The 5.5 Hole

For anyone who missed it, the last two days of baseball have been the greatest in history.  In history!  More specifically, last night was the greatest single night in regular season history.  These were games 162 for the teams involved, but there was no question, last night was play-off baseball. 

Many will argue last night's place in history, but until someone gives me a scenario greater than four teams battling for the final two play-off spots with two of those teams on the verge of the greatest comebacks in history, last night ranks supreme.  You don't need a recap, but here you go.

The Rays were nine games behind the Red Sox in the AL Wild Card chase when September kicked off.  The Cardinals were eight and a half games behind the Braves in very early September.  Both of these teams went on incredible runs to pull into a Wild Card tie heading into the last game of the season.  This set up the picture-in-picture creator's dream situation.  Four games, all with play-off implications.  The Rays were facing the Yankees, the Red Sox were facing the Orioles, the Cardinals were facing the Astros, and the Braves were facing the Phillies. 

But even with the drama leading into last night, no one could have predicted the excitement that was yet to come.  The fan bases in Boston and Atlanta will never see the beauty of last night.  I understand that.  As a Padres fan who watched that team lose a one-game play-off to the Rockies in thrilling fashion in 2007, I understand the pain of defeat will always block out the euphoria of baseball greatness. 

The Cardinals quickly put pressure on the Braves by running away with their game.  And the Braves seemed to respond.  With a one-run lead going into the ninth, they had their great rookie closer, Craig Kimbrel, on the mound.  But he blew it.  The Red Sox were leading in the seventh when rain threatened to end the game.  But after a delay of about an hour and half, the game resumed with the Red Sox maintaining their lead into the ninth.  But the Red Sox dominant closer, Jonathan Papelbon, blew it.  The Rays seemed dead in the water all game.  They were losing 7-0 until the bottom of the eighth.  Then magic happened.  The Rays scored six runs, capped by an Evan Longoria three-run home run, and headed into the ninth down only one run.  In the ninth, Dan Johnson happened.  In the 12th, Evan Longoria happened again. 

I've seen the footage of Bobby Thompson's walk-off home run to clinch the pennant for the New York Giants.  They were a team that came back from 13 games back late in August.  Until now, they were the greatest comeback story in baseball history.  I've seen Kirk Gibson's famous home run with two bad knees, I've seen Pudge Fisk waving his home run fair, Joe Carter winning the World Series, and Albert Pujols keeping hope alive for the Cardinals in 2005. 

Last night's home runs by Dan Johnson and Evan Longoria were better than any of those.  I have never been as excited in my life for a single night of baseball as I was last night.  Dan Johnson kept the excitement alive.  In the bottom of the ninth, with two outs, he stepped to the plate.  Dan Johnson?  Really?  He was batting under .200 and had one tater on the year.  It seemed like he was up there just praying he didn't make the final out that ended the Rays season.  With two strikes, he showed me he was up there to keep the Rays alive.  With a laser-shot over the right field wall, Dan Johnson placed himself in history with one of the greatest, most dramatic home runs in history.  Then, Evan Longoria topped him.

In the bottom of the 12th, Evan Longoria stepped to the plate literally seconds after the crowd made it clear that Baltimore had tied the game against Boston.  As Longoria was battling Scott Proctor, the crowd once again came to life.  The Orioles had just scored the winning run against Boston.  The Rays were at very least guaranteed a one-game play-off and maybe a Wild Card berth that night.  Longoria left little time to think about the possibilities.  Four minutes after Baltimore beat Boston, Longoria connected on another laser-shot.  This one, barely clearing the left field wall, placed Longoria on a very short list.  He became only the second player in history to clinch a play-off berth with a walk-off home run on the final day of the season.  Bobby Thompson, meet Evan Longoria. 

These last two days make me wonder if the postseason can top this.  Maybe we should end the season now.  What a wonderful chain of events that lead us to the magic and drama of last night.  Some will use last night as a call to keep the play-off format as is.  Some will still claim the season is far too long.  The fact is, the play-off format is what it is this year.  If the season were shorter, we would have had a Braves team and a Red Sox team limping into the play-offs.  This type of excitement cannot happen in football or basketball.  The NFL's season does not allow for great comebacks in the standings.  The NBA allows just about every team into their postseason. 

