The headline reflected the current cry from too many baseball observers. “High-Payroll Teams Likely To Dominate MLB Postseason,” it said. It is baseball’s version of the fable “Chicken Little, or The Sky Is Falling.”

In the words of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, “The phrase, ‘The sky is falling,’ has passed into the English language as a common idiom indicating a hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent.”

As it applies to baseball, the cry about high-payroll teams is both hysterical and mistaken. Anyone who cries that baseball’s sky is falling hasn’t been watching or keeping track of playoff developments in recent years.

Yes, high-payroll teams make the playoffs. That’s like the police captain discovering that gambling goes on at Rick’s in the film “Casablanca.” But why shouldn’t high-payroll teams make the playoffs? Should they be penalized for having high payrolls?

But what these baseball Chicken Littles overlook is that lower-payrolls teams also make the playoffs and sometimes even advance deeper into October than their high-payroll brethren.

Only two years ago the four teams that played in the league championship series were the Red Sox, with the second highest-payroll that year, and three teams in the bottom third of the payroll standings, the No. 22 Indians, the No. 23 Diamondbacks and the No. 26 Rockies.

Does the final four have to include three lowest-third teams every year for all of the Chicken Littles to mute their cries?

Yes, the four teams with the highest payrolls in the American League will be in the A.L. playoffs this year if the Tigers hold off the Twins. They are the Yankees (No. 1 over-all), the Tigers (4^th), the Red Sox (5^th) and the Angels (8^th).

But what about the National League? The N.L. might lose the All-Star game every year, but their playoffs count. Sometimes the winner of their playoffs even wins the World Series. Yet the teams with the two highest payrolls in the league will not play post-season games this year. The Mets, second over-all, and the Cubs, third, have other work to do.

The N.L. playoffs will have the teams with the sixth (Phillies), seventh (Dodgers), 12^th (Cardinals) and 17^th (Rockies) payrolls if the Rockies maintain their wild-card lead. The Cardinals began the season in the lower half of the payroll standings, which are based on figures compiled by the commissioner’s office, but traded their way into the upper half.  

It’s not as if all of the high-payroll teams battered their way into the playoffs. The Tigers, as of mid-week, were still trying to hold off the Twins, who rank 24^th in the payroll standings. The Angels spent most of the season brushing back the No. 20 Rangers. The Phillies survived late-season challenges from the No. 13 Braves and, even more interesting, the No. 30 Marlins.

Had the season continued much longer, the Dodgers might not have been able to hold off the No. 17 Rockies.

The Chicken Littles could argue that in each instance the high-payroll contender was able to hold off the lower-payroll challenger because having spent more money, it was deeper and better fortified to win. How explain, then, the instances where high-payroll teams don’t reach the playoffs? Injuries? Underachieving players? Poor managing?

Why aren’t the Mets and the Cubs in the playoffs this year? The Mets have an easy answer. Injuries decimated them, though there are those who believe the Mets would not have reached the post-season even if completely healthy. But they don’t get a do-over so we’ll never know.

The Cubs are classic underachievers, though injuries contributed to their disappointing season but to a far lesser extent than the Mets experienced.

Having six of the top eight payroll teams in the playoffs will be the most in recent years but by only one team over 2007.

Five of the eight teams with the highest payrolls also made the playoffs in 2004. It could be said that high-payroll teams dominated the playoffs that year and in 2007 and that nothing is new about this year’s post-season lineup, but Chicken Little-like cries weren’t heard in those years.

Why are those cries being wailed this year? I think the explanation is pretty evident. It’s the Yankees.

This is all about the Yankees’ extravagance last winter in signing three free agents to contracts totaling $423.5 million. No one said anything when the Yankees didn’t make the playoffs last year with the major leagues’ highest payroll.

But the Yankees reacted to that failure by signing C.C. Sabathia, A. J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira, and now the critics are screaming, especially with the contributions those players have made in making the Yankees the strongest team in the majors. The screaming will get louder if the Yankees win the World Series.

Some people, including some owners, want baseball to change its salary system. They want baseball to establish a cap on payrolls, like the other professional sports do. But it will never happen because the union will never accept a payroll cap. Players have gone on strike and lost millions of dollars in salary rather than agree to a cap.

