• Phillies 6-Mets 2:

    With post-traumatic memories dancing in the heads of Mets fans as the team lost their second straight game to the Phillies, there are many differences between the collapse of 2007 and what’s happening now in September of 2008. Last season, the Mets had been an average (at best) team from early June until they fell apart at season’s end; this season they’ve played like men who were released from prison since the firing of Willie Randolph. (This isn’t an overt reflection on Randolph; the questions about the manager’s job security were just as stifling as Randolph’s and pitching coach Rick Peterson’s presence.) Last season, they’d spent just about the entire campaign in first place; this season, they’ve gone back and forth with the Phillies since getting their house in order with manager Jerry Manuel and pitching coach Dan Warthen. Most importantly, the Mets have Johan Santana pitching the second game of tonight’s doubleheader—-the exact type of game he was acquired to pitch.
    The one thing missing from the Mets last season was that ace who they could give the ball and say, “carry us home”. With Santana and his cachet, that is no longer an issue. Even with John Maine and Oliver Perez winning 15 games apiece last year, there wasn’t that one guy that the team could count on to give them a winning performance regardless of the circumstances.
    Another issue that is an advantage for the Mets is that even though they’ve lost the first two games of this series and seem to have forgotten their bats in Milwaukee, losing the first game of a doubleheader on Sunday and trimming the lead to one game won’t be seen as the panic-stricken tragedy that it would have been with the tightly wound Randolph at the helm; with the dearth of the one guy they could count on to go to the mound and deliver the goods; and without the newspapers, talk show imbeciles and everyone else going into conniptions at the mere thought of another September swoon. This may be the most important factor of all.
    Part of the reason the team collapsed so completely last season, I think, was because the players heard the whispers of the fans, talk shows and newspapers wondering when the team was going to wake up. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy and everyone, from the front office on down through the entire organization, looked to someone else to get the job done and as a result, everyone played tight and tried not to screw up instead of doing their jobs. Even as they’ve lost the first two games of this series, the worst case scenario is that they and the Phillies will be all even with twenty games left; that would’ve looked pretty good early in the season given the way they played under Randolph until he was fired.
    Having the break between games and not having to answer a million questions about why the Phillies have the hex over the Mets in September; not having to go home and sleep with the feeling of impending doom that permeated the organization last season; not having to read the newspaper accounts of another Mets September stumble before heading back onto the field, and being able to get right back out with their ace on the mound is a huge advantage for those that are still seeing the nightmare of 2007 everywhere they look.
    Mets fans are inherently pessimistic and paranoid (with good reason), but if they go out tonight and get what they’re paying for from Santana, the combination of no remaining games against the Phillies (unless there’s a one-game playoff or they both make the playoffs) should give the entire organization and fan base some breathing room to not worry about what happened in 2007 and move forward. All the pieces are in place to put 2007 to rest once and for all and it starts on the valuable left arm of Johan Santana and is being assisted by this day-night doubleheader.

• Whither Ben Sheets?

    I’ve gone on about wondering where Ben Sheets is going to end up after this season ad nauseam, but after last night’s performance in which he dismantled the Padres I have to keep asking: which team is going to ante up the cash on Sheets’s potential and not worry about his propensity for getting hurt with various injuries to just about every single part of his body. The most important question that the interested teams (and there will be many) is how high they’re willing to go to get that potential and if they’re confident that he’s going to be able to get out on the mound on a regular basis.
    Is Sheets going to become Chris Carpenter, who overcame injury after injury with the Blue Jays, got healthy with the Cardinals and won 36 games over two years and won the Cy Young Award in one season and finished in third place the next year? Will he become Jim Palmer, who went 15-10 in his first full year in the majors during the Orioles 1966 championship season then missed most of the 1967 season with injuries; spent 1968 rehabilitating and became a three-time Cy Young Award winner and a Hall of Famer upon returning to the majors in 1969? Or is he going to be another Carl Pavano, who received a giant contract and couldn’t stay healthy? (It’s very interesting how Pavano is now blaming the doctors for his woes—-NY Times Article, but I digress.) It’s a big commitment that a team is going to make for Sheets with a massive risk/reward.
    Sheets’s teammate with the Brewers, C.C. Sabathia is putting himself into position to not only steal the National League Cy Young Award from Brandon Webb in just three months of work, but to make an even larger haul than Johan Santana got from the Mets. As for Sheets, the losers in the Sabathia sweepstakes will be calling him as a backup plan and he’d be smar
t to wait and see where Sabathia winds up before signing anywhere. If I were an executive for one of the teams that has the money to give Sheets the $110+ million he’s going to want (and get), I’d possibly be staking my job on whether or not he’s able to stay healthy for the 5-7 years of his contract.
    If I were advising someone like Omar Minaya or Brian Cashman (if he’s still with the Yankees), my recommendation would be to take the large chunks of cash that are coming off the books and invest it in Sheets; the change in scenery and different training staffs and medical teams might keep him healthy and he’s one of the best pitchers in baseball when he’s able to get out on the mound. My gut instinct is to take the risk because Sheets is Hall of Fame good when he’s at his best and a 2009 Mets rotation, for example, with Santana, Sheets, John Maine and Mike Pelfrey would look very intimidating as they came into town. It’s a big risk, but my gut feeling is that he’s going to be worth it even with his aches and pains.

