This is the 2nd and final part of an assessment of the current MLB playoff situation. To view Part 1 click here.
The National League looks like it will have 3 exciting division races that will all come down to the wire. Even the Wild Card winner could be represented from any of the 3 divisions. We are in for an exciting 6 weeks in the National League and the pennant is up for a number of teams to try and capture.
NL East: The two-time defending National League champions, the Philadelphia Phillies, are looking for their 4th straight division title, but the Atlanta Braves are currently leading the way in the division. After the Phillies won the World Series 2 years ago and then returned to the Fall Classic last year, they were big favorites to repeat in the East and were the most likely candidates to win the National League yet again. Although the Braves started relatively slow, they now lead the division thanks to owning the best home record in all of baseball at 42-16 as well as the league’s 2nd best ERA, largely due to Tim Hudson’s great year. They also recently added first baseman Derek Lee to bolster the offense which will be without Chipper Jones for the remainder of the year. The Phillies are starting to come on strong, however, and trail the Braves now by only 2.5 games and currently lead the Wild Card. If the Phillies manage to make the playoffs, they are a very dangerous team with Roy Halladay leading the rotation to go along with a resurgent Cole Hamels. No other team in the division is above .500 as the Mets, Marlins and Nationals are all building towards the future. While the Nationals aren’t going to be a factor this season, they will certainly be an exciting team to watch in the coming years as they are accumulating a vast amount of young talent, including phenom Stephen Strasburg as well as the newly signed Bryce Harper, this year’s first overall pick in the draft. As for this year, it’s very possible that both the Braves and Phillies will make the playoffs, and both are playing well as of late. The clubs have 6 more games against each other including a 3 game series in Atlanta to conclude the season which may end up deciding who wins the division.
NL Central: The St. Louis Cardinals were favorites to win the division coming into the season, but the surprising Cincinnati Reds have been neck and neck with the Redbirds all season. The two clubs met last week in Cincinnati, with the Reds leading the Cardinals by 2 games at the time. St. Louis ended up sweeping the Reds in 3 games, which included a fight where both benches cleared. Since that series, I thought St. Louis would take off while the Reds dwindled after their tough defeat, but if anything it has been the opposite. The Reds have now established a 3 game lead in the division while St. Louis has lost 4 games in a row, including a 2 game series sweep at home at the hands of the Milwaukee Brewers where their offense was no where to be found. If I had to chose a Cy Young winner right now in the NL, it would be the Cardinals’ Adam Wainwright, but even he could not stop the Cardinals losing streak yesterday afternoon. The Reds meanwhile have started their 9 game road trip 2-0. The two clubs have the easiest remaining schedules in baseball, largely due to the fact that they have mostly division games left, which include the Cubs, Brewers, Pirates, and Astros. As they are the only two teams in the Central, probably baseball’s worst division, with winning records, the three remaining games they have with each other at the beginning of September loom large. The 2 home games the Cardinals just lost to the Brewers are inexcusable for a team trying to push for a playoff position and if they don’t right the ship soon they will find it hard to stay with the Reds. That being said, they are certainly capable of getting the job done.
NL West: The most surprising team in baseball this season has been the San Diego Padres, who currently lead the division by a season high 6 games. The Padres have relied on their pitching, as they lead the league in ERA, to propel them to first over a division where experts favored other contenders like the Dodgers, Rockies, and Giants to win the NL West crown. The division currently has 4 teams above .500 with the Diamondbacks being the lone exception. The Padres also currently own the best record in the National League and, if they make the playoffs, can be poised for a long run if that pitching staff continues to have success. The Giants, meanwhile, have great pitching of their own, but find the division crown slipping away. They also are now involved in a critical series against the Phillies and have lost the first two games already. Colorado and the Dodgers are probably too far back to make a late playoff push in the division and will find it hard to jump 3 other teams to claim the Wild Card as well. It’s remarkable how San Diego’s pitching has held up all year when they lack a clear ace. Mat Latos, who should have been an All-Star this year, is leading the rotation with a 2.32 ERA, good enough for 5th in the National League and is tied with teammate Jon Garland for the club lead with 12 wins. He is also only one of two pitchers in the NL who currently have a WHIP (Walks plus Hits per innings pitched) under 1, the other being Wainwright. Additionally, Heath Bell has been great closing games this season and leads the majors with 36 saves. I think the Padres won’t be caught in the division at this point, despite having 7 games left with the Giants, 4 of which are on the road while the other 3 games are at home to finish off the season.
