Thursday, May 16, 2013
Washington Post: Boswell: Reiser Offers Harper A Cautionary Tale
(www.washingtonpost.com)
At age 22 in 1941, Reiser finished second for National League MVP. In just 137 games, he had 70 extra-base hits and led the league in runs (117), batting (.343), doubles (39), triples (17), total bases, getting hit by pitches and, if they’d kept track of on-base plus slugging back then, that, too (.964).
He was as good in reality as Harper dreams of being.
Then Reiser started running into walls. He never led the league in anything again, except stolen bases a couple of times….
“In two ...
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1 2 3 4 >Besides, what good would Strasburg do for a playoff team that apparently forgot how to score any runs?
And now we're again saddled with and forced to endure the ####### fifth-place Cardinals.
The Cards propensity to anally rape the playoffs every other year leads a man to root for the Yankees if that's the only choice.
I kind of expect a comet to hit NYS tonight to seal the Cards trip to the promised land.
SHHHH! You're spoiling the poop throwing party!
OPS+ for Pitchers with at least 5 games pitched and 20 PA in 2012
Rk Player OPS+ PA Tm G AB H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS1 Matt Harvey 113 21 NYM 10 18 6 2 0 0 3 0 7 .333 .333 .444 .778
2 Stephen Strasburg 105 53 WSN 28 47 13 4 0 1 7 3 13 .277 .333 .426 .759
3 Mike Leake 95 69 CIN 35 61 18 3 0 2 3 1 20 .295 .306 .443 .749
4 Jason Marquis 90 36 TOT 24 32 9 3 0 0 1 0 12 .281 .303 .375 .678
5 Jaime Garcia 86 46 STL 20 40 10 1 1 1 3 2 15 .250 .286 .400 .686
6 Jhoulys Chacin 75 26 COL 14 24 7 2 0 0 3 1 3 .292 .320 .375 .695
7 Drew Pomeranz 69 31 COL 22 26 6 2 0 1 1 1 15 .231 .259 .423 .682
8 Tyler Chatwood 54 23 COL 23 16 4 1 0 0 1 1 3 .250 .294 .313 .607
9 Cole Hamels 52 82 PHI 31 69 15 2 0 1 5 4 27 .217 .270 .290 .560
10 Jonathon Niese 46 68 NYM 30 55 12 0 0 0 2 6 19 .218 .295 .218 .513
That's one. Two is that he insulted the sport and the principles of competition by intentionally and brazenly not putting his best team on the field in the biggest games of the season.
There's a surfeit of loathable stuff in the whole mess.
I doubt it, unless Rizzo has a time-traveling Delorean.
No, but you don't #### with the baseball gods. Who knows, this might be their best chance. What Sean said makes the most sense.
No but an 80 win team that had improved with an extra playoff spot being added had to expect to at least be in the hunt. This is well-traveled ground though. I think Sean's point is the key, there were ways to do this that weren't as restrictive as the path they chose.
Hey, I hope they wind up being right. Maybe we'll look back at 2012 as the year that we finally came to a solid conclusion about how to deal with young pitchers and their arms. A watershed moment in pitcher health...I doubt that will be the case but it would be great.
The other reason GMs are pissed at this? Basically, Rizzo's blazed a new path for agents and players to strongarm teams into more aggressive rehab options like this that protect the long-term monetary value of the agent and the player, but aren't necessarily beneficial to the team that currently owns the contract. Can't you see Boras citing this as precedent in future contract negotiations or in his day-to-day dealings with one of his current young clients?
So Rizzo's possibly opened up a pathway to make pitching more expensive... or at least put a ceiling on the value a team can get from a pitcher, all for some nebulous benefit in the future for an opposing team.
They moved into first place for good on May 22. There was plenty of time to adjust their plans.
Christ, why all the Cardinal hate? They're a good team with a poor record in 1-run games, but a way better bullpen now than what they were throwing out there even through the first 100 games. I didn't see anyone getting too upset when their 105-win juggernaut was upset by some shitty "team of destiny" back in 2004---in fact as I recall, it was quite the opposite, a sickening orgy of love for the t.o.d.
