While watching last night’s game in which the Red Sox copped their second World Series title in four years, Fox flashed a graphic on the screen that showed that Red Sox rookie Jon Lester was only the third pitcher in history to win the clinching game in his first postseason start, the others being W. Ford and T. Bonham. I immediately recognized both hurlers as Whitey Ford and Tiny Bonham and though I know plenty about Ford I’m only vaguely familiar with Bonham and only because he pitched in the Seamheads.com Diamond Kings Historical Fantasy League. So out of curiosity I thought I’d look into his career and his lone start, which came in Game 5 of the 1941 World Series between the Yankees and Dodgers.

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“You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.”

Former major league pitcher Jim Bouton ended his controversial book Ball Four with those lines in 1969 and the nation has been in his grip ever since. The book was a best seller and was named one of the “Books of the 20^th Century” by the New York Public Library, but its success didn’t come without a price.

When his career ended in 1970 (he made a brief comeback in 1978) the former Yankee hurler affectionately known as “Bulldog” was exiled from Yankee Stadium due to the book’s candid revelations about baseball players’ off field activities and how the Yankees front office conducted its business.

Only six years earlier at the age of 25, Bouton was coming off consecutive seasons in which he won 21 and 18 regular season games, respectively, earned a spot on the American League All-Star team in 1963 and beat the Cardinals twice in the ’64 World Series. He copped only sixteen more wins over the rest of his career, played for three different teams after leaving the Yankees, attempted a comeback as a knuckleballer in 1978, and became a pariah for breaking one of baseball’s cardinal rules by exposing the privacy of baseball clubhouses to the general pubic.

Bouton’s son Michael wrote a letter to the New York Times in 1998 asking that the Yankees let bygones be bygones and invite his father back to “The House That Ruth Built” for Old Timers’ Day. The Yankees acquiesced and Bouton returned to Yankee Stadium for the first time in 28 years.

I learned in 2002 that Bouton was trying to convince the Seattle Mariners to host an Old Timers’ Day for the old Seattle Pilots, so I contacted him about granting me an interview and he graciously accepted. The following is a transcript of our conversation five years ago:

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Yet another chapter excerpt from Mike Hoban’s book, Baseball’s Best: The TRUE Hall of Famers, has been added to the site.  In Chapter Five, Dr. Hoban asks whether or not it’s fair to use the same criteria to evaluate short but great careers, like that of Jackie Robinson, and longer careers.  He evaluates the careers of a handful of players who played in fewer than 1800 games—men like Hank Greenberg, Mickey Cochrane and Kirby Puckett—and also discusses several more Hall of Famers who did not meet the minimum requirements based on his NEWS Hall of Fame Monitor scores.  Check it out!

Another chapter excerpt from Mike Hoban’s book, Baseball’s Best: The TRUE Hall of Famers, has been added to the site.  In Chapter Four, Dr. Hoban discusses 38 position players who are in the Hall of Fame and uses his NEWS HOF Monitor scores to determine whether or not they have the numbers worthy of the HOF.  Check it out!

About 25 years ago, Bill James introduced a prediction system that picked the World Series winner with 70% accuracy. He wrote about the system for Inside Sports magazine in 1982, then expounded on it in his 1984 Baseball Abstract. He developed the system in 1972 and it accurately predicted the World Series winner at a 68% clip for 12 years. Then he went back and used it to predict all of the postseason series of the 20th century and it returned a success rate of 73%. So I’ve decided to apply the system to this year’s Fall Classic to see which team is expected to win.

The system hasn’t been updated since 1984 (as far as I know), so the point distribution may not be as precise as it should be. For example, James awards 19 points to the team that threw more shutouts during the regular season because at the time of the original research, teams with more shutouts had won 19 more postseason series than teams with fewer shutouts. There have been 35 years of postseason games since he developed the system and I have no doubt the point distribution should be adjusted based on the last three-and-a-half decades of playoff games, but for now we’ll stick with the old system and see how it does. Maybe someday I’ll update it and see how it works moving forward (or maybe James will).

