As a fervent Blue Jays fan I would definitely say to the Yankees, Jeter at a different position? Are you mad? Derek Jeter is THE shortstop of the century and has to stay there, just like he says, right through 2014. Everybody knows that range and quickness are over-rated: what really matters is that he almost never fails to catch any ball he can reach. And of course, the kiddies will be screaming and screaming for him at every home game no matter what he does.
Baseballs Smothering Inertia
Have you noticed? The Yankees finished first in the American League East, Boston finished second, and the Toronto Blue Jays finished third. And Cleveland is making run at the Central division. And Atlanta owns the National League East.
Quick– now tell me what year this is?
1994? 1995? 1996? 1997 1998? 1999? 2000? 2001? 2002? 2003? 2004? All of the above?
Pretty well all of the above, with a few minor exceptions. The American League East has been fossilized for about 10 years, from the last labour disruption in 1994 to now. In almost every season, it’s been Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Orioles, Devil Rays.
You would think the fans would be catching on by now. Oh no. They jam the stadiums every week, paying $35 or more per ticket, to see what they have been led to believe is a contest between competitive baseball clubs for an attainable prize, the playoffs, and baseball glory.
Except– wait a minute– fans are not showing up in the same numbers in Cleveland or Baltimore, and they haven’t been showing up in great numbers in Toronto for the past few years either, and Tampa Bay, of course, is a lost cause.
If, in 1995, you would have told these fans that their team was going to finish in the same position for the next ten years, every single year, without fail, I doubt most of them would have bothered.
So what’s happened? Why is the season fixed? And it is fixed, without a doubt. Unless you really want to argue that the same five teams finishing in the same sequence ten years in a row is a cosmic coincidence. It isn’t. The game is now fixed because owners are smarter than they used to be and money is now the only factor. Owners used to squander a lot of money on washed-up over-the-hill over-rated low-average high-strikeout sluggers. But owners have gotten smarter. They trust their baseball men and scouts more and their own sentiments less.
Admittedly, the World Series itself is still up for grabs, at least, by one of the teams pre-selected for the playoffs. You can buy a regular season championship, but nobody has enough money to guarantee that your ringers will provide an optimum performance during a seven-game series. Ask Atlanta or the Yankees. The team that puts together the best confluence of talent and opportunity and determination over a five or seven game stretch will win each series. But money does determine whether, over 160 games, you finish with enough wins to play in the post season, with very rare exceptions.
I am telling you, Blue Jays fans, that the Blue Jays, for all their improvements this year, are going to finish 3rd or even 4th next year. Baltimore will finish 4th or 3rd. The Yankees will probably finish in first again, and Boston in second. And Cleveland will probably take the Central with Chicago a close second. Oakland and Anaheim will battle over the West.
In the National League East, Atlanta will finish in first, and Philadelphia and Florida will argue over second. St. Louis will contend again in the Central and Houston will again finish in second.
Does the league think there is any problems with this? Does it think fans will lose interest in a league in which the final standings are determined, generally, by team revenues, and where those revenues are a relatively fixed amount?
Not as long as you and I keep buying tickets.
Like any other Blue Jays fan, I can easily convince myself that next year will be better. They will have Halliday for the full season– we hope. Rios will hit more home runs. Hudson will not get injured. Koskie won’t strike out as often. Wells will pick it up a bit in April and May.
Dream on– a rational person can only draw one conclusion from the last 10 years of statistics: another 3rd place finish.
Where the Blue Jays will finish in 2006:
Third.
Where the Blue Jays will finish in 2007:
Third.
Where the Blue Jays will finish in 2008:
Third.
Where the Blue Jays will finish in 2009:
Third.
2022-05: Where they actually finished:
2005: 3rd
2006: 2nd
2007: 3rd
2008: 4th
2009: 4th
As you can see, I was never off by more than one position.
The 2003 Blue Jays
Here’s the starting lineup for the Toronto Blue Jays as of June 24, and their batting averages (from a game against the Expos– hence Halladay):
I’ve been following the Blue Jays since about 1983 and I doubt they have ever had as formidable a hitting line-up as they do now. Five batters over .300, six, if you include Shannon Stewart, who is currently on the DL. Average, of course, is not the most important number. Wells and Delgado lead the league in RBI; Delgado leads in homers, and Wells is fourth or fifth. The Blue Jays hit for average and power and they take a lot of pitches. They lead in almost all offensive categories: average, on-base percentage, hits, runs, etc., except home runs. They are third, currently, with 97, about ten behind the leaders, the Yankees and Texas.
