Seasonal Transitions

It's been a busy summer and I have not been blogging a lot. I can't believe summer is already over and we are transitioning to fall. This time of the year means the sports calendar is pretty busy- not that the sports calendar is ever barren for us serious sports fans anytime of the year! We got our collective national obsession called the NFL in full throttle right now, college football is ramping up, and the MLB playoffs is flowing fine. We love the playoffs in any sport, but major league baseball probably has the highest bump in terms of edge-of-the-seat drama from the regular season to the playoffs. And especially this year, every other playoff game seems to be going extra innings. The drama started rather painfully for me with the Oakland A's blowing a 7-3 lead late in their wildcard contest against the Kansas City Royals and losing the game and the season in extras. That game was a microcosm of the last two months of the A's season and not a happy one at that. Their sudden and ugly reversal in fortunes can be directly traced on the calendar to the Lester for Cespedes trade - a trade I supported whole heartedly. Whether or not that's what caused the disastrous slide, we will never know. But I am ready to at least accept that the trade did not work. It was still a good gamble, but sometimes gambles don't work. Thats why its's called a gamble.

As controversial and equally loved and criticized as Billy Beane is, this season and that trade is the biggest blot on his resume to date. GMs, coaches, and other leaders will never publicly accept failure or that they made a wrong call, but I am surprised Billy is still defending the trade and is saying he will do it all over again. That's where I separate from Billy. I liked his effort and I supported his trade, but I will NOT do it all over again given that we now know what happened since the trade. If I am allowed to rewind time, I would rather try and see what happens with Cespedes. It can't be worse than what we saw since July. Billy says he saw both the Angles and the A's problems coming and thats why he did the trade. He maintains the A's would have missed the playoffs without Lester and the trade. I don't buy that only because the A's were not just a little different since July, they were flat out horrible. Sure, Billy and everybody else saw the Angles surging, but you can't tell me he predicted the A's would be this bad all of a sudden and you can't convince me that they would have been worse with Cespedes. But we will never know and the season is now over. Regardless of what Billy says, his resume is a little uglier because of this trade - fair or not. The harder truth to swallow for the A's fans is that this was their best chance to win it all and next year figures to be a lot more challenging. 

The Kansas City Royals, who put the A's out of their misery, continued their post-season brilliance on the road at Anaheim as if they do this playoff thing every year. Thats pretty impressive for a team that has missed the big dance for 25 straight years! I am totally on-board with them putting the Angles to rest in the ALDS. At least the A's fans don't have to deal with the Angels celebrating. The team across the bay from Oakland, San Francisco Giants, have won both their road playoff games as well much like the Royals and are back home to host and possibly eliminate the Washington Nationals. The Giants had a couple of horrible months much like the A's, but they picked a slightly better time for that bad stretch. They righted the ship towards the end of the season and are now rolling in the playoffs. They won a 18-inning game yesterday that they were trailing 1-0 in the 9-Th. You just can't put the Giants away that easily in this Brian Sabean era. A Giants-Dodgers NLCS will be epic, though the St. Louis Cardinals might have something to say about that. In any case, looks like we might have two wildcard teams in the championship series. The playoff games have been greatly entertaining and hopefully, the trend continues rest of this playoffs.

Moneyball II

The Oakland A's swept their final series of the season against the big, bad Texas rangers yesterday and ended up at the top of the AL West standings - the only day the entire season they were at the top and not a bad day to be in that position. With a 55 million dollar payroll and a bunch of kids, they did the unimaginable against teams with twice or thrice their payroll. I don't think anybody except Billy Beane and I expected this! That's a shameless plug for myself, but I did expect this team to do better than what most people predicted. That was just based on my trust in Billy Beane's approach last off-season and had nothing do with my knowledge about these players. After all, apparently even Billy Beane didn't recognize some of these players when he crossed paths with them for the first time inside Oakland Coliseum. Of course, I would not have been surprised if they went 62-100 and finished last either because that's what the experts told us. It's a great story that the team came together and achieved this with a bunch of rookie starting pitchers. I can't remember any team succeeding at this level with so many rookie starting pitchers and pitching was and is their strength.