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I have always liked Joe Torre – admiring his class and his style. And, like most followers of the game, I have never liked George Steinbrenner. But, at his press conference on Oct. 18, Joe got it all wrong. St. Joe did not come across as a martyr to me. He came across as a tired old man who had lost touch with reality. Just for the record, I am older than Joe and a native New Yorker who has followed the game for more than 60 years (and I am not a Yankee fan).

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I never thought I’d say this about a Yankee, but I love Joe Torre. That’s right, I have a major man crush on the former Yankee skipper after he told George Steinbrenner and his sons, Uday and Qusay, where they could stick their ridiculous contract offer. It wasn’t the amount that was ridiculous—if you’ve been paying attention Torre was making twice as much as the next highest paid manager and you could hardly call $5 million with another alleged $3 million in incentives “ridiculous”—it was the length (one year) and the way it was presented that pissed Torre off and had him opining that the offer was “insulting.”It was clear that the Steinbrenner faction was low-balling Torre on purpose, hoping that he’d reject their offer, so they could replace him, which is what George has wanted to do for at least a couple years now. And if Torre had accepted their offer, they would have had one of the best managers in baseball at $2.5 million less than he’d made in 2006.

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Tuesday night’s game reminded me of another tough decision a Red Sox manager had to make about who to pitch in a crucial game. Terry Francona chose rested, but still not completely healthy veteran knuckleballer Tim Wakefield to face the Indians in Game 4 of the ALCS and the move backfired as Wakefield was touched for five runs in 4 2/3 innings in a 7-3 Boston loss that put them down three games to one in the best-of-seven series. Almost 60 years ago these same two teams met in a one-game playoff to determine who would face the Boston Braves in the World Series.

With three games left in the 1948 season the Indians held a two game lead over both the Red Sox and Yankees, but losses to the Tigers in two of their final three contests and a two-game sweep by the Red Sox over the Yankees gave Cleveland and Boston identical 96-58 records to close out the season. Boston was buzzing about a potential World Series match-up between the Red Sox and the National League’s Braves, but the Sox had to defeat the Indians one last time to advance to the Series.

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As promised I’ve posted chapter excerpts from Dr. Michael Hoban’s book, Baseball’s Best:  The TRUE Hall of Famers.  I’ve also included a list of the 25 best position players and pitchers from the 20th century.  Check it out!

While watching last night’s ALCS game between the Red Sox and Indians, I decided to take notes and write down my thoughts as they occurred. Here they are.

• At the start of the game Joe Buck asserted that Curt Schilling was a Hall of Famer. Schilling doesn’t feel like a Hall of Famer to me, so I thought I’d do a little research before dismissing Buck as a Schilling apologist. Schilling’s raw numbers are very good. He’s 216-146 with an ERA 3.46, he’s fanned 3,116 batters, boasts a K/BB ratio of 4.38, and has an ERA+ of 126. He ranks 79th in career wins (tied with Wilbur Cooper and Charlie Hough); he’s 14th in strikeouts and needs only two more to pass Bob Gibson on the all-time list; he has the second best K/BB ratio of all-time, sitting behind only Tommy Bond; and he’s 52nd in ERA+, tied with seven other guys, including Tommy Bridges and Bret Saberhagen. He has two more “Black Ink” points and 20 more “Gray Ink” points than an average Hall of Famer and has 65 more “Hall of Fame Monitor” points than an average Hall of Famer.

Below are the average numbers for pitchers in the HOF:

	W	L	Pct.	IP	H	BB	K	ERA
AVG	248	174	.588	3735	3456	1022	1999	2.99
BBWAA	268	187	.589	4022	3629	1154	2494	3.03
VET	228	160	.587	3431	3272	882	1473	2.94
Schilling	216	146	.597	3261	2998	711	3116	3.46

Schilling’s numbers look pretty good compared to the average Hall of Famer and when you throw in his postseason accomplishments, they look even better. I’m still not convinced that Schilling is a Hall of Famer, though. Neither is Dr. Michael Hoban, who in 2006 wrote in his book, Baseball’s Best: The TRUE Hall of Famers: “Curt Schilling has pitched for nineteen seasons. With a CV of 191, he would need 367 win shares to reach a NEWS score of 235 - and that’s not going to happen. But what about 300 win shares? He needs 58 more win shares to reach 300. Over the past four seasons, he has earned 55 win shares. At the age of 40, can he earn 58 more win shares? It’s possible, but very unlikely.” (Editor’s note: Schilling earned 10.3 win shares in 2007).

