Predicting the AL and NL Wild Card Races

With just over a month left, the playoff races are beginning to take shape.

The division races are fairly clear: Yankees, Angels and one of Tigers/White Sox in the American League, and Phillies and Cardinals in the National League; surprisingly it's the Dodgers who may have the most tenuous hold on their division lead in the NL.

The Wild Card races, however, are a bit harder to predict.

When the Yankees are so likely to win the East, why does the Wild Card race matter?

For two reasons: a) if the AL Wild Card winner comes out of the Central or the West, that will likely be the team the Yankees play in the first round, and b) The Wild Card winner has played in--and won--a fair few of this decade's World Series.

So, let's go through the teams in most contention:

American League

Boston Red Sox

The Red Sox have to be considered the favorite just because they've held the position for so long, but that doesn't mean they are a good choice to be favorite.

They made their biggest move early in the season with a 12-game win streak, but right now their starting rotation is mostly "Josh and Jon and then there are bombs". Getting Wakefield back should help, but not if Beckett keeps pitching like he did in his last two outings.

The good news is that the offense has stepped it up quite a bit--but there's only so much an offense can do.


Texas Rangers

The darlings of the AL this year, they're finally doing it with pitching. Derek Holland and Scott Feldman have been revelations. Head to head, they took two of the last three that they played with Boston, but the one loss came when the night's closer, Frank Francisco, blew the lead.

If they make the playoffs, Ron Washington is probably a shoo-in for manager of the year.


Tampa Bay Rays

The Rays are still paying for the slow, 2007-Yankees-like start to the season and may now have too much to overcome. They are only three games back, but they are trailing two teams and their pitching hasn't been as good as it was last season. Trading Edwin Jackson away does not seem to have been a great decision, speaking mildly.

There's certainly hope, though, and unlike the Rangers, this group has postseason experience.



National League

Colorado Rockies

Once again, they've taken on a veneer as a team of destiny. The division isn't out of the question for this group, and if they did take it, it would be a come back even bigger than the 1978 Yankees--just to give an idea as to what the Rockies have done already.

We still aren't quite sure how Jason Marquis is doing it, but somehow he's found a way.


San Francisco Giants

When both Lincecum and Cain are on, they are probably the best 1-2 in baseball. The problem is, outside of Pablo Sandoval, they basically have zero offensive support. Yes, pitching wins championships, but you can't win every game 1-0, which is pretty much what the Giants have had to do all season.

Given how poorly the Giants have played in recent years, the fact that they are this good this year has been especially remarkable. If only they had that little more bit of offense...


Atlanta Braves

Four-and-a-half games out, it's not exceedingly likely the Braves make the postseason, but it's also far too soon to count them out entirely.

Like the Giants, they have the pitching but not necessarily the hitting--that is, until they decide to give Heyward a shot...

Figure Something Out

A month ago, everything was going so well. The Yankees weren't losing, and if they did, they rallied after that with another two or three wins in a row. They played eighteen straight games in a row and in a period of twenty or so games, the starting pitching had only lost two or three of those games.

Then the team ran into a Boston Red Sox team that it still can't beat, and everything fell apart.

The team isn't playing good defense, and, more importantly, it's not hitting. Not even a little. Certainly, not when it matters, or the players that the Yankees need to produce.

Instead, as we saw last year, double plays and first-pitch swinging is again rampant, as I sit here and watch the Yankees lose their third game in a row.

What is going on?

Out of nowhere, it seems, the entire team has gone into a slump.

I know teams slump, players slump, etc., but this is beyond ridiculous. Earlier in the season, when the Yankees lost it wasn't so bad because the team fought, game after game after game. Where has that fight gone? It certainly hasn't come to south Florida or Atlanta.

I know Tommy Hanson is supposed to be the next big thing for the Braves--and therein is the Yanks' critical problem: An inability to hit (good) young pitchers whom they've never seen.

I don't know why that is, but I do know that any team that aspires to the World Series can't shrug their shoulders and give up when a young pitcher takes the mound. Is it an issue with scouting? With the Yankees' batters? With someone else?

It's become such a big deal now because it's only gotten more pronounced over time.

These guys can't face Livan Hernandez every night.

They have to figure something out.

A Preview A Day Keeps the Winter Away, #5

For the month of March I will be doing a season preview, with a new team each day, going in alphabetical order by team so I can save the Yankees for last, because I am, in fact, that devious.

As this is a Yankees' blog, the previews for AL East teams will be more detailed than those of AL Central and AL West teams, and any AL team previews will be more detailed than NL team previews, save maybe for the Mets. Each preview will involve consideration of how much 'threat' a team is to the Yankees, for fairly obvious reasons.