Baseball is game of streaks, so it pays to be careful before making judgments about how good a team is. The Jays have periodically shown flashes of inspiration in the past decade, but seem to always end up in third place, behind Boston and New York.
Are the 2003 Jays the real thing? Do they have the horses to make the wild card, or perhaps even over take the Yankees?
The most obvious weakness of this team is the pitching. For the first month, Jays pitchers were as horrible as any Blue Jays staff has ever been going back to 1982. The fact that they are still near the bottom of the league in pitching stats, however, is more indicative of that horrible month, during which they went 8-18, than of the quality of their current staff. Roy Halladay, Kelvim Escobar, and Mark Hendrickson have pitched very well in the past week or so, and Corey Lidle pitches well enough to win, usually. But the bullpen is unusually week, and Cliff Politte has not yet shown that he has solved their closer problem. I watched Politte today, one day after he gave up a home-run to lose a game the Jays should have won to the Expos. His off-speed stuff was well off the plate and his fast balls were high in the strike-zone and didn’t fool anybody. He gave up a single, and two fly ball outs within inches of the outfield wall. The Jays won, but it was a white-knuckle victory, especially after Halladay had given them 8 innings of two-hit ball.
For all the deficiencies of their bullpen, the Blue Jays have been playing terrific ball for the past month and a half. Only the Mariners have been equal to them over that period. That’s long enough to justify the opinion that the 2003 Jays will be competitive. They have closed steadily on the Yankees and Boston and currently sit 2 games back of New York, .5 games up on Boston. It is fair to say that almost no baseball pundits picked them to play this well. Of course, we’re not half way through the season yet.
The Blue Jays virtually never sacrifice bunt or steal. If you believe in the sacrifice bunt and the steal as offensive weapons, it’s hard to explain why the Jays lead the league in almost all offensive categories.
It also appears that baseball writers, while noting the spectacular offense, haven’t generally noticed that the starting pitching has improved dramatically. Halladay has 11 consecutive wins, and the rest of the staff — except for the bullpen– has pitched well enough to win most nights.
The Up Side: This team can score runs! Look at the averages above. The Blue Jays lead the league in most offensive categories, including batting average with runners in scoring position, and in scoring position with two outs.
Both Hinske and Stewart are due to return from the disabled list soon and Hinske, last year’s rookie of the year, at least, will be an improvement at third over Mike Bordick (.260, 2 hrs.). The Blue Jays lead all of baseball in runs scored, and Delgado and Wells lead both leagues in RBI. Delgado theoretically could drive in 160 runs this year, though it’s not altogether likely he’ll maintain this pace through the second half. Delgado should be a shoe-in for first base on the all-star team and Wells should be starting centre field, but he is not well-known outside of Toronto and the baseball writers association. Greg Myers is having a career year at 38 years old. Catalanotto had an off year last year with injuries, but his performance this year is not a fluke. Even the subs, Howie Clark and Reed Johnson, have hit remarkably well. In fact, the Jays would obviously like to find a way to keep Reed Johnson in the line-up after Stewart returns, but this is now a tough line-up to crack.
Pitching has been up and down, but has improved significantly since May 1. Halladay, Escobar, and Hedrickson have pitched very well in the past four weeks. Escobar has always had dominating stuff, but the story was that he occasionally lost focus and was prone to giving up the big inning. Hedrickson pitched poorly for a while but improved when manager Tosca made it clear his job was on the line.
The best indicator of all is the relative youth of the Blue Jays line-up. Young players are cheap, and they tend to improve. That may sound like common sense, but it’s surprising how many baseball teams (like the New York Mets) ignore that simple axiom. Vernon Wells, Orlando Hudson, Eric Hinske, Josh Phelps, Chris Woodward, Howie Clark, and Reed Johnson are already performing well and will likely get better in the next few years. In fact, their performances this year, so far, are somewhat extraordinary, which raises the suspicion that some of them will cool off later in the season. Is Hudson really a .300 hitter? Can Josh Phelps handle the slop pitchers will start to throw at him once they realize what he can do to a fast ball up in the strike zone? Will Hinske continue to improve defensively at 3rd base? If Catalanotto slumps, will Wells start to see more junk pitches?
