the_nub_sep2009.html
September
2009 Archive
(Posted
9/29/09)
Unwelcome Changes Affecting Team
Obama and Mets
Just as
a season of stinging
reversals has dismayed future-oriented Mets fans, so worrisome
off-field
changes are affecting the play of Team Obama.
Cracks in the Mets'
big-ticket-player facade exposed widespread organizational
rot. Hopes of a
new positive start were dashed when oft-disengaged owner Fred Wilpon
said he
intends to keep control of the club and leave son Jeff in
charge. Jeff Wilpon is overseeing removal but not (so
far) replacement
of people connected with the team's farm-system failure.
Un-replaced is the departed staffers’ boss,
GM Omar Minaya. The Mets will enter the off-season with holes
everywhere.
Skipper Obama
has most of his
squad in place, but the rules of the managerial game have changed
owing to
power plays that occurred before and post-9/11. Historian
Gary Wills traces
in the NY Review of Books the changes and their effect on the skipper
and his
team:
“Some were dismayed to
see how
quickly the Obama people grabbed at the powers, the secrecy, the
unaccountability that had led Bush into such opprobrium…(But) it should
come as
no surprise that turning around the huge secret empire built by the National Security State
is a hard, perhaps impossible, task. After most of the wars in US history there was
a return to the constitutional condition of the pre-war world. But after those wars there was no lasting
institutional security apparatus of the sort that was laboriously
assembled in
the 1940s and 1950s…
“On January 25, 2002,
White House
Counsel Alberto Gonzales signed a memo written by David Addington that
called
the Geneva
Conventions ‘quaint’ and ‘obsolete.’ Perhaps, in the nuclear era, the
Constitution has become quaint and obsolete….(Today),
we are all, as citizens, asked to salute our
commander in chief. Any
president,
wanting
leverage
to
accomplish
his
goals,
must
find
it
hard
to
give
up
the
aura
of
war
chief,
the
mystery
and
majesty
that
have
accrued
to
him
with
control
of
the
Bomb.”
Amid
the
burgeoning
shambles
last
month,
the
Mets
could
have
been
expected
to
act
aggressively
in
the
2009
draft.
Instead, they spent less money than any other
club in the effort to sign players in the first 10 rounds.
And they failed to sign two highly rated,
early-selection pitchers. Nevertheless,
fans can be confident the bright façade will be back next spring
and maybe it
will remain in place a few months longer than it did this year.
Gary Wills is somewhat less confident
in change for the
better transforming the National
Security State. “It
may
be
too
late
to
return
to
(the)
ideals
(of
the
Constitution),”
he
says,
“but
the
effort
should
be
made.”
- -
-
Looking at the schedule, it’s hard not to foresee the Braves
(now only two games behind) overtaking the Rockies
in the next
six games
and perhaps setting up a one-game NL wild card playoff.
While Colorado
must play three with Milwaukee
at home and three with the Dodgers
away. Atlanta finishes playing two
more with the Marlins and four with division doormat Washington, all
at home.
Minnesota
needs a sweep to win at least three of its current four games against
the Tigers to set up a possible one-game
playoff
with Detroit. The Twins will almost certainly face Zack
Greinke at the start of a final weekend series at home against KC. The Tigers, meanwhile, will close at home
against the White Sox, who have Jake Peavy but no one of Greinke’s
caliber.
Stat city: Although considered a good
bet for the Cy Young
Award, Greinke only places sixth on the
mlb’s list of effective starting pitchers.
The top five (in order): Roy Halladay, C.C. Sabathia, Adam
Wainwright,
Felix Hernandez and Justin Verlander.
-
o
-
(The Nub is a team
effort skippered by Dick Starkey.
Comments
to dickstar@aol.com
are welcome, as are subscription requests.
Previous Nubs can be found by scrolling below.)
(Posted 9/26/09)
Nitpicking Look
at
the Baseball and Political Playoffs
Playoff
time:
in
baseball,
at
the
end
of
next
week;
in
two
NY
citywide
runoffs,
this
Tuesday. How
do we handicap the competitions?
In baseball, it’s little unrecorded
things – errors of
omission like failures to cover a base, back up a play or hit a cutoff
man –
that separate good players from the rest. The same can be true in
politics. That’s how we’re judging the
public advocate and comptroller races.
