Contemplating Tony LaRussa

A World Series trophy? For me? 

The St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series Friday night, winning the most routine game of what had been an intriguingly dramatic series.

This makes three World Series titles for Tony LaRussa, who is increasingly making a case for the title of greatest manager ever.

There's no clear and obvious way to determine such a title, but but he's a serious contender. As I've said before, I don't like his persona, but I can't argue with his results.

One intriguing aspect of his career: He has had, by my reckoning, six teams that could legitimately be said to be the best team in baseball that year -- the 1993 White Sox, the A's of 1988-90, the Cardinals of 2004-05. Only one of those teams (the 1989 Athletics) won the World Series. Two of his titles, including this one, came with squads that were less than the best.

Of course, the wider net cast for postseason teams in the current set up makes it almost inevitable that the best team doesn't win. John McGraw, Joe McCarthy, Casey Stengel -- those men had to have the best record in the league to get to the World Series. LaRussa doesn't.

In both 2006 and 2011, LaRussa -- the father of the modern bullpen of specialists and rigid closers -- had to get resourceful with the relief crew. The Cardinals this year went through five different closers, and eight different pitchers picked up saves. Three of the men in his postseason 'pen were midseason acquisitions (Octavio Dotel, Arthur Rhodes and Marc Rzepczynski); another (Jake Westbrook) was a transplanted starter.  All through the postseason, as Jason Motte continued to get the ball for the final outs, LaRussa kept insisting that Motte wasn't the closer, that there was no closer.

That was just one of the challenges for LaRussa this season. Remember:

• Adam Wainwright, arguably his best starter (and the man who he turned into his October closer in 2006) went down for the year during spring training, opening a giant hole in the rotation. 
• LaRussa was troubled by a severe case of shingles from practically the start of the year and was forced by his bosses to take a leave of absence in May. He is still on medication for the ailment.
• Dave Duncan, his long-time pitching coach and confidant, had a long leave himself to tend to his severely ill wife.

The Cardinals were not the best team in baseball in 2011. But LaRussa led them to the title anyway. It was, perhaps, the most impressive accomplishment of an impressive managerial career.

The value of postseason games

One recurring argument in the seemingly unending debate over public subsidies of professional sports is if they have any real financial benefit to the hosting city/county.

Hosting the World Series has been a blessing
for St. Louis' city budget.

There is little doubt that the games trigger economic activity; the question is if that activity would occur anyway, just in a different direction, without the games.

On Friday we had a minor data point: The mayor of St. Louis dropped his plan for mandatory furloughs for city workers because the Cardinals had made the World Series. The seven postseason games played so far in the Gateway City brought in an unanticipated $2 million in sales tax revenue; should the Series go the full seven games, the city stands to pull in another $900,000. The furloughs would have saved the city some $2.7 million.

As the linked-to item from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch makes clear, there are city officials who didn't think the furloughs were ever necessary, but that's not the point here. The point is that St. Louis has gotten $2 million in revenue from seven games -- revenue it didn't expect because it didn't expect the games to be played. Nobody seems to be disputing that assessment.

Now, I wouldn't assume that the math (one game = $285,000 in tax receipts) would hold true for the regular season. Postseason tickets are pricier than regular season tickets, for one thing, and it's likely that fan enthusiasm brings more memorabilia sales as well. And extrapolating this to the Twins is dicey as well; I have no idea how Missouri/St. Louis sales taxes compare to Minnesota/Minneapolis.

But if we cut the per-game tax receipts to a third, we get about $95,000 per game. Multiply that by 81 (the number of regular season home games) and we get a bit less than $7.7 million a year in added public revenue.

Does that justify hundreds of millions in public investment in a stadium? Not by itself. But it doesn't hurt.

Still more on Delmon Young

Delmon Young launches his sixth-inning homer.

Delmon Young seems to have taken over this blog, but then, he's taken over the postseason for Detroit.

The erstwhile Twins outfielder hit two more home runs Thursday for Detroit,  helping keep the Tigers alive in the ALCS. He now has five homers in the Tigers' 10 postseason games — one more than he hit for the Twins before being traded in August.