Josh Phelps is the only hitter in the current line-up who still swings at bad pitches. It’s a scary thought– what if he gets some plate discipline? What if Hinske comes back and hits .300 with power?
The Blue Jays don’t seem to be intimidated by strong, power pitchers. They hammered a finesse pitcher, like Andy Pettite, and they hammered Vasquez in Montreal and scored five runs against Wood in Chicago. The only team that has given them trouble in the last month has been St. Louis.
The Blue Jays swept both Boston and New York in 3 and 4 game sets, the last time they played their divisional rivals.
The Down Side: relief pitching remains a major problem. Politte has given up far too many home runs, and Sturtze and Tam have been ineffective. This is the one area of the line-up Ricciardi might be thinking of improving. Any teams out there with a good strong, durable reliever to trade for a premiere lead-off hitter? Shannon Stewart is a terrific player, but the Jays are awash in good hitters and outfielders right now. Stewart becomes a free agent next year. It would not be a dumb idea to trade him now for a good relief arm or two.
The question of depth is often raised with young, over-achieving teams like the Blue Jays. Often they ride career years by a few key players, disguising their weaknesses with astute management and a bit of good luck. Delgado and Wells are indeed having outstanding years, but when Delgado recently drove in only one run in six games, the Blue Jays still went 5-1. The two bench players called up to replace Stewart and Hinske are batting .325 and .450, with power. Woodward and Hudson, shortstop and second base, are batting a respectable .265 and .298. In their last two starts, Hendrickson, Halladay, and Escobar have each allowed two runs or less each.
The Blue Jays are not a fluke.
This is a remarkable team. It is unknown, except for Delgado and maybe Halladay, but likely to overtake the Yankees within the next two weeks.
Fistfull of Dollars: Blue Jays Payroll is about $80 million, solidly in the middle of the pack, and well below the Yankees’ $175 million. Below is what the Yankees get for their $175 million:
Blue Jays Pitchers –
Starters:
Roy Halladay
Mark Hendrickson
Cory Lidle
Doug Davis
Kelvim Escobar
Relievers:
Cliff Politte
Tanyon Sturtze
Pete Walker
Jeff Tam
Aurilio Lopez
Doug Creek
In their 25 year history, the Blue Jays have had three great offensive line-ups.
The first, roughly 1983-1987, featured George Bell, Lloyd Moseby, Jesse Barfield, Tony Fernandez, Damaso Garcia, Rance Mulliniks, and Ernie Whitt. Willie Upshaw holds the team record for longest period of coming out of his slump. In fact, he’s still coming out of his slump.
The second, roughly 1992-1994, featured Roberto Alomar, Devon White, Kelly Gruber, Ed Sprague, Pat Borders, John Olerud, and Joe Carter with trade-deadline guests, Dave Winfield, Paul Molitor, and Rickey Henderson. I suspect both Winfield’s and Henderson’s contributions were minimal, but Molitor joined Olerud and Alomar as three of the best hitters in the league in 1993. The Blue Jays won two World Series with this team, including the infamous 15-14 victory over Philadelphia in game 5, and, of course, Joe Carter’s walk-off series-winning home-run off Mitch Williams..
Joe Carter and George Bell were dominating for brief periods. Olerud was an outstanding hitter at times, and extremely consistent, if unspectacular. He’ll have a 3,000 hit career but won’t make the Hall of Fame. Delgado is probably the greatest offensive threat to ever wear a Blue Jays uniform.
But of the entire pack of them, Roberto Alomar was, in his prime, the best all-round player the Blue Jays ever had, and the most likely to be the first Blue Jay to go into the Hall of Fame (as a Blue Jay)..
Blue Jays 1999
Look out Yankees!
The Ripken Curse Continues
Ask Not for Whom the Belle Tolls.
The best division in baseball right now is the American League East, and the best team in the American League East is the New York Yankees. In fact, a lot of baseball writers have already wrapped up the championship and handed it to the pinstripers.
Not so fast. Will the Yankees repeat?
Well, they look pretty solid. But the Yankees last year didn’t really have a single player who was as good as Sosa, McGuire, Griffey, or Roger Clemens. (This year, they have Roger Clemens.) So why did they win so many games? Almost every player in their line-up had a great year. Paul O’Neill, David Wells, Bernie Williams, Tino Martinez…. That’s what happened to Minnesota in ’91, and the Blue Jays in ’93. They had a bunch of players that simply had a great year at the same time.