• It sounded like Tim McCarver is losing his voice. Maybe we can lock him in a room with Joe Morgan so Morgan will catch what McCarver has.

• Memo to Fox: If you’re going to use a celebrity to announce a team’s lineup make sure he knows what the hell he’s talking about. When James Taylor called Kevin Youkilis the “first base player” I almost spit my beer into my lap. Are you shitting me? Couldn’t they have used Matt Damon? Michael Chiklis? Denis Leary? Couldn’t they have pried Stephen King away from his book long enough to announce the damn lineup? Fox clearly loves putting him on camera, they might as well let him speak into it.

• Reason #267 to love Dustin Pedroia: He came to the plate hacking in the first and struck out on pitches that were in the dirt, but he adjusted his approach (probably after watching the rest of Boston’s lineup) and walked on four pitches in his next at-bat. His swing-from-the-ass-on-every-pitch attitude is fun to watch from someone who stands about 4′ 9″, but it was good to see him tone it down a bit and take that free pass.

• Last night’s trivia question asked which player had appeared in the postseason for the most teams (they used the phrase “most different postseason teams”) and I figured it was Kenny Lofton, but I also thought Lonnie Smith and Don Baylor may have been the right answer. As it turned out Lofton has played for six different teams in the postseason (as has David Wells) , while Baylor played for five (Baltimore in ‘73 and ‘74, California in ‘79 and ‘82, Boston in ‘86, Minnesota in ‘87, and Oakland in ‘88) and Smith played for four (Philadelphia in ‘80 and ‘81, St. Louis in ‘82, Kansas City in ‘85, and Atlanta in ‘91 and ‘92).

• Is it just me or do Fox’s microphones make every hit ball sound like it’s going 600 feet and every fastball sound like it’s going 110 MPH?

• When a pitch just above the belt is called “up and away” (Schilling to Blake in the fifth), you know the strike zone is completely screwed. If you ever get a chance to watch a late 60s game on ESPN Classic, pay attention to the strike zone. Pitches at the letters were called strikes, just as they’re supposed to be. We can blame steroids, small parks, juiced balls, expansion, and the designated hitter for baseball’s offensive explosion, but until the umpires start calling the high strike again, batters will continue to have an advantage over pitchers.

• If Ryan Garko wasn’t a baseball player one gets the impression he’d make a great enforcer for the mob. It must be the nose (and the physique).

• Reports that George Mitchell’s investigation of baseball players’ use of performance-enhancing drugs has dug up some big-name players has me speculating about who might be on that list. I’m not about to accuse anyone at this point, but am I the only one who thinks Melvin Mora’s 2004 season looks fishy as hell? HGH usage seems to have been prevalent in 2004 before MLB pulled its head out of its ass and started paying attention to what its players were doing behind closed doors. And now that Orioles outfielder Jay Gibbons has been implicated, it’s not hard to imagine other Orioles taking performance enhancers. Of course I’m not naming names; I’m only speculating.

• Casey Blake made a nice pivot on a potential double play, then started a beautiful DP to end the fifth, but he still looks like he should be teaching chemistry somewhere (or playing the part of Alex P. Keaton’s father on “Family Ties”).

• Am I the only one who’s worried that Hideki Okajima is going to get drilled in the head by a line drive someday? Every pitcher risks getting hit by a batted ball, but Okajima’s going to get hit in the ear and he won’t even see it coming.

• Speaking of Okajima, the Red Sox should renegotiate his contract and give him the money they’re paying Daisuke Matsuzaka and give Matsuzaka what they’re paying Okajima.

