There may be no glory in winning with a $100 million payroll, as Michael Lewis said last week on BPR, but I don’t think anyone in Red Sox Nation cares as much about glory as they do about beating the Yankees. The Yankees were hoping the A’s would pull things out with half their rotation on the shelf, while the Sox head into the ALCS with momentum, energy, and a wrath-of-God offense that Gary Huckabay so richly evoked in his ALDS preview.
Watching the brutal collision between Johnny Damon and Damian Jackson has me wondering why neither player could use the low-tech solution of calling for the ball, or why something more high-tech like headset communicators aren’t being implemented (think how fast the game could move if we could eliminate mound conferences). The collision clearly knocked Damon out for perhaps as long as two minutes, much more than what Marcus Giles suffered in his run-in with Mark Prior. Damon’s availability is in serious question, making Theo Epstein work hard as he readies his ALCS roster. Damon is likely to be available, but likely will miss at least the first two games in New York, giving the Sox a short bench. I’m also closely watching Jackson. I have absolutely no idea why the Sox sent him back out after clearly being concussed. Post-concussion syndrome is still a possibility for both players.
You contend that rundowns should never require more than one throw. A properly executed rundown requires two throws. One to place the ball ahead of the runner and then another to finish the runner off. You want to run the runner back towards the base he came from rather than forward. This is so that in case of a dropped throw the runner will not obtain the next base but only get back to the previous base he had before the rundown.
— JT
Say a pitcher fields a ball and has a runner caught between third and home. He should close the gap, sprinting directly at the runner. Actually, he should run a little towards the home plate side to encourage him back toward third, as you point out. Pitcher sprints, makes runner sprint, third baseman steps up, receives ball, tag is made, one throw.
Things get complicated when other runners are involved such as a rundown between first and second and then another runner takes off from third. But, in a single rundown, it should take one throw. Also, say a runner gets caught up due to a throw from the outfield. That is not the first throw of the rundown. Once the runner is between two players, one with the ball, he is in a rundown and it should take one throw.
What you mean, though, is that it was Chavez’s imperative to get the ball in the hands of the catcher so that they could then run Varitek from home towards third in case of an errant throw. This can be defended, but I contend that a proper rundown requires two fielders and a single throw. Getting the ball ahead of the runner simply for the sake of it adds an extra fielder, an extra throw and more time. Why complicate things and increase the chance of an error?
It’s the all-underdog series, where virtually everyone outside of the greater St. Louis and Miami metropolitan areas seem to be entertaining fuzzy Cubby thoughts. After all, the Cubs are supremely telegenic, feature a healthy dose of celebrity, and some of the best pitching on the planet. But there’s another organization in this series, one with a recent World Series win a couple of owners ago to its credit, something achieved with almost galling ease compared to the decades of North Side misery. Moreover, these latest Marlins are an interesting collection of homegrown talents, other people’s prospects, a rented superstar, and the definitive retreaded manager.
Much will be made of the fact that this is the fourth straight season in which the A’s lost in the Division Series, all of them in the final game. They’ve lost nine straight games in which they had a chance to eliminate their opponent, the kind of fact that can become an epitaph. I’m reluctant to make the leap from that fact to an indictment of the players’ character, however, because these are successful people who, like all of us, are more than our work. The rush to brand the A’s with all kinds of labels that assail their collective character is wrong. As you read what will be an avalanche of stories that glorify the Red Sox players and make the A’s out to be chokers, remember that it’s all media nonsense. The outcome of a baseball game, a series, or even multiple trips to the playoffs don’t define a man’s character, good or bad. The A’s lost because they played baseball poorly at the wrong times. Is their baserunning a problem? It would seem so, but remember that this A’s team allowed the fewest runs in the league and scored the sixth-fewest. They played a lot of close games, and if their baserunning was such a problem, it would stand to reason that it would have shown up in their record. The A’s didn’t just do this to themselves, however. They also lost because the Red Sox played good baseball.