The Blue Jays won the World Series in 1992 on talent. That was different. They had the best players and these players played the way they were expected to. They deserved to win. But in 1993, the Blue Jays—a completely different team (minus Gruber, Key, Henke, Winfield, Morris; plus Molitor, Henderson, Sprague, Fernandez)—won because a lot of their players had career years. Philadelphia was in the World Series that year for largely the same reason. Atlanta lost to Philadelphia in the playoffs because the best talent does not always win.
The bottom line: you win in baseball when you have enough talented players having good years to beat the other team’s talented players having good or so-so years. Without the raw talent on the bench, all the grit and determination in the world is not going to take you anywhere.
Injuries are not as critical as reporters would have you believe. The difference between the best first baseman in the league (Mark McGuire) and an average first baseman is not the difference between 70 homeruns and no homeruns. It’s the difference between 70 homeruns and 40 homeruns. Over an entire season, that is ¼ homerun a game. How many games are decided by one or less runs? How many of those games would have ended differently had Mark McGuire been at first base instead of John Olerud? Not as many as you might think. That’s why St. Louis didn’t even make the playoffs. Mark McGuire alone isn’t going to get you there. I’m not saying he isn’t effective– I’m just saying that he can’t do it alone.
I’m not sure the Yankees are going to be as fortunate this year as they were last year. The Yankees have three or four great players this year: Clemens, Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, and Ramiro Mendoza. Then they have a string of superior players, including Tino Martinez, Paul O’Neil, Livan Hernandez, and Chuck Knoblauch. Well, yeah, the truth is, that’s a pretty impressive line-up. Cone and Hernandez can pitch, but Cone is 34 now and not as strong as he used to be. Pettite can pitch, but is he healthy? Jorge Posado is young and strong—how good will he be in September?
Well it’s early. They’ve picked up where they left off. They will play pretty well at times this season. But I’m not sure that, over the stretch of 162 games, this line-up is quite as durable as many people think it is. Most people never noticed it, but the Yankees were not the best team in baseball, or even in the American League, over the last two months of the 98 season: the Blue Jays were. And the Blue Jays whipped the Yankees in September.
I don’t expect Boston to continue their string of early success. After all, they are Boston. After Martinez, the pitching is pretty thin, and with the injury to Noamar Garciaparra and the absence of Mo Vaughn, they’re going to finish no better than third. More likely they’ll finish fourth. [this was written before Boston lost 4 straight].
Baltimore chose to spend big bucks on free agents, but, as usual, spent the money on players who were well-known for having had great years in the past. The trick is to spend that kind of money on players who are about to have great years, like Chris Carpenter, or Vladimir Guerrero. Baltimore will finish fourth.
This is why Montreal often does much better than expected: their scouts and coaches are good at identifying players who are going to command big salaries because they play well. That is why Baltimore is so BAD. Their coaches and scouts are really good at identifying players who have already had their best years, and, therefore, are in decline. In fact, they have an icon of a role-model right there on 3rd base: Cal Ripken, the most vastly over-rated player in the league.
Can you believe that the Dodgers signed 34-year-old Kevin Brown for 7 years for $85 million? Is this some kind of joke? Brown won’t be around for five years, let alone seven. Let’s say Brown, like almost every other pitcher in the history of the game, begins to lose his effectiveness in three years. What are you going to do? How are the Dodgers going to be able to pay replacement talent when they’re on the hook for $10 million a year for a pitcher who can’t play?
The Blue Jays have the pitching and offence to threaten even the Yankees, provided that one or two players like Jose Cruz and Alex Gonzalez have breakthrough years. I think it was a mistake to let Canseco go and then bring in Geronimo Berroa. I thought Canseco had reached a new stage in his career where he might avoid stupid injuries and provide a productive bat from the DH spot. I don’t like Canseco’s strikeout ratio but he will probably hit another 40 homeruns this year, and that is enormous offense, and who needs Geronimo Berroa? Still, the Blue Jays have Delgado, Greene, and Stewart, and Fletcher is a solid catcher. Tony Fernandez proved last September that he is still one of the best clutch hitters in the game, and Alex Gonzalez may be one of the two or three best defensive shortstops in the league. When your fifth starter leads the league in ERA and you have to put a guy who had a no-hitter going into the 9th inning last fall (Roy Halladay) into the bullpen, you’ve got a chance to scare a few people.