• Indians reliever Rafael Betancourt is listed at 200 pounds. If Betancourt weighs only 200 pounds, I’m the pope.

• There was a time when I thought Coco Crisp might not be a very good center fielder because of the way he played the position prior to coming to Boston. What the heck was I thinking?

• J.D. Drew went 2-for-5 in Game 2 and made a difficult catch along the right field line in Game 1, but I’d still take a battered, aging Trot Nixon over Drew any day. Nixon plays like he gives a shit; Drew plays like he’d rather be home doing his taxes.

• Eric Gagne has been so bad since coming to Boston (6.75 ERA, two losses, and three blown saves) that when he was brought into last night’s game, I immediately turned to ESPN College GameDay. I’d rather watch highlights of William and Mary vs. Maine than experience the inevitable meltdown of “The Goon.”

• All this talk about Joe Torre and Tony LaRussa has me wondering why the Yankees and Cardinals don’t consummate a trade that sends Torre to St. Louis and LaRussa to New York. You scoff but on August 3, 1960 the Tigers sent manager Jimmy Dykes to Cleveland for manager Joe Gordon. The trade did nothing for either team. Under Dykes, the Tigers went 44-52 (.458) before going 26-31 (.456) under Gordon. The Indians were actually decent under Gordon, going 49-46 (.516) before winning only 26 of 58 (.448) under Dykes. The trade wasn’t made because either team thought it would actually improve their chances of winning; it was made because Gordon and Indians G.M. Frank Lane despised each other.

Torre and Yankees G.M. Brian Cashman get along well and LaRussa got along well with former Cards G.M. Walt Jocketty, so that’s not the issue. But how cool would it be to see Torre in a Cardinals uniform again and how fitting would it be for the arrogant LaRussa to end up managing in a city that has as many newspapers as citizens?

Seamheads.com is featuring a new book written by Dr. Michael Hoban, a professor emeritus from City University of New York and a longtime SABR member.  Dr. Hoban has used Bill James’ Win Shares system to come up with a new Hall of Fame monitor score in an effort to determine which players truly deserve to be in the HOF.  Just click on the book cover in the “Featured Books” section for more information about the book.  I’ll be posting chapter excerpts and a list of the 25 best position players and pitchers from the 20th century over the next few days.  Stay tuned!

This morning while driving to work I was listening to ESPN’s Colin Cowherd talk about the upcoming ALCS and he was of the opinion that Cleveland has the edge over Boston because the Red Sox are under more pressure to win, the Indians’ aces are better than Boston’s, and because Cleveland has better middle relief. Is he kidding me?

About point two I can’t really argue. Frankly I’d take Josh Beckett over C.C. Sabathia, but it’s close and Beckett mostly gets the edge because of his postseason track record. But I have to admit I like Sabathia and Fausto Carmona over Beckett and Schilling (or Matsuzaka). You could certainly argue that Schilling’s postseason track record gives him an edge over Carmona, but Carmona looks to be the better pitcher and both he and Sabathia are legitimate Cy Young contenders while Schilling isn’t.

The Red Sox staff has more depth, though. Assuming a seven-game series, Beckett will most likely start Games 1, 4, and 7 and Schilling will most likely go in Games 2 and 5. That leaves Matsuzaka to pitch Games 3 and 6 against either Jake Westbrook or Paul Byrd. There’s also speculation that Tim Wakefield will be healthy enough to pitch Game 4, which would obviously muck up the above scenario, giving Beckett one less start, but also taking one away from Matsuzaka.

I like the back end of Boston’s rotation much more than Cleveland’s.

Cowherd’s third point was that Cleveland has better middle relief than Boston. Middle relief is important, although I have no idea what impact middle relievers have had on past playoff series. At least statistically anyway. Bill James makes no mention of middle relievers in his World Series Prediction System, giving points based on the performance of each team’s entire pitching staff, probably because middle relievers (or any kind of relievers) are new to the game, relatively speaking. Regardless I wanted to see if Cowherd had a point or if he was just blowing smoke out of his ass, so I compared each team’s middle relief corps.

