6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog: Funeral For A Friend: Yankees 19, Red Sox 8

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Saturday, October 16, 2004

Funeral For A Friend: Yankees 19, Red Sox 8

As I write this, the Yanks lead the Red Sox by eleven runs, 17-6. That's not a game, it's a funeral. The death occurred on the mound in Game 1, when Schilling got clobbered. After that, everyone else seems to have given up one way or another.

Will the Sox rally tomorrow to win at least one game? I don't know, but I tend to think it's immaterial. The Yankees will almost certainly win the pennant, and it'll be a Yankees-Cards series. Now, let's hope the Cards can beat the daylights out of the Yanks.

Put tonight's game into the column that says Moneyball is a crock. Wisely spent, if you can collect the best free agents in baseball and can afford to pay for them, you can beat pretty much everyone else. It might not work every time, but it sure gets you past the first round of the playoffs. Of course, the corollaries to this are --

Beltran is a Yankee next year (duh)
Clemens will retire
The Astros will fall into the mix with the Brewers and Pirates, and possibly the Cubs if the latter don't fix their offense in the offseason

As one of the announcers in today's NLCS suggested, there's something horribly wrong if a team like Kansas City can't afford to resign even one Carlos Beltran. The idea central to Moneyball -- that baseball players, stars particularly, are fungible -- might work over the very short term, but unless you can draft high, often, and smart -- all three of which are hard to do repeatably -- you're in a world of trouble.

Update 10/17: I dreamed about this game, kept seeing Johnny Damon's face awash in horror as yet another Yankee fly ball went over his head, another pitcher in trouble, Francona with that implacable yet inscrutable look on his face. Inbetween, the rain kept waking me up. Does anybody think it weird that, had the Dodgers or Angels gotten past the first round, one of their games might have been rained out in October?

Update 10/17, 11:36: Yankees Suck observes that the 19-8 final score is only a single digit away from the curséd year, 1918. There is no year that Boston escapes the Curse.

Recap

// posted by Rob @ 8:44 PM link // 6 comments

Comments:

"unless you can draft high, often, and smart -- all three of which are hard to do repeatably -- you're in a world of trouble."I'm not sure I agree with the first one. Draft position doesn't mean much in baseball. Sure, it's nice to be picking first overall, but unlike the NFL or NBA, it's not required to draft a stud. "Smart" would be the key here. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be enough "smart" to go around.

And that could have been the worst playoff game I’ve ever seen. I flipped the channel to watch a movie in the bottom of the first. Two hours and a bag of popcorn later, I flip back to find the game in the FOURTH INNING! I though for sure there was a rain delay.

# posted by

Richard : 10/16/2004 11:17:00 PM

Also, a lot of the teams that are on tight budgets can't afford to draft high. For the first round, at least, the draft is really about players drafting teams, not the other way around. They really need to come up with a football or basketball style draft policy, that either involves a rookie cap, or slots contracts to picks. The number 1 pick should be the best player and highest paid (although in baseball, draft picks so rarely materialize, maybe all draft picks should be given the league minimum). I can't see the players union not liking that, as it means teams have more money to spend on players actually in the Union.

# posted by

Unknown : 10/17/2004 12:09:00 AM

Richard -- as to your comment that "Draft position doesn't mean much in baseball", there was a very good study at Sons of Sam Horn (since deleted). One of its conclusions was "Most of [a draft's good players] will come from the first few rounds though all individual picks have very, very low probabilities of success." So as I said, drafting high is the best way to increase your chances of getting a good player.

Alchemist -- I absolutely agree. The players union is absolutely bleeding the game white. Why can't the Royals hold on to Carlos Beltran? Why is there fear that the Dodgers can't keep Adrian Beltre, for God's sake? This is just wrong. I mean, really -- Moneyball is a nice story, but if it's so easy to do and the rest of the teams are so dumb, how come Toronto hasn't clobbered their division yet?

# posted by

Rob : 10/17/2004 08:11:00 AM

It turns out the study is still available, but it has moved. The new location is here.

# posted by

Anonymous : 10/17/2004 09:33:00 AM

Explain, please, why the Yankee payroll is the union's fault.

And why should KC (MSA pop. 1.8 million) be on an equal footing with NYC (MSA pop. 20.1 million), or, for that matter, SoCal (MSA pop. 16.0)?

# posted by

Delicious : 10/17/2004 04:52:00 PM

Explain, please, why the Yankee payroll is the union's fault. The Yankee payroll is the union's fault to the extent that they would never, ever accept -- minus a strike -- a salary cap.

And why should KC (MSA pop. 1.8 million) be on an equal footing with NYC (MSA pop. 20.1 million), or, for that matter, SoCal (MSA pop. 16.0)?I didn't say they should. I do say that it's a pity that KC can't even hang onto one genuine star player.

# posted by

Rob : 10/17/2004 05:25:00 PM

6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog

Saturday, October 16, 2004

Funeral For A Friend: Yankees 19, Red Sox 8

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