Back to Kansas City

The NLCS is over; the Mets dominated that series, never trailing for even an out. I predicted here that the Mets would win; I certainly didn't expect it to come that easily.

That leaves us with perhaps two games, beginning today, between the Blue Jays and Kansas City to determine which team gets to try to derail the Mets sudden juggernaut. The Jays need two wins, the Royals just one; the Jays have, presumably, their two best starters lined up in David Price and Marcus Stroman. The Royals have their two best arms, Yolando Ventura and Johnny Cueto, as well; I'll take the Toronto duo. (Each duo, let it be noted, consists of a hired gun headed to free agency and a homegrown hurler.)

But even though I think Toronto has the advantage of the pitching matchups, the home field reality remains. They are a team of right-handed sluggers, even more so now than in the regular season with Chris Colabello having pushed Justin Smoak aside at first base. The Kansas City stadium is not a place where sluggers thrive.

Pitching, defense and three-run homers -- the Earl Weaver formula -- is usually a formidable combination. But when the three-run homer isn't something you can rely on, the formula breaks down. Which is why I return to what I said before the series began: I am rooting for the Jays, and I think the Royals will win.

Pic of the Week

Jose Bautista reacts to a called third strike during
Saturday's game in Kansas City.

I know, and you know, that the real pic of the week in baseball -- probably the pic of the year -- is the same guy throwing his bat aside after a game-breaking homer in Game Five of the division series.

But I used that one already.

So here is Jose Bautista in a decidedly non-triumphant moment.  As I write and post this, the Kansas City Royals have a 2-0 lead in the best of seven series. But now the ALCS moves to Toronto, and this series matches a pair of teams emphatically crafted to fit their home arena. The Royals are speed, contact hitters, outstanding defense; the Blue Jays lineup is one power hitter after another. The Kansas City stadium discourages the long ball; Toronto's retractable dome rewards it.

The Jays are down. They are not out.

Brandon goes Boom

Brandon Crawford unloads on this Edinson
Volquez pitch. He hit 10 homers in the regular
season, a career high.

Wednesday's wild card game wasn't up to the standard of Tuesday's, but that's a pretty high bar to set.

Brandon Crawford, former Mankato Moondog (2005) and current San Francisco Giant, put this one on ice with a grand slam in the fourth inning.

Of course, the Giants' Bay Area neighbors for Oakland were unable to sustain a four-run lead of their own in the AL wild card game. The difference: Jon Lester let the Kansas City Royals back into the game, and Madison Bumgarner did not.

So the National League team I was most interested in rooting for (Pittsburgh) is eliminated. Let's go down the list of division series match-ups:

AL: Anaheim versus Kansas City; Baltimore vs. Detroit.

The Angels had much the better record and do more things well than the Royals do, plus manager Mike Scoscia is far less likely to make a mess than is Ned Yost. But Anaheim's starting pitching has been thinned by injuries; Matt Shoemaker, who will start Game 2, hasn't pitched in more than two weeks. (I saw him against the Twins in early September and was not impressed.)

I'll almost always root for the Midwest team over one from Southern California, and this will be no exception. And while Anaheim is the better team, I'll go with K.C. to take this series. Hope so; the longer Yost is the Royals manager, the better for the Twins.

The other series is a genuine test of two postseason power theories. Theory one is that power arms win in October, and the Tigers have a genuine advantage in power arms. Theory two is that teams based on power hitters struggle in October; the weather is colder and the pitchers don't make as many mistakes. Baltimore's offense is based on the home run.

Both theories point to Detroit, so that's my pick. As far as rooting goes, I'm torn. I like the Orioles; they were my favorite non-Twins team in my formative years of fandom. I may well find as the series progress that I want the O's. I start without a preference.

NL: Washington-San Francisco; St. Louis-Los Angeles

I see no reason to pick against the Nationals. Deep rotation, solid lineup. Former Twin Denard Span had his best season since 2009 (led the National League in hits) and gives me a rooting interest. The Giants always seem to have enough pitching to be tough in October, but I gotta go with the Nats.

