Everything baseball and a little more. http://baseballsmorgasbord.ca Tue, 09 Feb 2010 03:07:21 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://baseballsmorgasbord.ca/images/M_images/joomla_rss.png http://baseballsmorgasbord.ca Everything baseball and a little more. http://baseballsmorgasbord.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=243&Itemid=26 Only a couple of weeks after steroids were named Story of the Year (index.php?option=com_content task=view id=239 Itemid=1) for 2009, baseball has once again been tossed back into the clutches of the shadow now that Mark McGwire has chosen to shed some light (http://www.thestar.com/sports/baseball/mlb/article/749278) on his own steroid usage. There's not much to say about McGwire, apart from the obvious points that: he should have said this five years ago, but since Mark presumably doesn't own a time machine, this is the next best alternative I don't know if he was told to do this as a condition for returning to baseball, or whether he just did it now so he focus could on his job spring training, but whatever. I don't think there will be much of an immediate effect on his Hall of Fame chances; some sportswriters have already jumped in to say that they will never vote for McGwire (http://www.thestar.com/sports/baseball/mlb/article/749451), but never is a notoriously long time. But despite the fact that this is a duh story - McGwire admits to something we already knew - it's gotten plenty of coverage, so much so that even non-baseball writers take notice. From Andrew Sullivan's blog (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/01/mcgwires-steroid-use.html): Well, knock me over with a vial of deca. Here's the main thought I have: why do Americans obsess about steroids in baseball when obviously they're focused on the wrong sport. How many football players in this country are not on steroids? And the effects of these super-huge juiced-up athletes running hard at each others is an increasingly worrying amount of brain damage. I mean: look at those dudes. They look like contemporary cattle in human form. I'm fine with it and wouldn't interfere. But the cognitive dissonance is amazing. I'm not going to try to answer the question from the baseball side of things (one of his readers has already given it a decent shot (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/01/mc.html)); instead, I want to focus on one word - cattle - that I wish sportswriters would use more often. Lots of people have pointed out the steroids double standard that exists with baseball and football. I'm a baseball fan, but I'm not going to defend the league; Major League Baseball generally deserves whatever criticism it gets. The people who run it, from Bud Selig to the owners, are neither honourable nor ethical; they are what they are, rich guys who have been given a legal exemption to act like robber barons. So they do. The thing I don't get is... I don't understand why young football players in the United States, from age 16 years up, are treated like ground beef. The vast majority, anyways; star quarterbacks may be treated like royalty, but most football players are not Tom Brady. There are thousands of them, and they all have to weigh over 300lbs to have any hope of making the big leagues. They get their brains bashed in for a few years; if they are one of the lucky few who make the NFL, then they get their brains bashed in for a few more years, but at least they make a little money as well. All but a few dozen are out of the game before age 30; and for the rest of their lives they face a litany of health problems, from chronic knee and back injuries to potential brain injuries to the many ill side effects of obesity to God Knows What side effects from all the God Knows What drugs they have used. And you can't just blame the big bad NFL; it's the schools, the coaches, and even the parents, who have devalued the lives of these young men to be worth the equivalent weight in hamburger. (Full disclosure: I don't get American college sports. I come from Toronto, I grew up with the Blue Jays and other local teams and went through a phase in my teens when I watched Monday Night Football every week (the Frank and Al and Dan era). But when I turn on an American college or high school football game... I may as well be watching a cricket match in Pakistan or a soccer match in Cameroon or a Kabbadi match in India. The culture shock is just enormous.) Steroids were pretty much a non-issue during the 1990's; they exploded into a hugh issue during the past decade, when people started to care. Why do they care? Two reasons are often given; I'm skeptical of one, but I'll also offer a third: the integrity of the game argument. I know there are people who think that steroids have damaged baseball's integrity (http://www.google.ca/search?source=ig hl=en rlz=1G1ACGW_ENCA350 = q=baseball+steroids+integrity btnG=Google+Search meta=lr%3D aq=f oq=), and who badly want fans to feel the same way, but I think this argument has pretty much zero resonance with the general public. Steroid users make their teams better - unlike, say, the Black Sox, who did the opposite. The Black Sox had an integrity problem. When someone says that fans don't care about steroids (http://articles.sfgate.com/2009-07-02/sports/17216900_1_ramirez-returns-mannywood-dodgers) , what they really mean is that fans don't think that the game's integrity has been compromised . Perhaps the statistical records have been compromised, but, well, that's been true since forever. the save the children (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22984780/) argument. Yes, it's been tossed around shamelessly over the years, but nevertheless has a great deal of truth and resonance to it. Forcing teenage boys and girls to take steroids so they can pursue an athletic career is simply unacceptable. the third reason is difficult to define, but I call it the ewww factor. Steroid users are gross; Barry Bonds is to steroid use what Donatella Versace (http://images.google.ca/images?hl=en rlz=1G1ACGW_ENCA350 q=donatella%20versace cts=1263532197618 um=1 ie=UTF-8 sa=N tab=wi) is to plastic surgery. You can talk yourself blue in the face about the health risks of steroids, and you won't get very far (you can even warn young men that their dicks will fall off, and they won't hear you); but icky images, such as bloated heads or bacne (http://www.google.ca/search?q=bacne btnG=Search hl=en lr= rlz=1G1ACGW_ENCA350 sa=2 cts=1263532617417), can be far more powerful. So... why don't people care about steroids in football? Like I said, the integrity of the game is not a big issue; especially when there are no fans on the planet Earth who care more about winning than American college football fans (except maybe for American high school football fans). The ewww factor? Football players are supposed to look gross. They're supposed to look like cattle. That may not be right, but that's the way it is. The save the children argument? One would presume that the lives of children who play football are worth just as much as the lives of other children, but... like I said, I really don't know. As an outsider, I get American football culture to the same extent that I get Indian Kabbadi culture (http://www.kabaddi.org/) - I don't get either at all (actually, that's not right - I think Kabbadi is sort of analogous to rugby, so maybe I get it a little bit. American football? Not so much.) Like I said, baseball usually deserves whatever criticism it gets; that doesn't bother me. But if we can at least acknowledge that football players are celebrated for looking like cattle, then perhaps we can make some headway in trying to figure out why this is. Article - 2010 Fri, 15 Jan 2010 08:05:18 +0100 http://baseballsmorgasbord.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=242&Itemid=26 In my previous post (index.php?option=com_content task=category sectionid=5 id=28 Itemid=26) a few days ago, I made some assertions about the Hall of Fame that I began to question as soon as I hit the publish button. The only way to test them was to create a Personal Hall of Fame - something this website has always been missing. It's a task I've tried once before - years ago, long since lost. And anyways, I've become much more of a big Hall guy than I was before. So I took 3-4 hours to create a first attempt at a new one. The results: Brett's Big-Ass Hall of Fame (index.php?option=com_content task=view id=241 Itemid=64)* were somewhat disappointing, in that there are only 216 players, whereas the real Hall of Fame (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Baseball_Hall_of_Fame) has 231 players. I became grinch near the end, paring off players whom I loved to start with (Tommy Bridges, Bob Elliott, Sal Bando) but then had second thoughts about. There's no Jack Morris, no Steve Garvey, no Dale Murphy... not even a Catfish Hunter nor an Orlando Cepeda. When push came to shove, my Big-Ass Hall of Fame went on a diet. But it's just a first pass; unlike Cooperstown, this list is not carved into rock by fire (http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi2096824601/), and is subject to revision (both additions and deletions). I also noted that there are 69 players in the Hall who were active in 1930, only 31 in the HOF who were active in 1980, and speculated that the correct number was somewhere between 40 and 50. That turned out to be bullshit; when I finished this exercise, I turned out to be just as conservative as the current BBWAA voters, with one distinction. From my own personal Hall of Fame, the number of players who were active at the start of each decade: 1880: 10 1890: 22 1900: 27 1910: 31 1920: 31 1930: 47 1940: 48 1950: 29 1960: 31 1970: 44 1980: 46 1990: 34, with about 15 more in the queue If you've watched Ken Burns' Baseball series (http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/baseball/), then you've probably heard that the 1950's was baseball's Golden Age . And that's true to some extent; if I were to draw up a list of the 10 greatest players ever, five top candidates (Williams, Musial, Mays, Mantle, Aaron) were all active during this decade, plus a few others who are in the discussion. But when doing this exercise, I was disappointing by the depth of talent in this decade; beyond the big stars, there just aren't as many interesting players as there are in either the 1930's or 1980's. Thiking about why that might be, two obvious reasons sprung to mind: the war. I give players credit for serving in WWII, but that