Red Sox Should Be Concerned Heading Into Playoffs

• Indians 4-Red Sox 3:

The playoff matchups in the American League are pretty much set and the Red Sox, despite their

successful history against the Angels, have reason to be concerned this year. The Angels are on a mission this season and two of the Red Sox main strengths as they've won their championships----starting pitching and clutch power hitting in the middle of the lineup----are question marks as they prepare for a trip to Anaheim.
Something clicks in Josh Beckett's brain at playoff time, so they're not going to have to worry about him; but Daisuke Matsuzaka is very likely going to have trouble with the Angels patient hitters as they run up his pitch count and gladly accept his propensity to walk people. Jon Lester's been excellent this year and knuckleballers like Tim Wakefield are always hit or miss.
The bigger problem is going to be the lineup. Jason Bay has been everything the Red Sox expected when they traded Manny Ramirez away; that being said, Jason Bay is not Manny and has never once played in a big game on the national stage in his entire career. The Angels are not going to let David Ortiz beat them and are going to force Bay to deliver in the clutch as Manny did. Even with the MVP-quality years being had by Kevin Youkilis and Dustin Pedroia, they're not additives to what was already a championship recipe;

they're actually picking up for the departed Manny; the injury-diminished Ortiz; the aging Jason Varitek; and the injured J.D. Drew.
No matter what Bay's stats look like and how well he's replaced Manny on paper and especially in the clubhouse, he's not Manny and he's not someone that the Angels are going to sit there and say, "we have to stop this guy if we're gonna win"; that could end up being a miscalculation, but it's a strategy not to allow Ortiz to beat them and to make Bay come through; if he does, you tip your hat to him. The Angels were never intimidated by the Red Sox just as they were never intimidated by the Yankees; the reason the Red Sox beat them so consistently was that the Red Sox weren't a favorable matchup for the Angels and the Yankees were; now that's changed and the Red Sox are in for a rough time heading to Anaheim unless Bay can make up for Manny's absence when it really counts, and that's a big question mark.

• Diamondbacks 4-Cardinals 2; Brandon Webb saves his second Cy Young Award:

I think it's safe to say that in addition to keeping his team alive in the playoff race, Brandon

Webb's last two starts have saved his 2008 Cy Young Award. If the situation calls for it, he may even do more than that; if the Diamondbacks see an opening to catch the Dodgers on Thursday, there's no way Doug Davis is going to start that game and Dan Haren and Webb will be moved up to start on short rest. If they're alive going into the weekend against Colorado and the Giants see the opportunity to knock out or severely damage the playoff chances of their archenemy Dodgers, the Diamondbacks could still have a chance.

• The trades you don't make are often the best ones:

Ervin Santana winning his 16th game last night brought back memories of spring training

when the offensively challenged Angels were discussing a trade that would've sent Santana to the White Sox for Paul Konerko. Think about the dominoes that would've fallen had that deal taken place. Konerko has picked up his game lately, but he was so awful early in the season that he was benched; Santana jumped out of the chute for the Angels and (along with Joe Saunders) took over as the team's ace to counteract the absence of John Lackey and get the team off to a good start. Then there likely wouldn't have been a deal for Mark Teixeira and Teixeira may have ended up with the Diamondbacks because they were the other team with whom the Braves were having serious discussions. What would that have done to the NL West?
Then there were the rampant rumors of Brian Roberts being sent to the Cubs. With the addition of Kosuke Fukudome, there probably wouldn't have been room to keep Roberts, Fukudome and Mark DeRosa and DeRosa might've been traded; DeRosa has never been the power hitter he's proven himself to be this year (it's likely his career year), and the Cubs have

discovered that Fukudome may be just an average player, and not what they were expecting; he's lost his starting job to boot. Looking at the numbers, DeRosa has had almost identical numbers to Roberts except with more power and a ton of clutch hits. How many teams would've had interest in DeRosa, a player who can play every position competently except catcher?
These are just two examples of rumored moves that didn't happen and would've made things worse for their team if they had happened. It's easy to look at trades that were made and judge them in the long and short term, but sometimes more can be learned from looking at trades that were said to be "near completion", but never came to pass for one reason or another and ended up working out far better than any completed deal could have.