• Enough already with the moaning and complaining about C.C. Sabathia’s lost no-hitter:

    Buster Olney linked an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in which Tom Haudricourt suggests that Major League Baseball institute a fifth umpire to score the game so another incident as happened to C.C. Sabathia and the no-hitter that wasn’t doesn’t happen again—-Article. This reminds me of the scene late in the movie Interview with the Vampire in which Lestat, the Tom Cruise character, hears a tape of Louis, the Brad Pitt character complaining about his life as a vampire and asks interviewer Christian Slater:

Lestat:
Oh Louis, Louis. Still whining Louis. Have you heard enough? I’ve had to listen to that for centuries.

    It wasn’t as if Sabathia had a no-hitter with two outs in the ninth inning and saw it snatched from his grasp by a bad call. It was a fifth inning judgment call that I’ve already said that I disagreed with; but what’s done is done. All the Brewers have done since this happened is complain about it. They petitioned the league for a scoring change and were rejected. Now, these articles that are being written about it and it’s enough. Sabathia wasn’t all that bothered about it, so why can’t everyone just stop whining and let it go. Can everyone move on with their lives please?
    Am I alone in not wanting to hear about it anymore? A drastic change has just been made to the way umpires call the game with the installation of instant replay, are they supposed to add an umpire just so an official scorer won’t be able to “steal” a no-hitter that may not have happened anyway? Baseball scoring has been done this way pretty much since the game began and a change isn’t necessary because of one call that didn’t go the way people with a vested interest in the outcome wanted it. I just don’t want to hear about it anymore. (That being said, I might be swayed if the Brewers continue to whine, moan and complain because anything that puts a stop to this silliness is good enough for me.)

• Yankees 8-Rays 4; Pavano’s stuff just ain’t there:

    Carl Pavano has shown some guts in coming back to try and help the Yankees in some way over the last month and redeem the previous 3 3/4 years with the team that can only be described as disastrous and embarrassing on and off the field; that being said, his stuff just isn’t there at all. His fastball is puttering in at a high of 88 and is coming in anywhere under that; his sinker isn’t sinking, instead it’s taking a slight lateral movement at the hitting zone; his changeup is good enough, but with a fastball that’s not all that fast, the changeup loses it’s effectiveness; his slider isn’t doing much of anything at all. He looks like he’s getting hitters out because they’re either stunned that his stuff is so weak or they’re too anxious and unaccustomed to a big leaguer throwing such substandard junk.
    It’s strange because a pitcher who comes back from Tommy John surgery tends to throw harder than he did before, but that hasn’t happened with Pavano. The only things I can surmise are that he’s still building arm strength or there’s something not right with him and he doesn’t want to say. If this is what he’s got to work with now, he’s going to have trouble securing anything more next season other than a Mark Prior-type contract in which the team that signs him is going to bring Pavano to camp to see if he can give them anything. If he thinks a month of starts is going to guarantee him anything more than a short-term contract laden with incentives, he’s in for a big surprise, but in looking at how he’s pitching, it shouldn’t be any surprise at all.

• Astros 4-Cubs 0; can the Astros pull this off?