PA: Former
Public
Advocate
Mark
Green,
running
for
NYC’s
political
comeback-of-the-year
award,
failed
to
cover
his
own
base
in
2001. That’s when he supported a
proposal to have Mayor Rudy Giuliani stay on the job for three
additional
months in the aftermath of 9/11. We
believe the other night Green should have backed up on calling the new
ballparks positive additions to the city; he might at least have
questioned the
handing over of parkland to make room for the new Stadium.
Bill de Blasio neglected to run a positive
campaign, hammering Green for, among other things, supporting the
more-of-Giuliani plan and for accepting campaign money from his real
estate-rich brother. We like that de
Blasio led a fight (with John Liu) against Mike Bloomberg’s third-term
power
grab, but it’s hard to forgive him for a bit of outlandishness: saying
that
Betsy Gotbaum was a better public advocate than Green.
Either will be a good PA. We give the
edge to Green (a
former client), owing to overzealous play on the part of de Blasio.
Comptroller: David
Yassky left his own base in 2006 to run in a neighboring minority
district for
the Congressional seat being vacated by Major Owens.
Before that he failed to follow through in a
tentative at-bat for the Brooklyn DA’s office. Yassky
was
all
over
the
field;
he
then
allowed
himself
to
get
out
of
position
on
the
mayor’s
extended
term-limits
maneuver,
moving
from
an
early
opposition
stance
to
a
vote
of
support.
His opponent John Liu matches him in
do-whatever-it-takes ambition. Liu
really wanted to run for public advocate but switched to the
comptroller race
when Green entered the PA contest. Thus
(unlike Yassky) Liu signaled a lack of fire about the prospect of
playing the
game of audits. But, in general, both have
been effective Council members and match up well.
Liu gets our vote because of the
elevated political status
his victory would give to the Asian community, but, mainly, because
Yassky
neglected to stand his ground on Mayor Mike’s term-limits play.
- -
-
Despite the late-August addition of Scott Kazmir, the Angels
have erred in not doing more to solidify their pitching.
The LAA staff ranks 22d out of 30 in pitching
stats; through Thursday the team had given up as many ERs and more hits
than
the miserable Mets. The Dodgers,
Cardinals and Phillies, in that order, have the best pitching records
going
into the NL playoffs; the Red Sox, Tigers and Yankees are lined up,
stat-wise,
in the AL.
Switching from errors of omission to
the other kind, the
team leading the majors in the fewest-errors category is the
still-in-contention Minnesota Twins.
Going into last night’s action the Twins had committed only 68
miscues
in 152 games. The Washington Nats, at
the other end of the category, had just under twice as many. Right behind the Twins was a surprise team:
the Pirates with 68 errors in 151 games.
The deal that brought Adam LaRoche from Boston to Atlanta
for Casey Kotchman is one reason the Braves are still in the NL
wild-card game. Amalie Benjamin had
comparative details in
yesterday’s Globe: “ In
47
games
with
the
Braves
(46
starts),
LaRoche
has
a
.355
batting
average,
12
home
runs,
36
RBIs,
and
a
1.048
OPS. Kotchman, meanwhile, has played in
29 games for the Sox, starting for the 13th time last night. With a
2-for-4
night in the Red Sox’ 10-3 win, he raised his batting average to .239,
1 home
run, 7 RBIs…(And) Kotchman has gone 0 for 9 this season off the bench.”
-
o -
(The Nub is a team
effort skippered by Dick Starkey.
Comments
to dickstar@aol.com
are welcome, as are subscription requests.
Previous Nubs can be found by scrolling below.)
(Posted: 9/24/09)
Bad News Developing
for Barack’s Team and War
The White Sox and Afghanistan:
Skipper
Barack
clings
to
the
hope
that
both
the
team
and
the
military
campaign
he
supports
will
pull
out
victories. In one case - the Chisox
– the hope has all but been blown away.
That his war game in Afghanistan
will end well is doubtful. But whether
the game should be played at all is a question that rallies fans on
both sides.
The early post-mortems in Chicago say a
“passive” offense doomed the
White Sox season. Manager Ozzie Guillen
said his hitters showed “no fire.” A
tell-tale sign of passivity is the inability of teams to sweep their
opponents. The Chisox were plagued by
letdowns after taking the first two (or three) games of a series.
