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Baseball’s Greatest Teams
No team has dominated the Fall Classic like the New York Yankees, who have won 27 MLB World Series titles—17 more than any other MLB franchise.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that five Yankees teams were voted among the top 10 baseball teams of all time by SN’s panel of experts. In the latest edition of SN’s great sports debates series, the 1927, 1939, 1953, 1961 and 1998 Yankees all made the top 10. And why not, with names such as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Derek Jeter highlighting those rosters.
But here comes the hard part: Which Yankees team was best, and is there another all-time great team that can claim the title of best ever? Fans will get to submit their votes at sportingnews.com beginning Monday, July 4. Our top 10 teams will go head to head in a bracket-style elimination game. Will the fans’ champion match the experts’ pick?
Among the other contenders for the title of greatest baseball team: the 1942 St. Louis Cardinals, who won a franchise-record 106 games en route to a world title and featured a rookie left fielder named Stan Musial; and the 1948 Cleveland Indians, the last Indians team to capture a World Series championship; the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers, who won the franchise’s first World Series after falling short in seven previous trips to the Fall Classic; the 1970 Baltimore Orioles, whose World Series-winning roster featured three Hall of Fame players, a Hall of Fame manager and three 20-game winners; and the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, the World Series-winning Big Red Machine squad that also featured four Hall of Famers, including manager Sparky Anderson. Read More >>
Unchartered Territory
Strike 1: Pujols problems
Albert Pujols is off to the worst start of his MLB career. (AP Photo)
No one doubts that St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols will finish the season hitting like Albert Pujols. As is the case with most opposing managers who come to town when Pujols is floundering, Philadelphia Phillies manager Charlie Manuel wanted to get his team out of town before Pujols got hot.
When the Phillies visited Busch Stadium last season, Pujols was in a one-hit-in-three-games slide and, “He hit one over the bullpen that almost went over those bleacher seats,” Manuel says.
Still, Pujols never has struggled like this. However you slice the numbers, this has been the worst start of his career. He has grounded into a major league-high 13 double plays and has only 11 extra-base hits. He hasn’t homered since April 23 and has just three doubles in that 22-game stretch. Instead of smacking line drives to right-center, he has been rolling ground balls to the shortstop.
“He doesn’t look as balanced at the plate,” an MLB scout says.
“He trying to pull pitches he normally doesn’t try to pull,” says another.
Inter-League Play: Is Change In Order?
This MLB season, Sporting News writers will debate one key belief each week.
This week’s belief: It is time for Major League Baseball to change interleague play.
Starlin Castro and Juan Pierre meet at second base during a Cubs-White Sox game last year. Crosstown interleague rivalries are always popular. (AP Photo)
Skeptic: Stan McNeal
Why we don’t believe: As imperfect as the interleague schedule is, it is working as well as ever when judged by the most important factor: fan interest. Attendance for interleague games last year averaged 33,253, which was 17.8 percent greater than intraleague games to that point in the season. That means more than 5,000 additional fans per game, a significant number no matter how it is dissected. Since the inception of interleague play in 1997, interleague attendance is about 12 percent greater than the rest of the regular season.
We believe this instead: While Detroit Tigers fans likely are yawning about the team’s upcoming trip to play the Pittsburgh Pirates and San Diego Padres fans surely aren’t going silly over another visit by the Seattle Mariners, interleague still provides scheduling gems. This weekend, the Chicago Cubs will play at Fenway Park for the first time since 1918. A World Series rematch between those two teams would be a bigger deal, but we might have to wait another 93 years. In 2010, the Cleveland Indians hosted phenom Stephen Strasburg’s second major league start, creating one of their most exciting days in an otherwise forgetful season.
Of course, the No. 1 thing that has made interleague play a hit is the creation of cross-town rivalries. Who doesn’t love hearing Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen complain about Wrigley Field? With interleague entering its 15th year, these geographical rivalries have become a tradition for young fans. For New York youth, doing away with New York Mets vs. New York Yankees would be like removing the Boston Red Sox from the schedule. Well, almost.
What else we believe: The major league schedule is the object of more complaints than gas prices. Players, managers and fans all have beefs—many of them legitimate—about their teams’ schedule. Regardless of how the interleague schedule could be changed, someone still would find fault. Changing a part of the season that attendance proves is a success would be a mistake.
In A-Rod’s $hadow
Baseball has two superstars whose identities have become inseparable from their MLB team’s identity.