There's a notion going around that this hot streak "proves" that the Twins shouldn't have traded him. I think it "proves" only what we knew — that Young has more power than he showed with the Twins this year, which isn't saying much. A slugging percentage around .400 and an on-base percentage around .300 isn't good for any major league hitter, much less a corner outfielder who had trouble in the field —and that's what Young has done in four of his five full major league seasons, the exception being 2010.

As a Twins fan, it doesn't bother me that Young hit three homers against the Yankees and two more against Texas. The more the merrier. And as a Twins fan, it will not bother me if the Tigers decide to wrap him up with a big-dollar, long-term contract.

Maybe Jim Leyland can get more out of him than Ron Gardenhire did. If so, more power to him. My sense is that Young is never going to live up to the expectations that accompany the No. 1 overall pick.

The reactivation of Delmon Young

Delmon Young hit
three homers in the
ALDS. He hit four
for the Twins before
he was traded to
Detroit in August.

This suggests that the Twins have no monopoly on dubious medical decisons.

The Tigers left Delmon Young off the second round roster because of his strained oblique. But then Magglio Ordonez broke his ankle — rebroke it, actually — and the Tigers exercised their option to replace Mags in mid series (which takes him out for the World Series, which is pretty obvious anyway.)

And they replaced him with ... Delmon Young.

I can't think of anybody who played effectively with a troubled oblique. Such injuries usually take weeks of rest. Young has had about four days.

Options were clearly scarce for the Tigers.

Owwie-oh, Maggilo

Magglio Ordonez was a shell of the hitter
he once was, but even that shell figured
to be useful against Texas' lefty starters.

Magglio Ordonez is out for the rest of the ALCS — and the World Series, should the Detroit Tigers go so far — with a fractured ankle.

He's 37, turns 38 in January. He's coming off easily the worst season of a brilliant career. He's a defensive liability. And now he's broken the same ankle two years running. I will be surprised if anybody, including the Tigers, offers him a contract this winter.

Of more immediate import — the Tigers are now without both Delmon Young and Ordonez, a pair of right-handed hitting corner outfielders who figured to be of importance against Texas' three left-handed starters.

The Tigers could readily replace either with Ryan Raburn without losing anything. But Raburn can't fill in for both.

Ordonez ain't what he used to be. But what he was still had some value in this matchup. That value is unlikely to be replaced by whoever the Tigers activate to fill his roster spot today.

Three great Game Fives

Wake me up before you Go-Go: The Brewers charge the field to celebrate
as Carlos Gomez slides home with the winning run Friday.

Three of the division series went to a fifth game; all three were excellent contests. All were one-run affairs; one went extra innings.

Fox may not be happy that the Yankees and Phillies have been eliminated; the News Corp bean counters may dread the possibility of a Detroit-Milwaukee World Series. But these results pleased me, not least because of the roles certain recent members of the Twins played in those games.

When Carlos Gomez was perched on second base in the bottom of the 10th inning in Milwaukee on Friday night, I flashed back to Game 163 in 2009 — a stirring game in the Dome. Remember? It was Go-Go who carried home the winning run that night.

Among Nick Punto's crisp defensive
plays was this tag on Chase Utley
on a stolen base attempt.

And it was Go-Go who brought the run home on Friday for the Brewers. Good for him. I continue to believe that Gomez will thrive if he lands on a team that can put him in center field and at the bottom of the lineup. He hasn't found that team yet. Maybe he never will.

Also on Friday, Nick Punto played a sparkling game at second base for St. Louis. Punto missed a lot of time with injuries this season, so even if the Twins had kept him, he probably wouldn't have been the reliable Plan B for the infield that he was for so many seasons for Ron Gardenhire. The Twins didn't adequately replace him.

And, of course, Delmon Young on Thursday hit his third home run of the series as the Detroit Tigers knocked off the Yankees. At this writing, I don't know if Young, who strained his oblique Thursday, will be available for the ALCS against Texas.