Polls say the American public is passive at best about pursuing the
war in Afghanistan. How skeptics feel was well expressed the
other day by the International Herald Tribune’s William Pfaff: “On Afghanistan,
there seems to be no coherent reason or vision as to why we are there. To ’catch’ Osama bin Laden, ten years after
his crime? But you don’t have to take
control of a country of 250 thousand square miles and 3l million people
in
order to catch a terrorist leader. (Especially when it is taken for
granted
that he actually is in Pakistan.)
You don’t have to take it upon yourself to solve Afghanistan’s internal
social
problems or to ‘defeat’ (how, no one knows) the Taliban military,
political and
religious uprising in the country. What
has that really to do with Americans?”
The equally lefty Michael Tomasky, of the UK Guardian, stresses
fundamentals
in what amounts to an answer from the other side of the field: “In
the
United
States’
history
as
a
world
power,
it
has
been
attacked
on
its
mainland
soil
exactly
once.
Neither mighty Russia nor powerful China
nor Nazi Germany
nor
Imperial Japan
managed to hit the American continent. Only one foreign entity…did:
al-Quaida,
clearly and directly aided and abetted by the then-government of Afghanistan.
“How do you justify running the risk
of letting the only people who have ever successfully attacked the
American
mainland regain power? That they could attack again is not merely
theoretical. It happened.
So it could happen again.”
The president clearly agrees with
the Tomasky view. He has termed Afghanistan
a
“war of necessity” but has begun hedging on a response to his military
commander’s call for more combat troops.
The New Yorker’s George Packer, who hits down the middle,
suspects
skipper Barack would regret making too big a commitment.
Packer visited Afghanistan with Our Man in
the
region Richard Holbrooke (about whom he did a long, puff piece). This laser of his could be the walkoff
comment on the situation: “Now there is a strong possibility that (last
month’s) stolen election will leave (shifty, unpopular President Hamid)
Karzai
in power for five more years, at the very moment that Obama (would have
to
commit) to send thousands…perhaps(to) die, on behalf of the Afghan
government.” Unthinkable?
We’ll see soon enough.
-
- -
KC’s Zack Greinke, on the difficulty of
maintaining a low - 2.08 - ERA: “It’s
kind
of
like
watching
Joe
Mauer
hit,
where
he’ll
get
a
hit
[in
a
game]
and
his
batting
average
will
go
down.
You’re like, ‘That’s unbelievable’.” (quoted by the Globe’s Adam Kilgore)
The suddenly
inarticulate Terry Francona on Greinke’s 5-1, two-hitter against the
Red Sox
Tuesday night: “Man. that’s
.
.
.
he
had
everything.
That’s, that’s, that’s . . . that’s impressive.’’
Who said: “Overall,
we lacked depth. When we had to reach down ... (it wasn't there)."
Although it sounds Metsian, the speaker (quoted by SI's Jon Heyman) was
not Omar Minaya, but Brewers GM
Doug Melvin.
-
o
-
(The Nub is a team
effort skippered by Dick Starkey.
Comments
to dickstar@aol.com
are welcome, as are subscription requests.
Previous Nubs can be found by scrolling below.)
(Posted: 9/22/09)
Remembering Irving
Kristol’s Gift to Baseball Fans
A parting game of pepper in honor of
Irving Kristol, who
died the other day at 89. It was
Kristol, the neoconservative ace, who struck out oracular baseball
writers, sparing
many of us the sense of being sporting simpletons.
At a long-ago televised panel
discussion on the media and
literature, Kristol said newspaper readers had to accept the
reliability of
reports from abroad, places and situations they knew nothing about. But, he said, “when a baseball fan turns to
the sports page, he usually knows as much as the writer.”
That reality took awhile to sink in,
but the tone in sports
reportage and opinion gradually changed as writers like Jim Murray,
Peter
Gammons, Robert Lipsyte and Tom Boswell
did in their own way what Red Smith had started – treating the fans as
equals, and
with a sense of humor, to boot.
Kristol, who began his career in left
field, then moved to
right, eventually became a rare breed of political pitcher. a
lighthearted
neocon. He described his right-of-center
delivery this way: “It is hopeful, not
lugubrious;
forward-looking, not nostalgic; and its general tone is cheerful, not
grim or
dyspeptic." Few, if
any, of his teammates have followed that lead, nor is there much cheer
to be
found on the left. Where are you when we
need you, William F. Buckley? Thanks for
trying, Michael Moore.
- - -
With the Red Sox surging and the Yankees sputtering - and a
three-game series between the two on tap in a few days - the wild-card
Sox are
thinking the unthinkable: overtaking the Yanks.
