The Futility Infielder

The new Prospectus Hit List went up at Baseball Prospectus yesterday, with the St. Louis Cardinals barely edging the Chicago White Sox for the top spot. The Cards are the sole representative of the NL among the top nine teams, a byproduct of the completion of an interleague segment which saw the AL soundly whup the NL 136-116 (.540 winning percentage) or 133-101 (.568) if one excludes the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, who though they have shown they can beat the Yankees, barely qualify as major league. In fact, the average ranking of each division, which Jim Baker included in his latest Prospectus Matchups column, closely mirrors interleague results:

Div      Avg Rnk  Int W-L   Pct
AL Cent   11.6     53-37   .589
AL West   13.0     41-31   .569
AL East   14.0     42-48   .467 (39-33, .541 w/o Tampa)
NL East   14.4     41-37   .526
NL Cent   17.7     43-44   .494
NL West   23.2     32-55   .368

Though they're only a game above .500, Yanks hold the #9 spot, but don't be too fooled: the numbers underlying the list put them much closer to #17 (the Mets, ironically) than to the #5 Orioles. Here's what I wrote about them:

Now starring in Back! Or Not! a musical based on this team's ability to mount only the occasional gallant rally -- setting off new rounds of tea-leaf reading in which the question, "Is this the turning point?" is endlessly invoked -- as opposed to the more mundane ones that sustain the real business of winning. Don't be fooled by the intermittent dramatics; these Yanks may be too rich, but they're also too thin (Kevin Reese? Russ Johnson?), they don't have enough pitching (Sean Henn?), and to paraphrase Bob Dylan, they ain't goin' nowhere.

Since writing that, the Yanks have split a pair with the Orioles, with both games being decided in the late innings. Last night's was a particularly sickening affair in which Joe Torre was once again burned for improperly using his bullpen.

The Yanks led 4-1 at one point on the strength of homers by Hideki Matsui and Robinson Cano, but Chien-Ming Wang gave up a two-run blast to Rafael Palmeiro in the 6th to cut the lead to 4-3. Tough to fault the kid, as he gave the Yanks seven strong frames, scattering seven hits and walking no one. The homer was Palmeiro's 563rd, tying him with Reggie Jackson for ninth place on the all-time list -- and man, isn't that a strange contrast between the hot-dog-with-extra-mustard superstar Jackson and the comparatively nondescript Raffy, who if he gets 10 more hits could qualify for both the 3,000 Hit Club and the Federal Witness Protection program.

Tom Gordon came on in relief of Wang, promptly issuing a leadoff walk to Brian Roberts and then throwing wildly on a sac bunt, an error which led to the tying run. That damage done (gee thanks, Flash) Gordon did manage to blank the O's in his second frame to send the game to extra innings.

With the O's at home and able to end the game with one swing of the bat, the situation called for extreme care; per a Win Expectancy chart, the home team could be expected to win 63.4 percent of the time in a tied, no-out, home half of a potentially final inning. Torre had his ace closer, Mariano Rivera, he of the 0.91 ERA, available. Mo had worked single innings the previoius two nights, barely breaking a sweat by throwing only 23 pitches combined. But with the switch-hitting Roberts coming up, Torre decided to get cute, reaching in his bag of shit tricks to pull out Mike Stanton, he of the 6.43 ERA in a grand total of 14 innings. One poorly located sinker later, the O's had broken their six-game losing streak with a walk-off homer.

As I listened to the game, Stanton's entry conjured up two bad memories: the pivotal Game Four of the 2003 World Series, in which Torre tapped Jeff Weaver to pitch the 11th and 12th innings instead of Chris Hammond, with Alex Gonzalez belting a walk-off homer, and a 2001 contest in which Stanton himself surrendered a walk-off homer to Jason Giambi. In both of those instances, Torre played the platoon matchup rigidly. In the World Series, he chose the beleaguered righty Weaver, who hadn't pitched in four weeks, while ignoring the fact that the lefty Hammond had a reverse platoon split: a .648 OPS allowed against righties in '03 compared to .797 against lefties. In 2001, he chose Stanton, a lefty with a reverse platoon differential (.646 vs. righties, .774 vs. lefties), over Rivera, who hadn't pitched in three days.

Here, Torre threw the platoon concept out the window and chose to go after the natural righty Roberts (who was hitting .402/.460/.675 from the left side) with Stanton, which is great if you've got a time machine. It's not 2001 anymore, and Stanton isn't getting anybody out these days. The take home message is that the gap in abilities, particularly between Mo and anyone else, is a much more important than some small-sample platoon advantage. When you've got the best, you go with it, particularly when the manager himself is saying, "Every game from here on out has to have a message attached to it." As Leo Durocher said, "You don't save a pitcher for tomorrow. Tomorrow it may rain."

Chances of showers for tonight's game in Baltimore: 50% according to Weather.com. Grrrrr.