FJM has gone dark for the foreseeable future. Sorry folks. We may post once in a while, but it's pretty much over.
You can still e-mail dak,Ken Tremendous,Junior,Matthew Murbles, or Coach.
The Post Wherein I Take A Throwaway Sentence in the Penultimate Paragraph of a Murray Chass Column Absolutely Devoid of New Information or Insight ...
... and I use it to bludgeon him to death.
Look, the column is no good. Boring, stale, rehashed -- and the big revelation is an allegation by an anonymous source that gasp! the Red Sox wanted to keep Daisuke Matsuzaka away from the Yankees.
Well, no shit.
My issue is with this paragraph, which appears in an odd little below-the-dot addendum at the end of the piece: Varitek was speaking before the Red Sox abandoned their plan to make Jonathan Papelbon a starter and restored him to the closer role he filled so capably for most of last season. But his exit from the starting rotation presumably weakens it. It now has two 40-year-olds, one of whom, Tim Wakefield, had a losing record last season that might have made the difference between the Red Sox making and not making the playoffs.
Read that last sentence again. According to Murray Chass, Tim Wakefield was (okay, "might have" been) the reason the Red Sox didn't make the playoffs last year. This is sort of like blaming Azerbaijan for fucking up the war in Iraq, except a million times more egregious and important and serious.
Mr. Chass, let me explain to you how you go about not writing a sentence like that. I know you don't cotton to VORP or WARP or people who believe, as I do, that the game of baseball is played by animatronic numbers swinging bats and fielding balls. Unfortunately, this method involves a computer, which you may have to purchase, and the Internet, which you may have to look up in a dictionary and then dismiss as a fad.
Alternatively, you could probably find this information at the library with your knowledge of card catalogs and the Dewey Decimal Classification System. It would only take several more hours and ten times the work.
First, find last year's baseball standings. You will discover that the Red Sox finished eleven games behind the AL East champion Yankees and nine games behind the Wild Card Tigers. So we'll go with nine games as the ground the Sox needed to make up to reach the playoffs.
Now look up Tim Wakefield. Yahoo (don't worry about what that is) provides a record of all of the games he pitched in last year. Huh. Look at that. In 23 games started by Wakefield, the Red Sox went 11-12.
Your claim, remember, is that "Tim Wakefield had a losing record last season that might have made the difference between the Red Sox making and not making the playoffs."
11-12. Nine games out. So Tim Wakefield would've had to have willed his team to go 20-3 in his games he started in order for them to even pull into a tie with the Tigers.
I think it's pretty fair to blame him for that.
---
I'm jumping all over Chass for a minor mistake in a minor piece written before the season has even started. But I think it's a minor mistake that reflects either carelessness (if you're willing to be charitable) or a fundamental misunderstanding of very basic statistics and player value. It's like Chass saw on a piece of paper that Wakefield went 7-11 and decided he had a terrible year because hey, that's losing and losing is bad. The year before he went 16-12. That's winning! There you have it: Tim Wakefield, 2006 goat.
Here's the thing: Wakefield may have finished 16-12, but in games Wakefield started in 2005, the Red Sox went 17-16. That's basically .500. Which is basically what they did in his starts in 2006. Because that's what Tim Wakefield gives you -- league-average ERA and hopefully, lots of innings. (His last three ERA+ years have looked like this: 100, 106, 100.)
Wakefield did miss starts last year, and that hurt the Red Sox, but keep in mind that that's not what Chass is saying. No: he is saying that 7-11 (losing!) somehow damned the Red Sox to that ignominious third place finish.
See, being afraid of numbers and resistant to change and unwilling to learn new things doesn't just make you look like a sad, anachronistic old kook. It can actually hurt your writing in concrete, demonstrable ways. It can make you assert things that with an ounce of research can be shown to be patently ridiculous.
I am beginning to think that Murray Chass could improve as a sportswriter.
I am not a trained psychologist, but I can say with 100% certainty that Newsday's Wallace Matthews has serious emotional problems. How else to explain this bizarre ad hominem attack on Tim Wakefield?
If the commissioner of baseball truly wants to get to the bottom of one of the great mysteries of his game, he can shelve the steroid investigation and start looking into how Tim Wakefield has managed to get away with his act for the past 15 years.
Let's just get a few facts and figures out of the way right off the bat, here. In his career, Tim Wakefield has thrown almost 2500 IP at an ERA+ of 109. That's pretty solid. Only twice has he ended the season with a below-league-average ERA+. In 2002 he had a 157 ERA+ and a WHIP just over 1.0. This year, at the age of 40, he has a 139 ERA+ in 57 IP. That's pretty darned good for a fourth starter.
In 1995, he was 3rd in the Cy Young voting and 13th in the MVP voting.
Let's face it, we already know that Juicin' Giambi, among many others, took steroids, that baseball's greatest batting records are already either irrevocably tainted or soon about to be, and that at least three of its MVP awards were won by cheaters under false pretenses.
What I want to know is, how in the world has Wakefield been able to draw a major-league paycheck since 1992 with the kind of stuff you generally see at a family barbecue?
What is your deal, man? How does this have anything to do with steroids, even in an over-the-top facetious way? Seriously, what are you talking about? The guy is a rock-solid MLB pitcher. He has better numbers year-in year-out than the majority of the other MLB pitchers. In this day and age, if a guy can throw the ball backwards over his head lefthanded and post a 109 ERA+ over 2500 innings, he's going to be very successful. In fact, one could argue that Wakefield's contract, which pays him $4 million a year in perpetuity at his team's discretion, is one of the absolute best veteran contracts in all of MLB for any team. His knuckleball, or whatever you want to call it, is a bigger menace to the game than steroids, growth hormone or Clomid will ever be. Okay. Even though you're joking, this is actually offensive to me. This is the sports journalism equivalent of yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. You need to apologize for this. I'm not kidding.