When the Yankees play Minnesota, you have about $80 million in talent playing about $8 million. There is no way that baseball is going to remain competitive with this kind of system, unless we get more owners like Marge Schott and Peter D’Angelos. But most owners are smarter than they used to be. George Steinbrenner used to squander all his money on players like Joe Girardi and Jesse Barfield. Lately, he squanders his money on players like Chuck Knoblauch and Bernie Williams instead. Why should the fans in Minnesota continue to pay $30-$50 to come out and watch their team get pummeled by athletes that make ten times as much as their players do? What chance do they have?
A word about Cal Ripken. I said many years ago that Baltimore will never win a championship as long as Cal Ripken is on that team. It was not so much that he was a bad player (though he was vastly over-rated) as it was that the entire culture of the Baltimore Orioles baseball club, with fawning owner Peter D’Angelos, centred on THE STREAK rather than THE WORLD SERIES. The focus of the team was Ripken’s achievements, not Baltimore’s. So what does Baltimore do in the off-season? They sign Albert Belle and Will Clark! They let Roberto Alomar, one of the two or three most valuable all-round players in the game, slip away to Cleveland (which is 8-1 or something as we speak).
I also find Ripken rather phony anyway. He goes around acting modest and self-effacing, while he sucks up to all the media attention like a leech. How much do you want to bet that when he retires he’s going to get one of these grand tours of all the major league cities? For classy exits, see Wayne Gretzky. “Hello? Sunday’s my last game. Nice seeing you.”
If the Blue Jays are in contention come August, look for them to trade a prospect or two for a DH or, possibly, a closer. I’m not convinced by Person yet. I liked Escobar there more. Look for Atlanta to try to talk Montreal out of Urbina. They’d be stupid not to try.
Small is Beautiful and Other Momentary Lapses in Justice
Twenty-five years after E.F. Schumacher published “Small is Beautiful” the Ontario government still doesn’t get it.
It is about to close hundreds of small schools across Ontario because they are “inefficient”. The Ontario Public Schools Association predicts that 600 small schools will have to be closed to meet the demands of the Harris government. In Toronto alone, 128 schools are slated to be shutdown. In response to the public outcry, Harris tells the boards to cut their own “bloated bureaucracy”. He tells them, to give up some of their administrative space, though he must know that even if they gave up all of their administrative space, it would still be less than 20% of what is required.
The Toronto Board has already implemented the following:
- School superintendents (making $100,000 a year) cut from 92 to 47.
- Trustees cut from 74 to 22.
- Trustees’ salaries cut from up to $50,000 to $5,000.
- Administrative staff of 2,000 to be cut in half over three years.
Well, hey, we all hate bureaucracies, so way to go Toronto School Board! I’m too stupid to figure out what 2,000 administrative staff do in a city the size of Toronto, so let’s turf them.
Well, what do they do? The truth is, I have a feeling that a lot of what they do is administrative masturbation. You need a clerical worker to do the filing for an administrator who organizes training seminars for other administrators who run the human resources department which administers the pension plans and benefits packages for the secretaries and the administrators. Other administrators spend a lot of time doing “the vision thing”, going on retreats, and making strategic plans.
Anyway, speaking of Napoleon, I’ve had enough the Harris sniveling about “improving” education. He thinks we are stupid enough to believe that reducing the money spent on education will result in smarter, better students and teachers. Just as you know that if you reduce the amount of money you spend on a car, you will end up with a better car, right? And if you spend less on plumbing, you get better pipes, right? And if you hire the cheapest computer programmer, you get the best software, right? Riiiiight.
Now, obviously, spending more money does not guarantee a better educational system, just as it doesn’t guarantee better software. But you certainly can’t have a good educational system without spending the money necessary to do the job well, attracted good people, and provide adequate resources.
I attended small schools all my life. My children attend a large high school. The larger high school has some advantages, but the biggest difference between the two, by far, is that it is relatively easy to coast unnoticed through four years of education without learning anything in a big school. And it is hard for parents to get to know your kids’ teachers. You see them once for the one semester your child is in their class, and then you never meet the same teacher again. You never develop a strong enough relationship to feel that wonderful sense of accountability that teachers in small schools feel.
Small schools are often an important social and cultural force in the communities they are located in. They are where everyone goes for Halloween parties and the Christmas pageant and graduation. Parents volunteer to help in the classroom and to improve facilities. Everyone meets there at 3:15 to bring their children home. Everyone cares about their safety.