Up Today: The Atlanta Braves



It seems like just yesterday when you could pen in the Braves for an appearance in the NLCS, and an October appearance in New York at Flushing or Shea (and on one occasion, both), but those days are a long way gone now.

Sure, John Smoltz, Tom Glavine and Chipper Jones are still on the team (in Glavine's case having taken a brief hiatus in New York), but they are...how do we put it delicately...not young any more.

Okay, Smoltz packs a mean punch, and talking about rotation, Hudson's not half bad, either, but it's a far cry from the Maddox-Smoltz-Glavine combination of the nineties.

However, this isn't to say that Atlanta is a bad team. In fact, they're much more on par with the Blue Jays than, say, the Astros. In fact, they're like the Jays in that they really are a middle-of-the-division team, only, in the NL East, the Mets and the Phillies have more smoke and mirrors than a stranglehold on the division.

Mark Teixiera at first base is arguably Atlanta's most talented player, even if he's not the face of the franchise, and Jeff Francoeur will likely be around a while as well. Of course, Teixiera is a free agent at the end of the year, which means he'll likely have a very very good year because, well, that's the cool thing to do in your walk year.

Bobby Cox is still at the helm, which is just plain impressive. I mean, there's not much else you can say; he's like the Jaime Moyer of managers, not in terms of age, but in terms of longevity.


Threat to the Yankees: Green, Proceed Normally.

The Yankees and the Braves don't play each other at all during the regular season, and they don't play any AL East teams. The only possible impact the Braves could have on the Yankees outside of the World Series is if the Yankees lose in the Wild Card race to Anaheim or Seattle by one game...and yeah, you get the idea.

They're a much bigger concern to that other NY team.

You learn Something New Every Day, Last Friday of the Semester

(A thanks to Jay Destro for the idea, and to Baseball Reference for being the G-d of baseball statistics!)


Right, for this week's YLSNED, I thought I'd take a look at some historical teams that had started a rotation with three or more pitchers under thirty, perhaps as some food for thought given the Yankees' probable rotation next year.

First of all, you have what I consider the 'classic, best scenario example', the 1993 Atlanta Braves, with John Smoltz, Greg Maddox and Tom Glavine.

Maddox and Glavine were both 27 and Smoltz was 26.

The Braves won 104 games. Glavine was 22-6, Maddox 20-10 and Smoltz 15-11. The Braves only made it to the NLCS that year, but the year before they had made it to the World Series, and in 1995 (with no WS in 1994), they won it all.

I consider the Braves the classic success story because of the fourteen straight chances at a World Series, and the team they were able to build around their 'big three' that lasted nearly all of the nineties and into the beginning of the new millennium.


Right. Next example:

The 2003 Chicago Cubs. They are a great example of having something great...and then having it go way, way astray.

Kerry Wood, at 26, was 14-11. Mark Prior, at 22 was 18-6. Carlos Zambrano, at 22, was 13-11.

The team went to the NLCS, and if not for a fan's interfering with a foul ball (and a curse of some sort of goat thingie) would have likely met either the Yankees or Red Sox in the World Series (THAT would have been some series!)

Of those three starters, however, only Carlos Zambrano now still pitches on a regular basis, having just signed a massive $90 million contract extension. Wood has not won more than 10 games since, and Mark Prior has battled serious injury concerns, going just 1-6 in 2006.

The culprit? Overuse of the young pitching arms, which has had almost immediate effects with other teams across the league, which for Yankee fans will be familiar with two words: "Joba Rules"


Third example:

The team that beat the Cubs, AND the Yankees in 2003. Also known as 'why Loria will never be my friend'.

The Florida Marlins in 2003 won the World Series with a pitching rotation that included Dontrelle Willis, Mark Redman, Josh Beckett, Carl Pavano and Brad Penny.

At 21, Willis went 14-6. At 23 Josh Becket was only 9-8, but came up huge in the postseason. At 27, Carl Pavano was 12-13, but the next year 18-8. At 25 Brad Penny was 14-10.

The rotation was largely kept in tact through the 2004 season, but by 2006 Dontrelle Willis was the only one still left, and as you probably know now, he has been traded to the Detroit Tigers.



So, as you might have guessed, there is no way to tell exactly how a rotation of young studs could pan out--for every Maddox, Smoltz and Glavine, there's a Mulder, Hudson or Zito, or Wood, Prior, Zambrano.

There is no question that Hughes, Chamberlain and Kennedy have the talent to be a Maddox, Smoltz, Glavine (or, who knows, even better...), but there are so many unknowns as well.

So, basically the message regarding the Trinity/the Three Musketeers is thus: hope for the best, but keep your feet on the ground.