When Wakefield is pitching, the game moves slower than David Ortiz going from home to first.
Here are the times of the 8 games Wakefield has pitched in this year:
April 6: 6IP., 2:14 April 13: 7IP, 2:49 (and the Sox scored 10 runs) April 18: 7IP, 2:24 April 23: 6IP, 3:02 April 28: 5.1IP, 3:25 (nine total pitchers used, one long injury delay) May 4: 7IP, 2:33 May 10: 7IP, 2:18 May 15: 7IP, 2:45
The average time of a baseball game in 2006 was 2:51. Tim Wakefield works very quickly, and the longer he pitches, the faster the games go.
If as many guys in major-league baseball threw the knuckler as have taken performance-enhancing drugs, the game and its fans would have died of boredom years ago.
Hey! What did I just say to you? This is shitty irresponsible journalism. Steroids are actual health risks. They kill kids sometimes. MLB stood idly by and allowed them to infiltrate and generally fuck up the game that I love. Tim Wakefield is a good dude who is good at baseball. His knuckleball has nothing to do with anything bad. If anything, actually, it is a cool (and dying) link to the past. So shut the fuck up.
At 40 years old, Wakefield might not be quite ready to retire, but it certainly is time to retire his reputation as a Yankees killer. After last night, when he allowed six runs and five walks in five stupendously mind-numbing innings, his record in his last nine starts against the Yankees stands at 1-7, with an ERA of 6.00. That's not even counting the home run he allowed to Aaron Boone that put the Yankees into the 2003 World Series. In October, he's done more for this franchise than Alex Rodriguez.
Wake has struggled against the Yanks recently. But look at this game (6IP, 2H, 2R and a win) and then look at this game a few days later (7IP, 5H, 1R, and the win), and then shut the fuck up, please, again, thank you.
So before you start to think that the Yankees, who have now won two straight, are back to normal, here's one bit of advice: Now, let's see them do it against a major-league pitcher.
If you thought the Yankees were "back to normal" after salvaging one game of a 3-game series with the Mets and then winning the first game of a series with the Red Sox, making them an awesomely "back to normal" 4-6 in their last 10 games, you are already a moron, and if you think that Tim Wakefield is not a "major-league pitcher" you are a double moron, and if you just blindly write spittle-laden hate pieces against a guy because he doesn't throw fastballs despite the fact that he has pitched an an above-average level for fifteen years, you are a triple-asshole moron, which are very rare. So, this is actually quite an honor, to be reading your writing, good sir!
Wakefield may very well be the least entertaining player ever to appear in a major-league uniform, unless of course passed balls, uncontested stolen bases, endless delays between pitches and three-ball counts on every batter is your idea of fun.
Well, your claims about speed have been scientifically disproven. Passed balls are indeed an element of his game, yes, as are a lot of stolen bases. Over his career, Wake walks 3.0 per nine innings. Tom Glavine is at 2.7, as is Randy Johnson. So, there you have it. Tim Wakefield: walking one more person every three games or so than Tom Glavine and Randy Johnson.
Last night's 6-2 victory over the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium was like watching a T-ball game, only slower. There's nothing remotely entertaining about watching big-league hitters stand rock still in the box, waiting for the ball to make its interminable trip from Wakefield's hand to home plate, then rock back on their heels to swing for Westchester County.
I happen to think it's incredibly entertaining to watch him pitch. It's weird and different and fun. Perhaps you would like all pitchers to be replaced by pitching machines, and for the batter to be able to program the pitch speed and location. Now that would be some fun-style baseball!
And the only thing slower than Wakefield's knuckler is the time he wastes in between throwing it.
I have already shown you to be a moron when you make this claim. And yet you continue to make it. Your only real move right now is to resign in disgrace.
Once Terry Francona, and the rest of Yankee Stadium, had seen enough, the remainder of the game moved along in an orderly fashion. By then, of course, Wakefield had done his job, at least for the Yankees. He got Rodriguez back on track in the first inning, allowing a monstrous two-run homer, and did the same for Giambi, who claims now to be playing with the help of nothing more than orthotics for his aching feet. In fact, Giambi's performance-enhancer of choice last night was Wakefield, who served him an upper-deck homer in the second and walks in the third and fifth.
He also did wonders for Johnny Damon, who had three hits off him, and Robinson Cano, who tagged him for a double and a three-run triple. In fact, by the time Wakefield was lifted, it was hard to believe this was the same Yankees team that was sitting dead in the water, four games below .500, 10 1/2 games behind the Red Sox and 7 1/2 games out of the AL wild-card spot.
The Yankees are very good hitters. They hit all kinds of pitchers. Last night they hit Wakefield. What is your point? That Wakefield losing that game is going to propel the Yankees to a return to glory? Well, Papelbon just struck out Captain Intangibles looking, and the Yankees are right back where they were before Wake took the hill.
A sweep would still leave the Yankees 7 1/2 games out,
Irrelevant, now.
and to reach 90 wins, the minimum number any team could expect to need to eke out a playoff spot, they would have to go 70-49 the rest of the way. Under any circumstances, it is a lot to ask.
Unless, of course, they get to face Wakefield 70 more times.