Harris wants to put them all on a bus, demolish or sell the schools, and convince the parents to place all their trust in an institution he has been slamming ever since he came into office.
Does Harris really care at all about education? It’s hard to believe that anybody could be so stupid as to not care. But all of the policies and directives and initiatives he has taken seem far more concerned with reducing costs than actually improving anything. The truth is, improvements do cost money. The truth is, even though we know schools and school boards waste a lot of money, they do still accomplish things. Students need good lab equipment, computers, books, field trips, art supplies, film, paint, desks, and so on. Having all those things doesn’t guarantee a good education, but you can’t have a good education without them.
* * *
The government has stacked a committee that was supposed to hold hearings, listen to varying viewpoints, think about the information gathered, then come to a rational and fair conclusion about how 46 million hectares of publicly owned land in Northern and Central Ontario should be used. This committee heard from loggers, industrialists, commercialists, environmentalists, cottage-owners, and the general public. They then adopted a very thoughtful expression and said, “hell, let’s turn everything over to the loggers.”
The Committee’s official conclusion is that 7.6% of public land should be set aside for preservation. “Hell, let’s give everything to the loggers.”
Now, this is a government that says no one gets a free ride. No more welfare bums. No more government handouts for people who don’t contribute. This government wants to charge user fees for fresh air. This is a government that wants schools of 10,000 students, taught by video camera from a windowless cell in Port Elgin. This is a government that wants MacDonald’s to operate our prison system. But then they turnaround and offer all the trees in Ontario to the logging companies for practically nothing.
If you’re poor. If you’re destitute, and living on the streets of the Toronto– this government says, tough luck, fella. I can’t help yah. But give that bum a chain saw, and the government says, hey, you want some trees? We don’t need them.
* * *
Hey, I’ve been saying this all along! You know those late penalties they charge you on your utilities bill (in Canada)? Like, about $20.00 if you’re one day late on a $200.00 bill? The real interest rate on those charges is, according to actuarial experts, about 5,000,000,000%. That’s right, five billion. In Canada, it is illegal to charge interest rates higher than 60% per annum (which is pretty ridiculous anyway). Well the Supreme Court just ruled that these interest rates, contrary to previous rulings, and with the complicity of the Minister of Energy for Ontario in the 1970’s (under Premier Comatose, Bill Davis), may well be subject to Federal law after all.
This was just another example of the golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules. Now it looks like there’s a chance that the law might be applied equally once again.
The court case is based on a challenge of the penalty filed by Gordon Garland against Consumer’s Gas, on behalf of the 30% of customers who pay late.
* * *
The Blue Jays are demanding a “better deal” from the Skydome or, so they say, they will play at the “mistake on the lake”, Exhibition Place, next season.
Watch your pockets. A “better deal” means the Blue Jays want the taxpayers of Ontario to subsidize the cost of playing baseball in the Skydome so they can pay Jose Canseco $28 million over four years to bat .234.
Why don’t they just pay Jose Canseco less? Because the New York Mets just agreed to pay Mike Piazza $91 million over seven years to play catcher for them. How can they pay this guy so much money? Well, they can’t. Buy we can. You and I will gladly hand over our money for stadiums and police and road construction so Mike can have an extra limo, three or four extra houses, body guards, and a $25,000 stereo system.
If we don’t pay, undoubtedly, they will move the Blue Jays to Sarasota or someplace that has more suckers per capita than we do.
* * *
How many wars are there in the world this year? How many conflicts between two or more nations in which people are shooting or bombing or shelling each other?
None. Nada. Not a single one.
Yes, there are conflicts. But every conflict in the world this year, involving military action, is a civil conflict, between two factions within a single nation.
It’s true– you can check it out. Is humanity making progress? I think so. Eeyore says, “oh, there’s sure to be another war soon.” Pooh says that’s dumb.
Blue Jays in 1998
Well, Cal Ripken finally sat down. He notified his manager 30 minutes before game time that, in his infinite grace and wisdom, he would sit out one game. Half of baseball was frantic. I even heard some sadly misguided fans talk about what a great, unselfish player Cal has been.
Unselfish! What’s wrong with this picture: Cal Ripken tells his coach when he will and when he won’t play! For the record, aside from Ed Sprague and some no-name, Cal Ripken has the worst offensive stats of any third baseman in the league. I wonder if his manager thanked him for sitting out a game.