NL Wild Card: The Wild Card race in the National League is far more exciting than the American League. Three teams are in the thick of the race currently with 2 more teams that could possibly make a late run to make things interesting. The Phillies currently lead the Giants by two games and the Cardinals by 2.5 games. The Cardinals have the easiest schedule of the three, thanks to the division they play in. They also play host to the Giants with a 3 game series that begins on Friday, and 6 of their last 13 games are against the lowly Pirates. The Giants will try and salvage the final game against the Phillies tomorrow, to try and cut Philadelphia’s lead to 1 game, before heading off to St. Louis. After Sunday, none of the three teams will face each other again for the rest of the season, making these remaining games important. All three, the Giants a little less so, are also involved in close division races and can easily overtake the division leaders with a strong run. I give the edge to the Phillies to make the playoffs right now as they seem to be hitting their stride at the right moment, but the Cardinals easy schedule may be a difference maker if they don’t manage to overtake the Reds in the Central. The Giants are the only team of the 3 to have a losing division record, which will make their lives more difficult down the stretch.
August 19, 2010 · Filed under MLB
No Comments
For the last few years, I’ve kept a running list in my head. I started watching sports in the early 1990s, but my memory of certain teams and players doesn’t have a clear starting date. I remember some teams before others, and some players before other ones. As I’ve gotten older, the players that I grew up with have as well, and almost all have retired. The list that I’ve kept has been of players that I can’t remember their teams without them being on it. There have been some players where I can’t remember their teams without them being on it, and then some players where I can’t remember the sport without them being in the league. I’ve started to include managers that have stuck with one team on the list, too. In these past few weeks, the list got shorter when Mike Modano signed with the Red Wings, leaving the Dallas Stars after 20 years. He was the last Minnesota North Star, and a staple of American hockey for the last two decades. With his signing with the Red Wings, the only hockey player that I can’t remember his team without is Nicklas Lidstrom of the Red Wings. There are no players in the NBA or NFL that qualify, and only Tim Wakefield remains in the MLB. (Now, you might think that if Tim Wakefield qualifies from 1995, then Martin Brodeur should surely qualify, since he came to the Devils in 1993 full time, after a brief cameo in 1992. But, I remember the Devils before Brodeur, since I grew up learning about hockey by going to primarily Devils games. I remember the goalie tandem of Craig Billington and Chris Terreri before Brodeur came around, but for some reason I don’t remember the Red Sox before Wakefield. My list, my rules.) As I’ve extended the list to managers and coaches, I realized that the about-to-retire Bobby Cox, Jerry Sloan, and Jeff Fisher make the cut.
The list remains at just Lidstrom, Wakefield, Cox, Sloan and Fisher. There are many more managers that I can’t remember their leagues without, but that list gets too long. This last has become more and more of an endangered species recently. In the last few years, Joe Sakic, Brett Favre, Bill Cowher, Michael Strahan, John Smoltz, Mike Shanahan and Steve Yzerman have all come off of this list. But, it makes sense. Most teams I started remembering in the early 90s, between 1990 and 1993. It’s now 2010, so if the guys were 23 in 1993, they’re 40 now. It’s not surprising. But, in some way, it’s sad. We all look at sports differently as a little kid. As we grow up, we look at these players as heroes on our TVs; guys that can do no wrong, even if they make a misstep once in awhile. But once those guys retire, and we’re mature enough to see these guys for who they are, what’s really left?
Now that I’m 23 years old and have become a marginally responsible adult, it’s a lot easier to see athletes for who they are on a more personal level. As I wrote in my Oliver Perez column, some of these athletes may just be regular guys who happen to be really good at one particular job that pays handsomely. They don’t have to be super-competitive freaks of nature that are willing to sacrifice themselves at all costs in order to win. They might just be guys doing their jobs. It’s also a lot easier to see the bad apples in the bunch, and a lot harder to forgive guys like K-Rod for doing what he did last week to get himself arrested. When we look at the game from a strictly person-to-person level, it’s a lot tougher to idolize the players. I can be disappointed about the fact that Derek Jeter is having among his worst years in his career, but then I remember that he gets to go home to Minka Kelly every night, one of the hottest actresses on TV. Life isn’t bad for Mr. Jeter. Once we learn too much about certain players, the mystique of them goes away, and so does the idolatry. Last week, I tried to change all of that.