Why do you hate Tim Wakefield? What is your problem? Is this just sour grapes because ther Yankees are having a bad year, or something? Seriously. I need to know. Please, Wallace Matthews, if you ever read this, e-mail me and explain this weird factually inaccurate and bizarre attack so I can sleep at night.
(I mean, Papelbon just struck out Jeter looking to end the game, so I'll sleep fine. But I would sleep better if you e-mail me and explain yourself.)
Imagine the strength of the Red Sox' rotation if they had the good sense to get rid of 87-year-old Tim Wakefield. The knuckeball act has become dreadfully tedious; even the Yankees own him. He's had some nice moments over the years, but it's time to join the cows and the sheep out on the pasture.
I was curious as to why Jenkins has it in for Wake, so I invited him to come with me to a Sox-Giants interleague game in beautiful AT&T Park. Here's my transcript of that totally real event that happened:
(Ken Tremendous and Jenkins settle into their seats in the Club Level. Ken has one of those awesome cheese-infused sausages they sell; Jenkins, fairly drunk already, holds an egg crate filled with eleven beers and one hot dog. He also has a flask filled with Old Grandad whiskey, and a wineskin overflowing with chablis.)
(For some reason -- and I did not expect this -- he speaks with a slight British accent.)
Bruce Jenkins: My my, what a lovely day. Ken Tremendous: Yes, it sure is. Careful! Oops...
(Jenkins has spilled six of the eleven beers all over his shirt. He does not seem to notice.)
BJ: Tell me, Mr. Tremendous, is this the first professional baseball game you've ever seen? KT: Um, no -- I've seen, like, hundreds of -- look out! Oh boy.
(Jenkins has taken a bite of his hot dog; the entire dog squirted out the other end of the bun, falling on his lap. There is now a copious amount of relish and ketchup leaking through his unzipped fly.)
BJ: (gnawing happily on the empty hot dog bun) You were saying? KT: Yes, um, I've been to hundreds of games. BJ: (chuckles) Really. Because you being a "web logger" and all, I just assumed that you would spend all your time-- KT: -- in my mom's basement. BJ: (simultaneously) -- in your mom's basement!! KT: Very clever. BJ: Zing! I zinged you, m'boy! KT: Yes, you did. Well played. BJ: You web-log all you want, Kenneth. Endulge yourself in imaginary statistics like "VORP," HEEP, SKANK and VLZSKS. I'll be out here in the sun, talking about a little thing I like to call "Runs Batted In." (Belches loudly.) KT: Okay. So, listen -- about this thing you wrote about Tim Wakefield... BJ: Oh my, yes. His knuckleball act has become dreadfully tedious. The Red Stockings should put him out to pasture! KT: He did get roughed up by the Yankees -- a very good hitting club -- and he's struggled recently. But the guy isn't bad. Every year, he's good for 180 innings and a 4.20ish DIPS. Isn't that good for a fourth starter?
(Jenkins stares at me blankly.)
BJ: What did you call me? KT: (confused) What? I didn't call you anything. BJ: You listen to me, you rogue! You blackguard! I didn't fight in the Boer War to be insulted by a man who probably still lives in his mom's basement! (chuckles to himself) KT: I wasn't insulting you. I was just pointing out that no matter what kind of pitch the guy throws, he's a pretty good fourth starter. I mean, the Sox only pay him $4 million a year, and his K/IP ratio is better than Mark Buehrle's. BJ: Blorrrmp.
(Jenkins has vomited a little. I help him clean off his chin)
KT: There we go. You okay? BJ: Listen, I don't care what your so-called "statistics" say. The man's act has become dreadfully tedious.
(He produces a partially-eaten grilled cheese sandwich from his waistcoat and washes down the bite with a long draw off the wineskin.)
KT: Yes, you mentioned that. But what-- BJ: I mean, where is the man's fastball?! Where is the challenge pitch? Where is the wicked googly? KT: Is that...a curveball? Because he throws a curveball occasionally. And no matter what, the guy has had a 100-or-above ERA+ in 13 out of his 15 years. That's pretty good. BJ: Will you stop spouting statistics, you mom's-basement-dweller?! Where are you even getting this information? KT: From my Blackberry. BJ: (eyes light up) A blackberry? Sounds delicious!
(He eats my Blackberry.)
KT: Oh boy. BJ: (licking fingers) Excellent. KT: I needed that. BJ: Look, Ken Tremendous -- if that is your real name! KT: It's not. BJ: This game is about traditions, my friend. It isn't called "NumbersBall." It's called "Rounders." KT: "Baseball." BJ: And Rounders just isn't Rounders without the sweet smell of the chalk, and the loud crack of rawhide in the Snufflebucket, and the crisp feeling of flerbits in the mrrrrph mrrgggle...
(Jenkins is fast asleep. I gently take the wineskin off his back and wrap him in my new Noah Lowry jersey. The first pitch is thrown, and I settle in to watch a baseball game.)
(Two hours later, Jenkins offers his final salvo...)
Re: Bruce Jenkins' gem about pitchers with ERAs over 4.00 (specifically, 4.29) being lousy.
Noticed this, from Jenkins' column a couple days ago:
"Barry Zito's brilliance was there for all to see, particularly a handful of clowns in the New York media who dismissed Zito as a flake last winter, when the Mets were in the running to sign him as a free agent (between the lines, Zito is about as flaky as an anvil)."
Barry Zito's ERA this year is 4.21, and he's "an anvil."
Tim Wakefield's is 4.24.
The fictional pitcher from Jenkins' Sept. 2005 column had a 4.29.
Joe Morgan has written an entirely worthless article about the Sox-Sox series. It's so worthless I'm not even going to link it. His point is: The Red Sox are in trouble. Which I think most people knew. He also opines that in order to win, the Red Sox will need to score some runs. Which, again, I think most people knew.
