FJM has gone dark for the foreseeable future. Sorry folks. We may post once in a while, but it's pretty much over.
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It's been a while, old friend. Rick Sutcliffe has done us the kindness of putting something down on paper for the Diamond Daily section of ESPN.com. And boy, is it wrong.
CUBS "X-FACTOR"
Bear in mind that about seven times out of time, when an analyst calls a player an "X-Factor" it's because that player is normally not very good, so an above-average performance gives you a significant advantage over what the guy typically does. I guess "X" means mediocre.
The Chicago Cubs have that type of player you want in the postseason: Ryan Theriot.
No. Nope. Not really. I think you'd want more Aramis Ramirezes or Derrek Lees or Alfonso Sorianos. Theriots grow on baseball player trees.
Lou Piniella saw Theriot busting his butt in spring training, but he was pressing for a couple of weeks. Piniella told Theriot he was on the team and he needed to just let the game come to him. Piniella talks about having certain types of players who are winners, and Theriot is that kind of player.
This winner wins to the tune of a .245 EqA. That is awful. And if you believe in BP's FRAA, he's at -4.
Piniella told me that Theriot will have a World Series ring before his career is over; furthermore, he compared his shortstop to Craig Counsell and David Eckstein -- players similar in style to Theriot, and both have two World Series rings.
Remember when David Eckstein played all nine positions and beat the Tigers in the World Series all by himself? And Piniella's being modest about Counsell -- he won a dozen straight rings pitching, fielding, hitting, managing, general managing and owning the Carolina Counsells, whose team picture consisted of Craig Counsell posing in front of a mirror. (He was also team photographer.)
Ryan Theriot has as good a chance of getting a ring as literally any other player in this year's playoffs. Probably less than most, actually.
When the Cubs need someone on base or to ake a play made in the field, Theriot usually makes something happen. The Cubs have a front-line starter in Carlos Zambrano, a solid No. 2 in Ted Lilly and offensively they have power hitters Alfonso Soriano, Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez.
Yes, those are their good players. Those are the players Theriot should get on his knees and thank if the Cubs are so fortunate as to win the championship this year. Theriot should get marginal credit unless he carries them over the next fifteen or so games.
But players like Theriot usually are difference makers in the postseason -- someone who steps up and steals the attention from the big boys. Just look at David Eckstein last year being named the World Series MVP.
"Usually"? I'm looking back at David Eckstein's World Series MVP...okay, now I'm looking a little further back, and I'm seeing
These guys look more like Theriot or more like "big boys" to you? You have to go all the way back to Atrocious Scott Brosius in 1998 to find another shitty player. And at least that year was actually his best regular season, when he posted a .297 EqA.
Anyway, Sut, I'll make you an offer. Construct your team, your Tennessee Theriots, and enter them into the playoffs. Keep in mind this team will slug .346, score 4.1 runs per game, and hit 27 home runs all year. As a team. That's right. Ryan Theriot hit 3 home runs all season. The Theriots will be a team full of winners. Guys who bust their butts. X-Factors. They won't play baseball well, but that's secondary. It's the motherfucking playoffs now.
This Is What Happens When Rick Sutcliffe Tries To Come Up With Unconventional Wisdom
Red Sox-Yankees, 4:49 PST. Dusty Baker's in the booth and yet somehow Rick Sutcliffe manages to outcrazy him:
Rick Sutcliffe: We were talking last week, OB, about the Cy Young winner, and it's probably going to be Sabathia or whoever wins tomorrow, Chien-Ming Wang or Beckett, but you know who's had the best year? It's been Roy Halladay.
(No one responds.)
Dave O'Brien: The 0-2 ...
Roy Halladay. Cy Young. Hmm. That's thinking outside the bun. What if instead of picking the guy with the best ERA in the league, we pick the guy who has the 19th-best ERA? How about instead of choosing a guy who leads his team in WHIP, we vote for a guy who's third on his own staff (behind Dustin McGowan and Shawn Marcum (yes, I realize Marcum has some relief appearances thrown in there, but Jesus, it's Shawn Marcum we're talking about here))?
In previous years, yes, Roy Halladay has sometimes been a phenomenal starter. But let's let these very traditional, very digestible statistics speak for themselves:
3.91 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, 129 K, 45 BB
Cy ... Young? Has Sutcliffe even watched baseball this year? Maybe someone is pulling an elaborate experiment on him wherein Sut is constantly wearing contact lenses that show him baseball games from 2003 in place of the current year's games. Yes, that must be it.
--
Later, Robinson Cano strikes out and Sutcliffe tries to remove himself from the giant, crazy person-shaped hole he's just dug.