The Rangers figure to have three lefties in their rotation, so Detroit would be better off with Young in the lineup — if he can swing the bat freely. He missed a month for the Twins with an oblique strain this summer, so I suspect he's not going to be useful in the coming series.

Verlander-Sabathia II

CC Sabathia eats his glove.

A few observations on Monday's Tigers-Yankees game:

*The TBS crew seems startled at how Justin Verlander geared up the velocity for the final couple batters of the game. Their amazement merely underlined how little they know about Verlander in particular, and -- here I extrapolate a bit -- probably about baseball outside the New York Boston axis.

Velander ALWAYS does this. In fact, it's the surest way to know that he's in his final inning. For that last out, he's leaving nothing in the tank. He opens the game throwing low 90s, dials it up to 100 or more when he's in a jam, throttles it back down when not in trouble -- and lets it all out for the final few pitches.

*Maybe it's just me, but CC Sabathia looked fatter than ever. Perhaps I've mainly seen him in the (slimming) home pinstripes this year, but man, in the road grays, he looked particularly blimped out.

* The beauty of that matchup is that Sabathia and Verlander appear to be the workhorses of their generation. It comes out in different ways. Sabathia is probably the most equipped current pitcher to work on short rest. Verlander hasn't done that nearly as often as Sabathia has, but he probably throws more 120-plus pitch games than anybody else -- and, as noted, holds that velocity.

* I was happy to see the Tigers use the bunt on Captain Cheeseburger, and not at all surprised that after Alex Avila missed on his first bunt attempt, Sabathia came up and in on him.  Sabathia hates it when people bunt on him, hates having to field his position and move his poundage.

* Even without his command, Sabathia is still impressive. When he needs a strikeout, he can do that; when he needs a ground ball, he can do that too. No, he didn't pitch well (neither, really, did Verlander, at least by his own standards). After a season spent watching Twins starters (and infielders) make bad situations worse, it was striking to see Sabathia and his infielders display their mastery of damage control.

*The TBS boys were surprised to see Sabathia pitch at all in the sixth; they figured he was done after five. On the surface, I agreed. But here's the thing: Sabathia's shortest outing in 2011 was 5.6 innings (once in April, once in September). Joe Girardi expects more than five-and-fly from the big man. He didn't get it Monday, and today he's counting on A.J. Burnett, which is something he probably doesn't want.

Playoff shortstops

Shortstop was a disaster for the 2011 Twins -- so much so that it remained on my mind as I watched the first weekend of playoff baseball.

The odd thing is how many of the teams in the October tournament struggled at the position. Three of the surviving eight changed their regulars during the season; few have a truly outstanding all-round shortstop.

Break it down:

Sean Rodriguez played 431 innings at short this season
for Tampa Bay, 353 innings at second base and 172
innings at third base.

Tampa Bay Rays: Reid Brignac opened the season as their regular, but he was an utter disaster at the plate (.193/.227/.221). Elliot Johnson didn't hit either. Both men, according to Baseball Info System's advanced metrics (plus-minus and runs saved), fielded well; Brignac was +11 in plus-minus, +8 in runs saved, Johnson +13 and +11 in less than half Brignac's playing time.

But right now it's Sean Rodriguez playing short. He's out of position -- he's a second baseman -- but he's getting the job done well enough in the field, and he supplies something with the bat.

This solution has a ripple effect on the rest of the lineup. Playing Rodriguez at short means Ben Zobrist is locked in at second base, and that in turn deprives manager Joe Maddon of his preferred right fielder against left-handed pitching.

Texas Rangers: Elvis Andrus might be the best defensive shortstop in the American League. The BIS metrics like him (+14, +13).  His offense isn't to the same level, but he just turned 23 in late August. Of all the shortstops in this year's field, he's the one I'd most like to have.

New York Yankees: Derek Jeter had a painfully slow start and caught fire around the time he finally got his much-hyped 3,000th hit. (Second half slash line: .327/.383/.428). His power is pretty much gone, and the defensive metrics continue to say he's a poor defensive shortstop. Plus-minus has him at -22, runs saved at -18.