And this offseason, both Albert Pujols and Derek Jeter went through contract negotiations with their franchises that left everyone, player and team, taking criticism.
We can blame the Steinbrenner brothers for both.
Hank and Hal are the ones who gave Alex Rodriguez — at age 32, after their general manager said he would not re-sign A-Rod if he opted out and he opted out anyway — a 10-year, $275 million deal.
Jeter, rightfully, could feel he had done more for the Yankees than A-Rod and thus deserved to be richly rewarded.
Pujols, rightfully, could feel he is, right now, a better player than A-Rod and deserves a richer contract.
The Cardinals on Wednesday announced they could not reach a deal for a contract extension with Pujols, and at Pujols’ request will cease “negotiations” — we put that in quotes because the Cardinals acknowledged having made just one offer, about six weeks ago — until after the season.
It’s an unsatisfactory position for the team, its fans and perhaps their favorite player. Cardinal Nation is left to choose sides, feeling either Pujols is greedy or the Cards aren’t taking care of their icon.
In a statement, agent Dan Lozano said, “While both parties were hopeful that an agreement could be reached, a difference of opinion in determining Albert’s value simply could not be resolved. Albert’s production over the last 10 years is nothing short of historic. He is not only the best player in baseball, and on his way to having a Hall of Fame career, but an iconic figure in sports. The expiration of today’s deadline does not eliminate the possibility of Albert returning to the Cardinals in 2012, but simply delays negotiations until the conclusion of the Cardinals’ season.”
Asked to compare the Pujols talks with Jeter’s, St. Louis general manager John Mozeliak said they have similar status in their cities but, “We’re not looking to position this in any way or start trying to negotiate points or sides via the media, so there’s a stark difference.”
Yes, at least this saga didn’t include a smear campaign by the team against the player, as the Yankees did with Jeter. But one element of the ugly back-and-forth between Jeter and the Yankees seems to apply here too: a taunt to test the open market.
Back in late November, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman, knowing Jeter’s market value as a 36-year-old shortstop, told ESPNNewYork.com, “We’ve encouraged him to test the market and see if there’s something he would prefer other than this. If he can, fine. That’s the way it works.”
Pujols is closer to his prime, and St. Louis management has been more subtle.
MLB 2010 Review
MLB Hot Streaks
• Troy Tulowitzki hit four home runs in 40 games between June 7 and Sept. 2, missing nearly six weeks during that span with a broken wrist. Suffice to say, there were no indications at that point that he was about to break out in an otherworldly power surge. From Sept. 3 to Sept. 18, Tulowitzki mashed 14 home runs and amassed 31 RBI. Four times during that span, he hit a pair of homers in a game. Throw in four doubles and a triple and his slugging percentage for that 15-game stretch was a tidy 1.164. Interestingly, 10 of those games came against teams in playoff contention (the Padres and Reds), but Tulowitzki didn’t draw a single intentional walk during his run.
• Perhaps Tulowitzki was just trying to outdo his teammate Carlos Gonzalez, who had an impressive streak end the day before Tulo’s began. Gonzalez collected at least one extra-base hit in 10 consecutive games from Aug. 24-Sept. 2 — four doubles, two triples and six homers. His slugging percentage during that time was an absurd 1.257.
• Arthur Rhodes went 33 games without allowing a run before his 30-inning scoreless streak ended when the Phillies scored three against him June 29. He hadn’t allowed a run since April 10.
• Josh Hamilton posted the longest hitting streak of the season, 23 consecutive games from June 4-June 30. He hit .457 during that run, collecting nine doubles, a triple and nine homers while driving in 29. His OPS was a staggering 1.352. Oh, and after going 0-for-3 on July 1, he hit safely in his next eight games.
MLB 2010 in Review: Giants’ Title Run | Year of the Pitcher | Cliff Lee Saga
The Imperfect Game | Summer of Strasburg | Prospect of the Year | Manager Turnover
Bad Breaks
• Kendry Morales on May 29 suffered perhaps the most avoidable season-ending injury ever, breaking his left leg as he jumped into home plate to celebrate a game-winning grand slam against the Mariners.
• Well, maybe Morales wasn’t the worst offender. Marlins outfielder Chris Coghlan managed to tear the meniscus in his left knee July 25 while attempting to apply a shaving cream pie to the face of teammate Wes Helms after a walk-off win. He missed the rest of the season, as well.