Rick Sutcliffe: Getting back to Roy Halladay -- the reason I say that is he doesn't have the Yankees or Red Sox lineup behind him, and yet he's gotta face them. I mean, it's so much tougher to pick up a win when you've got to pitch against these two lineups and you don't have that lineup behind you.
There's some grain of truth behind what Sut's saying, but it's obscured by the K2-size mountain of ludicrosity that is picking Roy Halladay for the Cy Young. Yes, Halladay has faced Boston 5(!) times and the Yankees twice. But I'm fairly confident that saying that the quality of lineups he's faced has not, in fact, accounted for the three-quarters of a run in ERA that separates him from some of the best Cy candidates.
By the way, has anyone else noticed that C.C. Sabathia has pitched 40 more innings than Josh Beckett and Chien-Ming Wang to this point in the season? That's pretty fucking incredible. If you're leading the league in innings and you're still third in ERA, you're doing a pretty awesome job at pitching.
Monday Night Baseball, Yankees-Braves. Scott Proctor comes in to pitch the 8th.
Gary Thorne: He is the workhorse of the Yankee bullpen. Sutcliffe: Well, you're going to have workhorses when you win as many games as they do.
Now, I'm no embarrassing, in-my-cups, public shame mongering former ballplayer, but to me, the number of games a team wins doesn't affect the number of innings a medium-good bullpen guy like Proctor is likely to throw. Because: either the team is behind a lot, so someone needs to come in and relieve the troubled starter, or else his team has a lead, and they need someone to hold the line. For example, just at random, last year in the NL, the top seven leaders in games pitched were Eyre, Majewski, Sanchez, Fuentes, Madson, Mercker, Torres. Their teams, SFG, Nats, Dodgers, Rox, Phils, Reds, and Bucs, all missed the playoffs.
Why am I harping on this middlingly stupid thing uttered by ol' Martini Jones? Because a few minutes later he said that if he had to vote for MVP right now, he would vote for Derek Jeter. And that made me really angry.
Now, Jeter is in the midst of one of his best years. His OPB is among the best in the league, and he's hitting the ball really well. But he has five HR. He is 15th in the league in RC27 at 7.71 -- a very nice number, but only good for third on his own team. Posada's at 7.73, and Giambi's posting a robust and unquestionably HGH-fueled 9.44.
I kid. I'm sure he's found something better than HGH by now.
Anyway, oh my God, Derek Jeter is a terrible idea for an MVP. Jim Thome? Manny/Papi? Travis Hafner? Vernon Wells? Alex Rios? Jermaine Dye? Joe Mauer? For that matter, if you're voting for Jeter, why not vote for Kevin Youkilis? They have almost identical OBP, But Youk has four more HR and a better OPS.
Rick Sutcliffe on Scott Podsednik in Game One of today's ALDS (very slight paraphrase, I think):
"You know, you just can't underestimate what Scott Podsednik did in that first inning. He did a great job."
Here's what Scott Podsednik did in the first inning:
He got hit by a pitch. He was bunted over to second. He stole third. He came home on a fielder's choice.
Now, what can he take credit for? Getting hit by a pitcher with no control? No. Being moved over to second? No. Stealing third? Okay. Coming home on a fielder's choice? Not really.
And let's look at that steal of third. Considering that the ChiSox' best hitters were coming up, was this a good idea for a guy who was 5 for his last 10 in SB? I don't think so. Especially since a few innings later he tried to steal second and was thrown out by ten feet. It did get him to 3rd with one out, but look at what happened in the rest of the inning:
S Podsednik hit by pitch. T Iguchi sacrificed to catcher, S Podsednik to second. J Dye hit by pitch. S Podsednik stole third. P Konerko grounded into fielder's choice to third, S Podsednik scored, J Dye out at second. C Everett singled to right, P Konerko to second. A Rowand singled to center, P Konerko scored, C Everett to third. A Pierzynski homered to left center, C Everett and A Rowand scored. J Crede fouled out to catcher.
So, after the steal and the FC, it went single, single, homer.
I just don't think there is anything to value that much in this inning from Podsednik. He got on base, which was good, but in a passive way. And he did steal a base, but in an incredibly risky way. Just because it was successful does not make it a good decision. Expecially the way the ChiSox pounded Clement.
I literally can't believe this, but Podsednik just hit a 3-R bomb, his FIRST of the year. For this, you may congratulate and praise him. However, for the record, this fact says a lot more about how awful the Sox' pitching is, than about how good Scott Podsednik is. Trust me.