Here are a few little tastes:
The Red Sox won four games from the Yankees last year after being down 3-0 in the ALCS. Ninety-nine out of 100 times that wouldn't happen.
That was the first time it had happened, ever, in baseball, and like the third time in any sport, and the other two were (I believe) in hockey in like the 1940's. It seems like that would have been a better way to put it.
...you can only put your back against the wall so many times and bounce back, and this is a different Red Sox team. Last year, you had Pedro Martinez and Curt Schilling at the top of their rotation. Schilling right now isn't at the top of his game, and you don't know who in the Red Sox rotation can match up with White Sox starters. Game 3 starter Tim Wakefield has been good on occasion, but not lately.
Wakefield in September: 2-1, 1.99 ERA. 28 H in 40.2 IP, 34/7 K/BB, .197 BAA. Those are "Pitcher of the Month"-type numbers. He did get knocked around by a red-hot Yankees team in his one October start, but that was on three days' rest. So, saying he hasn't been good lately is kind of dumb.
Last year when the Red Sox were down 3-0 to the Yankees, I said no way they could come back. I won't go that far -- won't make that mistake again, so to speak -- but I don't think they can come back from down 2-0, because they don't have the same rotation.
"So to speak?" How is "won't make that mistake again" a figure of speech? That's just...a phrase.
...even if Wakefield and Schilling win their starts, it's going to be very difficult for Boston to come back and win this series. They would still have to go back to Chicago for Game 5, and who would start that game for Boston?
Bronson Arroyo. Not that that's good, or bad, or whatever, but that's who would start. Or maybe Wells on short rest, or regular rest, if there's a rainout in the next two days, which is actually likely. Just FYI, Joe -- there are ways of divining these elusive mysteries.
What's next: If Jon Lester (4-0, 3.06 ERA) is as good as he's looked, the Sox have arguably the best pitching in the division and a better-than-good chance to earn their first AL East title since 1995.
Lester has worked his way out of a ton of jams. He has also been in a ton of jams, because he has 25 BB in 37.3 IP.
Just thought that I'd point out than in his AL Central grade for the White Sox, he thought something that "Went Right" for the White Sox was this:
"...and the rest of the by-now-familiar rotation -- Mark Buehrle, Jon Garland, Freddy Garcia and newcomer Javier Vazquez (9-4, 5.07) -- is ever-steady."
Garland: 5.37 ERA (42nd out of 46 qualified AL starters) 1.42 WHIP (36th) .297 BAA (40th) and 39th in DIPS
Garcia: 4.91 ERA (35th) 1.39 WHIP (33rd) .283 BAA (39th) and 38th in DIPS
Vazquez: 5.07 ERA (39th) 1.35 WHIP (29th) .273 BAA(31st) but at least he's like 11th in DIPS.
That's "ever steady?" I would say "bad" would actually be more appropriate.
John Kruk, who is a MENSA-level genius, has this to say about Manny Ramirez:
When is this guy going to be held responsible for his actions? I understand that sometimes a star player gets special treatment, but this is supposed to be a team game in which every player is responsible for his team and he doesn't seem to understand or care. He just goes about his business without any fear of reprisal from management or his teammates and that's not right. When I played, there was no way I could have gotten away with this type of behavior, and neither could anyone else on the team.
John Kruk has mounted his horse, and he is going to ride it all the way to Indignationville! Because Manny Ramirez is not being a professional, and John Kruk has some words for him, by gum! This would have never stood in John Kruk's day. For example, John Kruk played on the 1993 Phillies. If Manny Ramirez tried any of this nonsense on the 1993 Phillies, someone would have held his feet to the fire. If Manny tried this B.S. on the 1993 Phillies, Lenny Dykstra would have taken the hypodermic needle out of his ass and marched right over to Manny and said, "Hey! Be a professional!" Dykstra's words might have carried some respect, since -- totally coincidentally -- he was in the midst of a year where he set statistically improbable personal highs in every major offensive category. (He was working really hard in the weight room, I guess.) Also, Dykstra's words may have carried respect because his sheer physical size had exploded so much in so short a time that one of the Phillies announcers took to calling him "Lenny Kruk" when he came to the plate.
But if Dykstra had approached Manny, things might have gotten heated. So heated, that maybe Jeff Scott, the convicted felon who, in a sworn affidavit, said that he "hug out with about half" of the 1993 Phillies, providing them with drugs, would have had to come over and break things up. Maybe Kruk could have pulled Dykstra aside and given him a cigarette, since the two of them used to smoke cigarettes on the bench -- in full view of the fans -- during games. Or maybe they could have just done a line of coke, as dozens of whispered reports suggested they did all the time.
Or maybe Pete Incaviglia, who hit 11 HR in 1991 and 1992, but who hit a mysterious 24 in 1993, would have stepped in and restored some professionalism to the clubhouse. Or Danny Jackson, the pitcher (pitcher!) who was nicknamed "The Incredible Hulk" because of how muscular he was, could have knocked some professionalism into Manny. If not, surely Dutch Daulton, who had 105 RBI in 1993 but never played in more than 98 games in any subsequent season due to a series of injuries (he was only 31 in 1993; maybe the injuries were the result of eating too many Froot Loops?), and who was beloved for what amounted to erratic and bizarre behavior, would have gone up to Manny and said, "Settle down. Act properly."
