The Futility Infielder

Notes on a Playoff Weekend

Between watching the games, reading about them, and writing about them, I've been so absorbed with the Yankees-A's series (which I'll get to in my next post) that I haven't had a chance to say much here about the other three postseason series. Not that I saw all that many of those games--I do work for a living, and I had my parents in town this past weekend. But I have to say that we've had one hell of a week of baseball--three deciding Game 5's in the space of two days, decided by a total of five runs, one of them won in a final at-bat, three 1-0 gems, and several unforgettable defensive plays, including two by Derek Jeter. I went 4/4 in my predictions, and got the Game 5 part right on two of them as well. Anyway, here are few notes about those series:

• Atlanta over Houston 3-0. I didn't actually get to watch more than 10 minutes of this series due to its daytime schedule. But it didn't take an astrophysicist to see this one coming; an Astro physician could have done the job just fine. With half of their rotation down with injuries, the poor Astros continued the slide that watched them lose nine out of their final 12 regular season games. Once again, the Astros Killer B's, Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio, proved anything but killer in the postseason. The Astros are now 0-4 in postseason series with those two, and they've combined to hit .178 with 0 HR over the course of that run. Baseball Prospectus's Joe Sheehan points out that the 'Stros have faced some seriously great pitching in those appearances, which explains a good portion of their woes. Baseball Axiom #1 of the 6000 or so my father taught me as a tyke is that Good Pitching Will Beat Good Hitting, Especially in October.

I'm not a Braves fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I do think their run of 10 straight division titles is an underappreciated level of success. And since I've always had such great respect for their Big Three, I'm heartened that my favorite of the bunch, John Smoltz, has made an amazing comeback from Tommy John surgery by reinventing himself as a closer. Smoltz closed out all three games in the series, and was reportedly throwing as high as 98 MPH. Thanks to the trade of John Rocker, the Braves now have a bullpen as good and as deep as any in baseball east of Seattle. And while their offense was decidedly inferior to all of the other postseason teams (see the analysis at Mostly Baseball, a brand-new web site run by two frequent contributors to the discussions over at Baseball Primer), they hit the Astros pitching to the tune of .303 AVG/.333 OBP/.545 SLG. Battle-honed thanks to a three-way race for the NL East title (they played the Phillies and the Mets, their competition for the crown, 13 times in their final 20 games), they seem a lot closer to the Braves of old than the less-than-dominant team they resembled this year.

• Arizona over St. Louis 3-2. Back in the 1993 postseason, I fell for the Phillies, thanks largely to the gritty performance of Curt Schilling. Shilling won the NLCS MVP award despite not getting a decision in either of the games he started, though he posted a 1.69 ERA in 16 innings and the Phils won both games in extra innings. He got roughed up by the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 1 of the World Series, but with the team down 3-1 in games, he tossed a 5-hit shutout to keep the Phils alive. I never forgot that performance, and so I was pumped to see him pitch in the postseason. He didn't disappoint in his first shot, winning a 1-0 gem of a duel against the Cardinals' ace and fellow 22-game winner Matt Morris. And he almost topped that Sunday, with a 1-run complete game in the finale. He's now 3-1 with a 1.82 ERA and 46 strikeouts in 49.1 innings. Money, man.

I didn't see any of his fellow ace Randy Johnson's performance, or much else of the series except for a few innings here and there. But it did seem to me that the D'Backs made some huge plays on defense--the Game 3-ending 5-3 double play by Matt Williams, those line drives speared by Tony Womack and Craig Counsell on consecutive batters last night, for example.

As for the ninth inning of Game 5, I was glad to see Williams make a positive contribution toward the series' winning run (though technically it was his run that was cancelled out in the form of Tony Womack's missed squeeze play). I've had a soft spot for the man since 1994, when he hit 43 HR in 112 games and had a legitimate shot at Roger Maris's record until the strike hit. He's had his struggles with injuries, but I've never heard the guy complain about missing out on the chance to make history. Anyway, while I didn't think much of Womack's execution on the squeeze, the important part of the play was that the trailing runner, Danny Bautista, alertly advanced himself into scoring position. In the end, Womack's redemptive base hit made for a feel-good story, especially when he dedicated the hit to his late father.