    The Astros can forget about the NL Central because eleven games is too much to make up over the final 22 games, but they’re only 6 1/2 games out of the Wild Card lead and their schedule is notoriously weak over the final month. Other than three more games with the Cubs starting September 12th, they play: the Rockies, Pirates, Reds, Marlins and Braves. The teams ahead of the Astros in the Wild Card standings, the Brewers, Cardinals and Phillies have a much tougher road.
    The Brewers have ten games remaining with the Cubs and Phillies; the Phillies have those games with the Brewers, plus three with the Mets; and the Cardinals have ten with the Diamondbacks and Cubs. After all the ridicule the blazing hot Astros endured little more than a month ago for “needlessly” trading for veteran help, it’s legitimately possible that they could still be alive for a playoff spot going into the last weekend with the Braves and no one other than the Astros thought that would be possible.

• Nationals 9-Phillies 7; Charlie Manuel’s reliever-abuse is showing:

    The wear on the tires of the Phillies entire bullpen is starting show. J.C. Romero is pitching in almost every game (much as he did last year) and looks exhausted even if he doesn’t make himself unavailable to pitch; Chad Durbin has been brilliant this season, but as he’s forged that new career as a reliever, the fact that he’s been a career-long starter and has never pitched in more than 36 games in a season is diminishing his performance. The other members of the Phillies bullpen—-Clay Condrey, Scott Eyre, Ryan Madson and Brad Lidge—-are going to feel the affects on and off the field before too long if they aren’t already. (I’d be willing to be heavily that they are.)
    Eyre came over from the Cubs and, after being a lefty specialist used for one or two batters at a time for the last several years, has found himself pitching multiple innings to lefties and righties; he’s pitched well, but how long before the wear and tear of this sudden change causes an injury, ineffectiveness or both? Manuel can argue that it’s being done out of necessity, but he still hasn’t shown any restraint in the use of his relievers from the time the season started until now and with the Phillies three games behind the Mets, they’re not going to be able to give any of those pitchers any rest.
    Just like last season in which the Phillies bullpen heroically and selflessly sacrificed their bodies for the good of the cause of their comeback, the pitchers aren’t going to complain and say they’re unable to pitch when the team needs them; but because the Phillies authored such a miraculous comeback over the Mets in 2007, it’s forgotten how they flamed out in the playoffs and were swept away by the Rockies before they even knew what happened.
    Part of the reason for that was because the comeback attempt was so intense on a night-by-night basis that the playoffs was almost a letdown after they finally caught and passed the Mets; the adrenaline that was carrying them petered out; the same thing is happening now and it’s because of the way Charlie Manuel handles his bullpen that the Phillies are staggering toward the finish with 22 games left. They’re running on fumes with no rest stop in sight and they’re in big trouble because those pitchers can only reach back so far until there’s nothing left to give, and what should frighten Phillies fans is that they may have reached that point.      

• Yankees 5-Orioles 3:
  

    It wasn’t a David Cone/seven no-hit innings in a comeback from aneurysm surgery kind of performance for Carl Pavano, but all things being equal, it wasn’t all that bad. Pavano’s stuff wasn’t great; his control wasn’t great; and he was lucky, but after four years of embarrassment on and off the field, a win is a win is a win. Before anyone gets all enthusiastic about a possible useful month from Pavano, it has to be remembered that he acquitted himself well in his two starts in April of 2007 before going on the disabled list with Tommy John surgery, so it’s a start-by-start thing with him and the Yankees should put him out on the mound as long as he says he’s able and use him for whatever they can get out of him over the last month.
    The thing that sticks out for me in this whole episode was revealed in the recap of the game in the New York Times—-Story. Here’s the relevant clip:

When the Yankees were courting Pavano in 2004 — taking him to “Mamma Mia!” on Broadway, with General Manager Brian Cashman dancing in the aisles — they never could have expected what would happen to their $39.95 million, and medical expenses.

    They took him to see Mamma Mia!? And they used this as a selling point? And Brian Cashman, the general manager of the New York Yankees, was dancing in the aisles? Say what you want about Pavano on the field, but off the field he’s a guy’s guy; he chases girls, drives fast cars and lives his life; I find it hard to believe he had any interest whatsoever in Mamma Mia! other than scouring the cast for potential dates. In fact, if the idea were suggested to me to go see the show as part of the free agent courting process, there’s a pretty good chance I would’ve gone to see the show and afterwards dragged Cashman into an alley, beaten him up and taken his wallet.