Jason Bay put it this way to the Globe’s Adam Kilgore: “’You
want
to
be
that
team
that’s
hot
at
the
right
time.
It’s not always the best team that wins. It’s
the
best
team
at
the
time. Right now,
we’re on a pretty good roll.’’
If
regular-season road records are useful playoff indicators, Phillies
fans have
reason to be confident, Tigers fans much less so. The
Phils,
at
45-29,
have
the
best
road
record
in
either
league. Detroit has registered an abysmal
31-44. Although the AL will have
home-team advantage in the
World Series, the stats suggest that the Phils, if they make it, will
not be at
a disadvantage.
Lob
from
the
green
grass
of
center
field:
"Every
time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of
the
human race."
- H.G. Wells
- o
-
(The Nub is a team
effort skippered by Dick Starkey.
Comments
to dickstar@aol.com
are welcome, as are subscription requests.
Previous Nubs can be found by scrolling below.)
(Posted: 9/17/09)
Cuban Ballplayers ‘Si,’
Cuba
‘No’
How striking: the same week the
NY Times celebrated Cuban
slugger Kendry Morales, Team Obama announced it was extending the
anti-Castro embargo
to prevent people like the Angels first baseman from coming here
legally.
Morales had to risk his life, sailing
to Florida
from his home island in 2004. That was 15
years after the end of the Cold
War, the end of the alliance between Fidel Castro’s regime and the
former Soviet Union.
Although Cuba
no
longer represented a threat to U.S.
security, it could only hope to play ball with Team USA if
it introduced democracy to
the island. That is, the first Bush
Administration arrogated to itself the right to tell a sovereign state
how it
wanted things done. Among those things:
“free” elections.
Cuba
sees our elections as giving the candidate with most money the
“freedom” to
win.
Some things have changed 19 years
later: Team Obama has
eased travel and financial restrictions between the two countries. But Skipper Barack has parroted Bush I and II
in demanding “democratic reforms” in Cuba before the decades-old
“trading-with-the-enemy” embargo would be lifted and diplomatic
relations could
be normalized.
Morales has come close to achieving
normal production as a
replacement to Mark Teixeira. Mega-star
Mark hit 13 home runs in 54 games with the Angels last year (after
being traded
from Atlanta);
Morales
has
hit
30
HRs
in
137
games
and
has
98
RBIs,
not
far
off
Teixeira’s
’08
pace.
In relations with other Latin American
states, Obama has
followed the spike marks of George Bush II: adversarial – if not
hostile – to
leftist Venezuela
and Bolivia. We’ve made clear we don’t like the way Hugo
Chavez or Evo Morales are running their countries.
At the same time, like Bush, we are friendly
to right-wing Colombia
and,
meanwhile, patient with the rightists after their June 28 coup in Honduras.
“Change
we
can
believe
in?” More like
“Barely perceptible change that tests our willingness to believe.”
Lots of Congressional
impatience with ACORN, the community
organizing group caught in a compromising position by conservative
sting teams. The House has voted to end
federal funding -
$3.1 million a year – to the group.
Salon’s Glenn Greenwald puts the events into perspective: “Nobody
is
apologizing
for
(ACORN)
or
suggesting
that
they've
done
nothing
wrong.
Any
group
that
large
will
have
individuals
in
it
who
do
bad
things. The
issue
is
one
of
proportion.
If
someone
ostensibly
opposes
government
waste
and
unfairness
in
tax
policy
yet
spends
most
of
their
time
focusing
on
a
tiny
group
that
helps the poor and receives a
miniscule
amount of government money -- all while ignoring or even revering the
enormous,
omnipotent industries which eat up trillions in taxpayer waste and
dwarf the
impact of ACORN by many, many magnitudes -- then any rational person
would
question what the real motives are. “
-
-
-
The Phillies have inched past the Cardinals, setting up for
the moment a St.Louis-LA Dodgers playoff
first round while the Phils get the wild-card opponent, probably the Rockies. Philadelphia plays seven of its last 10 on the
road – two more at Atlanta, then two at Florida and three at Milwaukee
before
finishing with three at home against Houston.
The Cards play eight of their last 10 away; after completing two
more at
home against the Cubs, St.Louis goes to Houston
and Colorado for three each and Cincinnati for
two. If the Phillies have the edge, it’s
because
of their one extra home game and the fact that the Cardinals will be
playing
the team with the strongest incentive, the wild card-leading Rockies.