• It looked as if the torn ACL that ended Chipper Jones’ season in August might also spell the end of his career, but the Braves icon quickly decided to come back in 2011 and try to go out on top.
Impressive Feats
• Four players hit for the cycle in 2010: Jody Gerut of the Brewers on May 8, Bengie Molina of the Rangers on July 16, Kelly Johnson of the Diamondbacks on July 23 and Carlos Gonzalez of the Rockies on July 31. Molina’s was by far the most interesting of the bunch, given that the lumbering catcher had tripled only four times in the previous 10 seasons.
• Just about everything that could go right did for the Twins on July 26. Minnesota mauled the Royals 19-1 as Joe Mauer went 5-for-5 and drove in a career-high seven runs.
• The Year of the Pitcher featured two perfect games and three additional no-hitters during the regular season, but that wasn’t the extent of the mound mastery. Teams were held to just one hit in a game 23 times during the season, most notably Armando Galarraga’s would-be perfect game on June 2. The total of 28 no- or one-hit games topped the old record of 26, set in 1988.
Repeating History
As the color man on TV broadcasts for the Triple-A team in Syracuse, N.Y., Steve Grilli has witnessed the Stephen Strasburg phenomenon up close. It reminded him of someone else, 34 years ago.
The same kind of attention Strasburg will get when he makes his MLB big-league debut tonight for the Nationals was once heaped on Mark Fidrych, a teammate of Grilli on the 1976 Tigers.
“He electrified the city,” Grilli told FanHouse. “We were a middle-of-the-road team at the time, but every night he pitched, there was 45,000-plus at the stadium. That’s the closest thing I’ve seen to what this guy [Strasburg] has done.”
Strasburg isn’t the first mega-phenom pitcher in baseball history. Before Strastivus, or Strasapalooza, or whatever the rest of this summer becomes known as in D.C., there was Fernandomania. And the K Corner. And “The Bird” — Fidrych.
“It can bring a lot of energy, a lot of energy to the town, a lot of energy to the league,” said Reds manager Dusty Baker, who played behind Fernando Valenzuela on the 1981 Dodgers.
In their time, those pitchers created what the Nationals hope for from Strasburg: a rejuvenated team, an energized fanbase and a transformed franchise.
No-No Taboo?
With two out in the bottom of the sixth inning on June 6, with the Yankees’ Javier Vazquez pitching in Toronto, YES Network broadcaster John Flaherty said something on the air about Vazquez he never would have said to Vazquez as a teammate.
“This is the point in the ballgame, Bob, you start thinking about the possibility of a no-hitter,” Flaherty said, addressing play-by-play man Bob Lorenz. “Two out here in the sixth, he has not given up a hit yet.”
Yes, Flaherty used MLB‘s version of the N-word: no-hitter.
“I wouldn’t have said it to him, but I would have said it to the guy sitting next to me on the bench,” Flaherty, a former big-league catcher, told FanHouse in recalling the moment. “I wouldn’t say anything to him, but when you’re having a conversation about it, you definitely say, ‘Oh, he’s got a no-hitter going.’ ”
With so many no-hitters, and close calls, this season, broadcasters’ superstitious sides have been tested.
In the end, they are determined to either avoid the jinx or ignore it.
When Matt Garza threw his no-no for the Rays on July 26, Tampa Bay broadcaster Dewayne Staats went the entire game without saying, “no-hitter.”
Staats told the St. Petersburg Times:
“I framed it in every way possible without actually saying it. Fans start to catch on that something is happening. At one point, I said, ‘Garza has faced the minimum and has allowed only one baserunner and that came on a walk.’ So I’m essentially saying it without saying it. I say things like, ‘We have something special building here.’ I’m giving the viewers clues along the way and it helps them become more involved in the game, I think. And they can see the box score at the end of each inning showing that a team has no hits.”
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What’s in a K? The Debate Goes On…
Jim Skaalen, the A’s hitting coach, was recently describing how he takes “personal pride” in his team’s ability to make two-strike adjustments and put the ball in play. Then his attention was directed to the guy at the other side of the room who has led the American League in strikeouts three years in a row.
“Well,” Skaalen said, “he’s the exception to the rule.”
Jack Cust is an exception because of what he does when he’s not striking out. He also draws a lot of walks, and, most important to the A’s, he hits a lot of home runs. The A’s are willing to accept Cust’s annual high strikeout totals, but they are not alone. MLBers have been whiffing with record frequency this year, which might be news if not for the fact that a new record is set every few years. Strikeout totals have increased steadily for more than a century.
