The Futility Infielder

It's been awhile since I actually discussed any of the baseball that's still being played, at least in this forum. But it isn't as though I haven't been watching the action. I spent a chunk of time over the weekend working on my latest piece for the New York Sun, the subject of which was Roger Clemens' abbreviated Game One World Series start and his spotty big-game legacy.

It's a topic I've addressed before, first in response to a column by Salon's King Kaufman back in the summer of 2004. Kaufman and I went a couple of rounds on the topic and while we never did reach complete agreement, our exchange was friendly enough that he kept me in mind to pinch-hit for him back in August.

Since our sparring, Clemens has lengthened his list of postseason lowlights, capping it with Saturday night's start, which saw him pulled after two innings and three runs allowed, the strained hamstring he's been dogged by over the last two months aggravated by running to cover first base. Here are the greatest misses I included for the article (the first of which was edited out due to space reasons):

• 1986 World Series Game 6 (Red Sox-Mets): One win away from Boston’s first championship since 1918, Clemens pitched solidly and held a 3-2 lead through seven innings. Sox manager John McNamara pinch-hit for him with one out and a man on second in the eighth, later claiming that Clemens asked out due to a blister (a charge Clemens denied). The Sox bullpen, with an assist (or rather a lack of one) from Bill Buckner, lost the game and the Mets took Game Seven.

• 1990 ALCS Game 4 (Red Sox-A’s): A flustered Clemens is ejected in the second inning for swearing at the home-plate umpire after loading the bases with a walk. At the time, Oakland leads the series 3–0; Clemens’s replacement, Tom Bolton, is greeted with a two-run double as the A’s complete the sweep and the Rocket takes the loss.

• 1999 ALCS Game 3 (Yankees-Red Sox): Returning to Fenway in the enemy’s pinstripes, Clemens is hammered for five runs in two-plus innings, much to the Boston boo-birds’ delight. The Yankees lose 13–1, their only postseason defeat en route to their second straight World Championship.

• 2003 ALCS Game 7 (Yankees-Red Sox): Having already announced his retirement, Clemens looks headed for the showers for good after being battered for four runs in three-plus innings. But the Yankees wait out Pedro Martinez, tie the game in the eighth after Sox manager Grady Little leaves his tired ace in too long, and the Yanks win the pennant in the 11th inning on Aaron Boone’s home run.

• 2003 World Series Game 4 (Yankees-Marlins): Boone’s homer earns Clemens another chance that he nearly blows, yielding a three-run homer to Miguel Cabrera in the first.Clemens guts out seven innings without allowing another run; the Yanks tie the score but lose the game in 12 innings and the series before Clemens can get another shot.

• 2004 NLCS Game 7 (Astros-Cardinals): Taking a 2–1 lead into the sixth, the Rocket runs out of fuel as the Cardinals rally for three runs, snatching Houston’s first-eve pennant out from under them.

Of course, Clemens does have his October successes, such as the 1999 World Series clincher (a game I attended), the pair of thorougly dominant starts in the Yanks 2000 title run which sent Alex Rodriguez sprawling and Mike Piazza ducking for cover via a combined 24 strikeouts, three hits and no runs allowed over 17 innings, and his dramatic three-inning relief stint to close out that 18-inning epic and the Braves season. But on the whole, his postseason stats don't measure up to his regular season record. In 33 starts -- a season's worth -- here's the comparison:

              GS   W-L    IP   IP/GS  K/9  K/BB   ERA   Lg R/G
reg. season*  33  17-8  231.1   7.0   8.6   2.9   3.12   4.75
postseason    33  12-8  196.2   5.9   7.9   2.5   3.71   4.31 
*per 33 starts

On the whole, Clemens has allowed more runs in a lower-scoring environment, lasted fewer innings, and showed decidedly less dominance. "Lg R/G "in the chart is the unadjusted, unweighted scoring level of the leagues he's been in (1984-2003 AL, 2004-2005 NL, and all games from the eleven postseasons in which he's participated). In retrospect that number probably should have been weighted by Clemens' innings, but the Sun editor cut it anyway.

In any event, despite the spotty track record, Clemens has performed particularly well in the World Series, even including Game One: a 2.37 ERA in eight World Series starts, with 49 strikeouts, 12 walks and just two homers allowed in 49.1 innings. That he's got only a 3-0 record to show for his trouble is the real issue: he doesn't last very long, firing his bullets early and leaving the rest of the work to the bullpen. As with Mariano Rivera in Game Seven of 2001 World Series, that doesn't always work out for the best.

The other myth to dispel about Clemens is that at least for the Yankees, his postseason record was better than his regular-season accomplishments. In 17 pinstriped starts, he allowed a 3.24 ERA and an 8.82 K/9, winning two World Series rings; with the other two teams, his ERA is 4.19, his K rate is 6.89, and he's still looking for a championship. Note that the bulk of complaints about his playoff shortcomings come from aggrieved Boston fans (such as this sniveler) amid the Red Sox 86-year wait for a championship, and entitled Yankee fans expecting no less than one per year. Note also that 38 percent of his postseason innings have come after his 40th birthday, and that Clemens has often hit the postseason at well less than 100 percent; recall the groin problems which dogged him in 2001 and of course, this year's hammy woes.