They're a legitimate playoff team, as legitimate as any playoff team since 1969.
They lost Albert Pujols, almost an entire season of Lance Berkman (he had under 100 PA), and 30 starts by Chris Carpenter, yet still won 88 games, despite underperforming their Pythag by 5-7 games, or whatever it was.
They're not a crappy fluke team, they have a GREAT offense 1-through-6, they have four solid starting pitchers, and with the emergence of Trevor Rosenthal, four very solid late-inning relievers.
They might be the best playoff team of the 10 that began the postseason.
That said, they can still easily lose today and tomorrow and then everyone will be happy.
You mean, the team that never trailed against the Cards during that four-game blitz? That team that thorougly throttled the representative from the weaker league? That team?
Sorry, but anyone who thought the 2004 World Series was an upset wasn't paying attention. Sure, if your top starter hadn't gotten hurt, maybe you get a game. But the better team won.
This is the equivalent of Yankees fans asking this same question. Because they routinely sneak in the back door of the playoffs and then run the table on the short series, which is ########. Then their fat assed fans dance and crow about how great they are for it. They're basically the worst elements of the Yankees and Red Sox blended together in a steaming #### stew.
Then you weren't paying attention.
They're a mid-80 win also ran that snuck in the back door.
Oh, brother.
One item that I would add to the list is how irate many of the pathetic sycophants in the local D.C. sports media are over the fact that people even have the temerity to keep bringing Strasburg up. Listening to some of these guys, you would think that Ken Rosenthal was one of the worst people in the world because he's still talking to players on the team about the situation off the record.
I always find it a little disturbing whenever people in the media adopt the "just keep your mouth shut" attitude. Their job is supposed to be to ask these kinds of questions, not to just blindly kiss Mike Rizzo's ass.
On Strasburg, I mean, obviously with him in the roster you increase your chances of winning the series by several percentage points. Several percentage points aren't going to turn the tide every time, and if the Cards womp up the jams today, it's unlikely Strasburg would have made a difference.
The issue is, coming into the series, the Nats made a decision to increase their risk of losing to the Cardinals. That was a radically new and strange decision, the evidence presented for it amounted to "we have a secret plan", and I can't imagine being anything other than highly skeptical.
Cleveland was in first place as late as June 22 playing in a weaker division. We know how they did.
No one honestly thought that when the Nationals took over first place on May 22 it was for good.
(They also could have noted in preseason that they had a significant chance at making the playoffs, and scheduled Strasburg around that. Why sign Edwin Jackson for 1 year / 10M if you don't think you're a plausible contender?)
Teams that have won World Championships in the last decade while winning 90 or fewer games in the regular season:
2011 Cardinals
2006 Cardinals
Nobody wants to see a third entry on the list.
Speaking for myself and as a Phillies fan, I certainly thought there was a reasonable chance that it could be for good. Lots of young talent jelling around a few key veterans? Those are the teams that can jump 15-20 games in a year.
You just made my point.
Christ, why all the Cardinal hate?
I don't get it, either. This isn't that sourpussed Whiteyball team that specialized in bouncing hits off the Astroturf. This is a legitimately good team that's had numerous key injuries and is now able to operate at approximate full speed. If you want to fault the playoff setup that got them into the postseason in the first place, that's one thing, but if that's the case then you should be equally mad at the Orioles.
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Because they routinely sneak in the back door of the playoffs and then run the table on the short series, which is ########. Then their fat assed fans dance and crow about how great they are for it. They're basically the worst elements of the Yankees and Red Sox blended together in a steaming #### stew.
Yes, while that stalwart Braves team always finds a way to choke in the crunch, while their zombie fans just sit there waving their little foam tomahawks in cadence to a canned chant over the loudspeakers, when they really want to be at a football game instead.