really only helps a few borderline cases like Enos Slaughter. It doesn't help a player like Cecil Travis (http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/t/travice01.shtml), who was fast-tracking towards the Hall of Fame before he spent four full years in the military, and suffered severe injuries during the Battle of the Bulge. There may be a few other players who could have HOFers had there careers not been interrupted the death of the Negro Leagues. They were once the largest black-owned business in the United States; but after Jackie Robinson broke the colour barrier in 1947, they went into steep decline, and by 1954 they were gone. Again, looking at my personal Hall of Fame list, here are the number of coloured players I have inducted: 1930: 19 1940: 18 1950: 8 1960: 9 1970: 19 A lot of great coloured players left the game in the 1940's, and weren't replace (or if they were, I'm not sure who they were or where they were playing). The Negro Leagues folded, while jobs in the majors were hard to get if you weren't Willie Mays or Ernie Banks; we all know the Red Sox did not sign their first black player until 1959. It wasn't until the early 1960's, when a bunch of changes occurred - expansion, changing social attitudes, the hiring of black scouts like Buck O'Neill who could find talent in black neighbourhoods, for starters - that a new generation of coloured stars arrived (between 1961-65, Billy Williams, Joe Morgan, Ferguson Jenkins, Willie Stargell, Tony Perez, Luis Tiant, Dick Allen, Jim Wynn, Tony Oliva, Lou Brock and many others made their debut). For the moment, I'm satisfied with the names on my personal Hall of Fame list. The number of great players in the game should, I think, match the number of professional teams that are playing. Baseball currently has 30 major league teams, and there are more great players now than there have been since the 1930's, when the Negro Leagues were at their peak and drawing the best coloured athletes from North and Latin America. I know some people think that expansion dilutes talent, but I think that's a short-term phenomenon; when you create 25 new high-paying jobs, it doesn't take long before you attract more top talent into your game. In the 1950's, a bunch of teams disappeared, and the jobs didn't begin to come back until the first expansion in 1961. There are fewer players being inducted into the Hall of Fame than ever before - which is just completely ass backwards, given the talent that baseball is currently producing. * I won't discuss the reasons behind each selection (or omission) right now. I will just point out that: I have both Pete Rose and Joe Jackson in parentheses; I acknowledge that they both fucked up real good, but since I wanted this exercise to give me a better idea of talent distribution over the decades, they had to at least be mentioned I was a little surprised to include Dick Allen; I've never been sympathetic to his HOF case in the past. However, the recent steroid controversy has convinced me that the Hall of Fame is a really, really shitty forum to be trying to pronounce moral judgment on people Allen is perhaps a different case than the roiders. His drug of choice was alcohol, and quite frankly, his teams might have been better off had he used roids instead. But man, could he hit; Allen's career OPS+ is 13 points better than Albert Belle, 9 points better than Edgar Martinez, 7 points better than Ralph Kiner. You have to be some kind of hitter to overcome Allen's flaws - but he was some kind of hitter. Article - 2010 Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:18:15 +0100 http://baseballsmorgasbord.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=240&Itemid=26 We're just a few days away from this year's Hall of Fame announcement. I haven't written about the HOF in awhile, but I fell compelled to do so now, as we are on the cusp of the first-ever Toronto Blue Jay to be inducted*. * and by first Blue Jay, I mean that Roberto Alomar (http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/a/alomaro01.shtml) ** will be the first Blue Jay Hall of Famer to wear a Toronto cap on his plaque ** of course, there is no guarantee that Robbie will actually be inducted... but of the ballots that have been published so far, he's been on almost every one. If he's not inducted then I doubt that anyone will be Yahoo sportswriter Tim Brown (http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=ArursyJqjdKKNaOR7Hmn930RvLYF?slug=ti-halloffame123109 prov=yhoo type=lgns), for example, put only one name on his ballot, and it was Alomar. Judging from this paragraph, he appears to be a small-Hall guy: The Hall, to me, is iconic great. Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson – the Hall's first class – great. Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr. great. Rickey great. Which is fine, because I used to be one of those, too. I suspect that many or most baseball fans take some pride in the fact that the it's harder to get into Cooperstown than any other Hall of Fame (though to be honest, it's not something I've checked to see if it's true; I think it's something that is just taken for granted). But I completely changed course a few years ago, and became a big-Hall guy - a really big, Hockey-Hall type guy. I think I gradually got tired of the Hall of Fame debate being dominated each year by assholes; whether it's writers who think that protecting the Hall of Fame (http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/16531681/) from Mark McGwire is the equivalent of protecting the Ark of the Covenant (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/ark.html) from Nazis; or fans who think that the writers are idiots, either for putting Player X on their ballot or leaving him off; or players on the ballot who whine because they haven't been inducted (http://toronto.bluejays.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20041223 content_id=925507 vkey=news_tor fext=.jsp c_id=tor); or players in the Hall who worry about diluting the HOF (http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/story/10026146) with lesser talents; or Dale Petroskey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Petroskey), who's just an asshole for no obvious reason. And besides, exclusivity sucks. Many of us learn this in grade school, when we are either left out of groups, or form a group with the intent of leaving others out. But we keep doing it our whole, forming exclusive clubs or exclusive golf courses or exclusive this and that - but the strength of any group of humans is its diversity. Any exclusive group of like-minded individuals is as doomed over the long-term as a Royal family full of hemophiliacs; as soon as the founding members lose interest or die off, the quality of the membership declines, and soon the exclusive part is a joke because nobody wants to join. Obviously the Hall of Fame has to be exclusive to some extent to justify its existence. But the actual, physical Hall is also a chartered museum that has to be, you know, interesting, to get people to show up. Most museums promote their wide variety of specimens to attract visitors; my guess is that the curators at Cooperstown feel the same way, and don't care too much for writers who mail in blank ballots. The induction ceremony in the summer will be OK with Alomar and Whitey Herzog and Doug Harvey and the Spink and Frick winners (if they're still alive) but it will be way more interesting and newsworthy if Bert Blyleven and Andre Dawson or someone else are there too. I don't claim to know what the right number of inductees is; I can tell you that there are 69 players in the Hall who were active in 1930, only 31 in the HOF who were active in 1980, and that one of those numbers is too high while the other is too low. I'm guessing that betweem 40 and 50 would be OK. Using that standard, my ballot would look like: Bert Blyleven Roberto Alomar Barry Larkin Tim Raines Alan Trammell Edgar Martinez Mark McGwire Andre Dawson Fred McGriff Which I don't think is terribly obscene; I'm not talking about putting George Kelly or Rube Marquard in the Hall. And they're all better players than Jim Rice (an unnecesary shot the Jimmer, but true nonetheless). They were all really great players - maybe not Hank Aaron, Cal Ripken Jr. great, but great nonetheless. And the Hall will be an infinitely richer place when their unique skills and careers become a part of it. Article - 2010 Fri, 01 Jan 2010 17:10:26 +0100 http://baseballsmorgasbord.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=239&Itemid=26 At the end of 2009, various end-of-year and end-of-decade lists and awards have been coming out, and the best and worst of these have been synthesized as well. My Tin Ear of 2009 Award goes to the Associated Press, who have declared that Steroids' shadow is AP Sports Story of the Year (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hJLF6w5fiugnRbhmc83vrZotjmkwD9CP94SG1). When they say steroids, they of course mean baseball players using steroids. From the article: Though only one major leaguer tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug in this, the first full year under toughened rules, baseball still finds itself trapped in the clutches of the Steroid Era. If the Steroid Era includes the best World Series ratings (http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-worldseries-ratings prov=ap type=lgns) in five years then perhaps it's not such a bad thing to be trapped in the clutches of. Of course, ratings were up because the Yankees were there - but the Yankees' biggest star, A-Roid (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/baseball/mlb/02/07/alex-rodriguez-steroids/?eref=sircrc), is the guy who started the whole steroids' shadow thing in the first place. More from the article: The impact that that story had made it the story of the year, said Lance Hanlin, sports editor of the Beaufort (S.C.) Gazette and The (Hilton Head) Island Packet. It was a big, ongoing, overall story. Well, the last sentence is certainly true, but the story Lance is talking about ended around early July. The rest of the story - the backlash against Selena Roberts' A-Rod book (http://www.kansascity.com/sports/columnists/jason_whitlock/story/1175681.html), A-Rod's redemption (http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/yankees/item_YFeH5WP30kFEHYFv9trUhJ), David Ortiz brushing off a positive PED test (http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/2009/08/03/2009-08-03_big_papis_big_loophole_.html), everyone from talk radio callers to Hank Aaron (http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090804 content_id=6245174 vkey=news_mlb fext=.jsp c_id=mlb) telling the New York Times to either fuck off or just release the damn list already, Mark McGwire's Bud-approved return to the game (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/sports/baseball/01rhoden.html?