Anyway, we saw the “great” Cal Ripken live, in person, at the Skydome on Monday. There was some announcement on the PA and then everybody was supposed to stand up and cheer him. I stayed in my seat.
bluejay1.jpg (32567 bytes)
We had decent seats, 15 rows back along the first base line, just beyond the infield. For four of us, that came to $117.00, including tax. Unlike most major league teams in the U.S., the Blue Jays pay their share of property taxes, $7 million for 1998.
We bought hot dogs and coke on the way, knowing we weren’t allowed to take cans of pop into the stadium. When I popped in one of the entrances to ask where we pick up our tickets, a nice man, a Jays official, offered to get us a cup for the coke. Very decent of him. You sometimes think professional sports organizations are rather tactless and ruthless about getting your money. They are, but at least the Blue Jays have the good sense to show a little decency here and there.
Most people spent the first twenty minutes in the dome looking at the jumbotron to see if the camera is zooming in on them. Fans in the nose-bleed sections will put on a show, take off the shirts, and dance. They have their reward. As soon as the game started, a steady stream of people began leaving their seats for the bathrooms or concessions. I estimate that I saw half of the first 30 pitches. A little boy to the right of us left his seat for the aisle, requiring us to stand up, 13 times. If I was his father, I’d tell him he could leave twice during the game, whenever he chose.
Shawn Green has an amazing ball-player’s body. If Norman Rockwell drew us a ball-player, and wasn’t joking about it, he’d come up with someone who looked like Shawn Green: tall, lanky, angular, with a whip for an arm and an easy, efficient gait. His cap sits low on his forehead just like a ball cap should. I love watching him.
Roberto Alomar, on the other hand, looks like a ballet dancer. Nothing wrong with that– he moves like a ballet dancer too. He’s probably the best all-round player in the game, when he’s not spitting at umpires. The home-plate umpire in this game, by the way, was the very same John Hirschbeck, and his strike zone is still pretty wide. Roger Clemens had 15 strike-outs on the night, not a few of them due to Hirschbeck’s generous zone. At one point, after a called strike that looked pretty low, Alomar turned to him and glared, but didn’t spit.
The Blue Jays are probably not going to make the wild card. At this stage, they would have to win all their remaining games and Boston lose all of theirs. Still, they have made a terrific race out of it after being more than 12 games behind at the end of July. The Jays have the major’s best record since July 31st, right after they dumped Randy Myers, Ed Sprague, Mike Stanley, and Juan Guzman. They were, supposedly, throwing in the towel, but something wonderful happened. Their “fall-back” outfielders, Stewart, Cruz, and Green did what many of us thought they would do two years ago: they ran down balls in the gap, hit the cut-off man, and brought some excitement into the field. They also began to hit up a storm, steal bases, and run up the pitch counts. Tony Fernandez, moved to third base where his defensive lapses don’t hurt as much, batted over .400 in September. Carlos Delgado is establishing himself as reliable RBI man. And Blue Jays pitching, including the young and untested Escobar and Carpenter, as well as the best pitcher in the League in Roger Clemens, began to smother opposition bats.
Everyone thinks the Blue Jays will do it next year. Well, hope springs eternal, but it is a known phenomenon that teams that improve dramatically one season often fall back the next. They would need to re-sign Canseco, but I doubt he will produce another 44 home runs, or survive the full season without injuries. Toronto’s pitching is solid, but I’m not sure that Person is going to be a great closer, and I wonder if Plesac and Quantrill can continue to work miracles out of the bullpen. Roberto Alomar has made it known he would love to play for Toronto next season. Alomar’s a cypher. What does he care about, other than baseball? Who knows? But he is, without a doubt, the best second baseman in baseball. If the Blue Jays were to sign him (he is a free agent at the end of the season), I would bet they will do very well in ’99. Alex Gonzalez is solid defensively, perhaps one of the two or three best shortstops, but he needs to cut down on his strikeouts. Behind the plate, the Jays are solid, if unspectacular. Santiago could have a great season. Then again, he could bat .240.
Jays in ’99? Possibly. Jays in ’00? Given the same line-up with two more years of maturity– almost certainly.
