It seems like the most important quality in the baseball-playing world.
Until it seems like the least important.
It's a quality we know as experience. And in baseball, if you want to win, you can't live without it -- unless you have to.
|  | | Second-year lefty Mark Mulder is 6-0 with a 1.89 ERA since the All-Star break. |
The Yankees have it in abundance. The A's don't. Yet their records are virtually identical.
The Braves have it all over the field. The Phillies don't. Yet the Phillies lead the Braves in the standings in the second week of August.
If the moral of this story seems to be that experience can be overrated, you're probably reading this correctly.
"The way the game is today," says Oakland's astute director of player personnel, J.P. Ricciardi, "experience is a great thing to have and all that. You always want veteran guys who can tell your young guys what to expect. But the bottom line is, guys still have to go out and play. And if you're a team like the Phillies, would you rather have a Jimmy Rollins with no experience or an experienced Kevin Stocker playing short? I'd rather have talent than experience any day."
And that is a motto that drives Oakland's engine every day of every year. The three starting pitchers at the top of their rotation -- Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito -- are 26, 24 and 23 years old. But big deal.
They're 17-2 since July 1. They've ripped off more quality starts (50) than the Yankees' big three (Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Mike Mussina, who have 49). And down the stretch, the hitters won't be asking, "How old are these guys?" They'll be asking, "How do you hit these guys?"
Meanwhile in Philadelphia, people wailed when the Phillies didn't go out and deal for an experienced starting pitcher before the trading deadline. But three big reasons they didn't are named David Coggin, Nelson Figueroa and Brandon Duckworth.
Those three rookie starters had started six games in August, heading into Coggin's start Tuesday in Milwaukee. They were 6-0, 3.14, in those six starts -- and 9-3 altogether in their 19 starts in the big leagues.
"We had a chance to trade for some experienced starters before the 31st," says Phillies GM Ed Wade. "There were guys we could have had if we'd been willing to say yes to a couple of things. But it seemed like, with all the starting pitchers we could have traded for, there was some issue involved. So there was no guarantee that those guys would pitch any better than our young pitchers."
The results so far have proved that. All three of those rookies have won more games this month than Rick Reed, the veteran starter in whom the Phillies had the most interest.
"I don't think experience is overrated," Wade says. "And I don't think it's underrated. In an ideal world, I'd rather have experienced talent. But when it comes down to it, I'd take talent before experience."
But the Phillies haven't even had the most starts by rookies among the contenders. Here's a look at how many games had been started by rookie pitchers for all the teams still in some kind of race this season:
National League
Astros 22 (Redding, McKnight, Oswalt)
Diamondbacks 22 (Ellis, Bierbrodt)
Dodgers 21 (Prokopec, Williams)
Phillies 19 (Figueroa, Coggin, Duckworth)
Cardinals 7 (Smith)
Marlins 6 (Grilli, Knotts)
Giants 5 (Jensen, Zerbe)
Cubs, Braves 0
American League
Indians 35 (Sabathia, Westbrook, Drew)
Yankees 33 (Lilly, Keisler, Parker, A. Hernandez, Jodie)
Twins 19 (Lohse, Johnson, Thomas)
Mariners 7 (Pineiro, Stark)
Red Sox, A's, Angels 0
But those numbers don't tell the whole story. In those 33 starts by Yankees rookies, they haven't made it through the fifth inning in 16 of them. And those Twins rookies have won just four of 19 starts.
The young pitchers in Oakland, meanwhile, aren't even rookies. But that kind of sums up the A's. They're young and they're experienced, because for many of these players, this is their third straight year in a playoff race.
"Even though our club is still young, we've been through it just enough that the experience we do have has helped us," Ricciardi says. "In some ways, you can have both."
Nevertheless, the A's have made a conscious effort in recent weeks to supplement their youth with experience off the bench. They've brought in Ron Gant, Greg Myers and F.P. Santangelo -- not in prime-time roles, but to provide leadership and veteran wisdom for the kids who are in those roles.
The A's, though, are at a different stage in their evolution than the Phillies or Twins or Marlins. The A's have already had one season ('99) in which they went through a race and just missed. They then had another season last year in which they made the playoffs and almost upset the Yankees. And that led them to this season, in which they've geared up to win as Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon and Jason Isringhausen head for free agency.