While players have been getting more skilled over the decades at just about every part of baseball, it seems that they are getting worse at putting the bat on the ball.
Major league teams are averaging 6.97 strikeouts per game so far this season, which would be the highest figure in history.
The past decade has seen some of whiffingest seasons of all-time. The top seven individual strikeouts seasons have all come since 2004. Prior to 2000, there had been just 12 seasons in which a player struck out at least 175 times, but it’s happened 21 times in the past 10 seasons. Last year there were 13 players who struck out at least 150 times, a major league record.
“That’s the elephant in the room,” said Diamondbacks manager A.J. Hinch, whose team leads the majors in strikeouts. “No one likes to talk about it. No one knows the answer or how to change it. …There is not a team in the big leagues who goes into a hitters’ meeting and says ‘Who cares if you strike out.’ It’s not as if it’s accepted in the sense that people don’t care.”
Strikeouts are increasing for a variety of reasons — everything from the bats to the umpires, according to some — but the biggest reason is probably because organizations are realizing that there is little upside to simply putting the ball in play.
Cooperstown Gatekeeper
Filling out a 2011 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot is going to be so easy.
Roberto Alomar gets a check mark next to his name, and so does Barry Larkin. I’ll also select Bert Blyleven for the 14th consecutive time (that’s how many times he’s been on the ballot), and I’ll go with Fred McGriff again and Lee Smith again.
That’s about it.
Oh, just so you know, you can choose up to 10 folks out of the overall 33, but here’s why this is easy: Several candidates promptly were eliminated — at least in my little Cooperstown justice system — even before their names hit the ballot.
Mark McGwire. Rafael Palmeiro.
You’re outta here.
I mean, NOBODY who was an active participant during the steroid era gets into Cooperstown on my watch.
Among the few rules they give us as Hall of Fame voters is to consider the “integrity” and the “character” of candidates. In other words, the combination of juicing and swinging is an automatic disqualifier. While McGwire admitted to doing as much, Palmeiro keeps lying about it.
Earlier this week, Palmeiro continued with his convoluted explanation of how he failed a drug test five years ago that turned his lifetime batting average of .288, 3,020 hits and 569 home runs into frauds. He said a teammate gave him a shot of what he thought was a vitamin (you know, as opposed to an anabolic steroid), and then he said the dog ate his homework before he put the check in the mail.
Yeah, well. Save your fables, Rafael, for the next time you’re wagging your finger at a congressman.
You also have Juan Gonzalez on the ballot, and he was cited in baseball’s investigation into performance-enhancing drugs called the Mitchell Report for getting stopped by custom agents in Toronto for carrying a bag filled with syringes and other things that smacked of steroid use.
Not good.
Where Will Phillies Rotation Fit in Greatest of All-Time?
The Phillies’ shock agreement to a five-year, $120 million deal with Cliff Lee late Monday night gave them what appears to be not just the best starting rotation in baseball heading into next season, but one of the greatest in the history of the MLB.
Lee joins Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels and Roy Oswalt in the City of Brotherly Love to form a fearsome foursome that has won a collective three Cy Young Awards, World Series MVP and made 13 All-Star Game appearances.
That quartet should make life awfully difficult for National League hitters over at least the next two seasons — Hamels can become a free agent after 2012, while the Phillies possess a ’12 club option on Oswalt — but what kind of competition will they have to match up with to make history as one of the greatest rotations ever?
Let’s start with the modern canon:
1971 Baltimore Orioles: Their four-man rotation of Mike Cuellar, Jim Palmer, Pat Dobson and Dave McNally each won at least 20 games. Cuellar’s 3.08 ERA was the high mark of the group. Despite their dominance, the Orioles lost the World Series in seven games to the Pirates.
1993 Atlanta Braves: The Braves’ 1990s dynasty was built on pitching and it might never have been better than in ’93, when Atlanta brought Greg Maddux in his prime into the fold before the season. Maddux won 20 games and the Cy Young Award after posting a 2.36 ERA. The three guys behind him — Tom Glavine, John Smoltz and Steve Avery — racked up another 45 wins between them, and Smoltz’s 3.62 ERA was the highest of the bunch. Avery threw the fewest innings of the quartet with 223 1/3. Like the ’71 Orioles, the Braves were unceremoniously dumped out of the playoffs. The Phillies bested them in six games in the NLCS that year.
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