_r=1) - is equally interesting. Perhaps the two stories together are indeed the Story of the Year - but AP doesn't seem interested in the second part. Which is not to say that we've lost interest in steroids - my guess is it's more of a correction. I do believe that the biggest - and most surprising - sports story of the past decade was steroid use in America - in the spring of 2001, when Marion Jones was the Queen of American sports and Barry Bonds was just gearing up for his record season and the steroid issue was completely comatose, it was hard to imagine that it would explode the way it did (and lead to the unthinkable: a Bud Selig Beatdown of Don Fehr and the MLBPA). And I think it was largely a good thing that the sporting public has decided that we don't want professional athletes using steroids (I think the issue could easily have remained comatose under slightly different circumstances). It's not just that steroids are dangerous, but gain and risk are disproportionately spread. If you have money, you can buy good drugs from a lab and get stronger and faster and keep your testicles; and if you don't have money, you buy stuff off the street or at the gym and take your chances. (Plus, steroid users just look really gross. In the decades to come, athletes are going to be increasingly enhanced in various ways, and I think it's inevitable that one day performance-enhancement will become acceptable. Perhaps the tipping point will come when someone like Barry Bonds can hit 70 homers in a season while still looking like Barry Bonds.) But for too long, the end justifies the means ethic has dominated the PED debate. Whether it's the unethical - such as the NY Times' decision to release one name per month from their precious list from now until 2016 (a list whose very existence defies a court order (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/08/26/sports/s103709D02.DTL)) - or the downright illegal (http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/2009/10/17/2009-10-17_lawyer_who_leaked_balco_testimony.html) (leaking grand jury testimony) - too many ugly things have been committed and celebrated and justified because after all we're doing it for the children and the only victims are million-dollar drug users. But after years of feeding the tempest, it was finally A-Rod (of all people) who stood up and said, Yup, I did it . Even if you didn't find A-Rod's confession convincing (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/tom_verducci/02/10/arod.admits/index.html), that misses the point - it was better than all the alternatives. With both A-Rod and Manny Ramirez having been scandalized and moved into redemption mode, the fans seem to be satisfied with the ends are and showing more suspicion towards the means. So what was the Story of the Year? Here in Canada, one survey ranked the 2010 Olympics (http://www.canada.com/news/Olympics+sports+story+year/2370308/story.html) as the top sports story for 2009, but then we're kinda weird that way. Tiger Woods' personal life has been a monster story that has dwarfed all others - but that's really more the Boinking Story of the Year as opposed to a sports story. Speaking of tin ears... I really thought that Tom Watson's run at the British Open was going to get more of these year-end awards. I'm not a golf guy, but just to step back a bit - Watson is not a guy who is past his prime. He's 25 years past his prime. Jack Nicklaus was an old fogey when he won the Masters at age 46 - and Watson was 13 years older. Yeah, it's golf, and apparently the competition that weekend sucked for some reason (I'm not enough of a golf expert to say). But The Open is still a major championship, and again... it's been 25 years since John McEnroe won his last Wimbledon singles title (17 years since his last doubles title) and McEnroe is ten years younger than Watson. Bert Blyleven last pitched in 1992, and has been on the Hall of Fame ballot for 13 years, stuck forever at 287 wins - and Bert is two years younger than Watson. Dude! That was some story. (I now realize I could probably condense this entire article into one Google search. Back in June, reports surfaced that Sammy Sosa had tested positive for PEDs; he was subsequently investigated by Congress (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/sports/baseball/18doping.html) for possible perjury, which you would think is a pretty big deal. How did that turn out? A Google search on Sammy Sosa (http://www.google.ca/search?source=ig hl=en rlz=1G1ACGW_ENCA350 q=sammy+sosa btnG=Google+Search meta=lr%3D aq=f oq=) reveals the following: Wikipedia entry Not to worry, Sammy Sosa is just rejuvenating his skin Sammy Sosa Bleached Skin Pictures Sosa blames skin-colour change on moisturizer Video: Sammy Sosa Shocking Bleached Skin Photos Sosa says he's preparing to endorse skin product Sammy Sosa Photos | Who is Sammy Sosa dating? Charles Barkley Mocks Sammy Sosa FINALLY, on page 5 of the search results, one lone story about steroid use. Followed by: Sammy Sosa: I Don't Have Michael Jackson's Pigment Condition Steroids' Shadow is the sports story of the year? Hell, it isn't even the Sammy Sosa story of the year. Article - 2009 Sun, 27 Dec 2009 08:10:44 +0100 http://baseballsmorgasbord.