Stat city: Detroit’s Justin Verlander not only leads the AL in
strikeouts with
239 in 210 innings, he’s also caught 13 runners trying to steal, tops
in both
leagues. SF’s Tim Lincecum remains the
majors’ strikeout king, with 244 in 207 innings. Incidentally,
Tigers
catcher
Gerald
Laird
has
far
and
away
the
best
backstop
caught-stealing
pct:
42.4.
The Boston Globe’s Bob Ryan on a subject close to our
hearts: “September
means
expanded
rosters,
a
form
of
peculiar
madness
unique
to
baseball.
Major
League
Baseball
is
the
only
one
of
our
primary
team
sports
in
which
there
is
one
set
of
parameters
for
the
first
five-plus
months
and
a
different
set
of
parameters
in
the
final
month,
when,
presumably,
the
most
important
games
of
the
season
are
played.”
Ryan solicited the support of Sox
manager Tito Francona who said this about
the expanded-September-roster rule: “I’m
against
it
I
think
we’ve
gotten
to
the
point
where
we
need
an
amendment
to
the
rule.
We
play
all
year
under
one
set
of
rules, and
when we get to Sept. 1, it’s vastly different.’’
- o -
(The Nub is a team
effort skippered by Dick Starkey.
Comments
to dickstar@aol.com
are welcome, as are subscription requests.
Previous Nubs can be found by scrolling below.)
(Posted 9/17/09)
Losing Teams in
Baseball and Politics Urged to ‘Get Serious’
Bobby Ojeda had an 18-5 record with the
world champion 1986
Mets; James Carroll won a National (non-fiction) Book Award in 1996 for
the
war-related “American Requiem”. Both
offered
similar advice this week, in Ojeda’s case, to his former team, in
Carroll’s, to
our non-fiction-writer president. What
they said in short was “get serious.”
Ojeda, an SNY analyst, said the Mets
looked unfocused to him
as far back as spring training, and he doubted their ability to make
the
playoffs even when they were at full strength.
Carroll, writing in the Boston Globe, said the president allowed
himself
to become distracted by foreign war-making when his focus should have
been at home:
“The
scale
of
President
Obama’s
military
mistake
is
becoming
clear
exactly
as
the
moment
of
his
greatest
opportunity
to
improve
American
life
has
arrived.
The
tragedy,
as
with
Lyndon
Johnson,
will
be
the
destruction
of
his
proposed
social
transformation
by
his
simultaneous
opting
for
war,
as
his
core
supporters
among
liberals
and
Democrats
feel
bound
to
oppose
him.
The
day
after
Obama’s
unifying speech on health reform,
Senator
Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, sent a foreboding
warning
on Afghanistan, ahead of an all but certain request from the Pentagon
for a
major escalation there. The storm cloud
(of
a standoff) approaches.”
The
storm cloud already shadowing the 2010 Mets - a fragile front line and
no real
prospects - can be tracked at length between seasons.
Ojeda’s recollection of the Mets “having fun”
instead of working hard at Port St.Lucie last spring is a reminder of
the hype
Gary Cohen and the SNY crew imposed upon fans then: the team’s “new
spirit”,
“fresh start”, “no-nonsense attitude”, etc.
As
if
Team
Obama
doesn’t
have
with
health
care
and
Afghanistan
enough challenges, the
aftermath of last year’s bank bailouts has refused to leave the field. NY Times slugger Gretchen Morgenson reminds
us of an ongoing regulation scandal: “Senior
regulators
who
stood
idly
by
for
years
as
financial
firms
built
their
houses
of
cards
have
been
rewarded
with
even
bigger
jobs…Those
in
the
public
sector
ask
us
to
believe
that
regulators
who
snoozed
during
the
credit
bubble
will
be
alert…when
the
next
mania
begins.”
Morgenson
quotes Edward Kane, finance prof at Boston College on how the
regulators and
those supposedly being scrutinized are playing ball:
“We’ve
got
a
very
comfortable
equilibrium
here
where
Wall
Street
praises
the
authorities
and
the
authorities
give
Wall
Street…what
it
wants
and
they
hope
that
the
public…doesn’t
understand.
“…You
keep
reading
about
how
wonderful
it
is
that
we
didn’t
have
a
Great
Depression. Well, if they can sell that
point of view, then nothing will change.”