The Sacrifice Bunt
The Sacrifice
Time and time again, if you are a baseball, fan you will see the following: a team comes up to bat in the late innings of a ball game. The lead-off batter gets on base with a walk or single. The next batter comes up and the manager instructs him to “sacrifice”: bunt the ball to the right side of the infield for a sure out in order to advance the runner to second base. If he succeeds, the colour commentator will rave about him “getting the job done” and “advancing the runner”. After the next two batters strike out and fly out, no one ever says, “Gee, I guess giving up that out on the sacrifice was pretty stupid, eh?”
Does the sacrifice bunt make sense? It must work. Almost every manager in the league does it, often two or three times a game. If everyone does it, it must be right.
The sacrifice bunt emerged as a strategy at a time in baseball history before there was such a thing as a designated hitter. Late in a close game, if a runner got on and the pitcher was the next batter, it made sense, because:
a) pitchers didn’t hit very well (a .200 average was considered good), and,
b) pitchers didn’t run very fast, making them very susceptible to the double play, and,
c) it was usually a good time to bring in a relief pitcher anyway. But nowadays, American League teams use it just as often.
It is possible, with a bit of computer programming and lots of free time, to create a “simulation” of thousands of baseball games. I set up such a simulation once to test the theory that the sacrifice bunt is a stupid strategy. I ran thousands of games in which, after the sixth inning, every time the lead-off batter got on, the manager used the sacrifice bunt. Then I ran the same series of games with no sacrifice bunt. Since there is no way of knowing which hitter exactly is coming up to bat in these situations, I created an average team with a set of batting and on-base percentages that reflected the abilities of a normal range of players.
It didn’t surprise me that the second simulation showed many, many more runs scored than the simulations using the sacrifice bunt. Consider this: the following batter, in most situations, will have an on base percentage (hits + walks) in the neighborhood of least .325. So roughly 1/3 of the time, he will advance the runner anyway, without giving up an out. The next batter has the same 1/3 chance of advancing the runner without giving up an out. And so does the next. And… here is the key point… so does the next batter. Without a sacrifice, you still have three outs to work with. With the sacrifice, you only have two. How significant is that? Consider some other factors. The next batter will, of course, often hit a double, a triple, or a home run instead of a single. With the runner on first, the first baseman has to hold the runner on, leaving a gap in the infield. The pitcher is often distracted by the runner. A fast runner has a chance of stealing the base anyway– I saw Tim Johnson use a sacrifice when he had Alex Gonzalez– a good base-stealer–on first. Finally, with the runner on second and one out, if the next hitter is “hot”, he will get walked anyway, setting up a potential double play. And don’t forget that without a runner at first, the first base man doesn’t have to cover the runner.
I’m not saying the sacrifice never works. But a lot of people make the foolish assumption that the odds of getting the hit you need to score a run are roughly the same after a sacrifice as they are before. In fact, they are substantially less, because one less batter is going to get a chance to drive in that run, and because the sacrifice ensures that the “batter” following a lead-off single or double invariably “hits” a single. In other words, over a season, or even a short series, the sacrifice will fail to achieve it’s desired objective– scoring a run– far more often than simply letting the next three batters do their job.
Well, if a sacrifice is so stupid, why do managers do it? The answer is simpler than you might imagine. Consider the World Series Champions of 1992 and 1993, the Toronto Blue Jays, who were managed by Cito Gaston. I don’t think anybody in this world would think that Cito was a smarter manager than Bobby Cox, one of the shrewdest skippers in the league. Why did he win? He simply put good talent on the field and let them play the way they were capable of. He put Roberto Alomar at second base and watched him make unbelievable fielding plays. He penciled in Devon White in centre field and watched him swallow up every fly ball hit there. He had the finest defensive third baseman in the league that year in Kelly Gruber (’92), and he had terrific pitchers, including Henke, Ward, and Wells, who didn’t give up a single run in relief until the final game. He won in spite of his questionable management. He won in 1993 in spite of the idiotic managerial decision to let Jimmy Key leave as a free agent and so they could retain Jack Morris, who contributed nothing to the 1993 victory. He won because Paul Molitor, John Olerud, Roberto Alomar, and Devon White, had terrific years.
Well, what exactly, then, is the role of the manager? The role of the manager is to call for the sacrifice bunt. What if the sacrifice bunt is a stupid strategy? Then what would the manager do? Send for the closer in the 9th inning of close games?
It’s like the famous question asked of Keith Richards, of the Rolling Stones: “Why don’t you sing more often?”
Keith replied, “then what would Mick do?”