The Phillies and Twins and Marlins are more at the stage where the A's were two years ago. For them, this is a season to build on, not to go for it all. So you don't find their rosters littered with veterans who have "been through it."
The Phillies have Jose Mesa, Turk Wendell, Dennis Cook and Todd Pratt. The Twins have Reed. That's about it. And that well could be where experience -- or the lack of it -- shows up in this next month and a half.
"I'd never say experience is overrated," Ricciardi says, "because a team like the Yankees has been through this so much, they know when to panic and when not to panic. But it still comes down to talent for me. I'd rather have a talented young guy than an experienced guy with no talent."
And the more you look around baseball as we head for September, it's clear more people agree with him than not.
Miscellaneous rumblings
We're used to looking at head-to-head match-ups in September as being far more pivotal than head-to-head match-ups in August. But because of the unbalanced schedule, that's not true in the wild-card races anymore.
In the American League, there will be only one out-of-division series between current wild-card contenders after Labor Day -- Indians at Red Sox, Sept. 4-6.
The National League is a little better, but not much. The only four out-of-division series between wild-card contenders in the NL after Labor Day: Braves at Cubs (Sept. 7-9), Dodgers at Cardinals (Sept. 7-9), and home-and-homers between the Giants and Astros (Sept. 11-13 in SF, Sept. 18-20 in Houston).
The schedule was intentionally weighted toward divisional showdowns in September. So if clubs want to take their wild-card fates into their own hands, some of those series this weekend -- Phillies-Cardinals, Giants-Braves, Indians-Angels -- loom larger than many people think.
We've always admired Dallas Green for his intelligence, his presence and his willingness to speak his mind. But when the Phillies' senior advisor to the GM spoke his mind about Scott Rolen last week, it may have been the moment that convinced Rolen to close -- and lock -- the door on a long-term commitment to the Phillies for good.
Obviously, a happily-ever-after run to the playoffs could change all that, much as success warmed the Larry Brown-Allen Iverson relationship. But baseball people who have spoken to Rolen since Green hung that "so-so player" review on his third baseman say that Rolen is now all but convinced a trade this winter would be best for everybody.
Rolen may not be the old-school personality Green and manager Larry Bowa would like him to be. But he's 26. No one plays the game with more fury from innings one through nine. And it isn't 1976 anymore.
Most important, this particular "so-so player" has more RBI than Mike Piazza, Brian Giles, Gary Sheffield or Jim Edmonds. And he's hitting .370 with men in scoring position.
He also might be the best defensive third baseman to grace the planet since Brooks Robinson. And at his current pace -- .296, 104 RBI, 100 runs scored, 18 steals, 42 doubles, 19 homers -- he has a chance to be the first third baseman since Mike Schmidt to win a Gold Glove, steal 20 bases, hit 20 homers, drive in 100 runs and score 100.
We've had three front-office men from three teams tell us in the last week that if Rolen is a so-so player, they would happily take him off the Phillies' hands in return for several other so-so players.
Wade on this delicate situation: "I'm through commenting on Scott and Dallas."
Meanwhile, two longtime Phillies beat writers -- the Philadelphia Daily News' Paul Hagen and the Bucks County Courier Times' Randy Miller -- both wrote stories in the last week suggesting that, essentially, Phillies players "hate" manager Larry Bowa.
Other than to say that situation has "been addressed," Wade says he isn't commenting on that subject, either.
But sources say that after the first of those stories appeared last week, Wade held a clubhouse meeting in which players were told to stop issuing derogatory not-for-attribution quotes about their manager and teammates.
The troops also were informed that it only mattered what the front office thought of Bowa. And it was made 100 percent clear he had the full endorsement of the front office.
Every indication out of Toronto is that GM Gord Ash's tenure is nearing an end -- but manager Buck Martinez is safe. One veteran Blue Jays player told us recently Martinez has an "impossible job" because this is a team "with no character."
"We've got guys who are talking on their cell phones during games," the player said. "Then they fly out the door after games. I've never been around a group that cared so little about how their team did. I know Buck shakes his head every day at what he sees. He can't believe what goes on around here."