Billy Beane deserves all the credit for this team, even more than the original moneyball teams. He traded away kids to acquire even younger kids and accumulated so many quality arms. The pitching depth of the A's is quite impressive and I am sure most baseball fans around the country can't even name 2 or 3 of A's starters - even today, not just when the season started. All of their veteran pitchers are either hurt or suspended, but they still have enough depth to keep winning. Beane deserves a lot of credit because he seems to have acquired the right kind of arms. Pitching prospects are dime a dozen, but successful prospects who turn out to be good are rarer than you think. Beane seems to have found the prefect group and seem to be paying even less than a dime for his dozen. The baseball establishment is not on board with all things Billy because of the moneyball hype, but he earned this one the hard way. And his quote at the end of the season ain't bad either. “We set out to create a team whose future was better than its past,” Beane said. “In the process, we made a team for the present.” And this team looks good for the future too. America better get used to names like Yoenis Cespedes, Josh Reddick, Daniel Straily, AJ Griffin, Jarrod Parker and Tommy Milone. They are here to stay.

This team had no business even being one of the 2 wild cards according to most experts, but they ended up winning the division at the end, that too after trailing the Rangers by 13 games at one point in the season. Their gift for all this - a tough series starting on the road against the Detroit Tigers and Justin Verlander. They actually have a better record than Detroit, but they still have to start the series on the road because of the unique 2-3 format this year to squeeze some time for the extra wildcard games by cutting the travel day out of the old 2-2-1 format. This new format will be dangerous for all these higher seeds opening on the road, but especially for the A's since they have to face Verlander and Max Scherzer. But they will come back home and I am sure will make a series out of it. Speaking of the one-game wildcard series, the idea made no sense to me at first, but now I realize I missed the point. Of course nobody from MLB did a good job of explaining the logic behind it either at the start of the season. Now that I saw it work through the entire season, I get it and actually love it. It totally restores the prestige and value of winning the division, which the first wild card took away back in the day. In fact, that was Bob Costas' argument against the first wildcard for years. With the addition of the second wildcard, of course teams want to win the division just to avoid that dangerous one game elimination game. Texas and Oakland swapped places on the last day and are in completely different worlds right now. The wildcard world is not fun for the teams involved.

A's are now getting ready for the playoffs to deal with Verlander and Miguel Cabrera. Congrats to Miggy on the triple crown. It's a special achievement that clinches the AL MVP for him. Sorry Mike Trout.

Playoffs are here

Baseball playoffs are here and this is definitely a fun time of the year. We get to share our attention between the baseball playoffs, college football and the NFL. Baseball is not exactly the most popular or fun sport during the regular season and I don't spend a lot of time watching those games. But playoff baseball is riveting and usually a lot of fun. I am looking forward to it this year since the Arizona Diamondbacks have made it. Also, the exciting and strange way in which the regular season ended by eliminating the Boston Red Sox and the Atlanta Braves has definitely help raise the interest in this post-season. The Red Sox were leading the Rays by 9 games for the wild card in early September and still managed to lose it with just one strike to go in the season. They lost a one-run lead in the 9-Th and ended up losing to the Orioles 4-3. The Sox went 7-20 in September to achieve this meltdown. The Rays on the other hand came back from a 0-7 deficit in their final game to beat the Yankees 8-7 in 12 innings to win the wild card. That was an amazing and unbelievable sequence of events that put the Rays into the playoffs! The Braves went 9-18 in September to lose their playoff spot as well on the last day to the Cardinals. Both wild card races had spectacular finishes and historic collapses. Now we have the Rays and the Cards in the playoffs and no Braves or Red Sox. Braves will be fine, but some big names are going to lose their jobs in Boston.

As for the playoffs, the fun starts tomorrow with the AL games. Justin Verlander and C.C. Sabathia are the headliners for day 1. That should be a fun matchup. The D-Backs kickoff October baseball on the first of the month and Ian Kennedy will take on Yovani Gallardo in Milwaukee. The Brewers have home-field and that can be a challenge for the snakes since the Brew-crew just does not seem to lose at home. Both teams have solid pitching as most playoffs teams tend to do and the Brewers have MVP candidates Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder in their lineup on top of that. That should make them the favorites, but thats why they play the games - to defy logic and numbers and to create new records. A lot rides on Kennedy in game 1. In the other NL contest, Philly should be an overwhelming favorite over the Saint Louis Cardinals with that pitching. Halladay goes in game 1, but it doesn't get any easier for the Cards after that as Cliff Lee and Cole Hamels will attack them just as effectively as Halladay. The Phillies should be the favorites to win it all with that pitching, but again, there's a reason why we actually play the games. Just so that the Dbacks can upset the Phillies and then the Yankees! I am sure this playoffs will throw us a few more astonishing moments just like the ones we saw yesterday when the Sox and the Braves wrapped up their historic collapses. Bring it on!

