Questionable Moves

Later this evening, St. Louis could rather easily become one of the worst teams to make the World Series. These guys finished the year 83-78. That’s five games over .500. That’s worse than the Red Sox. In fact, that’s a worse record than twelve other teams in Major League Baseball. There are only 30 teams in baseball. The Cardinals, this year, were a solidly middle-third of quality baseball teams. The Mets were among the three best teams in baseball. I suppose that it is still possible that the Mets pull this out, though the pitching matchups seem to favor the Cardinals, but if the thoroughly mediocre Cards make the World Series, that’s something that’s amazin’.

The presence of the Cardinals in the World Series would also, somewhat inappropriately, cement Tony LaRussa as a managerial genius. Sure, his team has been able to hang in there through the playoffs (thanks, Albert. Oh, and thank you too, Spicoli…I mean Weaver). But this is a team that almost blew an 8-game division lead with like two weeks left in the season. They finished 83-78. How come Walt Jocketty isn’t facing the same virulent criticism as Theo Epstein, whose team finished with a better record in a much tougher league? Well, of course everyone’s nice in St. Louis, including the press. Well, and of course St. Louis is on the verge of going to the World Series again. But really, should we really be saying that one manager or GM is so much more effective than another at this point? Does the fact that an otherwise crappy pinch-hitter cranks a homer in an NLCS game mean that your completely unremarkable season just goes away? Perhaps it does. Flags fly forever.

Speaking of that, I was about to be all worked up into a froth about the firing of Ken Macha in Oakland. Not only do I not have the energy for it, I don’t know if it’s so stunning. Sure, Oakland finally managed to win a post-season series for the first time since…well, since Tony LaRussa was manager there. But Billy Beane knows that the post-season is a crapshoot, and you can’t always control what happens there. He also knows that managers, by and large, are fungible. There are very few that make an actual difference to the team’s final record. Heck, Ken Macha knew this going in- he was only there because he agreed to stay out of Billy Beane’s way more than Art Howe would. Macha should probably thank Billy Beane. He’s going out on a winning note- making the ALCS with a low-payroll team. He’ll probably get one of the open managerial jobs- if not this year, then next year, and get a nice pay raise. It’s not as if Oakland is the bottomless pit of money that other teams could be. Maybe the Nationals.

And finally, Peter Gammons was reporting that there are only really two teams out there legitimately contending for the services of Daisuke Matsuzaka- the Mariners and the Yankees. He gives the Yankees about a 75% chance of winning the bidding to negotiate with him. The Sox claim (though Theo gave very little indication of this during his recent press conference) that they’ll be in the running. There are two things about this that intrigue me. First, it’s a sealed-bidding process. We don’t know what the Yankees or the Mariners will bid. It’ll probably be over $20 million, but there’s no saying the Sox won’t surprise us (and them) with a good guess about the Yanks bid and outdo them by a couple of bucks. Second, the winner has control over Matsuzaka for six years. He’s not a free agent. He either has to play for the team that wins the bidding or not play at all. This means that the team really has the upper hand in contract negotiations. Sure, it’s easy to say that he’s worth 10-12 million per year (which we really don’t know), but faced with the prospect of sitting out completely, Matsuzaka might be willing to sign for seven or eight million per year, thus making a bit of a gamble on the bidding process more attractive. I’ve got to look deeper into how he projects against major league hitting, but for my money (which isn’t the same as John Henry’s money), I think it’s worth a shot.