It looks like Cowherd was right. Cleveland clearly has a better middle relief corps. Even if they remove Gagne from the picture (we can always hope), the Sox’s ERA (2.67) is still higher than that of the Indians. Jon Lester could be a wild card for Boston, though, as he’s been moved from the rotation to the bullpen, but that could backfire just as easily as it could help.

So I guess my only bone of contention with Cowherd is his insistence that the Red Sox are under more pressure to win than the Indians. According to Colin, the Indians are “loose” while the Red Sox are “tight.” How he knows this is anyone’s guess. I don’t know either, so I’ll have to come at this from a fan’s perspective. No city in America is as passionate about its baseball team than Boston (New York, St. Louis, and Chicago notwithstanding). Except for New York, media coverage is neither as prevalent or intrusive as it is in Boston (it’s not uncommon for the Red Sox to get 15 or more pages of coverage in the local papers during the postseason) and the papers can adopt a doom and gloom attitude when things aren’t going well.

Having said that, I don’t think Red Sox Nation feels the same way about winning (or losing) the World Series as it did prior to 2004. If the Sox lose to the Indians we’ll be upset for sure, but we won’t be suicidal. Our entire winters won’t be ruined by yet another near miss at a championship that none of us had ever experienced. It won’t feel like it did in 2003 when Grady “Effing” Little ignored the most obvious signs (not to mention clear-cut stats) and left a clearly fatigued Pedro Martinez on the mound to lose to the “effing” Yankees. It won’t feel like it did in 1986, 1978, and 1975, and every other postseason series we lost in between.

If the Sox lose, I can honestly say I’ll be able to move onto something else until next spring when I begin to prepare for another season. I hope I can speak for the rest of Red Sox Nation when I say that. I also hope the players feel the same. Winning the Series in ‘04 finally took the edge off and vanquished that ridiculous Curse of the Bambino bullshit. Besides, we have a 5-0 Patriots team that looks to be favored to win another Super Bowl, a fourth-ranked Boston College football team that’s ranked as high as it’s ever been, and a Celtics team that might actually be good enough to compete for a change. If nothing else they’ll be entertaining.

Meanwhile Cleveland has a Browns team that looks to be improved but is far from a championship, a Cavaliers team that made it to the NBA finals last year but lost in four games, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and a river that once caught fire. It also hasn’t welcomed home a World Series champion since the Truman administration (1948 to be exact; don’t worry I had to look it up too, not the year but the part about Truman). In 1954 the Indians won a then American League record 111 games only to be swept in the World Series by the Giants. It took them 41 years to win their next pennant, but they lost to the Braves in the ‘95 World Series, then fell to the Marlins in ‘97. They haven’t been to the World Series since.

Cleveland may not be a city that puts a ton of pressure on its sports teams, at least not to the degree of Boston or New York, but I have to think that Indian Nation is a bit tired of a championship drought that is coming up on 60 years. I find it difficult to believe the Indians aren’t feeling the hot breath of failed Octobers past on the nape of their necks.

Now that the Red Sox have easily dispatched the Angels and we’re all waiting breathlessly for the outcome of the Indians/Yankees series, it’s time to vent my frustration on Daisuke “Dice-K” Matsuzaka and his performance, or lack thereof, in Game 2 of the ALDS (I’ll vent on Eric Gagne another day). Going into the game I was nervous because of Matsuzaka’s recent record of futility—he had a 5.19 ERA after the All-Star break, his K/BB ratio went from 3.24 in the first half to 1.86 in the second half, and he sported a 7.62 ERA in September. Needless to say I had reason to be on edge as he allowed Los Angeles (or is it Anaheim? Can’t they just go back to being the California Angels, for Christ’s sake?) three runs on seven hits and three walks in only 4 2/3 innings. Anyone who knows me knows that I was yelling at my big screen T.V. most of the game and probably scaring the hell out of my neighbors as I’m wont to do during big games (or inconsequential games or days that end in “y”).