As for history-makers... if it ends here for Mark McGwire, that's a sad thing. The man is, by his own admission, physically and mentally worn down, but no one can say he didn't give us, as fans, our money's worth of thrills. Even looking as bad as he did at the plate during the series, he did seem to make several good defensive plays, and he handled his woes with class. While Barry Bonds has already eclipsed McGwire's single-season HR record, McGwire seemed to bring much more joy to the Great Home Run Race, both in his own demeanor and the hearts of fans. I hope he uses the offseason to recuperate and gives it another go.

• Seattle over Cleveland 3-2. I didn't watch too much of this series very closely due to my own schedule. But I rooted for Cleveland in this one, mostly because I'm a spiteful bastard. I admit it, I was looking for the outcome that best helps my rooting interest, the Yankees--the current model and its chances, and the 1998 team and its place in history. Yes, the M's have an awesome team, and yes, I like that team, by and large, especially manager Lou Piniella, and yes, I like the fact that A-Rod and Junior can kiss their collective asses from their second-division vantage points. But if the M's want the World Championship and the "Best Team Ever" moniker (as the '98 Yanks so brashly put it on their rings), they've got to earn it just as the Yankees did in '98, by sweating out one playoff game at a time and seating all comers. And if somebody comes along and bumps them off, well, fair play to them.

Besides, it wouldn't be unprecedented. By now, you've probably seen the following chart, which shows where the M's fit in. Note that two of the top four teams in terms of wins didn't win the World Series:

Team 	          W-L 	  Pct. WC?

1906 Cubs 	   116-36 	.763   

2001 Mariners	116-46 	.716   

1998 Yankees 	114-48 	.704   Y

1954 Indians 	111-43 	.721     

1909 Pirates 	110-42 	.724   Y

1927 Yankees 	110-44 	.714   Y

1961 Yankees 	109-53 	.673   Y

1969 Orioles 	109-53 	.673 

1970 Orioles 	108-54 	.667   Y

1975 Reds    	108-54 	.667   Y

1986 Mets   	 108-54 	.667   Y

I have a large number of family members who live in the Pacific Northwest and who I know are pulling for the Mariners, especially against the hated Yankees (I'm the black sheep of the family with my rooting interests). Should the M's win, I won't begrudge them their happiness, but should they lose, well, that's baseball.

• One other note, only tangentially related to the playoffs. Minnesota Twins manager Tom Kelly retired the other day after 15 seasons and two World Championships. As someone who took great pleasure in those two championships (see the Department of Anything Can Happen in a Short Series), I'll drink a few toasts to the man who guided those teams. Any manager with the balls to send his ace out for the 10th inning of a scoreless World Series Game 7, as Kelly did for Black Jack Morris in 1991, has earned my respect and given me a story to tell my grandkids.

The early favorites to take over from Kelly include Twins coaches Paul Molitor and Ron Gardenhire, which brings me to yet another tangent. Back when I decided to do this web site, the phrase "futility infielder" had been kicking around my head for awhile. It was an instant fit in my mind for the name of this site, and an instant hit among my focus group of friends and family. I'd never heard anybody else use the term, which was another plus. I had no visions of an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary, however, and to futher disabuse myself of that notion I did a web search for the term. Two entries came up, one of them this piece on Gardenhire from the Naples (Florida) News, March 12, 2000:

"He bounced up and down between AAA and the big club. In 1986, major-league rosters reduced from 25 to 24 players, and Gardenhire began the season at AAA Tidewater.

"'I was what you call a futility infielder,' Gardenhire said."

The other reference was from a Sporting News feature on a baseballl roadtrip back in 1997. One of the writers referred to the Mets' Luis Lopez as a"futility infielder who misplays grounders at every position." That doesn't rate as highly as a good self-deprecating description, so you'll forgive me for reserving a special place for Gardenhire in my personal pantheon alongside Luis Sojo as the standard-bearers of the Futility Infielder brand name, and for rooting for him to get the Twins job over a classy player who racked up 3319 hits and was one of my favorites for 21 seasons.