Commissioner Bud Selig and most owners have suffered enough bruises from work stoppages to want to take a chance on enduring more. The owners and the players have negotiated two consecutive labor agreements without a work stoppage. Selig likes it that way. He likes it because labor peace has produced record revenues and attendances. A former automobile dealer, Selig knows a good deal when he has one.

If the owners wanted to revisit their payroll cap proposal, perhaps they should have done it after the 2004 season, two years before the expiration of the labor agreement. That season the teams with baseball’s three highest payrolls – Yankees, Red Sox, Angels – were in the playoffs, and the Red Sox won the World Series.

But there was no outcry, internal or external, for a system change because the Red Sox were being saluted for their first World Series title in 86 years, they knocked off the big, bad Yankees and the Yankees did not seize everybody’s attention with a flurry of expensive signings.

There should be no outcry this year either, even if the Yankees win the World Series. Baseball doesn’t need a new system just to stop the Yankees from spending. Try to kill the Yankees’ spending and the owners will kill their game.

These are the teams, according to their rank in the salary standings, that have made the playoffs the last 10 years. This year’s lineup includes the Tigers and the Rockies, who had not clinched their spots when this was posted. (number in parentheses is the number of teams in the top 8 that were in the playoffs):

• 2009 (6): 1-4-5-6-7-8-12-17
• 2008 (4): 2-5-6-7-9-10-15-28
• 2007 (5): 1-2-5-7-8-22-23-26
• 2006 (3): 1-5-6-12-14-17-19-21
• 2005 (4): 1-2-5-6-10-12-14-16
• 2004 (5): 1-2-3-7-8-11-12-19
• 2003 (3): 1-4-6-10-11-17-23-26
• 2002 (3): 1-4-7-10-13-16-27-28
• 2001 (4): 3-5-6-8-9-12-17-26
• 2000 (3): 1-3-5-12-15-18-25-27

 

 

 

Here they go again. For the third time in four seasons, the Minnesota Twins are in the last week of the season scrapping for the American League Central championship. In the previous two instances, they won one and lost one. The outcome of this season’s scrap will be determined, to a great extent, by their four-game series with Detroit this week.

The Twins were two games behind the Tigers entering Sunday’s games. The Twins were playing a three-game weekend series in Kansas City, the Tigers in Chicago. They are scheduled to begin their four-game series in Detroit Monday night. 

“We’ve got our hands full,” Bill Smith, the Twins’ general manager, said. “We still have a pretty steep hill to climb in the last 10 games. But a staple of a Ron Gardenhire team is we never quit. When we were six or seven games behind, we didn’t quit.”

Smith refered to the first week of September when the Twins trailed the Tigers by six and seven games. A six-game winning streak erased most of that deficit and left the Twins two games behind after games of Sept. 19.

That was not unfamiliar territory to Gardenhire and his players. In 2006 the Twins played an unprecedented season, never leading the division until they won on the final day of the season and bumped the Tigers to second.

The Tigers led the division from May 21 to that final day. They led the Twins by 12 games in the days after the All-Star break but withered under the Twins’ 49-26 charge. With three games to play, the Twins tied the Tigers for the division lead.

The Twins then lost the first two games of a three-game series with the Chicago White Sox. The Tigers lost the first two games of a three-game series with the Royals. On the final day of the season the Tigers lost yet again to the Royals. The Twins beat the White Sox and became the first team to finish in first place while holding first place only one day.

The 2008 division race was even closer. The Twins lagged two and a half games behind the White Sox with six games to play, but half of those games were with the White Sox and the Twins won them all, leapfrogging them into first with a half-game lead.

Both contenders lost the first two games of their final series, the Twins with the Royals, the White Sox with Cleveland, and both won the third game, maintaining the half-game separation. The White Sox, however, forced a one-game playoff by beating the Tigers in a makeup game the day after the season was supposed to have ended.

Playing at home, the White Sox won the playoff, 1-0, on a Jim Thome home run.

If the Twins and the Tigers finish in a tie for first, they will play a one-game playoff for the division title.

Win or lose, the Twins have demonstrated their contending consistency this season. I have said it before and I will say it again, the Twins have one of the best organizations in baseball, maybe the best, and they certainly have eclipsed the Oakland Athletics as the most outstanding low-revenue team.

