I would have bet real, actual cash money that more 1931 teams would have made the top 10 given that the entire league fell off by 61 points from 1930, but only the Pirates made the cut. Every National League team dropped by at least 44 points. Four Pirate regulars slugged over .500 in 1930; the high man the next year was Hall of Famer Paul Waner, at .453.
On the other hand, we have the Tigers, a team that finished 116 points behind the Red Sox last year in slugging. They have closed that gap to just 11 points through this juncture of the season.
Largest improvements in team slugging, 2003-2004:
Tigers: +62
Dodgers: +60
Cubs: +40
White Sox: +32
Reds: +27
Earl Weaver in Weaver on Strategy presented a set of guidelines for running a team. The book is the best on managerial strategies and roles I’ve come across, and the respect accorded it is well earned. Don’t play for one run unless it’ll win you the game–James Click’s series on bunting should be required reading for managers. Browsing any day’s box scores shows you examples of managers bunting early, or for no good reason at all.
Weaver’s Fourth Law, from the book: Your most precious possessions on offense are your 27 outs.
This leads to a short rant about bunts, particularly early in baseball games. The concept behind the rule runs throughout the book, though, and underlines the single biggest conflict in the game of baseball: The defense wants to get outs without giving up runs, and the offense doesn’t want to give up those outs.
The White Sox unload a Kochian albatross. The A’s wish they could do the same with half their pen. The Phillies flip their erstwhile center fielder the Byrd. These and other news and notes out of Chicago, Oakland and Philadelphia in today’s Prospectus Triple Play.
The Devil Rays are the biggest story in baseball.
(Yeah, it looks weird to me, too.)
The D-Rays have snapped off an 11-game winning streak, entirely against the
National League, and moved to within two games of .500, leaping into third
place in the AL East in the process. The Rays have scored 67 runs and allowed
37 during the streak, so it’s fair to say that they’ve dominated their
opponents, although there’s no way to win 11 in a row without outperforming
your Pythagorean projection.
The run prevention has been the key to the streak. I mentioned yesterday that
the Devil Rays’ outfield had really been able to show its stuff while playing
in Petco Park last week. Jose Cruz Jr. has a Gold Glove on
his resume, Carl Crawford has a center fielder’s range while playing left, and Rocco Baldelli is an above average center fielder with a good arm. The line about sweeping the Gold Glove awards may
have seemed like hyperbole–and Ichiro Suzuki’s outsized
reputation makes a sweep unlikely–but I’d take any two of these guys over
Torii Hunter, and he’s the only other Gold Glove holder still
playing outfield in the AL.
As if labrum tears weren’t bad enough, research from one of the top hip doctors is about to make us change our vocabulary and our thinking. According to an NATA presentation by Dr. Marc Phillipon–a University of Pittsburgh professor and consultant to the Marlins–groin injuries may be a misdiagnosis. He believes that many injuries described as groin strains are actually hip injuries, most likely acetabular labrum tears. Yes, the hip joint has a labrum, just like the shoulder. Beyond the medical research, is there other evidence that this might be true? Just last season, Ricardo Rodriguez was diagnosed with a groin strain and placed on the DL. After he was traded to the Rangers, he was examined and it was determined that he had a torn acetabular labrum. Rodriguez is coming back well, pitching at Triple-A, so this injury doesn’t appear as serious as a glenoid (shoulder) labrum.
In other words, for all these years, it’s possible that we’ve been treating the symptoms, not the cause. Phillipon is getting good results in his practice, and he’s someone I’m trying to get for BPR.