Last Tuesday, my podcast co-conspirator Allen Pines and I decided to take a one day road trip from New Jersey to Washington D.C., all in the name of seeing Stephen Strasburg pitch. Coming into last Tuesday’s game, he was 5-2 with a low 2.32 ERA, and had a sparkling 75 strikeouts in only 54 innings pitched. We were looking forward to hitting the road for a day out of town, but the main reason we were going was to see the phenom pitch. Here was a guy that is almost exactly one year younger than me, almost to the day. Outside of his amazing ability to pitch, I know almost nothing about him. I know he was a great pitcher in college, but that’s about it. He had his worst start of his young career while we were there, but the mood remained positive afterwards. We had all seen a young star, just as he was figuring it all out. It was an exciting place to be.
For the last week, I’ve had this running question in my head: How do the retirements of so many of the players that I grew up with as a kid, and the borderline insanity of driving 9 hours in one day to see Strasburg pitch relate? Why would I do something that extreme in order to see a player, when I’ve learned in past years not to idolize them? What’s the point of idolizing someone that’s so unproven, and someone that’s younger than me? After letting it fester in my brain for the past week, I came to this conclusion: we all idolize what we haven’t seen before. When we were younger, we idolized all of the players that we saw, because we hadn’t seen anything like it before. People playing the games that we loved to play in our backyards at this high of a level? Unprecedented. We sought their autographs, wanted to meet them, bought their baseball cards, and wanted to learn as much about them as we possibly could. As we got older, we started to see more and more repetition in the sports. Of course we cheered on our teams, but it wasn’t quite as special as when we were little kids and everything was new. Whenever we can find something that we haven’t seen before, it’s a lot easier for us to idolize it. And that’s why we went to see Strasburg. How many 22-year-old starting pitchers have come into their rookie seasons and dominated the National League like Strasburg has? Not many, if any ever. It’s a new phenomenon to see a pitcher pitch like that. Rangers fans idolize Mark Messier because he brought the vast majority of them something new, that they hadn’t ever seen in their lives: a Stanley Cup. Anyone under the age of 60 in 1994 couldn’t have remembered the Rangers winning the cup, so since he did something totally new, he was idolized as if his fans were little kids. And let’s be honest: As a Rangers, Magic and Yankees fan, I’d be much more excited to see either the Rangers or Magic win a championship than for the Yankees to win another World Series. Sure, I’d be very excited and happy to see the Yankees defend their crown, but it’s something that I’ve seen 5 times in my life already. Although I remember 1994 like it was yesterday, another Rangers title would mean a whole lot more to me, since I was only 6 when they won it last. And, of course, the Magic winning the NBA Title would mean a ton, since they’ve never done it. It would be an entirely new experience. We all want to see what we’ve never seen before. That’s why we have a special love for the players in our childhood, normal people like me would drive for 9 hours to see a kid pitcher on a last place team, and we all care so much about our teams winning championships. In the sports world, at least, what we haven’t seen before is very, very exciting.
August 18, 2010 · Filed under MLB, NHL
No Comments
It’s time for another Tales of Rothschild, where, in the spirit of the opera The Tales of Hoffman, I pick three stories to write about that have something in common. Today, let’s look at three baseball stories, all having something to do with a New York player or team.
1. A Cy Young Dark Horse
In the National League, it looks like Ubaldo Jimenez is the obvious front-runner for the Cy Young Award, with Adam Wainwright in a close second. Nobody else will challenge either one for the honor. In the AL, it’s a different story. There’s no obvious front runner, with David Price, Clay Buchholz and CC Sabathia looking like contenders, but it’d be tough to say which really has the obvious advantage. With no clear top candidate, how about Mariano Rivera? He took the loss on Tuesday against Texas, in a rare poor performance for him this year, but his season remains outstanding and borderline absurd. He has 23 saves to only 2 blown saves, and his era is at 1.09, and was as low as 0.88 before giving up the run to Texas. The 23 saves don’t look that impressive, but the Yankees have had an odd way of either winning by 4 or 5 runs or losing by about that many, so the work for him hasn’t been as much as in past years. This has been as good a season for him as any in his career, and it would be a shame if the best closer of the era went his entire baseball life without winning a major award, assuming that we’re not taking the Rolaids relief award as a big time thing. New rule, in the words of Bill Maher: If you get a sponsor for your award, and the sponsor is a heartburn medicine to take after eating a few too many chicken wings at Hooters, we aren’t going to take you seriously. If he were to win the award, skeptics would claim that the Cy Young isn’t meant to be a lifetime achievement award, and should reward the best of the best. It’s a fair point, but there really hasn’t been a more dominant pitcher than Rivera. Price was hit hard at Yankee Stadium in a big game for his Rays a few weeks ago, Buchholz is still young and proving himself, and Sabathia has been shaky on more than a few occasions. Cliff Lee could be in the discussion as well, but he didn’t put up incredible numbers in Seattle, and voters rarely reward a pitcher that switches teams midseason. Rivera has given up 5 earned runs this season. Not this month, or in his last 10 outings. This ENTIRE year. That’s pretty unbelievable. Despite his loss against the Rangers, he needs to be in the discussion. He’s going to be 41 after the season. There’s no better time than the present to give an award of this magnitude to a pitcher that has endured like Rivera has.