Sources say disenchantment with the work ethic of the modern player was also a factor that caused Devil Rays bench coach Darren Daulton to quit this month. But it's believed Daulton also is facing financial difficulties that made it difficult for him to continue as a coach. He recently filed for Chapter 11 protection, amid mounting debts, in an attempt to get his personal finances in order.
While A's officials strongly denied reports from Oakland city officials that an agreement had been reached to sell the club to investors from Las Vegas, several baseball sources say there is definite smoke to this story, if not fire.
Baseball officials say commissioner Bud Selig would never allow the A's -- or any club -- to move to Las Vegas. But they believe active talks are ongoing that could lead to the sale of the franchise -- and that that could be one explanation for owner Steve Schott's veto of the Jason Giambi contract this spring. It could also explain why the team was so reluctant to trade him, even when they seemed to be in such danger of not making the playoffs.
In other words, stay tuned on this front.
Jose Rijo's comeback with the Reds creates the first big crisis for the new Hall of Fame voting system. Why? Because Rijo will be the first player in many years to play in a major-league game after appearing on the writers' Hall of Fame ballot.
Because he hadn't pitched since 1995, Rijo qualified for the ballot last winter. He passed through the screening committee, got one vote and promptly got bumped off for failing to get the required 5 percent.
Under the new rules, that ordinarily would have meant his candidacy moved on to the new, expanded 90-member Veterans Committee. Except by playing again, according to the Hall, he now could return to the writers' ballot again five years after this portion of his career ends.
Rijo is not the first player to appear on a ballot, then make a comeback, though. Hall librarian Bill Francis reports that Minnie Minoso first reached the writers' ballot in 1969, then played again in 1976 (three games) and 1980 (two at-bats). Babe Herman got votes in 1943, but made a wartime reappearance in 1945. And Dizzy Dean got votes in 1945 and '46, then made a brief comeback in 1947.
But the returns by those guys were more gimmick than comeback. Rijo, on the other hand, is serious about coming back and staying back. Is there life after the ballot? He'll find out.
Triviality
Mark McGwire passed Harmon Killebrew on the all-time home run list this weekend. Can you name the two pitchers who gave up a homer to both McGwire and Killebrew? (Only hint: They were both left-handed.)
Answer at bottom.
Useless information dept.
For much of this year, it has seemed as if the Diamondbacks had just a two-man rotation. But on Monday, they finished a turn through the rotation in which their five starters allowed zero earned runs in all five games.
Elias' Randy Robles reports the D-Backs are just the fifth team since 1980 to make it through five straight games without a starter giving up an earned run. The others:
'95 Orioles (Sept. 26 to Oct. 1): Mike Mussina, Scott Erickson, Kevin Brown, Ben McDonald, Mussina.
'89 Royals (Aug. 22-26): Mark Gubicza, Tom Gordon, Luis Aquino, Gubicza, Bret Saberhagen.
'85 Dodgers (Aug. 10-14): Fernando Valenzuela, Jerry Reuss, Rick Honeycutt, Orel Hershiser and the current Arizona pitching coach, Bob Welch.
'81 Rangers (April 26-30): Jon Matlack, Doc Medich, Ferguson Jenkins, Danny Darwin and Rick Honeycutt.
Is there a more fun feat in baseball this year than Livan Hernandez's little tear at the plate -- 8 for his last 8, 12 for his last 13?
How about this for perspective? Hernandez now has as many 8-for-8 streaks in his career as Tony Gwynn, according to the Elias Sports Bureau's Rob Tracy. And Wade Boggs never had one.
Meanwhile, only two other pitchers have 12 hits all season -- Mike Hampton (19) and Javier Vazquez (12). And now one of their fellow pitchers has 12 just in his last 13 at-bats.
For that matter, Hernandez has just six fewer hits in those 13 trips to the plate than the entire Mets pitching staff has all season (18).
Tremendous.
Then there's the equally astonishing Junior Spivey, who went 5-for-5 Sunday in a game started by Greg Maddux -- and went 4-for-4 just against Maddux.