For Those Who Always Wondered What Joe Torre Managing The Red Sox Would Look Like, Here It Is

• Dodgers 7-Rockies 2:

If, during all those long years of Yankees-Red Sox vitriol, any loyalist for the Red Sox

wondered what their team would look like with Joe Torre sitting in the corner of the dugout, hands resting on the knob of a bat, same demeanor whether things were going well or poorly and coaxing, cajoling, dragging and leading his teams to the playoffs no matter what adversity presented itself be it injury, a rampaging boss, spoiled fan base, illness or tragedy need only look at what's going on with the Dodgers because it's being played out right now.
If, during all those long years of the Red Sox-Yankees battles, any loyalist for the Yankees wondered what their team would look like with a quirky, spacey, aggravating, forgetful hitting savant named Manny Ramirez manning left field and hitting, hitting, hitting his way into

everyone's hearts and making them ignore the defensive lapses, tantrums, demands and bouts of laziness, it's being played out right now with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The calmness that the Dodgers are showing is identical to that which the Yankees showed all those years as Torre guided them through any and all firestorms whether they were baseball or life-related. An eight game losing streak and season-long inconsistency? No reason to panic. Injuries to chunks of the pitching staff? Why worry? Someone else will get the job done, somehow. The Diamondbacks are pulling out all the stops to improve their club by dealing for help in their bullpen and lineup with stunning swiftness? No problem, for all of his bizarreness, Torre will handle Manny as he goes through his "Manny being Manny" act heading toward another big contract after crowbarring his way out of Boston. The infighting with rookies and veterans at odds in the clubhouse that doomed Grady Little and ended the Dodgers playoff hopes in 2007? Torre'll take care of it. The impossible Jeff Kent? Torre will placate him as well as he can.
Anything else? Torre, Torre, Torre. Four championship rings, controls the clubhouse, leads his men. Rookies? Veterans? In-season acquisitions? Lack of hitting? Lack of pitching? Injuries? Press? Naysayers? Mocking from the other coast and staggering Yankees at his

unappreciated skills? It doesn't matter. The one thing that's being proven this year is that despite his strategic ordinariness, Joe Torre handles his team and guides them through anything with the one thing that any manager has to have to be successful----he doesn't panic. Referred to as "The Godfather", Torre is the man behind the desk using his brain, experience and reputation to keep everyone in line and as a result, the Dodgers are heading for the playoffs and didn't panic when the world crumbled around them.
If anyone has ever wondered (publicly or privately) what would have happened had Torre been running the Red Sox for the years 1998-2003 instead of Jimy Williams and Grady Little, the result is on display right now in 2008 with the Dodgers. It adds to the irony that not only is Manny on his team, but so are Nomar Garciaparra and Derek Lowe. Anyone who questions the import of a manager need only look at how the Dodgers are finishing the season with the same placid, stoic personality of their manager. That's why the Dodgers are winning and a major reason why the Yankees aren't.

• Diamondbacks 3-Reds 2:

As important as this game was; as much as Brandon Lyon has been struggling as the Diamondbacks closer lately; and with the knowledge that the Dodgers were winning and another Diamondbacks loss would probably have sealed their fate, why was Brandon Webb,

their supposed horse and Cy Young Award winner yanked after throwing only 96 pitches and eight shutout innings?
This isn't being written because Lyon almost blew the game and the Diamondbacks season; nor is it being written to second-guess how decisions are being made in the Diamondbacks dugout; but after watching how the aforementioned Torre has handled his club through their various crises and how Diamondbacks manager Bob Melvin has been relying on that absurd "book" that's become so prevalent, why would he remove his ace and put such an important game in the hands of that shaky bullpen and run the risk of ending his team's season? If Webb had thrown 115 pitches, okay, but he'd thrown 96; are you telling me that he couldn't throw twenty more pitches to close the game out himself? Is he or is he not the team's best pitcher and guy who's supposed to carry them in times of distress?
Now Melvin is implying that he's considering making a change at closer and replacing Lyon with (I would assume) Chad Qualls. Melvin's quote was that he felt he'd given Lyon "enough rope"; once a manager starts thinking he has to have a certain amount of "rope" before going to his closer, then it's time to get a new closer. And Lyon shouldn't even have been in that situation to begin with because Webb should at least have started the inning and gotten yanked if and only if he got into serious trouble. Webb should've been the closer last night and the near disaster could've been averted completely.