The Cardinals and Dodgers? I'd like them both to lose. Only one will, however. And I'll pick the Cardinals to win his one. As for rooting, I dislike both operations, so I'll refrain from making any emotional investment.

The uncaged Tigers

Phil Coke — who came to the Tigers
as a side piece in a complex trade that
also involved Curtis Granderson, Austin
Jackson, Max Scherzer and Ian Kennedy—
was an unlikely closer in the ALCS.

The lead to the Chicago Tribune's story on the final game of the American League Championship Series had it right — the Yankees got all the attention, the Tigers got all the wins.

So today, let us focus for once on the team in the Old English Ds.

The Tigers have obvious flaws to match their equally obvious strengths. Those flaws, over the course of the long season, left them with just the seventh best record in the AL — behind New York, Oakland, Texas, Baltimore, Anaheim and Tampa Bay — but they had enough to top the league's weakest division.

The strengths were enough, in a short series, to best Oakland. The Tigers have Justin Verlander, who is today the best pitcher on the planet, and Verlander started twice in the five games and won twice.

And the Tigers matched up very well with the Yankees in the second round. The aging Yankees now struggle to hit good fastballs, and the Tigers have built their pitching staff around velocity.

When Detroit closer Jose Valverde cratered, Jim Leyland made do with left-hander Phil Coke. Coke was mediocre in the regular season and untouchable in the ALCS.  This is not unlike Delmon Young, the former Twin: a low-grade regular season and heroics in the ALCS. Young hit .262/.296/.411 for the year, which is woefully inadequate for a corner outfielder turned DH, but he drove in the go-ahead runs in all four games against the Yankees.

The Tigers entered the 2012 season entertaining World Series dreams. For much of the year, it appeared their defensive shortcomings would undermine those ambitions. And now, in mid-October, they clutch the American League title and stand four wins from the big prize.

Girardi should return to the basics

The media horde surrounds Alex Rodriguez, written
out of the lineup yet again by his manager.

With his Yankees one loss from elimination Wednesday, Joe Girardi designed a lineup that excluded his 43-homer center fielder (Curtis Granderson) and the highest paid player in baseball history (Alex Rodriguez).

That lineup didn't get used, as the game was postponed to this afternoon because of rain in Detroit. I think Girardi would do well, with another night to sleep on it, to tear up that lineup and rethink the panic it reveals.

A 25-man roster simply isn't large enough to bench every slumping hitter Girardi has. And even if it were possible, it would hardly be wise.

Players are constantly urged to "play within yourself." The same is true of managers — it is possible to try too hard, to outsmart yourself, to overmanage.

It's time for Girardi to say: If we're going down, we're going down with our best. This is the lineup that won 95 games; this is the lineup that led the American League in wins. If it doesn't get the job done, so be it.

I say that knowing that it's impossible for Girardi to put his full regular lineup on the field. Derek Jeter isn't playing again in 2012, and somebody else has to play shortstop.

Shuffling the slumpers in and out just smacks of panic. And panic is never useful.

Tigers v. Yankees. Yuck.

Justin Verlander's ERAs in six postseason
series: 5.06, 6.75, 5.73, 5.00, 5.56 and 0.56. 

So this is what the American League is down to for its World Series representative:

The New York Yankees, the very symbol of smug entitlement, and the esthetically unappealing Detroit Tigers.

Obviously, I was rooting for the Orioles and Athletics in the division series. The big budget boys won.

Both teams feature power hitters, power pitchers, inferior defense (especially Detroit), offenses that struggle to generate runs without homers and a lot of wasted payroll (especially the Yankees).

After watching the Yankees hitters flail and fail repeatedly against Baltimore this week, I'm inclined to predict that the Tigers' fastballs will be too much for them. True, Justin Verlander won't be available until the middle of the ALCS, but Max Scherzer is a high-velocity arm, and Anibal Sanchez is no slouch.