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=238&Itemid=26 My first website went online in February 2000, and since then the pitcher I have watched more than any other - by far - is Roy Halladay. And now that he is in Philadelphia - I am almost tempted to subscribe to MLBTV again, just so I can get a chance to see him before interleague play. At some point I will try to analyze the deal itself, but will buy time and take a stroll down memory lane instead: Spring 2000: (2000old/ALToronto.htm) One of the Blue Jay's three oustanding young starters, Halladay spent much of the season in middle relief, but finished very strong in the rotation. He really has no idea of what he is doing on the mound, as demonstrated by his ugly K/BB ratio, but his great stuff enabled him to post a fine ERA anyway. Very young, and figures to improve in leaps and bounds. Unlike Carpenter and Escobar, he was not rushed to the majors, and has had no arm problems to date. A very valuable property; if things go according to plan, will be an All-Star within five years. (Comment: An All-Star within five years? Damn, I'm some kind of wild and crazy guy. Next thing you know, I'll be predicting that Travis Snider will be an All-Star during the Obama administration.) Spring 2001: (2001old/ALToronto.htm) I said a lot of nice things about Halladay last season, and was dismayed when he had one of the worst seasons in the History of Pitching. He's still young, looks good on the mound, and has a history of success. I might suggest that he will come back and pitch well... but he was so awful in 2000 that I don't know how I could justify saying that. (Comment: I still can't justify saying it, except to say that baseball is weird.) Spring 2002: (2002old/alstarters.html) Doc Halladay's career continues to take some weird and wonderful turns. After having one of the worst seasons by any pitcher in baseball history in 2000, he was sent back to the lower minors to start over. He returned to the rotation in midsummer, and was as good as any pitcher in the league the second half of the season. That's pretty nifty, shaving seven full runs off his ERA. So, what now? I have to be optimistic; I've always liked Halladay, and there is nothing not to like about his performance last season. His ERA, strikeout rate and strikeout/walk ratio were all sparkling. The young man can pitch. (Comment: I was drinking some really outstanding Kool-Aid that night I wrote that comment) Spring 2003: (Players/alstarters.html) Last year, the Blue Jays began the season with a group of pitchers who, with one exception, were incapable of throwing strikes. Roy Halladay was outstanding all year, and the rest of the rotation gradually improved after some new faces were brought in. This year, the Jays will again be looking for help from unlikely sources. Halladay will be back, and at age 26 there is nothing not to like about him. He was consistent all season long, he was durable and he was very good. (Comment: Nuttin' really insightful to say here; everybody knew what we had in Doc by this point. The incessant complaining about the Jays' lack of a #1 starter came to an end; but it would start again soon...) September 2003: (index.php?option=com_content task=view id=68 Itemid=26) American League Cy Young Award 1. Roy Halladay 2. Tim Hudson 3. Pedro Martinez 4. Esteban Loaiza Here in Toronto, the fans and media seem convinced that Roy Halladay is going to win the Cy Young Award. And they may be right; Roy led the league in wins and innings, had a high-profile 15-game winning streak, and also a strong finish to the season that included a 10-inning shutout. But the AL pitchers are a crowded bunch this season: I have to give Halladay the edge over Loaiza. Halladay had 40 more innings, eight more complete games, two more shutouts and an extra win. Loaiza had a better ERA, and less run support. It's close, Loaiza also had six starts against the Tigers, while Halladay made six starts against Boston, and five against the Yankees. The Halladay-Hudson argument is similar. Halladay has more innings, more strikeouts, more complete games and six more wins, and had all those starts against tough lineups. Hudson had a significantly better ERA, and fell short in wins because his bullpen blew some saves. It's close, but there is no obvious reason why Halladay shouldn't be the winner. Pedro Martinez is still the best pitcher in the league, but missed some starts and threw 80 fewer innings than Halladay. (Comment: I later changed my mind (History/400Pages/alcy2003.html) and went with Pedro, choosing quality - Pedro was still in his Greatest Pitcher Ever period - over quantity. 