Now that it's all over, take a breath, forget about baseball for a day, because play-offs start Friday.  And I can't wait. 

My advice to the Boston faithful: close your eyes and hope for the best. With their faces buried in their hands with silent prayers floating through their minds, the Red Sox Nation is in full panic mode. And they should be.

While the Rays are furiously banging on the Red Sox door, the Angels are politely knocking. At just 4 games back, the Angels have inserted themselves as a second layer of Wild Card competition for the Sox. The difference, of course, is the scheduling. The Rays still have three vitally important games against the team they're chasing. The Angels, probably more focused on the Rangers, have none against the Red Sox.

Over in the National League, The Beer-Makers are in a similar spot. After building what seemed to be an insurmountable lead in the Central, the Brewers are suddenly faced with an entirely surmountable lead. Up 5.5 games on the Cardinals, Milwaukee probably has little to worry about, but a streak of two or three losses could make this interesting.

Beyond that, the Braves, who once seemed destined for the Wild Card, now carry just a 4 game lead over the Cardinals and a 6 game lead over the Giants. Yes, those Giants. With no head-to-head match-ups between these teams, the standings may not change much by the end of the year, but each game becomes more and more important down the stretch.

Just a month and a half ago we all had the play-off match-ups pegged. Yankees or Red Sox host the Tigers and Yankees or Red Sox on the road to Texas. Now things aren't so clear. In case you haven't noticed, the Tigers have the second best record in the A.L. all the sudden. They have moved from a sure-fire road series in the first round to potentially hosting the Red Sox or Rays. Even more surprising is the dwindling gap between the Tigers' record and the Yankees' record. They are now only 3 back in the win column for the American League's best record. Unfortunately, they are 5 back in the loss column and you can't control losses that have already happened.

What about the National League? Well, no one is catching the Phillies. But if I told you on August 1st that in mid-September the Diamondbacks would be tied for the second best record in the N.L., would you have believed me? The Phillies were all set to host Arizona in the first round, but now may be faced with hosting a Brewers club that can be as streaky as the best (or worst) of them.

A month ago, I wrote about what a second Wild Card in each league would look like this season. While in support of the idea, I wrote at the time that it would water-down the play-offs this season. That's no longer the case. How amazingly fun would a three game play-off series be between the Red Sox and Rays? How about the Braves and the Cardinals? These would be compelling match-ups worthy of postseason baseball.

In a 162 game season it's amazing to see such swings in the standings. You'd think things would normalize and start to be clear by September. Instead, thing get even more uncertain. And I love it.

Every year a handful of teams start the season in "rebuilding" mode. These teams take their limited payrolls and devote their cash toward the future. They settle for mediocrity in the hopes of a better future. The question is why?

In what other business, and make no mistake about it baseball is a business, can an owner sit back and simply say "not this year?" To quit before you begin leads to complete and utter failure. But not in baseball. In baseball it is completely understandable to begin the season with a goal that would seem counter-intuitive to the sport. These teams have a "rebuilding" goal that essentially forfeits the season.This happens because baseball is socialism-lite.  Revenue sharing helps off-set any losses the small market teams may have.  Rather than push for higher attendance, rather than make their own money, many team settle for the extra cash paid by those teams hit by the luxury tax. 

But it doesn't have to be that way.  Losing is not the crime here.  Not trying is.  If a team is striving toward success every year, the fans will come.  Baseball should be a constant experiment in winning.  Don't have a lot of money to work with?  That's fine.  Figure out new ways to win.  The Seattle Mariners have done it, the Oakland A's have done it, and the Tampa Bay Rays have done it.  Sustained long-term success is the difficulty here, but the key is innovation.  Much like a pitcher who has found a hitter's weak spot at the plate, adjustments should always be made.  If that hitter wants to remain in the big leagues, he will find a way to adjust to that pitch to keep from getting out. 

During every off-season, rather than resign to another losing year, teams should be brainstorming.  What has worked for other teams?  What hasn't worked?  Why have the successes of other teams stopped working?  Research and development.  Experimenting.  Trying. 