So who's the last rookie to go 4-for-4 off Maddux? How about nobody. According to Elias' Ken Hirdt, no rookie has ever gone 4-for-4 against Maddux, or 4 for anything else.
Meanwhile, that game gave Spivey two five-hit games in the first 42 games of his career. And the last man to do that, according to Elias, was Wally Moon -- 47 years ago, for the '54 Cardinals. Moon's five-hit shows came in the eighth and 24th games of his career.
And while we're on the subject of Maddux, you might want to know he faced 288 hitters in between walks. For comparison's sake, of the last 288 hitters Kerry Wood has faced, he's walked 43 of them. Phew.
The ever-versatile Mac Suzuki won his first game of the year for his third team of the year -- the Brewers -- last week. So if he never wins another game -- or at least adds a team for every win -- he can become the fourth pitcher in the last 30 years to accumulate as many teams in a season as wins. The others, according to Elias' Rob Tracy: Mike Kilkenny (four teams, four wins in 1972), Alejandro Pena (three teams, three wins in 1995) and Mark Guthrie (three teams, three wins last year).
Even if Mike Hampton does get a lot of hacks in the Rocky Mountains, it's a lot different feat for a pitcher to hit seven home runs in a season nowadays than it was when his two NL co-record-holders, Don Drysdale and Don Newcombe, did it.
This year, all the other pitchers besides Hampton have combined to hit just 15 home runs. In the two years Drysdale hit seven -- 1965 and 1958 -- the other pitchers in the major leagues combined to hit 46 and 36, respectively. And in 1955, the year Newcombe hit seven, the other pitchers whacked 45.
No pitcher besides Hampton has hit more than one home run this season. In each of the years Drysdale hit seven, another pitcher hit six -- Earl Wilson in '65, Jack Harshman in '58.
While we're on the subject of those Rocky Mountains, the Rockies did something last week they've almost never done in franchise history: score in double figures in back-to-back road games. When they scored 16 at Wrigley on Thursday and then 14 in Cincinnati on Friday, it marked only the third time they've wrapped up one of those double-doubles on the road in nine seasons. They've done it 35 times at home.
OK, who out there had Ruben Quevedo in the pool to name the first pitcher traded before the deadline to strike out 10 or more in a game? Quevedo punched out 11 Expos for the Brewers on Friday.
Tony Gwynn isn't leading the league in hitting, because he hasn't played enough. But at .384, he does have the highest average of any NL player with as many at-bats as him (73). Of course.
Loyal reader Marty Sinacola watched Scott Hatteberg hit into that triple play at Fenway last week -- which Alex Rodriguez almost turned unassisted -- and couldn't help but think of this great irony: On July 8, 1994, the day John Valentin did turn an unassisted triple play at Fenway, it happened to be the day A-Rod played his first game in the major leagues.
In a year in which Alfonso Soriano and Marquis Grissom got lots of attention for avoiding walks, we can't overlook Kansas City's Mark Quinn. If you don't count his intentional walk Sunday, he's up to exactly 200 consecutive plate appearances without an unintentional walk (through Monday). His last walk: May 8, by Dave Burba.
Phil Gianficara, of the Reading Eagle-Times, wonders whether Phillies rookie Jimmy Rollins and Tommy Harper, now a Red Sox coach, will be the first players from the same high school to lead their league in stolen bases. Rollins leads the NL. Harper led the AL twice -- in 1969 and 1973. They both went to Encinal High School in Alameda, Calif -- almost 40 years apart.
Do we take Sammy Sosa for granted, or what? Sosa now has hit 40 home runs four straight seasons. And only seven other men have ever done that: Babe Ruth (seven), Junior Griffey (five), Ralph Kiner (five), Duke Snider (five), Ernie Banks (four), Killebrew (four) and McGwire (four).
But Sosa is also well on the way to his fourth straight season of at least 50 homers and 138 RBI. And nobody has ever done that. The only player ever to get to 40-138 four straight years: the Babe, who did it six straight.
Sosa also had the third three-homer game of his career last week. Only McGwire (five) has more among active players. The four other active players with three: Jeff Bagwell, Juan Gonzalez, Harold Baines and Steve Finley.