And sooner or later, Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder have to start hitting. Don't they?

The surviving National League teams, San Francisco and St. Louis, are likewise less interesting to me than the teams they vanquished, Cincinnati and Washington -- the two teams with the best records in the league.

The four division series all went the maximum five games, and, particularly in the AL series, there was a lot of drama. But only one of the higher seeds -- the Yankees -- advanced. Such is postseason baseball. In a short series -- and even a seven-game series is short -- the better team doesn't always win.

Yankees lose, Yankees lose

Thhhe. Yankees. Lose.

Actually, that shortchanges the Texas Rangers. The Rangers won that series more than the Yankees lost it.

No save opportunities for Neftali Feliz; the Rangers won by at least four runs in each of their victories. Cliff Lee only had to pitch once. The Yankees were lucky to have two wins in the six games.

Texas WON that series.

Still more bad umpiring

More blown calls in Tuesday's ALCS game. And this time two of them came from an ump universally regarded as one of the very best: Tim McClelland.

McClelland erred in ruling that Nick Swisher left third too soon on a fly out. And he erred in ruling that Robinson Cano was safe when he and Jorge Posada pulled off the old Daffyness Boys Dodgers trick of multiple men on third — or, to be strictly accurate, nobody on third, but multiple guys standing around it.

McClelland, to his credit, was big enough to face the media after the game — unlike, for example, Phil Cuzzi — and admit his foulups — unlike, for example, Randy Marsh. But then, McClelland is the crew chief. He had nobody to hide behind. And the video evidence was too damning to ignore.

I can understand how he missed the Swisher call — and will even give him a certain amount of credit for making the call, there being a lot of umps who simply won't call a runner out on an appeal play unless it's so blatant that there won't be an argument. (Which doesn't mean he got it right.) But the Posada-Cano call ... I can't wrap my brain around that one. Neither was anywhere near the bag when tagged.

The good news for MLB is that the game was such a rout that the blown calls didn't matter. The bad news is that the blown calls continue. And continue. And continue ...

Sympathy for the Devil

I gripe a lot — more than I should — about baseball broadcasters. 

Today I contemplated the utter silliness of the sponsorship of the keys of the game segment early in Fox' broadcast, and, for the first time, felt sorry for Joe Buck.

How much did he have to rehearse to say "the Ninja Assassin keys to the game" with a straight face? 

Playing with match(up)s

It's kind of amusing to see Joe Girardi getting pilloried for switching from one right-handed reliever (David Robertson) to another (Alfredo Aceves) in mid inning.

Girardi outmanaged — by himself says the Daily News.

This is the way managers handle their bullpens nowadays — playing matchups.

Or playing with matches. Eventually they find somebody who doesn't have it that day, and then they get burned.

Girardi isn't going into detail on why he wanted Aceves rather than Robertson in the 11th inning after Robertson got the first two outs: "It's just different kind of stuff against those hitters. We have all the matchups and all the scouting reports, and we felt [Aceves] was a better matchup."

The scounting reports I've seen on Robertson say he has a quality fastball and curve; Aceves has average stuff, including a change. I suspect, therefore, that the Yankees scouting report says to use the change to get Howie Kendrick (above) out.

Aceves was the eighth pitcher Girardi used in Game 3. It took Girardi a while, but he found one without good stuff.

Girardi had been 5-0 running relievers in and out. Now he's 5-1. And he's still got CC Sabathia pitching Tuesday. The Fat Man has a way of making bullpens irrelevant.

Game 4 might be the key game of the ALCS. Sabathia's on short rest. If the Angels can knock him off, they might win this series. I remain doubtful.
---

Over in the other LCS, the Phillies are now one win away from a return to the World Series. And on paper, the Phillies have the advantage in every pitching matchup.