Football weekend is almost upon us. Pittsburgh crushed 16-Th seeded South Florida today to set the stage for a fun college weekend. ASU has re-entered the top-25 with an impressive win over USC last weekend. They should continue that trend when they host Oregon State. The big games of the weekend are Alabama-Florida, Clemson-Va Tech and Nebraska-Wisconsin. Thats a great way for Nebraska to start their life in Big 10 with a visit to the 7-Th seeded Wisconsin. Madison will be ready for that. SEC football at the swamp is always fun and they will welcome Alabama this weekend. UCLA at Stanford will be a fun, late night, Pac-12 contest as well. In the NFL, Patriots at Oakland promises to be one of the great match ups along with Detroit at Dallas and Pittsburgh at Houston. All 3 games featuring surprising teams in Oakland, Detroit and Houston that have not been in the playoffs the last few years, but have all looked good the last 3 weeks. The headliner will be the Jets at Baltimore, but the real action might be in those other 3 contests. The Raiders can definitely shock the Patriots since they can run the ball. Run DMC is an absolute monster and the Pats are going to have issues stopping Darren McFadden. Brady will be a handful for the Raiders as well and the team that commits the fewest mistake should take this one. Not a path-breaking theory, but I think it's going to be the case with this one given the Raiders tendency to commit mistakes and penalties. If they stay in their shoes, they have a shot.

600 is the new 300

When it comes to our age, people these days say things like "30 is the new 20" and "60 is the new 10" etc. Some of this is just idle chatter, but some of it does make sense due to changes in our lifestyles, priorities, development in health sciences, and workout habits. This is a good thing. The story is the same with home runs. 600 home runs these days doesn't get you the respect and attention it got 30 years back. This is not a good thing and Jim Thome has the rampant use of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) in baseball over the last 2 decades to thank for it. Thome just hit his 600-Th home run and nobody seem to care. Thome has stayed relatively clean in the eyes of people, but who are we to judge? These guys are all considered guilty until proven innocent because of the extent of the use of PEDs and the spate of shocking revelations over the past several years. It is what it is and I don't blame the fans or the writers for the way they are forced to think on this issue. It's baseball's fault that they never instituted any drug testing for decades.

Writers may take their time debating whether or not Thome belongs in the hall and delay his induction. MLB is exclusively to blame for this predicament. They knew there was a big problem for years and still had their blinders on for a decade or two. Is this fair to Thome? Of course not, assuming he is clean. But he only has his league's management and to some extent, his player's union to blame. Haven't we all been in that situation? Where our managers and our company's executives mismanage everything and end up adversely affecting our careers, earning potential, and the company's bottom-line and future. It's the same with MLB, NFL or the NBA. Baseball's executives and the player's union mishandled the PED issue and underestimated it's importance to the average fan and now, everybody is paying the price. Thome has to deal with the fact that 600 is the new 300. Thome is past his prime and also has a low-key personality and that contributes to his relative anonymity as well. But his feat would have definitely been celebrated way more if not for the specter of PEDs hanging over every baseball feat these days.

On the field, the Diamondbacks are leading the NL West ahead of the World champions Giants and I think the young team has a great shot at holding onto that prime spot through the season. They are different from the Pittsburgh Pirates who have declined rapidly towards the depths of the NL Central standing. The Brewers are on a roll and dominating that division right now. In the AL, the Central is tight as always with the Tigers owning a small lead. The Yankees and the RedSox are all tied up, but both will be in the playoffs - one of them as the wildcard. This is normal for those 2 teams. Few years back, this is when Bob Costas would typically start complaining about how bad an idea the wild card is. That train has long left the station and we don't hear Costas anymore on that topic, but his point is still valid. Yankees and RedSox should be involved in a heated pennant chase right now, but instead, they are humoring us with a mildly amusing and marginally relevant fight for the division. What we get in return for this diluted pennant chase is a whole bunch of teams fighting for the 2 wild card spots every year and a potential Yankees-RedSox ALCS contest. That would be Christmas, New Year and election day all rolled into one for the East Coast media.