When Lou Boudreau passed away last week, we got some inquiries as to whether he had been the oldest living Hall of Famer. Nope. Correct answer, according to Hall librarian Bill Francis: Al Lopez (age 93), followed by Enos Slaughter (85).
It might seem to be tough to join that other 20-20 Club -- 20 stolen bases, 20 times grounding into double plays. But Paul O'Neill (now at 20 SB, 19 GIDP) will be heartened to know that, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, it happens all the time. The last men to do it have managed to be known for other things, certainly: Chipper Jones (25 SB, 20 GDP) and Ivan Rodriguez (25 SB, 31 GDP) in 1999.
It's hard to believe a team could go almost three years without having anybody hit 20 homers. But Torii Hunter just became the Twins' first 20-homer man since 1998. In between Twins 20-homer seasons, all the other teams out there had 252 of them.
The Sultan's Corner
We know Barry Bonds got to 50 home runs faster than any player in history. But the question remains: How likely is it for him to hit the 21 more he'd need to break the record?
So we asked the Sultan of Swat Stats, SABR's David Vincent, how many players have ever hit 21 home runs after Aug. 11 in any season. The answer: six men, a total of nine times:
Player Year HR
Albert Belle 1995 25
Ralph Kiner 1949 25
Babe Ruth 1927 24
Ralph Kiner 1947 23
Mark McGwire 1997 23
Mark McGwire 1998 23
Willie Mays 1965 22
Jimmie Foxx 1938 21
Mark McGwire 1999 21
Bonds and Griffey hit a home run in the same game last Thursday. And since it was Griffey's 450th, it marked only the fifth time two 450-homer men have gone deep in the same game. The others, according to the Sultan:
9/25/1965 at San Francisco -- Willie Mays (No. 503) and Eddie Mathews (No. 477)
8/30/1969 at Atlanta -- Hank Aaron (No. 547) and Ernie Banks (No. 495)
6/17/1970 at SF -- Mays (No. 615) and Banks (No. 504)
5/08/1971 at SF -- Aaron (No. 604) and Mays (No. 634)
Then there was Fred McGriff, whose first home run at Wrigley Field as a Cub on Friday was a grand slam. That adds McGriff to a diverse group that includes two Hall of Famers (Billy Williams, Rogers Hornsby), the son of a Hall of Famer (Earl Averill), plus the immortal Kettle Wirts and the last man to do it, Brian Dayett.
The complete list of Cubs Whose First Wrigley HR was a Slam:
Cliff Aberson, 9/9/1947
Joey Amalfitano, 6/12/1964,br>
Earl Averill, 5/12/1959
Les Bell, 4/29/1930
Walker Cooper, 5/29/1954
Jack Cusick, 5/18/1951
Brian Dayett, 5/22/1985
John Ganzel, 9/22/1901
Al Heist, 4/15/1961
Burt Hooton, 9/16/1972
Rogers Hornsby, 4/17/1929
Cliff Johnson, 5/28/1980
Davy Jones, 6/02/1914
Nelson Mathews, 9/16/1962
George Mitterwald, 4/17/1974
Mike O'Neill, 6/3/1902
Joe Pepitone, 8/14/1970
Len Randle, 4/27/1981
Champ Summers, 8/23/1975
Chick Tolson, 5/1/1927
Billy Williams, 5/2/1961
Kettle Wirts, 6/27/1922
Finally, one of the great name-game events of the year occurred last week: Bud Smith giving up a home run to Mark Smith. That enables them to add their names to the prestigious list of all-time homers by Smiths off Smiths. The others:
Pitcher Hitter Date
Lee Smith Dwight Smith 6/17/1993
Bryn Smith Lonnie Smith 7/12/1991
Lee Smith Lonnie Smith 8/10/1983
Dave Smith Reggie Smith 8/6/1982
Bob Smith Earl Smith 9/17/1925
George Smith Earl Smith 5/30/1921
Mike Smith Germany Smith 7/17/1887
Mike Smith Germany Smith 9/25/1886
Trivia answer
Tommy John and Frank Tanana
Jayson Stark is a Senior Writer at ESPN.com. Rumblings and Grumblings appears each week.
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