80 innings is a lot, though; it's hardly a slam dunk either way. Curiously, Halladay's Cy Young year is probably the 3rd or 4th best season of his career.) Spring 2004: (Players/2004alindex.html#preview) 27 years old, has just completed 2 1/2 brilliant seasons. Improves his strikeout/ratio every year, has become more of a ground ball pitcher and so far his arm has been indestructible. He gave up 26 home runs last year, which was probably bad luck. There is no reason to think that he won't be back among the best pitchers in the league in 2004. (Comment: 2004 sucked in a lot of ways; Halladay's struggles got the most attention at the time, though they proved to be among the least suckiest developments of the season.) Spring 2005: (Players/2005alindex.html) There was good news and there was bad news. The bad news was that, coming off of his Cy Young season, Halladay's wins dropped from 23 to 8, and he spent 12 weeks during the summer on the disabled list with arm soreness. The good news is that there really isn't much evidence that there was anything wrong with him. He wasn't as sharp as usual early in the season, his teammates stunk, his arm felt a little funny, and so everybody decided to panic. The player, the team, the fans and the media all went skittish; after he went on the DL, my local paper reported that Roy had micro tears in his arm, which I think is something that you get by reaching for the remote control too often. With luck, he will be healthy and pitch great in 2005. But if the pain/discomfort returns... well, I just don't think they can have him sit out and rest any longer. It's either (1) have surgery, or (2) learn to pitch with the pain. Since Dr. James Andrews wasn't able to find anything to operate on, Roy's just going to have to learn to pitch with whatever comes along. The greats used to do it. Nolan Ryan pitched with a lot of pain, as did Carlton and Palmer. Carlton successfully altered his workout routine to strengthen the muscles that were bothering him. Obviously, it was ridiculous to let Ryan throw 170 pitches in a game when his arm was hurting, but I think the Jays were too cautious last year. Halladay should have returned at the end of August and made 5-6 starts before the end of the season. I know a lot of fans in Toronto were skittish about Halladay's health last year, afraid that letting Roy pitch with a sore arm would cause further damage. But there is also the danger of babying him too much; a pitcher has to pitch to stay strong. (Comment: Doc's 2004 season has now become a cornerstone in my own baseball philosophy. The basic idea - that a pitcher needs to either have surgery, or get off his ass and pitch - is something I expanded upon in this article (index.php?option=com_content task=view id=25 Itemid=26) on one Burnett, Allan James. I'm still amazed by the number of fans who think that the best way for a pitcher to stay healthy is to not pitch. I mean, it's true... in the same way that the best way not to get killed in a traffic accident is to never leave your house. It sort of defeats the point. Anyways, Doc figured it out on his own.) July 2005: (index.php?option=com_content task=view id=20 Itemid=26) One game that always fascinated me was from April 24, in Toronto; the Jays beat the Royals (whom they would later face in the ALCS that year). The winning pitcher was Luis Leal; the loser was Bret Saberhagen. I was reminded of that box score earlier this year, when the Roy Halladay was beaten by Sergio Mitre. Halladay is/was having a magnificent season, at least until his leg was broken by a line drive. Mitre is a young pitcher with the Cubs who has been pretty awful to this point in his career, though he beat the Doc 2-0, and a week later threw a shutout against the Marlins. Since then, he's gone back to being awful. But it got me thinking about the Leal game, and other unlikely victories throughout the years. (Note: this is an article that was started several weeks ago, was postponed and then never really completed, but I had fun looking stuff up so I'll post what I've got. Since then, something even more improbable has happened: the Jays lost a matchup of Roy Halladay vs Way Back John Wasdin. That was the game in which Doc had his shin cracked, and the bullpen... it wasn't so good). June 2006: (index.php?option=com_content task=view id=14 Itemid=26) I've ranted about this before, but I may as well again: I hate, I hate, I HATE the intentional walk. In today's game, Cabrera was intentionally walked by Roy Halladay with two out and a runner on third; two hits later, Cabrera crossed the plate to make the score 4-1. My hatred of the intentional walk began in 2001, when Jays' manager Buck Martinez was handing them out like Hershey Kisses on Halloween. And they always came to kill him. When teams were pitching around Barry Bonds, lots of ideas were floated around about how to combat the strategy. I don't understand why any that's necessary; teams keep doing it, and it keeps blowing up in their faces. (Comment: Three years later, I am still ranting (index.php?option=com_content task=view id=222 Itemid=26). But finally - Finally! - in 2009, Roy Halladay went an entire season without giving out a single intentional walk. The world did not end.) Spring 2007: (Players/2007_previews.html) It's Feb. 24 in Toronto, and Halladay Hysteria has hit a fevered pitch here in the city. Dude was 4th in innings pitched, 3rd in Cy Young voting, had the highest average Game Score in the division... and the media keep saying that he's got something