Or, wait -- I know what would have happened if Manny had acted unprofessionally in John Kruk's era. Lenny Dykstra's best friend, who allegedly helped him bet on baseball games, including those of the self-same 1993 Phillies, could have talked some sense into Manny over the phone, after taking Dykstra's wager on that afternoon's Twins-Brewers game. That would have worked. Maybe Dykstra, the notorious high-stakes gambler, who was linked to a gambling probe in Mississippi in 1991, could have helped matters by telling Manny that he, Dykstra, would bet heavily on Ramirez for the rest of the year in order to give Manny an incentive to play. And Kruk could have backed him up. After all, Kruk probably felt like he owed Dykstra some support, since a few months after Dykstra was linked to gambling on baseball, Dykstra broke his collarbone in a car wreck after John Kruk's bachelor party and missed several months of the season.
So, go get 'em, Krukie! Don't let these modern-day weirdos sully the reputation of your straight-arrow, play-the-right-way 1993 Phillies. You guys were the model for baseball player behavior. Is it possible that all of this is simply conjecture? That everyone on your team, more or less, had statistically improbably great years? That no one on the Phillies was using steroids or gambling on baseball or doing drugs or anything? Absolutely. And I will bet everything I own in the world that some of you were doing some combination of using steroids and drugs and gambling on baseball.
Think I'm being unfair? Think it's wrong to bring all this stuff up when you are accusing Manny of a different crime? Well, you did say, and I quote, "this is supposed to be a team game in which every player is responsible for his team. He just goes about his business without any fear of reprisal from management or his teammates and that's not right." So, way to call out your guys for everything they did back in the day. Let's see how you did that: (from cantstopthebleeding.com)
“Let me tell you, we partied hard on that team."
But what about Jeff Scott?
“I never heard of the guy, never saw anybody like that,” Kruk said.
Does Habeeb’s claim [that Scott "hug out with half the team"] bother Kruk?
“Not at all,” the former first baseman said. “If you listened to everything people said about us, you’d think we were all alcoholics, drug addicts and steroid users. I wish we had that much fun.”
Didn't you just talk about how hard you partied?
“One year [Dykstra] weighed next to nothing and the next he was all bulked up,” Kruk said. “I heard reporters wondering what he was on, so I asked him. I said, ‘What did you do?’ He said, ‘I just worked hard.’ I believed him. I had no reason not to believe him. He’d never lied to me before, and I knew he was big into weight lifting.
“You know, so many guys were getting big at that time from weights. When I first came in the league, I thought Jack Clark and Steve Garvey were big. Then all of sudden it seemed like everyone was that big. To me, Lenny was no different.”
Good work, Krukie. You're a goddamn hero. And for the record, you dunderhead, several of Manny's teammates, including Curt Schilling, David Wells, and Tim Wakefield, publicly or privately called Manny on his behavior. And as for management, well, they tried to get rid of him. So really, when you think about it, what the fuck are you complaining about?
Close up shop. Blow the team sky-high. Take that 81-55 record and shove it up your pee holes, because it's meaningless.
As we all know, the World Series trophy is awarded every year to the team with the fieriest passions. Who will scream and yell and curse the most? Who will fill the dugout with tears of insanity? Who will give the most hugs? These are the questions that will be answered in October, when we once again crown The Most Emotional, And Therefore Best, Team In Baseball.
What a bunch of losers! They have the best pitching in the majors, but with a lineup of increasingly frustrating incompetence.
And we all know the old saying: hitting wins in the playoffs.
They are going to win the American League East for the first time since 1995. They may even have home-field advantage throughout October.
But there is no way these Red Sox are winning the World Series.
There you have it. Eric Wilbur is offically putting the odds of the Red Sox, the team with the best record and best run differential in baseball, at 0%. 0 out of 30. 0 out of a million. Zero.
I'm going to go ahead and say that if the Red Sox make the playoffs, their odds of winning the Series are about 1 in 8. But let's read on. I'm sure Eric has some sound baseball reasons behind eliminating them altogether on August 30.
As far and as much as a fire for playing the game is concerned, the Yankees, Angels, and Indians all have to be considered superior American League squads.
Yep. Did it. Changed my mind. Forgot about fire. My bad. Can't win shit without fire. Gotta be fiery. Fire it up, Yankees, Angels, and Indians! You're all contenders for the World Series this year! Of course, as is the case every year, the World Series will be awarded to Ozzie Guillen and Ozzie Guillen alone.
First-place Los Angeles put on the clamps, and shut down the Mariners to take control of the West with a 5 1/2-game lead over Seattle. The Indians put any lingering thoughts the Twins might have had about getting back into the race by sweeping and putting Minnesota in a nine-game hole.
Very good use of the little-known MLB loophole (Rule 35.17 in the rulebook): "Performance in the last series of August shall be used to determine World Series championship eligibility, pursuant to Fieriness Clause in Rule 42.9." Red Sox got swept by the Yankees, as you recall, so they are ineligible for the World Series this year. Too bad, fans.
Additional note: the Yankees (run differential of +144) are a much, much better team than both the Mariners (+4) and the Twins (+23).
Your Boston Red Sox? They go to the Bronx and show all the passion of a weasel on Xanax in getting swept by the Yankees, who made them look foolish offensively and even suspect on the mound, where Boston has honed its greatest strength this season.
Is a weasel a particularly passionless creature? It seems like this joke would've worked better with an especially docile animal. My pitches:
sloth (a little obvious, but point gets made) basset hound (droopy face, droopy eyes, droopy ears; slow-moving) armadillo (these things don't seem that passionate -- prove me wrong) Asian person (get a pulse, am I right, guys?)