• Angels 7-Twins 5; the importance of long relievers as game stabilizers:

     The most unsung parts of any winning team are the long relievers who rarely receive attention unless they do something bad; don’t make much money; don’t accrue gaudy stats and are unappreciated by the general public. Smart baseball people know how important it is to have a pitcher who’s able to enter a game in the middle innings and calm things down because the only time these types of pitchers get into a game is when the starting pitcher is knocked out early. One of the ignored pieces of the Los Angeles Angels bullpen is veteran lefty Darren Oliver.
    Oliver was a successful starter early in his career and has fashioned a new job for himself as a long man out of the bullpen. He was an important part of the 2006 Mets and is now imperative to the Angels because when one of their starters gets knocked around, it’s Oliver who’s called upon. Many times, the game is in danger of getting out of hand when the long man enters; usually his team ends up losing no matter how well or poorly he does; but it’s when he comes into a game with his team behind and stabilizes things, giving his team a chance to come back, that his value is realized.
    In last night’s game against the Twins, the Angels built a 6-1 lead for starter Jon Garland before the Twins started pecking away and got to within 6-4 in the fifth inning with runners on second and third and one out; Garland was yanked in favor of Oliver. Oliver proceeded to get Justin Morneau to ground out to first, scoring one run to make it 6-5; Jason Kubel grounded to second to end the inning. Oliver pitched the sixth and seventh innings, allowing only an infield single before giving way to the glamorous (and better-paid) parts of the Angels bullpen, set-up man Scot Shields and closer Francisco Rodriguez. Shields gets the eighth inning “hold”; Rodriguez gets the save; and Oliver gets the appreciation from his teammates for stopping the Twins rally and getting them to the money men.
    Oliver’s an understated type who doesn’t want any publicity; and he’s come close to retiring several times; first when he was cut by the Mets on the last day of spring training 2006, only to see the team change their minds and bring him back; and then before the Angels called with a job offer that was partially accepted because he wanted to be closer to his family if he was going to continue to play. There are many games that are getting out-of-hand when a pitcher like Oliver enters and no one notices if the team doesn’t come back; but there are also many games like last night’s win, which might not have happened if the Angels didn’t have a guy like Oliver who can handle the pressure, throws strikes and does his job without complaint.

• Blue Jays 11-Red Sox 0; Vernon Wells pads his stats with a team not really in, but not completely out of contention:

    I’ve called Vernon Wells a player making $100 million rather than a $100 million player
because he’s essentially done nothing since signing that big contract to forgo free agency and stay with the Blue Jays. The argument that injuries have curtailed his production doesn’t account for his woeful 2007 season—-Wells Stats—-but now he’s starting to heat up after missing a big chunk of this season. Yesterday, Wells homered twice and his numbers are looking pretty good; if he has a solid final month and stays healthy, he’ll be close to 20 homers and 85 RBI, but injuries or not, is that a season worthy of a player with Wells’s contract?
    A player who is worth the money that Wells is making is not putting up these numbers once his team is out of contention. Where would the Cardinals be if Albert Pujols hadn’t put off elbow surgery to play through the pain? There were many voices, credible and not, saying that since the Cardinals looked to be so terrible in the spring that Pujols should just have the surgery immediately rather than trying to drag a rickety and unusable cart like the rest of the Cardinals roster on his back.
    A guy like Wells with his superior talent should have been putting these numbers up early in the season when the Blue Jays were desperate for power, their front office was making decisions that were based on money rather than wins (releasing Frank Thomas), and they weren’t scoring enough runs to support the solid work of their pitching staff. Wells has gotten hot now that the Blue Jays—-67-62, two games behind the Yankees and not in any realistic contention barring an almost impossible Rockies-like hot streak—-are playing out the string and trying to put up a respectable record to again save GM J.P. Ricciardi’s job.
    The reality of the situation would be obvious to people paying attention to the circumstances in which a player puts up his numbers, but given the way the Blue Jays ownership has been taken in by the bluster of Riccardi along with his embarrassing missteps, there’s every possibility they’re going to take Wells’s hot streak as a portent for the future; if they do that, there’s no reason to believe that they’re going to take proper steps to fix their franchise, which ends every season with 80-some wins leading them to think that they’re going to contend the next year, only to repeat the process again and again.