• The promotional ads for the Colorado Rockies:

From when I got the InDemand package, I've seen a lot of promotional ads for various teams, but the most creative and entertaining belong to the Colorado Rockies. Last night was

a funny parody of The Godfather with Todd Helton playing "The Toddfather"; and there was Troy Tulowitzki having his name chanted everywhere he went as it interrupted people from doing their jobs as Tulowitzki had a satisfied and bemused look on his face. The players are actually good actors and they're great spots.

Sabathia's Latest Masterpiece---A No-Hitter Or Not?

• Should the official scoring be changed in C.C. Sabathia's no-hitter/one-hitter?

In case anyone missed it, C.C. Sabathia pitched a one-hit shutout over the Pirates yesterday in which the sole hit was a little dribbler in front of the plate by Andy LaRoche that

was ruled a base hit----ESPN Story and Video Clip. The Brewers were livid after the game with manager Ned Yost being the most vocal about wanting the scoring changed so Sabathia is awarded a no-hitter. I don't see any way possible that this can be done and still have it considered a genuine no-hitter. There's a big difference between a pitcher going for a no-hitter and going for a one-hitter with or without a big lead on the scoreboard.
So what's the etiquette here? Is the MLB commissioner's office supposed to make the change on an official scorer's judgment call and "award" Sabathia a disputed no-hitter? If the change is made, what's going to happen? Before the next game immediately following the scoring change, are the Brewers going to gather on the field with Sabathia on the mound, pause for a moment and have Sabathia jump into the air as some sort of continuation of the game as it should have been with a canned celebration for the highlight reels?
Never mind the fact that the official scorer, Bob Webb, has twenty years experience in official scoring and made the call immediately; or that the no-hitter would forever be disputed as to whether or not it was a legitimate no-hitter; is this even that big of a deal? A no-hitter, as great an accomplishment as it is, isn't seen as a huge career highlight for most pitchers

who've had great careers. Tom Seaver has always said that the no-hitter was way down on his list of milestones. Sabathia's not some journeyman who'll have nothing else to look back on in his career; the guy has a Cy Young Award and is putting himself into contention for the award this season in the opposite league based on his dominating work since joining the Brewers; and he didn't even seem all that bothered about the scoring himself, so why are his teammates and management going so crazy?
Truth be told, in watching the replay of the call, I would've ruled it as an error, but it's a call that the official scorer is responsible for and he said it's a hit, so it's a hit and should stay that way; and if it was such a problem the umpires have the power to make the change in scoring if they deem it necessary, so why wasn't that change made by the umpiring crew if it were such an egregious call? I don't know how this is going to turn out, but if I were in the MLB front office, I would save all the grief that comes along with making such a change and awarding a post-game no-hitter by standing by the official scoring because it was a call that could have gone either way with a justifiable argument for both sides. What's done is done.

• Could Sabathia steal the Cy Young Award from Brandon Webb?

A more fascinating debate is going to be held if Sabathia continues his current dominance over the last month of the season and ends with a record of 14-1 or 15-0 for the Brewers and if

Brandon Webb continues to struggle----could Sabathia, based on a half-season of work win the National League Cy Young Award?
Such an occurrance (a pitcher traded at mid-season and being so brilliant that he wins the Cy Young Award for half a season) isn't unprecedented. Rick Sutcliffe went 16-1 after being acquired by the Cubs from the Indians in 1984 and won the award over other qualified candidates like Dwight Gooden and Bruce Sutter based on his flashy record, brilliance and that he carried the Cubs to their first playoff spot in 39 years.
Even if Webb goes, say 2-2 the rest of this season, he'll end with a record of 21-8 and will

get some votes based on that and because he was so brilliant early in the season; but he's been awful over his past two starts (lending credence to the implication that he's not 100% healthy). If Sabathia is as great as he's been so far and leads the Brewers into the playoffs and Webb continues to pitch poorly and the Diamondbacks miss the playoffs, Sabathia might steal the award from him and there would be good reason to give it to him. It's one thing for a pitcher to win back-to-back Cy Young Awards and to even do it in different leagues with different teams, but for a guy to win the second of the awards only after joining the new team in mid-July would be unbelievable, but it's becoming more possible by the day.