2. Teixeira, Dunn, and the Post-Steroids Era
After a very slow start, Mark Teixeira has put the Yankees on his back for the last few weeks, and with 26 home runs and 85 rbi, he’s put himself in a position to hit around 35 to 40 homers this year, and drive in between 110 and 120 runs. He joined a small class of players that have hit at least 25 home runs in the first eight years of their careers, which is something that hasn’t been done often. Despite never playing for a contender, Adam Dunn continues to be a force with the long ball, hitting 30 home runs already this year. He’s well on his way to another 40 home run season. His numbers throughout his career are ridiculously consistent, as for the last 6 years he’s hit between 38 and 46 home runs every year, and driven in between 92 and 106 runs in every year since 2004. There’s no reason why he wouldn’t hit almost exactly to those numbers again this year. Teixeira turned 30 at the beginning of the season, and at this point has 268 home runs to his record. Dunn turns 31 in November, and is sitting at 346 homers thus far. Teixeira looks to have a chance to get near 500 home runs in his career, if he keeps it up, and Dunn could exceed that with 4 or 5 more years of putting up his consistent numbers. Neither guy has ever had a sniff of PEDs attached to them. Both are considered to be good guys without any sort of track record of controversy. In any other era, both players would be prime candidates to be on their way to Cooperstown. But in 2010, can we really be sure?
I’ve said this before, and I’ll likely say it again: The entire steroid era doesn’t really resonate with me as being that terrible. Players needed to keep up with the times, and they did what they needed to do in order to succeed. Is it morally right? Probably not. But I understand the rationale, and I don’t really begrudge them. But, ethics of the era notwithstanding, the numbers that players put up are ridiculously inflated and are impossible to compare to the current day and age. A couple of weeks ago, I watched part of the 2000 MLB All Star Game on the MLB Network. It was the heart of the steroids era, and the numbers were through the roof. Ivan Rodriguez strolled to the plate. The league leader for home runs at the 2010 All Star Game was 23 by Jose Bautista, and Josh Hamilton led the league at the time with 77 RBI. Here were Pudge’s numbers: .366, 26 HR, 80 RBI. And he wasn’t even leading the league! He was a catcher! I went to Washington DC to see the Nationals play the Marlins (another story for another time), and Pudge had 2 home runs on the year as he was playing in mid-August. That’s just crazy. The point is, when players like Rodriguez put up those numbers only ten years ago, it makes Dunn and Teixeira look worse by comparison. When countless players from the era hit 500 home runs and weren’t even close to the best players at their positions, how are we supposed to evaluate what these two first basemen are doing? Most people wouldn’t claim that Fred McGriff, Carlos Delgado, Rafael Palmeiro or Jim Thome were ever indisputably the best first basemen in baseball. Yet, they each hit over or around 500 home runs for their careers. When Dunn and Teixeira put their eventual career numbers against those, they’ll at best look like equals, when in reality they were better.
And that’s where the shame of the steroids era comes in. I’ll never get worked up about the game being ‘disgraced’, because I think that’s a really immature way of looking at it. But baseball records are so strongly based on numbers that losing the ability to compare players from different generations is really too bad. It will hurt these two, and it will hurt fans in the future that want to learn the history of the game. That’s really a bummer.