None of which exactly an excuse; the objective record shows that one of the all-time greats hasn't been so great in the postseason. What Clemens has been is decidedly human, a more sympathetic figure than the adrenalized intimidator who's racked up 341 wins (ninth all-time), 4,502 strikeouts (second all-time), and a record seven Cy Young Awards (with an eighth a legitimate possibility after his league-leading 1.87 ERA). There are worse lessons to be drawn from our superstars than that.

• • •

Even with Clemens' abbreviated start, Game One turned out to be a tight contest, with the Astros clawing back to tie the game after both of the Rocket's less-than-spotless innings. It was something of a miracle that despite reliever Wandy Rodriguez -- the poster child of a replacement-level pitcher -- allowing four hits and five walks over 3.1 innings, the White Sox could only add a single run on Joe Crede's homer, keeping the game close until the late innings.

But that's where the Astos' plan broke down, and it's the reason I told anyone who asked me that I was picking the White Sox to win the Series in six games (a length it may not achieve). The Astros have a good bullpen, but it's not a deep one, and manager Phil Garner is too rigid in his roles. Closer Brad Lidge, though still smarting from Albert Pujols' game-winning monster shot in Game Five of the LCS, should have been on hand to protect that 4-3 deficit rather than Chad Qualls and Russ Springer, the latter of whom yielded the Sox a fifth run. But since it wasn't a save situation, Garner went with his lesser relievers, and he paid the price.

The same thing happened in Game Two, which was a bona fide fall classic befitting the Fall Classic. With a 4-2 lead but two men on base in the seventh inning, 'Stros setup man Dan Wheeler got jobbed when an inside pitch that deflected off of Jermaine Dye's bat was ruled a hit-by-pitch -- yet another example of the shoddy umpiring that's been all-too-common in the postseason -- to load the bases with two outs. For the game's most important situation -- nay, the season's most important situation -- Garner shifted from his second-best reliever to his third-best in Qualls, and Qualls' first pitch traveled over 400 feet off the bat of Paul Konerko for a grand slam. Here's what Baseball Prospectus' Joe Sheehan had to say:

Konerko hit a first-pitch cookie from Chad Qualls, who you could argue was only in the game because 35 years ago, a scoring rule was invented to credit relief pitchers who got the last out in wins. With the bases loaded, a two-run lead and the other team's best hitter up, you would think you'd want your best reliever in the game. Phil Garner--who'd used Lidge to get out of a similar seventh-inning jam in the 2004 Division Series--went with his third-best reliever, and paid the price.

I recognize that using your closer in the seventh inning is a highly unusual tactic, and with other effective relievers at his disposal, perhaps doing so would be too much to expect of Garner. But when you consider the leverage of the situation--not just the game, but how important this batter was to the World Series--it's hard for me to not see this as yet another example of how the save rule has corrupted bullpen usage. From the dawn of the use of relief pitchers as weapons through the mid-1980s, a team would have used their best reliever to pitch in that situation. They had it right, and we, in modern baseball, have it wrong.

In spite of all that, the Astros rallied to tie the game at 6-6 on what looked like another dubious choice, when Garner tapped Jose Vizcaino, a career .271/.318/.346 hitter, to pinch-hit for Adam Everett while lefties Mike Lamb (.274/.329/.412) and Orlando Palmeiro (.277/.355/.356) sat by idly. Vizcaino drove in two runs off of Bobby Jenks, with Chris Burke boldly running on Scott Podsednik's weak arm and executing a perfect slide and hand-touch of home plate just out of reach of catcher A.J. Pierzynski.

Garner called on Lidge at that point, and his ace reliever took one step closer to becoming the new Byun-Hyung Kim when he allowed a game-winning shot to Podsednik, who didn't homer in 568 regular-season plate appearances but now has two dingers in October. D'oh!

It wasn't as though Garner calling on his closer at that point was the wrong move, just that he could have made a better one to protect the lead while he still had it, regardless of the inning. By contrast, Sox manager Ozzie Guillen showed more flexibility and less attachment to roles when he pulled his nominal closer, Bobby Jenks, after Vizcaino's suprising single. In came southpaw Neal Cotts, getting the platoon advantage on pinch-hitter Lamb, who flied out to end the threat. With an admittedly deeper bullpen than the Astros have, Guillen has shown himself willing to play to that strength while avoiding being typecast as a LaRussa-esque micromanager. Ultimately, that -- and four home runs accounting for seven of Chicago's 12 runs -- is a bigger part of the reason the Sox have a 2-0 Series lead than any small-ball antics.

Speaking of which, last Wednesday featured a surreal Dan Le Batard article in the Miami Herald in which Guillen revealed himself an adherent to santeria, a religion which features animal sacrifice. "You bleed, I'm there," quipped the ever-controversial Sox manager. As one BPer put it in, "Sacrifices, eh? That small-ball thing really is pervading his whole life."

I'm still laughing at that one.

Labels: New York Sun