• From this week's Joe Morgan files of "What is he talking about?":

I used to live in an apartment near the elevated trains in Brooklyn and people would ask how we used to deal with the noise, but after so many years, we didn't even notice it. I've gotten to the point where Joe Morgan is like background noise that I hear every day and has turned into something that is easy to ignore as if it doesn't even exist, but he still has that

uncanny ability to say something that is so completely absurd that I have to stop, scrunch up my face, shake my head, look around and say, "What?!?"
Morgan and his partner Jon Miller (who must have the patience of Gandhi) were discussing the Sabathia no-hitter/one-hitter and Morgan came up with a new interpretation of the rules that I'd never heard before. Morgan's asserted that there was a "rule" that the official scorer was required to make sure that the first hit recorded is a "clean" hit. By that logic, the Andy LaRoche grounder to Sabathia would've been recorded as an error whether it was an error or not; by that logic, if a guy like Jose Reyes leads off the game with a bunt, then it's not allowed to be a base hit because it was the first hit of the game and the scorer is under the edict that the first hit of the game has to be a line shot to center field or something of that nature; by that logic, if a guy takes a home run cut, hits the ball off the end of the bat and has it bounce thirty times down the third base line and stay fair, it's not a base hit no matter the inning or situation whether it's the first inning, the fifth inning or the eighth inning.
I have no response to this. There's really nothing to say other than perhaps Joe Morgan

should consider moving to the broadcast booth for professional wrestling because he's starting remind me of the late former wrestler/broadcaster Gorilla Monsoon who would say things like "Hulk Hogan has literally been on the shelf for the past month" meaning that Hogan was physically sitting on a shelf. I don't know where or what to say or do with Joe Morgan other than shake my head in bewilderment and laugh because the man's in a world all his own.

The "Boost" From A Managerial Change

• Is it the new manager or is it the stability?

The Mets have played and looked much better and more relaxed under Jerry Manuel than

they did under Willie Randolph since at least the middle of last season and Manuel is going to receive credit for that with his different take on running his ballclub, but is that fair? Is the improvement a function of the new manager or is it that the players wanted some finality and an end to answering the non-stop questions about the manager's job security if they lose one or two games?
There have been many cases where a team just wanted a manager out of their sight because they couldn't stand him and subsequently went on a tear. It happened twice with former Astros and Blue Jays manager Jimy Williams; with the Marlins when they dumped Jeff Torborg; and with the Red Sox when they fired John McNamara. While it's easy to give credit to the successors----Cito Gaston and Phil Garner replacing Williams;

Jack McKeon replacing Torborg; and Joe Morgan (the veteran New Englander, not the inept broadcaster) in replacing McNamara----it's not that easy to automatically think that the new manager was the reason things turned around.
The perception of playing for a manager's job on a nightly basis can't be easy. Most managerial changes don't just come out of the blue; there's usually a series of leaks to the newspapers mentioning that it's possible (sometimes that's done to gauge the temperature of the situation, the fans and the players and see how they're going to react); many times management wants to get a feel as to whether or not the change is actually going to do any good on the field.
Amid all of that, even the Mets players who didn't particularly like Randolph or pitching coach Rick Peterson and wouldn't have minded them being gone don't want to be seen as responsible for getting the manager and pitching coach fired. It wasn't necessarily that the

players had simply stopped performing for Randolph on purpose, but it can't be easy for a reliever to come jogging in from the bullpen with runners on base and a one-run lead and all the factors he has to worry about in that situation to be thinking that if he doesn't do the job, he's getting someone fired as well. It gets to a point where even the wins are tinged with the repeated questions about the status of the manager; once the idea of a change is in the air, it's going to be there and fall on the players until the matter is resolved.
There's no question that Randolph had lost his effectiveness as a manager, and if the team turns things around Manuel is going to get the credit, but it might have little to do with what he does as the manager and more to do with the players not having to worry about every loss possibly resulting in the manager getting fired.