- -
-
What’s
left of regular-season baseball fun is in the West, where the Rockies
and Giants are dealing for the NL wild card.
But the re-emergence of Daisuke Matsuzaka – six shutout innings
against
the Angels Tuesday night – gives AL East fans something to look forward
to. The Red Sox now have the pitching to
give them a definite edge over the Angels in the first playoff round. The Tigers don’t match up with the
Yankees. Ergo, while acknowledging how
unpredictable baseball can be, it’s fair to say a Sox-Yanks ALC series
appears
likely. And won’t that be fun!
Comparisons,
we
know,
can
hurt. While the Mets wonder
where they are going to find their future stars – certainly not in the
system –
the Braves have produced a young ace in Tommy Hanson (10-3) and are
bringing
along an outfielder, Jason Heyward, whom Baseball America
has just been named Minor
League Player of the Year.
- o -
(The Nub is a team
effort skippered by Dick Starkey.
Comments
to dickstar@aol.com
are welcome, as are subscription requests.
Previous Nubs can be found by scrolling below.)
(Posted 9/15/09)
Batting Practice for
Today’s NYC Balloting
Nobody asked, but here is how we see
the field in today’s NYC-wide
Dem Primary:
Of the 10 players - Tony Avella
(running for mayor), Billy
Thompson (mayor), Melinda Katz, John
Liu, David Weprin, and David Yassky
(comptroller), Bill de Blasio, Eric
Gioia, Mark Green and Norman Siegel (public advocate) – only one has a
sustained
positive connection to baseball: Stormin’ Norman.
Siegel twice filed legal challenges to
Team Bloomberg’s plan
to hand public baseball fields on Randalls Island
over to private
schools. And he has supported local opposition to terms under which the
new
Yankee Stadium was built. We’re voting
for Siegel, a former client, for more than baseball-related activism:
he has been
the unelected people’s advocate for well over a decade and can be
counted on to
keep the mayor honest during the next four years. Norman,
a rabid Mets fan, is up against it in his race just as his favorite
team is in
its. But his supporters can cling to the
mantra of the NY Lottery: “You never know.”
Polls suggest that Green (another former client) and de Blasio
are
pre-game leaders into today’s crucial PA contest. We
give
Green
the
edge
over
de
Blasio,
owing
to
the
latter’s
hilarious
contention
(along
with
Gioia)
that
Betsy
Gotbaum
was
a
better
public
advocate
than
Mark
had
been
from
1994
through
2001.
Speaker Christine Quinn told us last
fall that she was
“proud” of the Council vote in support of the Yankee Stadium deal that
carved
away 22 acres of ballfield-dotted public parkland.
None of the seven Council members running for
the various offices today spoke out against that deal.
Nevertheless, we favor feisty underdog Avella
over current Comptroller Thompson for the mayoral nomination. We prefer Liu over Weprin among the
comptroller candidates because he is a leader of the under-represented
Asian
community. As we’ve said before, there
isn’t bad candidate among the 10. But
Katz
and
Yassky
lost
any
chance
for
our
support
by
going
to
bat
for
Bloomberg’s
push
for
term-limits
extension
without
a
referendum.
- -
-
Regular-season
newsworthiness? Yes, even though
eight mlb teams - Yanks, Red Sox, Tigers, Angels, Phillies, Cardinals,
Dodgers,
Rockies - are virtual playoff locks, there are a couple of marginally
interesting cliffhangers to watch over the final two weeks. By taking three of four from the Mets over
the weekend while the Cardinals were losing three to the Braves, the
Phillies
moved to within a game of St.Louis (as of early last night). Should the Phils pass the Cards in W-L pct.,
they will get to play the (likely) wild-card Rockies
while Tony LaRussa’s squad will draw the Dodgers in the first round. The Rocks, of course, still have an
outside
chance of catching LA for the division title.
That about sums up the quasi-interesting developments.
Stat city: If
it
is
true
that
starting
pitchers
consider
number
of
innings
their
most
important
statistic
(a
David
Cone
contention),
then
baseball’s
three
leading
starters,
as
of
now,
are:
C.C.