2011 Cardinals
2006 Cardinals
Nobody wants to see a third entry on the list.
Then take it out on Selig and the owners for letting all these lesser teams in, and let's just skip the playoffs and go straight to the Yanks and the Nats in the World Series. That'd work for me.
Yeah, I don't really care one way or another about your larger point. I just like nipping any "Cards were better than the Red Sox in 2004" talk in the bud.
The over-the-top Cardinal hate is another thing. I can understand it when TLR was there, but he's gone now. It's not like they're the Yankees, a club that deserves every bit of scorn hurled its way.
I don't see the comparision -- the Whiteyball teams won divisions. And they won 92, 101, and 95 games, not 83 and 88. Nobody wants to see the fifth-best team in the NL, an 88-game winner, get lucky and ruin the playoffs.
The Red Sox played a brilliant and dominant series, but that roster was more than capable of losing four of seven to a Cardinals team that easily would have won 90 in the AL. No team is baseball history has ever been so good that they couldn't easily lose four of seven to a team within 5-10 games of them in overall quality.
Well I suspect "nobody" doesn't include Cardinal fans who obviously would. And I imagine for many fans that the Cardinals were the fifth best team in the NL but still has a chance to go all the way is a feature not a bug. I like the Cards, I'd be fine if they went all the way. They didn't get in through some nefarious means, they played by the rules at hand and earned their spot.
Try to keep the official and accepted hierarchy of hate in mind when you post this stuff, OK?
speaking only for myself as i stated at the end of last year i was disgusted that a wide swath of cardinal fans gave up on their team in the latter stages of 2011 and then were rewarded with a championship.
i found that.........................distasteful
but that's just me
I don't think you need to put the teams that closely together. With the exception of serious extreme matchups (e.g. '27 Yanks vs. '62 Mets) I don't think I would make any team more than a 75-25 favorite in a seven game series.
You're always quaint and entertaining in your way, Andy. Of course, no one is really talking about the Braves but you, are they? Not that you're new to the "having your own conversation with the voices in your head" idea, of course.
The question was asked "why all the Card hate." We're explaining that to the boy. First, because the Cards have won "championships" they don't deserve, and second, because their fan base is obnoxious.
Mikael, I was noting the way that series played out, the availability of Carpenter wasn't going to dramatically alter the outcome. I'd never claim that the 2004 Cardinals could never beat the 2004 Red Sox in a 7-game series. But I firmly believe the Sox team that took the field in the 2004 postseason was the best team in baseball, and the outcome most definitely wasn't some kind of upset.
This, exactly. Just a lot of people longing for the "I told you so".
Rizzo knows they're going to win the NL East a few more times, but he shouldn't expect to win it when the team is in first place after a third of the season? He can't have it both ways.
Because I am sick and tired of them oozing into the playoffs every f#cking year and having the cosmic forces conspire to get them into the World Series and as earlier indicated, listen to Joe Buck leech off his father's legacy relaying the superior nature of their fans to us all.
I haven't given up. It's two games. Comically, people are blaming Davey here, I guess for not figuring out a way to have his #2 and #3 starters and partners in crime give up 20 runs in two fu#king games. Let's go Nats.
To be fair, a great many of us didn't need the 2-1 hole to begin telling so.
This would be a nice tack for Rizzo to take in the post-series press conference. "Our team was so inept, we wouldn't have won if we'd activated Strasburg, Frank Howard, Goose Goslin and Walter Johnson."
And if you didn't at least appreciate Whiteyball, you probably aren't a baseball fan.
I could've easily appreciated Whiteyball if it'd been played on anything but a Superball playing field. I've got nothing against the running game---hell, I would've enjoyed the deadball era---but if you consider "artificial turf hits" a legitimate part of baseball, then I'd say you're not much of baseball fan yourself.
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If only we had Strasburg then we could've lost 3-0 instead of 8-0
O ye of little faith. Strasburg would've obviously led the Nats to a 0 to -2 win.
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