Auxiliary pitch:
instead of Xanax, how about "(passionless animal or Asian person) on downers"?
It's a different brand of baseball come autumn, and it's now completely evident that the Red Sox don't have that (bleep) 'em attitude that defined their 2004 predecessors. The Yankees have it. The Angels have it. The Indians seem like they have it. The Red Sox? I give you J.D. Drew.
2007 Red Sox: Good pitching, not enough fuck 'em 2007 Yankees: Rag-taggest, underdoggest, scrappiest, fuck 'em-iest team ever!
Doesn't it seem like J.D. Drew is the quintessential fuck 'em player? The guy clearly doesn't give a shit, ever. The always helpful Urban Dictionary defines "fuck 'em" as "In a state in which a person could careless [sic] about a person, place, thing or a group." J.D. Drew cares so little about baseball it looks like he's on the verge of taking a nap in between pitches. If you look closely at his face, he actually mouths the words "fuck 'em" on every feeble missed swing he takes.
For all the warranted criticism hammered upon the underperforming outfielder, his emotionless approach to the game has seemingly become this team's calling card.
J.D. Drew = Emotion Cancer For all the passion emitted from guys like Josh Beckett, Kevin Youkilis, Jonathan Papelbon, and David Ortiz, on the whole the Red Sox are a squad that comes to the office, does their business with zombie-like efficiency, says all the right things afterward, and then has fans scratching their heads wondering if there is anything special here at all. That's J.D. Drew, and that is the Red Sox.
There you go. It's not enough to have the best record in baseball. It's not enough to have the best pitching staff. They're not special enough. Not special like the turd of a team the St. Louis Cardinals were last year. Not fire-breathing passionate personality monsters like the dynastic San Antonio Spurs are in basketball. Not emotional, constantly weeping, frighteningly volatile like Bill Belichick and the Patriots.
I also love that he names four very passionate essential Red Sox players in an article decrying the lack of passion on the team. I mean, seriously, let's do an inventory real quick:
Passionate (Special, World Series-worthy, Fiery, Prone To Being On Fire, Combustible, Flammable, Inflammable) Beckett Youkilis Papelbon Ortiz Schilling Varitek Pedroia Lowell (borderline, but he's a Cagey Veteran who sublimates his fire into Lunchpailism) Wakefield Gagne (facial hair! curses in French!) Crisp (diving catches! leaps into walls!) Buchholz (hugged a lot of people last night!) Tavarez (once murdered a drifter with a mini-screwdriver!)
Dispassionate (Not Special, Emotionally Cancerous, Membership On Team Automatically Disqualifies Team For World Series)
Drew Manny Lugo Matsuzaka (Japanese robot)
Honestly: Red Sox, passionate or not? You make the call.
Curt Schilling came out of New York with the best outing of any starter, but was victimized greatly by a Manny Ramirez-less lineup that had the following 6-9 hitters: Drew, Jason Varitek, Eric Hinske, Alex Cora. Beckett pitched well when he needed to wriggle out of jams, but 13 hits?
Disregard this paragraph; we're talking about who's going to win the World Series, not about baseball stuff.
Daisuke Matsuzaka at this point is an enigma, and has not had a memorable, step-up, "wow" performance in his rookie season other than a recent 1-0 outing at Cleveland.
Would've rewritten to say "Daisuke Matsuzaka is at this point an inscrutable, crafty, math-genius enigma ... "
Also, re: "wow" games -- how about that complete game, one run affair against the vaunted Tiger offense? How about a span of four consecutive games where he allowed a total of two runs (and in the process struck out 8, 9, 8, and 9)? How about the month of June, when he had a 1.59 ERA? (I guess that doesn't count because there were some National League teams mixed in, and everyone knows you do not play National League teams in the process of winning the World Series.) Is anyone wowed by the fact that he's struck out 174 Major League batters in 176.1 innings? The days of late-inning heroics are long gone; the celebrations of leaping men in uniform at home plate a thing of the past.
That was the identity of the Red Sox these past few years, more than often bailed out by Ortiz. What is this team's identity?
Best record in baseball. Good team. Good pitching. Solid starters, excellent bullpen.
We've sought so long and hard for one that by now it has become evident that it doesn't really have one. Theo Epstein wanted to rid himself of the "Idiot" culture, but he has replaced it with a collection so vanilla in attitude that one has to wonder what the consensus is when adversity is placed in front of the OPS objective.
Not to get all Michiko Kakutani here or anything, but how can an "objective" encounter "adversity"? Can an "objective" really reach a "consensus"? Can an "attitude" be "vanilla"? That's just weird. A lot of abstract nouns doing a lot of active things in there, Wilbur.
Where's the fire? Where's the passion?
Mark my words: Tim Duncan will never win a championship. Pete Sampras will never win a tournament. John Stockton sucked balls. Ivan Lendl was so bad at tennis whenever he touched a tennis ball it would explode and kill fourteen innocent bystanders. Unless you scream and curse and cry and pump your fist and chop your groin all at the same time, you will never be good at sports.
The Yankees welcomed the Red Sox into their home and were ready to pounce, even after falling one night earlier to Detroit, 16-0. Their zeal was evident from pitch one on Tuesday.
Their zeal was evident in that they won. They won the games. That's why this article was written. If the Sox had taken one or two of the games, regardless of how passionate they looked while doing it, this article doesn't exist. Winning. Winning is important. Winning makes guys leap into each others' arms. Winning makes David Ortiz crush people with bear hugs. Winning at sports.
