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| Monday, April 22 Baker's Dozen: The week in preview By Jim Baker Special to ESPN.com |
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1: Best Matchup of the Week The American League standings look more like those of the National Basketball Association than modern baseball. That bipolar disparity thing reeks of the NBA, doesn't it? Two teams over .700; four more over .600; three teams under .400, a team under .300 and another under .200. Of course, this is only temporary, so, if you like your good records really good and your bad records really bad, savor the moment -- or switch to basketball.
2: Worst Matchup of the Week Is there some kind of way we could assign a qualitative measurement to the level of competition seen on the field of play? Baseball classifies its minor leagues with an A, A+, AA and AAA arrangement and then, of course, we have the major leagues. But what about within the context of the major leagues? What is the overall level of what we are seeing in this series as opposed to, say, the Yankees-Mariners series? I'm not being flippant here. In comparison to the rest of the world, the Tigers and Royals play the game with a high degree of skill (and the Steve Sparks-Chris George pitching duel on Wednesday should be interesting), but, if we were to say that the Yankees-Mariners rate a 20 on a scale of 1 to 20, what would this series score? An 8? A 10? A 14?
3: Biggest Mismatchup of the Week Somebody ought to tell Johnny Damon it's April and not August. After two slow starts in 2000 and 2001 (the first of which he recovered from, the second of which he did not), Damon is torching the skies in the early going of 2002 with a .354 average and 12 RBI. And the Red Sox? They're hotter than Hitler on his first day in Hell.
4: Old School Matchup of the Week They're back at it again. They seem like two parts of a whole, don't they? I guess that's because long-time Tribalists Kenny Lofton and Sandy Alomar are Sox now. Thursday's game is one of the 10 weekday non-night games this week. For those of you who still think night baseball a pox on the game, there are 33 total day games on this week's schedule.
5: The Missed Opportunity Matchup of the Week Is it so much to ask that the two teams with the best one-two pitching punches in baseball give us one decent matchup? Could we have Randy Johnson versus Greg Maddux or Tom Glavine, or failing that, Curt Schilling versus Maddux or Glavine? No soap, I'm afraid. Here's the lineup:
Tuesday: Schilling vs. Jason Marquis Come on, we'll all be dead soon and we'd all like to get as much out of life as possible.
6: C.A.D. (Contraction Anxiety Disorder) Matchup of the
Week One of the oldest tricks of evil invaders is to turn the local population against themselves. Neighbors who harbor grudges against other neighbors turn them over to the secret police for cash rewards and favors. This leads to increased paranoia and serves to keep the minds of the vanquished off the main problem, which is that they need to dislodge those who have taken over their land. Ever since the concept of contraction was introduced, we have all taken part in discussions that go something like this: You: OK, I understand Montreal, but why Minnesota? Your pal: Yeah, why don't they get rid of one of the Florida teams? You: Right. Or Kansas City. The trouble with this line of thinking is that it follows a correct logic based on a ridiculous concept: that baseball needs to reduce its size. In this way, commissioner Bud Selig has done what those invaders have done for centuries: turned you against your neighbor when the real enemy is at the gates. Instead of arguing over whether there should be contraction at all, we are reduced to debating who needs to go. I liken it to another event from history: the Salem witch trials. They started with a ridiculous notion -- that there were witches -- and got bogged down deciding who the witches were. That is exactly what has been done in baseball: we are debating who needs to be burned at the stake while forgetting there does not need to be a stake in the first place. So, here we are again, put in the position of having to root against the Brewers as they travel to ground zero of the contraction bomb blast. Of course, it would look a little better if more than 4,000 people showed up to scream French invectives at the visitors, with whom Selig is so closely associated.