The book “Moneyball” made Billy Beane, the Athletics’ general manager, a celebrity, but as good as Beane is, the Athletics have not outdone the Twins under general managers Terry Ryan and Bill Smith.

Actually the Twins’ run began under Andy MacPhail with World Series triumphs in 1987 and ‘91, but then the team took a downward turn, enduring eight consecutive losing seasons from 1993 through 2000.

“I was taking stupid pills,” said Tom Kelly, manager of the World Series teams as well as the losing teams. “My wife gave them to me. I didn’t know she was doing that.”

But Kelly taught Gardenhire, his successor, well, and in the seven seasons before this one, the Twins won the division title four times and had the narrow miss last season.

From 2000 through 2008, the Athletics finished first four times and won the wild card once. In an eight-year span, 1999 through 2006, the Athletics finished first or second each year, giving people reason to be impressed with Beane. But the Athletics’ magic has faded. They have finished a distant third each of the past two seasons, and this year they have been a solid last the last five months.

The Twins, meanwhile, have sustained their status as a contender, and no one has cared to chronicle their achievements. When Ryan was the general manager, I told him he didn’t get the credit or the recognition he deserved, and he replied that he had received plenty of recognition. Jut not the Beane kind. But the Twins are still up and the Athletics down.  

“Our strength for a number of years has been in scouting and development and patience and consistency,” Smith said. “This year’s team is no different. We have a lot of homegrown players. That said, some of the guys who have come in this season had been good contributors.”

He mentioned, among others, infielders Joe Crede and Orlando Cabrera, the only free agents among the front-line Twins. Homegrown are catcher Joe Mauer, first baseman Justin Morneau, outfielders Michael Cuddyer and Denard Span, designated hitter Jason Kubel and a bunch of starting pitchers, including Nick Blackburn, Kevin Slowey and Scott Baker.

Mauer and Morneau are the jewels of the Twins’ scouting and development efforts. The Twins made Mauer the No. 1 pick in the 2001 draft and selected Morneau in the third round in the 1999 draft.

In 2006, his second full season in the majors, Mauer became the first catcher to win the American League batting title, and then he won it again last year. He entered Sunday’s game with a league-leading .371 average, in position to make it three titles in four years.

Another title would make Mauer the first A.L. player to win three titles in four years since Wade Boggs won four in a row from 1985 through 1988.

Morneau (at right) was the A.L. most valuable player in 2006. He leads the Twins this season with 30 home runs and 100 runs batted in. But he is also finished for the season, shut down Sept. 12 with a stress fracture in his lower back. Not that Morneau is replaceable but the Twins have replaced him seamlessly.

“Michael Cuddyer is one of the true leaders on our club,” Smith said. “Losing Morneau is tough on any club, but one of the things we’ve had all year is outfield depth. When we lost Justin and Michael came in to first base, we were able to replace him.”

The Twins have done that by putting Kubel in right field and opening the d.h. role to a variety of hitters. Their ability to replace Morneau’s body, if not his production, is a testament to the Twins’ production of major league players. That is a result of their scouting and development system.

MacPhail initiated the system in the ‘80s, and first Ryan and now Smith have maintained it.

“We have good people and we’ve been able to keep our people,” Smith said. “There’s a lot of consistency to our scouting and development staff. We have a lot of people who have been with us 20 years, 15 years. Our ownership has made it a good place to work. Andy MacPhail, Terry replacing him…it’s been a good place to work. People don’t want to leave.”

Ryan didn’t want to leave when he had the opportunity. In 2002 baseball owners were considering contraction, and the Twins were one of the teams to be lopped off the major league map. Toronto wanted to interview Ryan for their general manager job, but he declined, opting to stay with his people in Minnesota. It was as classy a move as any ever seen in baseball.

“We know each other and we know our strengths and weaknesses,” Smith said. “We’re not constantly trying to reinvent the wheel. Andy and Terry on the administrative side and Tom Kelly and Gardenhire (below) on the field side have emphasized the simple part of it and it has worked for us.

“Each regime has tried to maintain the positives. You tinker and tweak our programs and philosophies to try to get better. We have a lot of talented people in this organization who don’t get near enough credit. Working together has made us successful.”

