September 23, 2005

Prospectus Today

AL Reset

by Joe Sheehan

Ten days left, 11 teams still playing relevant baseball games (being very generous to the Giants) and just one team that has clinched a chance to keep playing beyond next Sunday (being not so generous to the Braves). As we enter a weekend that is really a break from the recent norm--just one series, the Marlins in Atlanta, matches two of the dozen remaining relevant teams--let's reset this thing.

In the AL, you can throw out those six-team standings I ran a couple of weeks ago. The injury-riddled A's, 9-11 in September, have drifted 5 ½ games back in the wild-card chase, making it highly unlikely that the AL West runner-up can use the industry back door into October. That leaves the A's and recently hot Angels fighting for the division title and just one path to the playoffs.

Angels      87-65   .572   --    3 vs. TB, 4 @ Oak, 3 @ Tex
A's         84-68   .553    3    3 vs. Tex, 4 vs. LAA, 3 @ Sea

The Angels have pulled out to a significant lead thanks to a six-game winning streak, all games decided by three runs or fewer, three of them come-from-behind victories. The Angels' bullpen, bolstered by Kelvim Escobar (15 IP, 1 ER in September), has come up big over the last week, supporting a rotation in which only Paul Byrd is pitching great baseball and an offense that seems to have picked up some of the White Sox' first-half fairy dust, scoring just enough runs to win.

The season will come down to that series in Oakland, and the question becomes how healthy the A's can get in advance of it. Can they have Rich Harden available in some role, and will Bobby Crosby's ankle allow him to play all four games. In the short term, the A's need to try to shave a game off of the Angels' lead this weekend. If they can, they'll need to take just three of four, rather than sweep, to gain control of their own destiny.

You might think the A's have the advantage, getting the big series at home, but remember that the two teams met in Oakland on the last weekend of last season, tied going into the series, and the Angels took the first two games to lock up the division title. Their better health has to make them a slight favorite, although as I keep harping on, it's very hard to know what might happen in a week's worth of baseball. I do think the key between these two so-so offenses will be the middle relief; expect most games to be won in the seventh and eighth innings, putting pressure on Escobar, Brendan Donnelly and Scot Shields on one side, and Justin Duchscherer, Jay Witasick and Ricardo Rincon on the other. We may again see games decided by which manager gets his best reliever--Francisco Rodriguez or Huston Street--into the games in high-leverage situations.

The rest of the AL is four teams for three spots, and looks like this:

White Sox   91-61   .599    --    3 vs. MIN, 4 @ Det, 3 @ Cle
Indians     90-63   .588   1.5    3 @ KC, 3 vs. TB, 3 vs. CHW
Yankees     89-63   .586   2.0    3 vs. Tor, 4 @ Bal, 3 @ Bos
Red Sox     88-64   .579   3.0    3 @ Bal, 4 vs. Tor, 3 vs. NY

What looked unlikely two weeks ago--that the season-ending White Sox at Indians and Yankees at Red Sox series would both be relevant--now appears a certainty. Next weekend has the makings of the kind of baseball weekend that books get written about, with two sets of Sox trying to hang on to postseason hopes while teams young (Indians) and old (Yankees) try to push them out.

There's a mix of advantages here. The Indians are arguably the best team in baseball right now, and they play the worst one in Kansas City this weekend, then return home to face the 24-51 road version of the Devil Rays. It's hard to see them losing much ground to the White Sox before next Friday, although both the Royals and D-Rays have shown themselves to be pricks in the side of contenders on occasion.

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