Detroit Tigers: The Cleveland Indians despaired of Jhonny Peralta's glovework at short, shifted him to third base, then unloaded him. The Tigers returned him to short. The BIS metrics say he's a very slightly below average defender (-5 in plus minus, -4 in runs saved.) From a shortstop who hit .299/.345/.478, that's plenty good enough.

Philadelphia Phillies: Jimmy Rollins is 32, and his game has declined since his 2007 MVP season. The BIS stats say he's an average defender (-4, -2). He is very much still a central figure on the best team in the National League, and it will be interesting to see how he and the Phillies handle his impending free agency.

Ryan Theirot, seen here taking a break-up slide from
Chase Utley, started 87 games at shortstop
for the St. Louis Cardinals.

St. Louis Cardinals: They opened the season with Ryan Theriot, then traded for Rafael Furcal. Theroit was vocally displeased about being replaced, but his defense was bad (-15, -12) and he isn't enough of a hitter to make up for it. Furcal isn't much of a much either, but he's an improvement over Theriot.

Arizona Diamondbacks: Opened with Stephen Drew, who has lived up to the family tradition of being generally viewed as making the least of his considerable talent. Whether that's fair or not, Drew broke his ankle in late June, and the Snakes have made do with veteran utilityman Willie Bloomquist. He's been an adequate patch.

Milwaukee Brewers: Few major league regulars draw the sabermetric disdain of Yuniesky Betancourt, and he certainly isn't a standout. But the position hasn't been a gaping wound for the Brewers either. Betancourt is, by the BIS metrics, a below-average defender, and there's no question that he's a below-average hitter. But this has been one season in which several teams have done worse at short than Betancourt, and that's not always been the case.

Who I like

The headline carries a double meaning — it can be who I'm rooting for, or it can be who I predict will win.

For this year's Twins-free baseball postseason, the two meanings are mutually exclusive.

I expect the World Series to match the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies. Those are the two highest payrolls (not only in the tournament but in MLB total); they have the best records; they probably offer the highest ratings potential for the TV boys.

On that latter point alone, I rather hope to see the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays advance.

Who I root for is another matter. As general rules, I prefer fly-over land to either coast, I prefer north to south, I prefer small market to large market, I prefer American League to National League, and I want to see historically great teams triumph (not an issue this year). And personalities matter -- indeed, they may trump other concerns. I abhor Tony LaRussa, and despise all things Steinbrenner. ABY -- Anybody But Yankees.

CC Sabathia may not be the best pitcher in baseball,
but he's not far behind.

Taking the actual matchups:

Detroit Tigers-New York Yankees
Rooting for: Tigers, of course
Picking: Yankees

I won't be shocked if the Tigers win this one. But I suspect Doug Fister's remarkable record since coming to Detroit is largely a function of a weak Central Division. Detroit needs to win anytime Justin Verlander takes the mound; CC Sabathia makes that difficult.

Texas Rangers-Tampa Bay Rays
Rooting for: Rays
Picking: Rangers

The Rays's struggle to get in leaves them with rookie Matt Moore -- a September callup -- to pitch the opener. Moore is extremely talented, but that's a tall order. The Rangers have their rotation neatly arranged.

This is likely the final month that Ryan Braun and
Prince Fielder will hit back-to-back for Milwaukee.

Arizona Diamondbacks-Milwaukee Brewers
Rooting for: Brewers
Picking: Brewers

A remarkable worst-to-first season for the Snakes, but the Brew Crew has the better stars in Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder; the deeper rotation in Zach Greinke, Yovani Gallardo and Shaun Marcum; and the knowledge that this is this crew's last chance. Fielder's a free agent, he's a Scott Boras client and he ain't staying.

Philadelphia Phillies-St. Louis Cardinals
Rooting for: Neither
Picking: Phillies

Don't really care for either team. Phillies fans -- based on the commenters on the Hardball Talk blog and on a handful encountered at spring training -- come off to me as insufferably smug and entitled. St. Louis is tainted by the bully LaRussa. I will root vigorously for the winner of this series to lose the next one.