Then what happened in that eight-year span of losing seasons, other than Kelly taking stupid pills, of course?

“We lost some of our key players after 1991, Puckett and Hrbek,” Smith said. “They were the heart and soul of our club. It was tough to replace core players like that. We tried to replace them with veteran players without having confidence in our system. We were trying to be competitive.”

After seeing the new strategy fail often enough, Ryan and Jim Pohlad, son of the owner and the team’s chief executive officer, decided they needed a different plan.

“It wasn’t working, and Jim Pohlad said then why are we doing this,” Smith related. “Terry said we had to be patient. They agreed that for us to get better we had to stop signing the journeyman players and give our young players a chance.”

In 1998 and ‘99, Smith recalled, the Twins had 17 rookies, including Torii Hunter, Jacque Jones, A. J. Pierzynski, Cristian Guzman, Doug Mientkiewicz and Corey Koskie. “That group jelled and became a winning team,” he said.

“There are some cycles that every team goes through,” Smith added. “You certainly hope to minimize the down side and maximize the positive trends. We’ve been on a good run for most of this decade. It’s our job to try to extend this period as long as we can.”

 

TWO THIRD BASEMEN NAMED ALEX

Alex Rodriguez is the Yankees’ third baseman. Alex Gordon is the Royals’ third baseman. They had similar hip operations this season. Rodriguez, whose operation was March 9, missed 28 games, beginning his season May 8. Gordon missed 79 games, virtually the entire first half of the season. 

Since his return, Rodriguez’s season breaks down this way:

In 71 games before July 31, he batted .247 with 19 home runs and 57 runs batted in. In 47 games beginning July 31, before Saturday’s game, he was hitting .349 with 9 homers and 36 r.b.i. His post-July 30 pace raised his batting average to .288.

Before July 31 the Yankees had a 62-40 record (.608). Since then their record is 36-16 (.692). 

Gordon, in his third major league season, has not flourished as Rodriguez has. Following his return from his April 17 operation, he hit .186 in his first month back for a .198 average at the end of August, then was sent to the minors for a 17-game stretch. Since his return, he has batted .256, raising his season average to .224.

Gordon is accustomed to struggling at the plate. In his rookie season of 2007, Gordon didn’t reach .200 until June 14 in his 60^th game.

 

THEY CAN DO BETTER; JUST ASK THEM

No matter how the major player awards are voted this year, some segment of the more-knowledgeable-than-thou neo-statistical posse will tell the voters they got it wrong. I recall the outraged reaction to the selection of Justin Morneau as the American League most valuable player in 2006.

The writers got it all wrong, the statistics-minded critics screamed. They don’t know what they’re doing.  I don’t recall who it was the screamers thought should have won the award, but I do think those screamers are jealous of the writers who vote. They think they know more than the writers, and they should be using their knowledge to pick the m.v.p.s and the Cy Young award winners.

But I have news for them, The awards, which are the best known in all sports, were created by the Baseball Writers Association of America, and they remain in the writers’ hands. Newspapers may be dying, but the BBWAA awards aren’t.

If, on the other hand, some group thinks it can do better, let it create its own awards and see how far they get. Several years ago Major League Baseball tried to get the BBWAA to take on the Hank Aaron award, given to a player in each league deemed to be the best over-all hitter in the league. The BBWAA said no, thank you, and the award remains a minor award.

There’s nothing wrong with good, spirited debate over various candidates, but for one segment to say its view is right and another’s wrong is weak.

For example, I might think Felix Hernandez should be the A.L. Cy Young award winner and you might think it should be Zack Greinke, but there would be no right or wrong in the debate. The only opinions that would mean anything would be those of the 28 voters.

 

There are reasons to like the wild card. Bud Selig likes the wild card because it creates more late-season interest in the cities whose teams have a chance to make the playoffs as a second-place team. Fans in those cities would otherwise have nothing to root for in the final weeks and months, and more interest in more cities means more revenue for teams and for Major League Baseball.

The Angels like the wild card because in 2002 they won the World Series after qualifying for the post-season as a wild card. The 2003 Marlins and the 2004 Red Sox followed the same path to their World Series championships. They like the wild card, too.