3. The Mets Fade Into Obscurity; Now What?
The Mets have faded away in the last month and a half, and it looks like another year without a playoff race for the Mets fans. They haven’t won back to back games since June 23rd, and they still haven’t won a road series against an NL team. Things have gotten ugly, fast. With this season all but over, it’s time to put it in the rearview mirror and look at where they can go from here. Fred Wilpon said last week that Omar Minaya will be keeping his job next year, since he has another year on his contract. With money tight and rumors flying about exactly how much money the Wilpons lost to Bernie Madoff, it doesn’t look like they’ll be letting go of people that don’t have expiring contracts. That being said (courtesy of Jerry Seinfeld), the Mets need to send a message to their fans. It’s one thing to tolerate another losing season, but something altogether different about letting players that aren’t contributing continue to play, only because of their contracts. Here’s my three-step process towards a brighter future for the Mets.
-Fire Jerry Manuel…today. He’ has an expiring deal, and keeping him at this point is just making the ownership look like they’re accepting what’s happening. Wally Backman can be promoted cheaply, so it wouldn’t cost a whole lot more money to bring him in, even on an interim basis. Even if the Mets have to live with the laughable Razor Shines as the manager for 2 months, the world will go on. But keeping Manuel just makes management seem lazy, even if not everything that’s happened has been his fault. There’s no better way to send a message than to fire the manager. He’s the fall guy, and it’s not all his fault, but that’s part of being an MLB manager. These things happen.
-Cut Oliver Perez and Luis Castillo. I know that only two paragraphs ago I said that the Mets can’t cut salary of players that have contracts next year, but this is an exception, and the cost wouldn’t be much more anyway. Ruben Tejada can be the regular second baseman next year, and he’s not making more than a few hundred thousand dollars a year, so Castillo is expendable, despite owing him money. Perez hasn’t been in the starting rotation for the Mets since late-April, so it’s not like they really need to replace him. He’s owed a good amount of money next year, so he should be cut, despite my defense of him a few weeks ago. The Mets need to send the message that positions on the team will be earned based on merit, and not due to the mistakes ownership has made with long-term contracts. This would be a good start. With that in mind…
-Promote Angel Pagan and Josh Thole to regular starters on Opening Day. Like I said before, it’s time for the Mets to start giving out positions based on what players have done, and not what they make. Pagan has been the most consistent Met all season, hitting over .300 and playing his hardest every day. Thole has given the team a spark off the bench, and has played well enough behind the plate to warrant the starting position. If these guys get rewarded, it will send a message to the clubhouse that if you play the game the right way and work hard, moving up on the team is very possible. I’ve never been a professional, semi-professional, or even a high school athlete, but I can’t imagine it feels great to play hard and succeed, only to learn that you can’t move up due to other contracts and commitments. We’ve all been in jobs where someone unworthy gets a position over us due to something other than the work at hand. Maybe it’s knowing the boss, or having a family tie with the company as a whole. Either way, it sucks. It sucks for workers, and it sucks for athletes too. Keeping Perez and Castillo will only enforce that, and moving Pagan and Thole up will give everybody something to strive for.
If the Mets can do all that, they should be competitive next year. A lot of their future is dependent on how well Carlos Beltran comes back from his knee injury, and if Jason Bay can turn it around. But, at the very least, they should be able to get their farm system to be a positive to support the stars.
August 13, 2010 · Filed under MLB
No Comments
This is Part 1 of a two part piece on the MLB playoff situation. Part 1 looks at the American League while next weeks Part 2 will examine the races in the National League.
The division races in the American League could come down to the wire, with perhaps the AL West, where Texas has a comfortable lead, being the lone exception. The AL East is the unquestioned best division in baseball with what are probably the three best teams in the American League, if not all of baseball, with perhaps apologies to Texas. The Yankees, Rays, and Red Sox are all battling for what will likely be two playoff spots.
AL East: The defending World Series champions, the New York Yankees, lead the way in the division and currently have the best record in baseball, however, the Tampa Bay Rays are right on their heels. In a division where four of the five teams are currently over .500, each division game will be tough to win. The Red Sox currently sit 5 games back of the Yankees and are still in the thick of the race as well. The Wild Card winner is also likely to come down to the 2nd and 3rd place teams of this division, although the team that doesn’t win the Central out of the Twins or White Sox could also be a contender. The Yankees are my pick to repeat this year, although I know I’m not really going out on a limb on that one, and I think they will hold off the Rays and Red Sox to take the division. The Yankees do have certain questions they have to answer before the postseason, particularly in their bullpen and with the health of certain players. Joba Chamberlain hasn’t faired well this year when he was put in the set up role to get to closer Mariano Rivera and David Robertson has become the 8th inning man recently. Kerry Wood was also added to the bullpen at the trade deadline and he picked up the win in the Yankees comeback win against Texas last night. Andy Pettitte should come back soon fully healthy and ready to continue his all-star season. A.J. Burnett has been inconsistent, but this isn’t anything new in his career. Tampa Bay has the pitching to contend, but I think they are lacking slightly offensively compared to the Yankees and that might just be enough for New York to take the division.
