, and are winners of eight straight. That seemingly impregnable 14.5 games is at 8.5 games; a hearty figure that would be cause for celebration any other season but now seems like reason enough to start gnawing those fingernails. And, indeed, expect to see plenty of stories (and hear plenty of the-end-is-nigh segments on the radio) in the days to come. (An aside: how is it that sportswriters are never forced to explain why they proclaim a team invincible and deeply flawed within a period of several weeks…when nothing has changed except for the vagaries of a long season? But I digress.)
So here’s a short list of reasons not to worry…
* Just as Okajima was not going to finish the season with a .0001 ERA, the Yankees pitchers are not going to keep on performing this consistently well. I remain convinced that Clemens is a #3 AL starter, and nothing in his first start made me think any differently. Pettitte has been pitching above his level, and I’d expect Mussina to resemble the 5-inning mediocrity much more than I’d expect him to keep on looking like an ace, as he did last night.
* There are several trends that are unlikely to be sustained. Posada isn’t going to end the season looking like Ted Williams (just as Alex Cora wasn’t going to hit .400 all year…and Pedroia wasn’t going to end up at .200). Manny isn’t going to end the year having remade himself as a singles hitter. And JDD — who’s been among the MLB power leaders for the last half-decade — isn’t going to look this anemic all year, either. (By the same token, I’m assuming Abreu has actually turned a corner.)
* Even Boston’s pitching staff falters a bit — and they will — the rotation looks to be strong and deep enough to end the year pretty near the top of the heap.
* Even the worst teams go on tears. Three years ago, the Devil Rays won 12 in a row. (Granted, 11 of those were against the AAAA-NL, but still.) The Yankees are better than they looked for the first third of the season; they’re not this good. Their rotation is too old; too many key players are scuffed up (Damon) or about to enter exile (Giambi). The next three-and-a-half months aren’t going to be a cakewalk. But this isn’t going to be 1978 all over again, either.
So gnaw those fingernails. Just don’t reserve a spot on the Tobin. You’re much more likely to need to keep October free…
***
Want to hear me discuss this, and much, much more? Head down to NYC’s Professor Thoms tonight, where I’ll be reading, talking, signing books, and encouraging copious consumption of alcohol in the hopes that that’ll spur book sales…
June 11th, 2007
This Thursday: watch the Sox-Rockies, get your FTM personally inscribed.
All you NYC Sox fans: Don’t forget this Thursday’s Feeding the Monster reading/book signing/discussion/heckling at Professor Thoms, the East Village’s Red Sox bar extraordinaire. Thoms is at 219 2nd Ave, and has a 41-foot bar and an 100-foot projection screen, so there’ll be plenty of distractions. And, of course, the bar plays every Sox game, all-year round. Here’s your chance to get your FTM paperback (also available from Amazon for only $10.20 — cheap!) personally scribbled on by me. And all while the Sox sit atop the AL East. Yay!
(Boston-area Sox fans shouldn’t despair: there’s full slate of Dirty Water readings scheduled for next week.
June 11th, 2007
D-Lowe: Renaissance man
From today’s David Carr column on sorting through medical information on the web:
“Derek Lowe, a research scientist who has worked for pharmaceutical companies, writes a blog, In the Pipeline. ‘It is falling into a fairly predictable template, in part because we have had a number of drug safety issues and scares, so this story ends up getting slotted into the same mold as Vioxx on parts of the Web,’ he said in an interview. ‘So we end up reading about the evil mustache twirlers in Big Pharma who knew it was toxic and marketed it anyway.’”
He went on to explain the physics behind the sinker and also discussed the subtleties of sports psychology.
June 11th, 2007
The Times’s stubborn addiction to sloppiness reaches new heights: The Andersen files, Pt. 5 in an ongoing series
In what must be some kind of record, it only took 177 words of this morning’s Times story on Random House for the paper to muff the spelling of Kurt Andersen’s last name…and they did it in the same paragraph in which they spelled his name correctly:
“Random House is also expected to announce today that Kurt Andersen, the author and the host of “Studio 360,” has been named editor at large, where he will suggest new nonfiction books. Last week, Random House, which published Mr. Anderson’s best-selling novel, ‘Heyday,’ announced a two-book deal with him.”
Thank god the Times has new public editor to keep the paper in line. I don’t have the energy to keep at it for much longer.