There are reasons, however, not to like the wild card. The biggest reason, I think, is it kills races for division titles. Often, if two teams are competing for first place the loser is assured of the wild card so it doesn’t really matter, except for homefield advantage, which team finishes first and which second.

In fact, there was a situation where the Dodgers and the Padres reached the final game of the 1996 season tied for the lead in the National League West and were playing each other. Both teams were assured of playoff spots so the Dodgers lifted their best pitcher, Ramon Martinez, after one inning to save him for the first post-season game against Atlanta.

The Padres won the game and the division title. As it turned out, the Dodgers’ strategy didn’t help them in the post-season. The Braves swept them in the opening series. But then, the Cardinals swept the Padres. Nevertheless the existence of the wild card influenced the outcome of that division race. 

This season the Yankees have already clinched a post-season spot and the Red Sox are zeroing in on their own spot via the wild card. But if not for the existence of the wild card the Yankees and the Red Sox might be engaged in a scintillating race right now.

With the Red Sox losing the first two games of their series in Kansas City this week, the likelihood of a race diminished, but the fallacy of the predestined outcome applies here. What is the fallacy of the predestined outcome? It is a variation of the fallacy of the predestined hit.

So named or at least popularized by Ken Nigro, a former Baltimore baseball writer, who now works with the Red Sox, the fallacy of the predestined hit refers to the situation where something is assumed after something else has occurred.

It usually relates to a hit a batter gets after a runner is out trying to steal a base. An announcer will say, “Oh, if Jones had not tried to steal second, the Red Sox would have runners at second and third and no one out.” He has assumed that had the runner remained at first, the batter would have hit the same double.

But he has not taken into account that with a runner still at first, the pitcher might have pitched the batter differently and the batter might not have hit the double. In this case, the double is the predestined hit, and it is a fallacy to assume that the batter would have hit it.

Applying the fallacy to a race between the Red Sox and the Yankees, if circumstances for the Red Sox were different, were they not virtually assured a playoff spot, their approach to the series with the last-place Royals might have been different. Players are human beings, and they are affected by the reality of their circumstances.

I am always puzzled by players talking about the motivation they got from something said by a player on the other team. This sort of remark is heard even in a post-season situation. I have never understood how a player can be motivated by someone’s words more than they already are by the chance of winning a game or a series and going to the World Series.

I remember when I was in high school the coach of the football team would gather his players for a pre-game motivation session and tell his players, “I just heard someone on the other team say you guys are yellow.” His ploy never worked, but maybe that was because they were always a bad team to begin with, yellow or not.

But I suppose if even professional players think they are motivated by derogatory remarks from an opposing player, you can’t dismiss the possibility. So perhaps if the Red Sox had to beat the Royals to remain in the race for a playoff spot, say, the championship of the American League East, they might have played them harder and more successfully.

In 1978, to go back to another Yankees-Red Sox race, there was no wild card, and the loser would go home. The Yankees overcame the Red Sox 14-game lead and bumped them from first place, only to have the Red Sox stage a last-gasp rally and tie the Yankees for the division lead on the final day of the season. The Bucky Dent playoff game ensued.

But we can’t go back and recreate the race that wasn’t. With a week and a half left in the season, the Yankees and the Red Sox are not fighting for a lone playoff spot. The loser has a fallback position.

We are left, then, with the question of whether or not the Red Sox can overtake the Yankees and win the division title. I suppose a corollary question is do the Red Sox care if they finish first or second as long as they win the wild card.

There’s always homefield advantage to consider. Commissioner Selig, Fox television and others think homefield advantage is so important that baseball bases it for the World Series on the outcome of the annual mid-season exhibition game, the All-Star game.

Other than homefield advantage, which really does seem to be an advantage in a playoff series, a playoff spot is a playoff spot. Playing as the wild card did not affect the Red Sox in 2004. The wild card can not have homefield advantage in the division and league series, but that doesn’t always mean anything.

The Red Sox won their division series as the wild card last year, then lost Game 7 of the league series to the Rays. A year earlier the Rockies won both the division and league series as the wild card.

So maybe there is still an A.L. East race and maybe there isn’t. But if the Red Sox needed to finish in first place to make the playoffs this year, think of the intensity and the excitement and the drama that would fill this weekend’s three-game series between the Red Sox and the Yankees at Yankee Stadium. It would be as good as a playoff series.