AL Central: The Twins won the division last year after defeating the Tigers, who did their best Mets impression by having a collapse down the stretch, in a one game playoff to decide the AL Central winner. They went on to get swept by the Yankees and an injury to closer Joe Nathan which has forced him to miss the entire year had some people question whether they could repeat. Minnesota is right there again largely thanks to Jon Rauch who has stepped in for Nathan. They also boast the best bullpen in the American League in terms of ERA. They are currently battling the White Sox in a pivotal series for first place while Detroit sits a ways back and will need a big comeback to win the division at this point. Joe Mauer isn’t having the MVP season he had last year, but he still is 5th in the league in batting. After Chicago’s win last night, the White Sox and Twins are in a dead heat for first with the rubber match coming tonight to decide who claims first place. Minnesota’s offense has been strong this season as they are 4th in baseball in runs scored. Chicago’s pitching has been strong as they are 4th in the league in team ERA, but Minnesota isn’t far behind them as they are 7th. I think Minnesota has the edge coming down the stretch and they have the experience of being defending division champions. It will likely come down to the wire between the two clubs, but I see the Twins repeating as AL Central champs.
AL West: The Texas Rangers have always had a potent offense, but their pitching has recently become the reason for their success, and with Nolan Ryan as Team President, maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise. They currently have the 3rd best ERA in the American League and boast a particularly strong bullpen full of hard throwers. Ryan has made it clear that he doesn’t regard pitch counts for much and is preaching for his pitchers to build up their arms and throw longer outings throughout the organization. They currently have the largest lead of any team in baseball with a 7.5 game lead, 5 more games than any other division leader currently has. The Mariners have been a disappointment this season and recently fired their manager, while the Angels, who have been the class of the division in recent years, are also struggling with their former ace John Lackey being traded to the Red Sox at the beginning of the year as well as slugger Kendry Morales being sidelined for the remainder of the season. Texas should be in line to win the division and make their first playoff appearance since 1999 barring a surprising turnaround. Outfielder Josh Hamilton is having an MVP type season and is leading the majors in batting with a .357 average. DH Vladimir Guerrero, who played for the Angels last season, is also having a resurgent year for the Rangers and is currently 4th in the AL in RBIs with 86. Neftali Feliz has been strong at closer and the addition of Cliff Lee provides the Rangers with a legitimate ace to head their rotation. Come playoff time, they could surprise a few people and make a deep run.
AL Wild Card: The Wild Card winner is likely to come from the East, and the Rays currently lead the way. The Rays currently sit 1.5 games behind the Yankees for first in the East and have the 2nd best record in all of baseball. They lead the Red Sox by 3.5 games for the Wild Card and boast a 5 game lead over the White Sox and Twins, who are tied for the Central lead. After that, another AL East team, Toronto, is actually the next in line so it’s safe to say no other team will likely contend for the Wild Card. The Red Sox were supposed to be built on pitching and defense, but Jon Lester has really been their only consistent starter all year, however, their offense is 2nd in the league in runs scored. The Rays on the other hand, lead the AL in team ERA and are led by young David Price, who leads the league in wins. The Rays young arms are comparable with any rotation in baseball and I think they have the pitching to hold off the Red Sox and win the Wild Card, although Boston is giving them a strong test and will be right in the thick of things until the end.
August 12, 2010 · Filed under MLB
No Comments
This is the first edition of a running column where Jeremy will defend a sports or entertainment star whose star has fallen thanks to public judgment. Wait, did he just refer to himself in the 3rd person? And did he (I) just do it again?
