Morgan to the Rescue...
Baseball is such a great game because as soon as you think you have it figured out, it throws you a curve.
Baseball writing is such a great gig because as soon as you're convinced that you'll never have anything to write about again, Joe Morgan rattles off a column that begs to be shredded. Oh goody.
Joe: One month into the season, it looked like the New York Yankees and San Francisco Giants were the class of their respective leagues. But as Yogi Berra said, "It ain't over till it's over." Baseball's unpredictable nature is why I never predict a World Series winner at the beginning of a season. Now it appears that the Atlanta Braves -- with baseball's best record at 35-17 -- are head and shoulders above everyone else. We'll have to see if that lasts.
I gotta hand Joe this, sorta. He didn't actually pick any winners, just teams he thought would be in the mix, and even that was pretty funny at times. Depending on your bent, this was either wise if him or wishy-washy and non-committal. You pick.
Joe: Over the long haul, those ups and downs even out, which means the best team usually finishes first in the end. The Kansas City Royals started 16-3 and looked like one of the best teams in baseball. But you're never as good as you look when you're playing well, and you're never as bad as you look when you're playing poorly.
Well, actually, you didn't have to be psychic to tell that the Royals weren't going to keep that pace up. That great record, built on beating AL-Central powerhouses like Detroit, Chicago and Cleveland, was pretty obviously a mirage even then.
It didn't require a mystic to determine that Mike MacDougal, who had all of 24 major league innings under his belt coming into 2003, wasn't going to finish the season with 77 saves and a 1.64 ERA, or that Joe Randa and Raul Ibanez weren't going to hit over .325 all year, and Brent Mayne sure-as-hell wasn't going to hit .378 all year. Runelvys Hernandez wasn't going to finish the season 34-0 with a 1.10 ERA. Albie Lopez wasn't gonna finish the year 26-0 in relief with a 2.30 ERA.
Sorry, Joe, but even at 16-3, the Royals looked like a fluke.
Joe: The formula for MLB success is simple: The best team that plays most consistently will win over the long haul. Consistent, quality play is rewarded.
Oh CRAP!! And I've been measuring baseball teams by Average Road Attendance on Odd-Numbered Sundays all these years! This changes everything!
Joe: The Giants roared to a 15-2 start, and all the so-called experts in the Bay Area had given them the NL West. The Los Angeles Dodgers were playing poorly and the Arizona Diamondbacks were off to a slow start, and the Bay Area media said they wouldn't be able to challenge the Giants. Well, on May 9 the Giants were 25-9. Since then, they've gone 6-11 while the Dodgers ran off 10 straight wins. The Giants (31-20) now lead L.A. (30-21) by just one game.
Yeah, but LA is still last in the NL in Run Scoring, and are gonna have a hard time keeping that team ERA under 3.00 all season, which is what they're gonna hafta do to keep pace with the Giants if their hitting doesn' pick up.
Joe:The Yankees jumped out to an 18-3 start. On May 8, they were 25-9. Since then, they've gone 5-13, and now they're in second place in the AL East, trailing the Boston Red Sox by 1-1/2 games. In one of my ESPN.com chats earlier in the season, someone asked me if the Yankees would win 120 games. Because I've been in this game so long and realize there are ups and downs, I said, "No way." I don't think anyone will be asking that question anymore.
Of course they will! Just wait till next year when the Milwaukee Brewers start out 9-1, or the Braves start out 15-2, and some Brewers or Braves or other team's fan will undoubtedly ask you, like a kid that doesn't want to leave the amusement park, "Gee Wally, ya think we can keep this up all year?" It is the very nature of sports fans to hope against all reasonable logic until their team is mathematically eliminated from relevance. And even then, sometimes, it's tough to talk a guy down. I used to work with a guy who was convinced that the 2000 Phillies could still "surprise people" and contend for the Wild-Card, despite the facts that
A) There were 19 teams in front of them in the NL WIld Card race and
2) It was November when he said this.
Joe:I still believe the Yankees will win their division. But the Red Sox are a better team this season because they don't rely on Nomar Garciaparra and Manny Ramirez alone. Shea Hillenbrand, Trot Nixon and others make Boston's lineup more capable. And I've always felt that the bullpen-by-committee has promise, and it is holding its own.
Yep, the Red Sox are much better off now that they've got those new guys helping out Nomar and Manny. Of course, I guess the Red Sox offense is gonna go back in the tank now that they've traded Hillenbrand away, right?