• Brewers 7-Orioles 3:

The Brewers turnaround has a great deal to do with Prince Fielder finally hitting some home runs, but it also has a lot to do with Salomon Torres taking over as the closer and not coughing up the games as Eric Gagne was. Russell Branyan has provided a big boost as well, but he's only been back in the big leagues for three weeks; time will tell whether this is

just an opportune hot streak for a veteran professional player or if he's found his niche in Milwaukee. If I had to guess, I'd say Branyan's going to come back to earth sooner rather than later.
The Brewers took a reasonable chance on Gagne last winter signing him to a one-year deal hoping that a return to the National League would revert the pitcher into what he was with the Dodgers and with the Rangers early last season. Instead, they got the pitcher who imploded for the Red Sox on a nightly basis. They turned to the quirky veteran Torres out of desperation more than anything else and, in a prime example of how finding a successful closer is a flip of the coin, Torres has been excellent. For a guy who was a closer off-and-on for the past few seasons and lost the job as a member of the woeful Pirates last year and also had some bizarre incidents in his career (walking away from the game for five years, etc.), Torres might be remembered as the man who saved the Brewers from 78-win season and a major restructuring. The Brewers are still within striking distance of the NL Central and right in the middle of the Wild Card race. If they hit as they're capable, Ben Sheets stays healthy and Torres continues to perform as he has, they could hang around in both races for the duration and that's a far cry from scanning the want-ads for a closer who wouldn't blow games they should be winning.

• Twins 5-Diamondbacks 3:

The expectations for the Diamondbacks were at least as high as that of the Mets this season, but they find themselves with an almost identical record and saved by the unexpected wasteland that the NL West has become. With a starting rotation fronted by two

legitimate aces; a deep and diverse bullpen; and a lineup that, despite it's youth, should be a force, the Diamondbacks find themselves at 39-37 and stumbling along despite hanging onto first place.
Brandon Webb has been getting raked around so regularly that I would be concerned about the pitcher's health; granted it would've been impossible for him to continue pitching shutouts every night, but he's gotten knocked around in three of his last five starts; it could be a mid-season slump, but it's not something to ignore out of hand. Their rotation, which was supposed to be a strength, is looking short. Dan Haren has been everything advertised, but Micah Owings got off to a great start and has been pretty much terrible since late April; Randy Johnson has been more bad than good; and Doug Davis, for all the courage he's shown in coming back from thyroid cancer, is a back of the rotation starter who can't be counted on to pick up for the top of the rotation.
Out of the Moneyball school, Josh Byrnes is probably the closest GM to Billy Beane in

terms of temperament, playing his cards close to the vest and making decisive moves. Even though they're in first place, this could mean one of two things: 1) Bob Melvin might be in trouble if they continue sleepwalking; or 2) a big trade is going to be made to shake things up. I don't think Melvin deserves to be fired (for what that's worth), so I would think that Byrnes is scouring the trade market and other teams in need to make a quick and decisive strike to loosen the cobwebs.

• Tigers 5-Padres 3:

I'm aware of the payroll disparity between the Padres and the Mariners and why the Mariners are a laughingstock because they look like they're going to lose 100 games after being a trendy pick to win the AL West, but the Padres expectations were higher in many

circles than the Mariners; the payroll shouldn't factor in if the Padres were taking credit for being smart and frugal while being almost as bad. No one seems to be flogging the Padres with a similar enthusiasm as they are the Mariners. There's even talk of the Padres crawling back into the race for the division. They're not crawling into any race; the race is tumbling to them and it's not going to last. The Dodgers and Diamondbacks are going to right their ships enough to bury the Padres, but will anyone notice, or will they continue to protect the "smart" Padres management team, which may not be all that smart after all?