Things got so bad that I left the house to go to the store with my wife (something I typically don’t do during big games) to keep my head from exploding. As it turns out, going to the store was the best thing I could have done. I bought a cheap bottle of red wine hoping it would soothe my pain, but instead it made a joyous celebration even merrier (and a bit foggier) when Manny Ramirez launched a Francisco Rodriguez “cripple” into space in the bottom of the ninth inning to win the tightly contested game. Had I had my wits about me (and a blood/alcohol level below the legal limit), I would have gone out for another bottle. Hell I should have bought two in the first place.

Part of Matsuzaka’s problem is that he followed Josh Beckett’s brilliant Game 1 performance in which he shut out the Angels on four hits, struck out eight batters while walking none, and was nearly perfect with his pitches over the final seven innings. Most of Matsuzaka’s problem is that he’s afraid to throw strikes (or so it appears). Beckett threw first pitch strikes to 25 of the 31 batters he faced (81%), and only twice over the last seven innings did he start a batter off with a ball. Overall he threw 77% of his pitches for strikes. Matsuzaka threw first pitch strikes to 62% of the batters he faced and 65% of his total pitches were strikes, which is a hair above his season average. Beckett’s performance was masterful and a joy to watch. Watching Matsuzaka pitch borders on torture at worst (yes that’s too strong a word, but I’m using it anyway) and is maddeningly frustrating at best.

To make matters worse (for Matsuzaka, not Red Sox fans), Curt Schilling threw a workman-like and efficient seven innings in Game 3, shutting out the Angels for seven innings on six hits and walk. Schilling threw first pitch strikes 63% of the time, which is only a percentage point better than Dice-K, but what made Schilling’s performance almost as impressive as Beckett’s and much better than Matsuzaka’s is what he did with the rest of his pitches. Of the three, Schilling threw a higher percentage of strikes (71%) with his remaining pitches than either of the other two. Beckett threw 70% of his remaining pitches for strikes. You can guess who finished third (his name rhymes with Schmatsuzaka). That’s right Dice-K tossed only 58% of his remaining pitches for strikes. So while Schilling and Beckett kept coming after hitters, Matsuzaka was doing what he’s been doing for most of the second half of the season—being what former A.L. Cy Young Award winner and current broadcaster, Steve Stone, called a “power nibbler.”

To be fair to Matsuzaka, Beckett’s numbers were well above his norms this season. The guy’s been lights out all year and as far as I’m concerned he’s this year’s A.L. Cy Young Award winner, despite what ESPN’s Cy Young predictor says. But he’s not normally that dominant. Heck, last Wednesday’s performance was by far his best outing of the year. Schilling was also better than normal, although he threw fewer first pitch strikes than he typically does. But he made up for that by throwing more second, third, fourth (and so on) pitch strikes than normal.

Matsuzaka had the nearly impossible task of following Beckett and preceding Schilling, two of the best postseason pitchers of this generation. He was damned from the start. And he looked it. But he was actually slightly better in Game 2 than he’s been throughout the season, at least in terms of strike percentage and first strike percentage. But he couldn’t find the strike zone with a lot of the rest of his pitches and the perception remains that he’s afraid to throw strikes. In fact, his strike percentage dropped almost every month this season, before rebounding in September:

And his second half strike percentage is decidedly lower than it was before the All-Star break:

Now he has the unenviable task of facing either the Indians or Yankees in the ALCS (Cleveland is ahead 4-0 in the second inning as of this writing), both of whom are much more patient at the plate than the Angels, who ranked ninth in the league in free passes (the Yankees ranked third in the A.L. in walks while Cleveland ranked fourth). Meanwhile both Colorado and Arizona ranked among the upper half of the N.L. in walks drawn, with the Rockies finishing second only to the Phillies. In other words it’s not going to get any easier for Matsuzaka as the post season moves along.

Ironically what Dice-K needs less of is the same thing he needs more of—BALLS. And if he doesn’t get a pair soon, I have a feeling I’ll need more wine.