Now, before we get out of hand, let's be fair and rewind the clock. It was Sept. 17-19 of '04 when the Red Sox invaded Yankee Stadium for three, starting with a thrilling 3-2 win on Friday night, and ending with embarrassing 12-5 and 11-4 losses the next two days. The next weekend, the Yanks made Pedro Martinez their adopted son.
One month later, none of it mattered.
Way to disprove your own article.
Maybe we're being a bit too revisionist, erroneously remembering the 2004 squad as a group that could change water into wine, slay the dragons that unwelcomingly inhabit the Charles, and accurately able to translates the mayor's jabberings. But still, that team had a certain undeniable ardor that this edition is severely lacking.
New sports word: ardor! Ardor: does your team have it? A short radio play: Joe Buck: Well, Tim, you have to like the Red Sox' starting pitching and bullpen, but how do you feel about their ardor?
Tim McCarver: Ardor is a funny thing, Joe. It's like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography: "I know it when I see it." And with these Red Sox, I just don't see it.
JB: How do you know it when you see it, Tim?
TM: For me, it's when you see the dick going in.
(ten minutes of silence)
TM: Oh. I see. You were talking about ardor.
"You know what happens when you wake a sleeping giant," Papelbon said yesterday after the Chamberlain incident.
Yes. But whether the Red Sox are indeed a snoozing leviathan or indolent group of nondescript ballplayers remains the question.
Hey Eric Wilbur, indolent means "slothful, lazy, idle." You really think a large percentage of Red Sox players are slothful, lazy, and idle? Okay, dude. Have fun telling them that.
Plus, nondescript? Tell me: which team, other than the Yankees, has more descript players than the fucking Boston fucking Red Sox? We're talking descript as hell here. Ortiz, Schilling, Manny, Dice-K, Papelbon, Beckett. These guys are unique, superfamous uberstars. Even the role players are descript: Youkilis is Moneyball-famous, Pedroia is three feet tall, Coco Crisp has a funny name, Wakefield throws a knuckler, Varitek is supposedly a god of intangibles. I'll tell you who's nondescript: the Pittsburgh Pirates.
They're one of the best teams in the game, no doubt, and have an outside shot at a 100-win season. But be honest, can you really imagine this group as World Series champions?
Yes. Broken record: very good pitching, decent hitting, dependable bullpen. No one's a lock, of course, but they have a shot, sure. On the flip side, nobody expected Detroit and St. Louis to be in the World Series last year after the way they played much of August.
Way to disprove your own article, part II. But the fact that there is something so maddeningly lacking on the Red Sox in terms of fire and inspiration still has much of the baseball world looking elsewhere when trying to pinpoint a winner. They can do it.
No, you can't backtrack and say they can do it now. You can't. I'm not allowing it. The whole thesis of this article is that they can't do it because they're not emotional. They're not special. You're not buying it back here.
They just have shown us no reason why anyone should think they could.
81-55. AL-best 3.75 ERA. Fourth in MLB in runs scored. No reason.
Guys scream and pump their fists and point to the sky and give each other funny handshakes when they win. For the last time, it's not the other way around.
Because the creator of this site is not a professional journalist. He is just a guy who wants ARod to be more respected in New York.
And this is a cause I can get behind. I am a Red Sox fan, and thus, currently, I "hate" ARod. But as you might have read on our site, we feel that his treatment by fans and the NY press is absolutely insane. He is super awesome at baseball, and plenty of sportswriters think that because he has had some bad playoff series he is a headcase who fails in the clutch. The phrase "not a True Yankee" gets thrown around. Please see our Glossary for some thoughts on the phrase "True Yankee."
Point is, AlexRod is straight-up, no foolin', one of the maybe five best offensive players in baseball over the last decade, which lots of people, weirdly, forget.
Anyway, this "Project A13" fellow thinks that all Yankee fans have to do is read "The Secret" and bend some spoons with their minds and maybe rub some crystals on the back of a cauldron filled with jackal testicles and then maybe, just maybe, Alex Rodriguez can become good at baseball.
Maybe, if they use their positive vibes and Healing Vectors and Optimism BrainPlasma Rays extra effectively, he'll even become as good at baseball as he was in 2005, when he won the MVeffingP Award for being the best baseball player. As a member of the Yankees.
There is just something contagious about positive energy, and even though it can't be put into words readily, or explained in a lab with science, we've all felt its effects at Yankee Stadium in the past.
Yes. Going to baseball games is very fun, and when the crowd gets into the game, it is very exciting. Why do Yankee fans often feel like Yankee Stadium, which is a 1970's-remodeled shithole, is governed not by the laws of physics but by White Magik?
Think post-9/11, in the 2001 World Series, when every fan's thoughts were focused squarely on baseball—they had to be—and how amazing their pinstriped heroes could make them feel. In back-to-back games, the Yankees hit two game-tying, two-run home runs in the bottom of the ninth inning, with two outs each time (what are the odds?), a feat never before witnessed in World Series play.
This happened...because of positive energy? Not because BK Kim threw like 100 pitches in 2 days? Not because the hitters who hit them were good. Not because sometimes: crazy shit happens, especially in the wonderfully complex and unpredictable world of baseball? It all happened because of positive feelings.
For the record, I was living in New York at that time. Those HR were amazing. They brought tears to my eyes. They almost made me happy, which I never thought any Yankee triumph could do. People in New York were happy, for the first time in two very terrible months. It was wonderful, for the city. It did not happen because of magic.
Derek Jeter went on to hit an extra-innings, walk-off home run in the first of these two games, and Alfonso Soriano had the game-winning hit in the second. Euphoria rained down in the Bronx.