7: Miguel Asencio: Fantasy Pitcher It is a curse, I suppose, having fantasies overwhelmed by realistic constraints -- like a teenager who dreams of being with a girl, but in every scenario his mind conjures, he is caught by her father. Let's face it: everyone reading this has spent some time in their lives wondering what it would be like to pitch in the major leagues. I know I have -- and I, like that teen above, am such a realist that I know exactly what it would be like. It would be, pitch-for-pitch, exactly like the first and third outings of Royals rookie Miguel Asencio. In my first appearance, I would be so damn nervous I would do what he did in his: keep throwing pitches out of the strike zone until somebody came and took me away. And then, on my next trip to the mound, I would try to overcompensate and end up tossing something resembling batting practice -- much as Asencio did Sunday -- when he surrendered two home runs and a double to the Red Sox. Even the outs were hit with authority. Asencio pulled off a very hard trick yesterday: he entered a game with an ERA of 36.00, pitched a full inning, and left that number completely intact. When he will get a chance to pitch again no one knows, as he is saved for blowouts (the scores in his three appearances have been 0-14, 16-3 and 2-12). He might even be demoted by the time this series starts. Or by the time you read this.
8: See One Thousand Home Runs on Display!
It's actually quite a few more than that as Fred McGriff could combine with Bonds to also topple the thousand mark. But McGriff has popped his longballs in a much more pedestrian fashion that Sosa, never going higher than 37. Believe it or not young readers, McGriff led the American League in 1989 with 36 and his 35 topped the National three years later. Ahh, the quiet innocence of the old days. Now, of course, 35 home runs will get you a one-way ticket to the bushes. We require a minimum of 55 from our sluggers in these modern times, thank you very much.
9: The When Does Interdivision Play Begin? Matchup of the
Week With their crushing ninth-inning loss to the A's Sunday night (as seen on ESPN) Anaheim is now 2-9 versus Seattle and Oakland and would like to have quit of them for a while. (They are 3-1 against Texas, however.) Troy Glaus missed a game because of trouble with his contact lenses. I've got a big picture of me calling in sick with that excuse. Something tells me that line would get me introduced to one of the charming counter clerks at the state unemployment board on the double quick. According to his manager, Mike Scioscia, Glaus has been having trouble with this for years. Apparently, the world looks to Glaus (as evidenced by his .195 batting average) like a day in the life of Foster Brooks. Here's where I begin to lose patience. The man plays baseball within spitting distance of Beverly Hills, California, a place where the best doctors in the world are drawn because they know they can charge the highest rates. Surely one of those fine medics can solve this problem, either through laser surgery or one of the most expensive pair of glasses ever ground by man? Millions of dollars are at stake here, folks -- let's stop goofing around.
10: The Back From the Dead Matchup of the Week After Jose Rijo's first start and victory in seven years, his manager, Bob Boone, has indicated he will get another chance to start. Should it come in rotation, it will happen next weekend against the Giants. This got me to thinking: given his performance and that of Jim Morris, whose story is told in "The Rookie," are there other pitchers out there who, after years of rest, could mount similar rejuvenatory pursuits of major-league opportunities? In order to pull off these minor miracles, it pays to have an organization that "owes" you something. Rijo, as MVP of Cincinnati's World Series victory in 1990, engendered some loyalty from the club and had a ready home to which he could return. Other pitchers might not be so lucky. Speaking of "The Rookie," I have to mention that one of its producers is the only person from my hometown to make it to the major leagues. Mark Ciardi had a brief stint with the Brewers in 1987 and was also in my typing class in high school. I'm sure he remembers the former much better than the latter. (That class is still serving me well, by the way, witness the typo-free text you see before you. Another public education success story!)
11: Homecoming Game of the Week
"Jeremy Giambi's Lament"
My brother has more talent,
12: Run the Bases With the Mets! Someone has to say it: the Mets run the bases like forgetful drunks. Whether it's Mo Vaughn belly-sliding twice yesterday, or players forgetting how many outs there are or not running out pop flies or groundballs or Vance Wilson getting trapped off first on Saturday and taking the bat out of Mike Piazza's hands when he represented the tying run, it's been a nightmare on the basepaths for this team since day one. Maybe it's just a phase they're going through, or maybe they need a stern lecture with lots of finger waggling. To the average person, baserunning miscues are so much more maddening than errors made in the field. I think it's because we can understand why a hard-hit groundball can elude someone, but cannot fathom why a guy can't keep it in his head how many outs there are.
13: The Can Rafael Furcal Triple Some More? Matchup of the
Week Jim Baker's 'Baker's Dozen' column appears on Mondays during the baseball season. He also writes Monday through Friday for ESPN Insider. |
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for the details on the historic achievements of the Atlanta speedster.