Just take a look at the last-place team in each division.  They can easily shrug their failure off as rebuilding years, but they shouldn't.  They should be giving the fans reason to hope.  Come out and tell them the goal is to win.  Show the fans you are trying.  Prove to them that, even if the team loses, you are not simply allowing the team to wallow in failure in hopes of a great year decades from now.  Success should be a constant goal.  The fans deserve that.  To fail while trying to be successful means you tried.  To fail while building for the future means you gave up. 

The best way to make a profit in baseball is to attract fans.  It seems like simple enough logic doesn't it?  The more people who attend a baseball game, the more ticket sales the team will have, the more concession stand purchases, the more team shop purchases.  Even the smallest market ball club has plenty of fans just hoping and wishing for the opportunity to go to a game and cheer on a winning team.  They flip on the television and see game's like Sunday night's Ranger/Angels game.  They see the intensity, the crowd, the energy.  And they wish they could be part of it.  But they stay home.  Their team is in a "rebuilding" year, and disposed of any real hope on Opening Day. 

Again, losing isn't the issue here.  The concept of rebuilding is.  For teams like the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Kansas City Royals, and any other perrennial losers, what are you rebuilding?  Are you rebuilding the success of the '70's, the '80's, or even the '90's?  Those teams and players are long gone.  What you're left with is the here and the now.  The development of young players is perfectly fine.  But the goal is to run a Major League franchise.  Not a Triple-A club. 

With this in mind, stop promoting the idea of rebuilding.  Stop dreaming of the future.  Forget about getting lucky and finding a cheap ball club with All-Star talent.  Get on the phones and the internet and search.  Lock your executives in a board room and brain storm.  Start your experiment now.  Test your hypotheses.  Squeeze success out of every limited dollar you have because the future is not 10 years from now.  The future is today. 

"They are who we thought they were!" One of the greatest and easily usable quotes in sports history came from former Arizona Cardinals head coach Dennis Green. The quote applies to so many things.

If your team gets knocked around and blown out by a better team, "they are who you thought they were." If you think you have a shot against a former Cy Young winner because he's coming off an injury, only to be dominated as usual, "he was who you thought he was." And if you bring in a former closer who has shown more of a propensity for giving up runs than preserving them of late with the hopes that he can be molded into a solid set-up man, only to melt down in his first real opportunity, "he is who you thought he was."

Forgive the possible run-on sentence above, and the roundabout way of getting to the point that Chad Qualls is not a fit for an 8th inning hold man. He proved this last night. While there will be more opportunity for redemption in Qualls' future, he was promoted and put into the set-up role because he's supposed to bridge the gap from starter/reliever to Heath Bell.

Qualls spent last season in Arizona posting an 8.29 ERA before being shipped to Tampa and posting a 5.57 ERA to close out the season. Qualls struggled all of last season after having himself a decent career up to that point. Therefore, the Padres thought he could return to form in the spacious, pitcher-friendly confines of Petco Park. Unfortunately, they passed up a solid candidate for set-up man when they chose to promote Qualls in the wake of Mike Adams' trade.

Luke Gregerson, while experimenting with mustache choices, has quietly been putting together a nice resume for the Padres. Since his call-up in 2009, Gregerson is sitting on a 3.18 ERA, a 1.097 WHIP, and 9 K's per 9 innings. He's also only 27 and making $448,000 this season. He's not eligible for free agency until 2015, and he has three arbitration years ahead of him unless his contract is re-worked.

Qualls, on the other hand, Is going to be 33 in a few days and is making $2.55 Million this season with a club option for 2012.

Qualls is still an above average pitcher. For his career, he has 3.7 WAR. Gregerson, through three seasons, has a 1.7 WAR. However, Gregerson has not yet had the opportunity to be a set-up man, let alone a closer. Qualls has held both positions.

It would be easy to write this off as a rant in response to last night's bullpen meltdown, but the numbers, both statistical and contractual, support Gregerson in the set-up role over Qualls.

Qualls will do well in San Diego. Most pitchers who come here show better numbers than their previous career stops. But Qualls is who we thought he was and is better served as a 7th inning guy or long-relief man.