Sabathia,
213.1,
Roy
Halladay,
208.0
and
Adam
Wainwright,
205.0. Halladay leads the AL in another
important
stat – fewest walks allowed. He’s given
up only 1.25 passes per nine innings. The
Cards’ Joel Piniero leads both leagues in the fewest walks category –
1.04 per
nine over a total of 190 innings. Arizona’s Dan
Haren is
third overall – 1.39 per nine over 201.1 innings. The
presence
of
Wainwright
and
Piniero
on
these
below-the-radar
lists
of
leaders
points
up
the
strength
of
St.Louis
pitching,
headed
by
ace
Chris
Carpenter.
- o -
(The Nub is a team
effort skippered by Dick Starkey.
Comments
to dickstar@aol.com
are welcome, as are subscription requests.
Previous Nubs can be found by scrolling below.)
(Posted: 9/12/09)
The Concession Game
in Baseball and Politics
For some of us, the usual baseball
homestretch excitement
began to dissipate on August 29. That
day the wild-card-contending Tampa Bay Rays traded their erstwhile ace
Scott
Kazmir to the LA Angels. A
month-and-a-half earlier, Team Obama’s dugout coach
Rahm Emanuel took the suspense out of the health-care-reform
contest by signalling that his skipper would pitch around the public
option
threat.
Then, Wednesday night, Obama waved away
the threat, saying
the public option was something that could,
not must, be part of the reform
package and, anyway, it would only be available to the uninsured, less
than
five percent of the new program’s potential enrollees.
Thus did the skipper dash the early high
hopes of fans in left field. Last spring
they thought creation of a public program “to keep insurance companies
honest”
was a realistic goal.
When the Rays let Kazmir go they had a
valid shot at the
playoffs, positioned only four-and-a-half games behind the AL card-leading
Red Sox. Since then Tampa Bay had lost 10
of 12 games (before
last night) and reduced the number of “meaningful” AL races to a single
one –
that between the Sox and Texas for the
fourth playoff spot. The betrayal of the
Rays’ fan base that the deal – for two prospects – represents is an
additional
argument for mlb to institute a rules change to stop rich teams from
getting
richer at the expense of poorer ones during the season.
In the interest of greater fairness to fans,
there should be - it says here (yet again) - a freeze on team rosters
at
season’s start or shortly thereafter.
In fairness to Obama, his overall pitch
for the need for
health reform was effective. Washington
Post super-sub Tom Shales described the president’s late-in-speech
persuasiveness
in terms of baseball offense: “Quoting from a letter
that (Ted) Kennedy
had written and that he had asked to be read after his death, Obama hit
one out
of the park…
“The letter was in part
an…assault
on partisanship in a time of deep crisis, and Obama's point was that
Kennedy,
no matter how political an animal he was, knew when it was time to put
differences aside and stop bickering. If
we don't, Obama said, then ‘we lose something essential about
ourselves’ and
about ’the character of our country’."
Shales said that at-bat “most likely
touched a chord with
millions watching.” Indeed, polls showed that a substantial number of
previously skeptical fans swung their support behind Team Obama’s
initiative.
- -
-
Although the Dodgers’ at-the-wire deals for Jon Garland and
Jim Thome will give them a stronger playoff roster, the new pitcher and
pinch-hitter may not provide enough of a boost to stop destiny’s team
the Rockies from winning the division. The reward to either NL West winner will be a
first-round rendezvous with the defending world champion Phillies. The Dodgers have taken four of six from the
Phils this season, the Rocks have lost four of six to the champs but
that was
before they went on their latest high.
If you’re a fan of one of the 20-odd
teams out of the
playoff race, the Washington Post’s Tom Boswell offers this tepid
consolation -
his listing of potentially available free agent pitchers this winter: “It's a huge class. People
like (Braden) Looper would be at the bottom of it.
Somebody like Randy Wolf in the middle. They
were available last winter, signed for one year and are available
again. Some
of the 'names' have club options for (20)10, so it's hard to say
exactly which
ones end up on the market. But it will be a ton of them. (My rough) list includes: Jason Marquis, Looper, Garland
(club option), Rich Harden, Livan (Hernandez), Tim Hudson (club
option), John
Lackey, Cliff Lee, Kevin Milwood, Brett Myers, Vicente Padilla, Brad
Penny, Joel
Piniero, John Smoltz, Carl Pavano, Jarrod Washburn, Brandon Webb (team
option),
Todd Wellemeyer, Wolf."
-
o
-
(The Nub is a team
effort skippered by Dick Starkey. Comments
to dickstar@aol.com
are welcome, as are subscription requests.
Previous Nubs can be found by scrolling below.)
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