to prove. Of course, he's not a slam dunk to stay healthy - he's a pitcher, for Chrissakes. He does horrible, horrible things to his arm 32 times a year. As a Jays fan, I don't lose too much sleep worrying about the Doc... well, I'm a little worried about the large drop in strikeout rate. But both his strikeout rate and K/BB ratio are far away from Tim Hudson levels... (Comment: 2007 was more of the same... then in 2008, Doc reinvented himself as a power pitcher, setting career highs in strikeouts in both '08 and 2009. After two years of pitching to contact , he fundamentally changed his approach to getting people out... the best explanation I have heard is that after watching A.J. Burnett for two years, Doc decided that strikeouts were awesome, after all. Or, you give me a better explanation.) March 2008 (index.php?option=com_content task=view id=25 Itemid=26) I won't reprint the entire article - it was all about Halladay's supposed influence on Burnett. I think that New Yorker's have already figured out that A.J. is the same big donkey he was five years ago - he has not, and will not, develop into anything else. The key to A.J. the last two seasons is that he has been a durable donkey, making all of his starts and pitching deeper into ballgames than before. After turning 30, he woke up one day, realized that he was past the midpoint of his career, and it was time to get off his ass and pitch. How much of an influence Halladay had, I have no idea. April 2008: (index.php?option=com_content task=view id=38 Itemid=26) In the meantime, Roy Halladay pitches tonight; I will concede that there may be a few better ways to spend a Saturday night than watching Roy Halladay pitch - but really, not that many. (Comment: I thought I would leave it up to the reader's imagination to think of better uses for a Saturday night than watching Halladay. But now that he's gone... I wonder if the list is even smaller than I imagined at the time.) May 2008: (index.php?option=com_content task=view id=70 Itemid=26) The pitcher who has had the most horrendous games for the Jays is none other than Roy Halladay. As a rookie in 1999, Roy gave up 11 earned runs in 2 1/3 innings; that's a Game Score of -7, the second worst in Jays' history. In his infamous 2000 season, Halladay gave up nine runs in one start and eight in another; and then in 2007, Roy was hammered by Texas on May 5 and again by Tampa Bay on June 5, in starts that bookended his bout with appendicitis. But the kid turned out to be an OK pitcher. (Comment: Heh. Baseball is weird.) September 2008: (index.php?option=com_content task=view id=165 Itemid=26) The Predictable: Roy Halladay had another awesome season, winning 20 games with a 2.78 ERA, plus a career-high 206 strikeouts. Cliff Lee will win the Cy Young - and he deserves it - but an argument can be made that Halladay was the best pitcher in baseball. (Comment: Cliff Lee's decision to reinvent himself as Warren Spahn has been surprising in many ways - in the spring of 2008 I was watching Roy Halladay closer than any pitcher in baseball, and thought I knew him as well - or better - than anybody. Meanwhile, I honestly thought that Cliff Lee's career was over. Who could have guessed that their careers would intersect so often over the next two seasons?) Spring 2009: (index.php?option=com_content task=view id=215 Itemid=26) The starting rotation, locked and reloaded. Yes, the first couple of months will be pretty hairy; it will be Doc Halladay and Jesse Litsch and David Purcey(!) and then Scott Richmond or Davis Romero or Brad Mills or Matt Clement or maybe Paul Beeston will pick up the phone and convince Dave Stieb to make another comeback. But if they can survive... if Halladay can do his thing and if Litsch can be above-average and if the other guys can be not horrible... remember, they don't need Richmond to replace A.J. Burnett, they need him to be Tom Filer and help them through a rough stretch... the Jays in 2008 had BY FAR the league's best pitching staff in the second half of the season, and it's not impossible that they could repeat the trick in 2009. But they gotta survive April and May. (Comment: Sigh. This prediction was so wildly off that it was the complete opposite of what actually happened. The Jays' rotation cruised through April and May, even after Litsch's season-ending injury. Then it got bad, and then it just got worse. What if the prediction had come to pass? What if the Jays had stunk the first two months of the season, and what if they'd been forced to convince Stieb to make a comeback? And what if they'd made gradual, positive improvements over the course of the season and finished strong? How would the team look any different today? How badly did the raised expectations of the first seven weeks poison the rest of the season?) July 2009: (index.php?option=com_content task=view id=233 Itemid=26) Again, the whole thing is pretty much about Halladay - the first Doc trade saga when a different GM is in charge. And the whole thing is pretty much irrelevent now that both Halladay and Ricciardi are gone, and the new GM has yet to shove a giant foot into his mouth (though it took Ricciardi awhile to do that as well). Article - 2009 Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:43:32 +0100