• Giants 4-Padres 3; the Padres should trade Jake Peavy:

     A few weeks ago, I wondered whether a devoid franchise like the Padres should try to recover as quickly as possible by trading their two most marketable quantities in Adrian Gonzalez and Jake Peavy; now I know they should trade Jake Peavy. The Padres (48-81), heading toward 100 losses and with an owner in the midst of a divorce and possibly cutting the team payroll down to $40 million, have no hope of contending in the near future. Peavy, with his brutally violent motion is a pitcher who’s destined to get hurt, but he has a reasonable contract through 2012—-contract—-and many teams have the prospects and motivation to take a chance on Peavy.
    I don’t have any faith at all in the Padres front office; nor do I think they’d be able to extract an adequate haul for a former Cy Young Award winner with or without his terrible mechanics (these ain’t the brilliantly smart and savvy Marlins we’re talking about here), but if they’re slashing salary, they’ll be better-served to re-stock the organization as best they can and they can do that by putting Peavy out on the market to see who bites, because someone definitely will.

• Carlos Zambrano loses a tooth while pitching…and keeps right on going; big deal or not?

    I haven’t spent as much time on the Cubs as I probably should have (some might see such a lack of attention as a good thing); they’re clearly a serious contender for the World Series and it’s all likely to come down to whether Kerry Wood can handle the closing role in the playoffs; right now, that’s an iffy proposition and manager Lou Piniella is going to have to make that judgment and switch to Carlos Marmol if necessary; the playoffs (especially the first round of the playoffs where a team can be gone before they realize what happened—-like last year for the Cubs) is not a time to be screwing around if a first-year closer can’t do the job. Other than that, they’re well-built for a long playoff run because they get good starting pitching, they hit and hit for power and they catch the ball. It’s no coincidence how Piniella’s teams have always played the game correctly.
    Speaking of their starting pitching, strange things are always happening to their ace,
Carlos Zambrano. Zambrano sometimes appears to get so excited out on the mound that he
bears a resemblance to a volcano about to erupt—-not in anger, but in enthusiasm. He’s
hyperventilated on the mound because he gets so pumped up; has had problems with his forearm from spending too much time on the internet; punched walls in anger; and now, on Thursday, he lost a tooth while warming up. Zambrano claims it’s from all the sugar in the gum he’s always chewing, but he might have just been grinding too hard as he exerts himself, weakened the tooth until it eventually broke like the chipping away at a block of clay. It must’ve hurt, but aren’t the armchair athletes making a bigger deal out of this than necessary?

    Hockey players, who abuse their bodies far more than the average baseball player—-and far more than even the most active pitcher—-get their teeth knocked out on a regular basis in a much more brutal way; I don’t see or hear them being discussed as inordinately tough partially because if they can’t stoically take the pain of being in the NHL, they’re not going to be in the NHL for very long. Football players get their teeth knocked out as well and no one notices. In all fairness to Zambrano, this to me isn’t that big of a deal.

• Previewing tonight’s start for Carl Pavano, 502 days in the making:

    After all the head shakes, jokes and ridicule; with his desire to pitch rightfully questioned and the allegations that he’d rather go to the beach and meet girls than earn his lofty salary; and the disbelieving tone of his former manager Joe Torre who, while managing the Dodgers in Philadelphia, quizzically asked visiting New York reporters, “Is Pavano really going to pitch tomorrow?” without even trying to hide his disbelief; there’s still time for Pavano to contribute something to the Yankees. He’ll never be able to make up for the time missed and implications of disinterest, but he can help his team over the final month.
    If I were manager Joe Girardi, one thing I would tell Pavano repeatedly is that he can’t try to make up for everything that’s happened over the past four years; that he has to stay within a gameplan and instead of trying to make amends all at once, he needs to execute his pitches and help his team by doing the best he can and not strike out every hitter as if he were an in-his-prime Randy Johnson. Publicly, the Yankees are saying all the right things about Pavano; that they expect him to compete and that he’s on about a 100 pitch count; privately, I’m sure they’ll be happy if he gives them five innings and allows three runs, and exits the game able to make his next start without some other catastrophe happening to him. (After that picture to the left was taken, did he end up Touching ‘Em All? I wonder.)
    If I had to make a bet, I’d say that Pavano is going to get shelled; he’s in a hitter’s ballpark against a team that can hit and he’s bound to be nervous and rusty. That being said, he’s still a better option than the likes of Ian Kennedy (which is a sad statement in and of itself after all the pre-season hype the rookie pitcher received), and the Yankees have a right to try and get something out of that sunk cost before Pavano is shown the door. Whether they will get anything from Pavano is the question.