Anyone remember who eventually won that World Series? Who? The Diamondbacks? Huh. Maybe the Yankee Fan Brain-Energy Sparkle Photons couldn't penetrate the warm desert air.
Want more examples?
Yes, please.
Think Tino's upper-deck Grand Slam versus San Diego in the 1998 Series. Or Chad Curtis' two Game Three, World Series home runs in 1999.
The Yankees were very good at baseball in the late 1990's. Every good thing that happens in your home park is not due to Dark Arts.
Mariano's three Series-clinching saves in three consecutive October Classics—also a feat never before seen.
This is what we in the tangible human world of cold mathematics call: a Cherry-Pick.
And the list could go on and on for this extraordinary stretch of time, such as David Justice's clutch home run off Arthur Rhodes in the 2000 playoffs, and let's not forget the back-to-back perfect games pitched by David Wells in 1998, and David Cone in 1999.
These are "back to back" because they happened in consecutive years? That's not what "back to back" means. You can't say that Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz hit back-to-back home runs on May 13, 2003 and August 18 2004. Or that Bill Clinton and George Bush won back-to-back elections. Or that France and America won back-to-back revolutions. They both threw prefect games, in Yankee Stadium. It was all very exciting.
Hang on a second. Oh my God. Their names are both named David. Maybe everyone in The Bronx should change their names to David!!!!!!
Just like the media can create waves of negative energy to sell its newspapers and ad space, fans like you and me can create waves of positive energy that carry our athletes to heights never thought possible.
Nope. No. Sorry. Untrue. Opposite of true. Baloney. Fake fake fake silly dumb no. Bad nope ugh stop dumb silly no no no.
It is super fun to go to baseball games. It is one of my favorite things in the world. And I certainly believe that it is exciting and fun for players to hear -- and feel -- that the crowd is roaring their approval. But for the love of god, man. Get a grip.
Think of all those insane moments, where the opposition and their fans were left staring out onto the field, or at their TV sets, in dazed, dejected, bewilderment—mouths hanging to the floor—while the Yankees danced, and jumped, and hugged, shaking their heads...the Yankees' Mystique...the Ghosts of Yankees Stadium...the Aura of New York. All of these events can be explained, in large part, because everyone involved believed they would happen—they just knew the Yankees would come through—players and fans alike.
I hate to be "this guy." But did everyone think the Yankees would lose Games 6 and 7 in 2004? Did you think you would lose to the Tigers? Did you think you would lose to the Angels?
Here are some words I would use to describe the Yankees' players and fans after those defeats:
"dazed, dejected, bewilderment—mouths hanging to the floor—while the [other team/their fans] danced, and jumped, and hugged, shaking their heads."
And read this again:
"All of these events can be explained, in large part, because everyone involved believed they would happen—they just knew the Yankees would come through—players and fans alike."
Those events can be explained because the Yankees were good at baseball. It had little/nothing to do with the fans in the stands. Sorry.
It can be that way again. All we need is a spark.
Plus two more good starters, a reliable lefty set-up guy, a good year out of Cano, quick injury come-backs from Abreu and Wang, a 75% PECOTA year from Posada, and another 30 rounds of HGH for Giambi. And Roger Clemens. And Phil Hughes.
Oh -- and a spark. You need a spark.
To a certain extent, these moments still happen for the Yankees, even if a ring is not the ultimate reward. For example, Hideki Matsui's opening day grand slam in 2003, in the snow.
This is an event worth singling out? This is a "special moment" that resulted from Yankee Magic? The guy hit a grand slam. He's a good hitter. Fernando Tatis hit two in one inning once. Was that because of fans?
Or, my personal favorite, the 2003 ALCS Game 7 comeback against Pedro, punctuated by Georgie's game-tying double in the eighth, and signed, sealed and delivered by Aaron Boone in the bottom of the eleventh—the definition of insanity.
Oh, I beg to differ, chumly. The definition of insanity is believing that fans and their Positive Energy Beams caused a Tim Wakefield knuckleball to hang. Or that Yankee Stadium, and not Pedro's exhausted arm, or Grady Little's complete and utter inability to manage baseball games, caused those hits to fall in. That, my good man, is the definition of insanity.
The problem today is that these moments are happening less and less frequently, especially in the postseason, and we the fans are getting more and more angry—a frustrating cycle headed in the wrong direction.
Yes. The problem is not an aging roster and terrible trades and a lack of a farm system that plagued the team for the last five years and Jason Giambi's steroids/pituitary tumor and losing Andy Pettitte and playing ARod out of position and giving Tony Womack like 400 AB one year and insisting Bernie can still play CF and Hideki Matsui breaking his wrist and no pitching depth and a crappy bullpen. The problem -- and why won't anyone listen to this guy?! -- is a Cyclical Downtrend in Forward-Thinking Optimism that spawns Grumpy Beams that are Radiated Outward from the Happy Helping Mechanisms (the stands). Haven't you guys ever seen baseball? Or learned science?
This is the problem when a city becomes conditioned on excellence, as the Yankees of the late 90's definitely conditioned their fans. We stop believing good things will happen, and start expecting them to—a major difference. Belief, in its purest form, is a measure of confidence...of faith.
Expectation is a measure of entitlement, which is not nearly as endearing a quality, is it?
No, it is not. But even less endearing is: lunacy.
I really don't want to be a killjoy. I like the humanistic element of baseball fandom. I often do not move from my seat if the Red Sox have a rally going. But: and this is key: I do not actually believe that my actions affect those of the players on the field. How is it possible for me to differentiate between superstition and the actual doings of men I have never met? Because -- and this is my secret -- I am a sentient human.