Of course, on paper, the Dodgers have the advantage when the games go to the bullpens, but on Monday, the Phillies pen was solid and the Dodgers closer failed.

I suspect the Phillies would love to see the Angels win the ALCS. That way they can line up Pedro Martinez for more warm-weather starts. I'm not sure how well his arm will respond to chilly weather.

And that I've turned my thoughts to how to handle Pedro in the World Series tell you what I think of the Dodgers' chances.

ALCS Game 2: Yankees 4, Angels 3, 13 innings

This game ended well after our press deadline, so here is the AP game story.

The winning run scored because Anaheim's second baseman, Macier Izturis, made an over-aggressive play. Men on first and second, one out, a grounder to Izturis's glove side. Instead of taking the sure out at first base, he tried for the tougher out at second, presumably in hopes of getting an inning-ending double play. He threw the ball past shortstop Erick Aybar, and Hairston scored (right).

Too aggressive. It was a dicey DP ball, and there was no reason to worry about a second runner in scoring position. Only Hairston mattered. Take the sure out, take your chances on the next hitter.

The Yankees thrive on other teams' over-aggressiveness. Torii Hunter in the first game of the series. Nick Punto and Carlos Gomez on the base paths in the division series.

You don't see the Yankees diving for balls on defense, and you don't see them taking chances running the bases. Earl Weaver would approve; he didn't want his players diving and running into walls. Such plays can result in injuries and misplays. Take the easy base, take the sure out, be in position, make the percentages work in your favor.

The Angels pride themselves on their aggressiveness. In the regular season, against bad teams, that can be effective. Bad teams miss cutoff men; bad teams throw to the wrong bases; bad teams can be pressured into making mistakes.

Flash and dash don't fare so well against good percentage baseball.

Quotes, notes and comment

"It was about as cold as it gets. It was pretty nasty today."

—CC Sabathia after Game One of the ALCS

You ain't seen nothin' yet, CC.

The official temperature at game time in Yankee Stadium on Friday was 45 degrees. But it was windy and rainy and pretty darn miserable — and it's probably going to be worse for tonight's scheduled Game 2.

I'm willing to chalk up the lousy weather so far this postseason to bad luck. But we're in mid-October now, and the prospects for Indian summer are waning fast. Bud Selig wanted a schedule that pushed the World Series into November, and he got it. He deserves all the snow, ice and frostbite a Phillies-Yankees series can offer.

*It's not really the playoffs unless Torii Hunter overruns a single to turn it into extra bases.

He did it twice while with the Twins, and he did it again Friday night for Anaheim. This time he did it on a grass field, so the ball didn't roll on to the outfield fence for four bases. And at least this time he got charged with an error.

Officially, Anaheim was charged with three errors. But that doesn't count the first inning popup Erick Aybar and Chone Figgins neglected to corral. That was counted as a hit — and a two-out run.

* The Yankees plan to work Sabathia on three days rest in Game 4; if the games are played as scheduled, that will allow them to go with just three starters in the ALCS while not working anybody else on short rest. A postponement tonight would change that.

Sabathia should be able to handle a start on short rest. He had a lighter workload this season (231 innings, as opposed to 253 last year and 241 in 2007), so the weariness factor that seemed the likely cause of his playoff implosion the past two years shouldn't be a factor.

* A great job Friday by Pedro Martinez, who tossed seven shutout innings on 87 pitches against the Dodgers. After which the Phillies middle relief spent the eight inning demonstrating why it's not easy to be Charlie Manuel. It took five relievers to get three outs.

Of course, things might have worked out had Chase Utley made a routine double play pivot. Second time in as many games that Utley — regarded as a superior defensive second baseman — has thrown away a DP ball.

And for that matter, the Phillies scored just one run off former Phillie Vincente Padilla. I think they expected to crack Padilla like a bag of roasted peanuts. Didn't happen. Should have. He's not that good.

So the NLDS is tied at one game apiece — and the series moves to the chill (I assume) of Philadelphia.