I’d like you to go on a journey with me, if you will. Let’s look at somebody’s life, all in the second person narrative. You’ve been trained to do a job since you were a little kid, coming from a poor neighborhood in a poor country. You have one specific talent that has carried you through your life, but you’ve never really made the choice to embrace it. You got a job right out of high school in your field, went through job training, and landed at your job, which pays very handsomely. You don’t love what you’re doing, and you may not share the passion that others have for the same line of work. But you continue to trudge along, doing very adequate, if not great, work until it’s time for your contract to be re-negotiated. Since you work in a position of high demand and limited supply, you make more money off of this contract than your resume indicates that you deserve. In the last few months, you’ve gotten married, and are thinking about starting a family. You live in the biggest city in the world, and you want to keep it that way. As a provision in your contract, you make sure that if your job wants to demote you to a tiny city hundreds of miles away from your home and family, then they have to get approval from you first. Your boss and employer agree to this deal, and the new contract is signed.
After a year and a half, your job performance has slipped, although you’ve tried to keep it at its best. Your effort may have gone down a bit from when you were working for a new contract, but you haven’t stopped trying altogether. Your boss isn’t pleased. He’s decided to demote you to the place that was hundreds of miles away for more job training. You say that you feel fine and that you’ll turn your performance around, but he’s having none of it. He demands that you go for more training, and leave everything that you have in order to do it. After thinking about it, you say to your boss that your contract states that you don’t have to make this move, and he has to honor it. You stay at your high-ranking job, despite hating it at this point. You’re made into a villain of the highest order by your co-workers and onlookers, because you decided to stand up for what is rightfully in your contract and was agreed to by management. You become the face of everything that is wrong with your line of work, and cynics scoff at the disgrace that you’ve become to the field. All you can do is take the abuse, and try to continue your work, until management tells you that you’re injured, despite feeling almost perfectly fine. The governing board of the management investigates the injury claim, but eventually agrees with management. They take you out of your job, and tell you to return when you’re ready to produce. Life sucks for you right now. Your name is Oliver Perez.
Perez came to the Mets in 2006, and was productive for about two years, before turning into the remarkably inconsistent pitcher that would eventually sign a 3-year, 36 million dollar contract. He went from being inconsistent to very, very consistent, and not in a good way. His ERA jumped from a 3.56 in 2007 to 4.22 in 2008 to a sky-high 6.82 in 2009. He’s been public enemy #1 for Mets fans ever since he signed his contract, and he’s done nothing to change their mind. Now, some of my first two paragraphs were pure speculation and shouldn’t fully be taken at face value, since none of us really know if Perez is passionate for the game or not. It’s possible that he’d give his life to win a World Series. But the body language he’s shown in the past few years has been of someone that is just doing his job, so that he can go home and have a stiff drink and get ready for the weekend ahead. It’s not all that different than the average person working at a cubicle and trying to make his boss happy without putting in too much effort.
This line of thought is far-fetched to a lot of sports fans out there. Why wouldn’t Perez give his all? Doesn’t he want to win World Series titles? But what if Perez just doesn’t have that kind of mentality? Is that really his fault? I went to NYU, among the biggest liberal arts schools in the country, as a vocal performance major, where some of the most artsy, non-sports-loving people attend. So I know about people that just don’t have any interest in sports and competitions to win a championship. And that’s completely fine. I couldn’t judge the people that I was with for not liking sports, because it’s totally normal to not like it. Some people do, and some don’t. There are perfectly valid reasons to hate sports (I’ll save them for another time), even if I personally don’t agree with them. What if Perez is one of these people? Is that really his fault, for working in a field that he’s not passionate about but is the one where he can make the most money? The amount of people in the world that hate their jobs but just do them anyway is large. The amount of people that are truly passionate about what they do is a much smaller number, but professional ballplayers are usually in that rare group. When an athlete isn’t, that’s when his fans and teammates vilify him. So, for people who want to blast Perez for not caring enough about winning, remember that playing baseball is his job, regardless of his excessive salary. There aren’t rabid fans calling in to radio shows to complain about when you don’t work your hardest at your job. Just because he makes more money than average people doesn’t stop it from being a job. As Oliver Perez comes off the DL this week and rejoins the Mets, remember that passion usually can’t be obtained by osmosis. It has to come from within. Some players have it, and it can be seen from miles away. But some just don’t. It’s our job as sports fans to judge the performances on the field, and to root for our teams to win. It’s not our job to measure what’s inside a man, for better or worse. We can ask of our athletes to try their hardest to win. But we can’t ask them to change who they are in order to do it.
July 23, 2010 · Filed under MLB
No Comments
Podcast Home
Podcast Directory