It surprises me a little that Joe would be a fan of the Bullpen-by-Committee experiment, but it astounds me that he can look at the Red Sox bullpen's 5.38 ERA and say with a straight face that the experiment is "holding its own."
Joe:I expect the Giants and the Dodgers to have a close pennant race, but don't count the Diamondbacks out yet -- especially if Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson get on a roll. I viewed L.A. as the favorite heading into the season, followed by San Francisco and Arizona.
I think the Diamondbacks would be happy if the Big Unit could just get on a treadmill, much less a roll.
Joe:In baseball, the long haul counts. Short bursts, which sometimes are related to favorable or unfavorable matchups, become less important. And the beauty of baseball is that you can't ever predict what's going to happen. Just ask the Anaheim Angels.
Would those be the same Angels that you kept saying everyone was going to try to emulate this year? Playing scrappy, NL-style little-ball, taking the extra base, getting clutch hits, whatever happened to that? Doesn't seem like it's working so well for them this year.
Joe: I asked Ichiro about the difference between playing in Japan and here in America, and he told me that it had nothing to do with baseball. It was a question of how comfortable he was 24 hours a day, not just how comfortable he was at the ballpark. The cultural change was the biggest adjustment he had to make. There's a marked difference between how he lived in Japan -- from cuisine to cultural customs -- and how he lives here in Seattle. It's the same with Latin players who come to play in the major leagues. We live so differently here in the United States than people do in many other countries.
Yep, it turns out that baseballs on both sides of the Pacific Ocean are round and white with red seams. Go figure.
Oh, and it's different from, not different than. Than is comparative (more than, less than, uglier than, etc.), while from is contrasting (varying from, straying from, changing from, etc.) I actually had a Religion professor at Lehigh who would take off points for that. Of course, he also came to class barefoot sometimes too, so...
Joe:Ichiro's command of the English language is also much better than people realize. When he walked in, I was prepared to use the Japanese greeting "konnichiwa" -- which means "hello" or "good afternoon" -- because we were meeting in the afternoon. But he walked in and said, "Hey Joe, how are you doing?"
I wonder if Ichiro gets annoyed with people making attempts to speak to him in Japanese with phrases they learned from watching Shogun, but actually butchering some word or phrase in his native language. (I had a friend who was working at a Christian camp for high school students with me in 1993, and spent significant portions of the summer telling people that his stomach was a watermellon when he meant to say that he was hungry. Leo also spent half an hour explaining to one of the japanese students, on a trip back from the beach, that while swimming, a "cat" went up his nose. And by "cat" he meant "water".) I would get annoyed about that. But maybe Ichiro's nicer than I am.
Joe:What's the secret to Jamie Moyer's success? This year, the Mariners starter is 7-2 with a 3.66 ERA. (BoS note: now 8-2, 3.55) Since coming to Seattle via a trade with Boston in mid-1996, Moyer is 105-50. In all but one of those seasons, he's had a sub-4.00 ERA. My theory has always been that left-handers who are able to throw strikes and change speeds can win in the major leagues -- even if they can't throw hard. If Jamie Moyer were right-handed, he wouldn't be nearly as successful.I can't see a right-hander throwing in the low-to-mid 80s (like Moyer) and having the same success. For instance, Greg Maddux is not a power pitcher at all, relying on his control and location. But he throws harder than Moyer (upper 80s to low 90s). Hitters don't need to look for Moyer's fastball, but Maddux can keep them honest. I don't believe a right-hander can win the way Moyer wins.
True, Jamie Moyer is that rarest of birds: The Pitcher Who Gets Better As He Approaches 40. There aren't many of them (Randy Johnson, Warren Spahn) but he's one. But to say that a righty can't have success because he doesn't throw hard? C'mon, Joe, if a guy gets outs, he gets outs. John Burkett, Bob Tewksbury, Mark "Same-Up" Portugal and a boatload of other guys would argue with you vehemently about that contention.
Chat Reminder: I'll answer your questions in an ESPN.com chat Friday at 10:45 a.m. ET.
Reminder from Boy of Summer: Go check out Mike Carminati's send up of last week's Joe Morgan Chat session, a cheesy 1970's themed post in which he lists the most screwed up shows of the seventies and somehow omits The Magic Garden. Tisk, tisk. But the rest of it is pretty good.
