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A Plaque For Posada?

Peter Abraham is discussing Jorge Posada's Hall of Fame chances on his excellent blog today. On my recent vacation a friend and I played a little game where we went through each major league team and said "If their career ended today, would _______ be elected to Cooperstown?" I could bore you with the entire list but I'll cut to the quick and tell you that Posada wasn't on it. Two Yankee fans predisposed to players who wear our favorite pinstripes didn't think Jorge cut the mustard but Abraham is leaning in the positive direction. What's his view?

Look at it this way. The only catchers in the history of baseball with as many home runs, doubles and RBI in one season are Mike Piazza (1998), Pudge Rodriguez (1998), Pudge Fisk (1978) and Johnny Bench (1974 and ‘75). Only Piazza and Rodriguez hit .300 in those seasons.

This could be the season Posada played himself into the Hall of Fame. He’s a .278 career hitter with 217 homers, 855 RBI, three rings and five All-Star game selections.

The only catchers who can match those statistics are Piazza, Rodriguez, Ted Simmons, Javy Lopez, Yogi Berra, Gabby Hartnett and Roy Campanella.

Simmons never won the World Series. Lopez did once.

By the time these current Yankees are retired, they’ll have to build a new room at the Hall of Fame. Rodriguez, Jeter, Rivera, Clemens and Torre are in for sure. Posada is probable and Mike Mussina will get a lot of consideration.

I see a couple of big problems with this. Posada is having a great season but a great season does not a Hall of Fame selection make and the other four catchers that Abraham cites had careers that were far better than Posada's. He was a direct contemporary of two of them, Piazza and Pudge, and there's never been a reasonable argument that could put Posada ahead of either one on a list of the best catchers of this generation. When you look at the list of catchers who can match Jorgie's career statistics you get those two contemporaries as well as Berra and Hartnett who are two of the greatest players ever at the position. Campanella has essentially the same numbers as Posada but did it in a far shorter career and the other two guys aren't Hall of Famers and never will be.

I'm Not So Much Angry At You As I Am At The Whole Situation

John McLaren was tabbed to manage the Seattle Mariners in the wake of Mike Hargrove's unexpected departure. For most of the summer it seemed like a charmed spot for the longtime bench coach because the Mariners were outperforming expectations and looking like contenders for a playoff spot. All they had to do was keep it up in September and, even if they fell short of playing in October, McLaren would seem a safe bet to keep the job next season. Alas, Seattle has gone into the kind of downward spiral that costs men their jobs, families, homes and sanity. They lost again last night, 7-4 to Oakland, and all the losing is starting to get to McLaren. He was ejected for yelling at the home plate umpire after a fourth inning walk, his third ejection since taking over the job and the latest sign that he's not long for the managerial world.

• Down 8-1 after three and a half innings the Red Sox were staring down the barrel of some trouble. Their lead could be down to four over the Yankees just before the Bombers rolled into town for a three-game set, Tim Wakefield was slaughtered for the second straight start and, worst of all, it was the lowly Devil Rays doing the pounding. But since it was the Devil Rays on the other side all wasn't lost. The Sox scored four times in the fourth, three times in the fifth and finally took the lead in a six-run sixth inning. They even added two in the seventh to run their lead up to the same seven runs that Tampa led by earlier in the evening. There wouldn't be two comebacks, though, and Boston held on for a 16-10 win.
• Jake Peavy was back on his normal amount of rest Tuesday night and it served him well. He allowed two runs over seven innings and the Padres regained a game on the Diamondbacks with a 9-4 win over the Dodgers. The Friars are two and a half games back of Arizona in the West but lead the Phillies by the same amount for the Wild Card.
• You're doing a heckuva job, Ozzie! Ending speculation before it really had a chance to begin, the White Sox announced that Ozzie Guillen's contract was extended through the 2012 season despite lackluster on-field results for the Pale Hose this summer. They didn't celebrate the good news with a win, however. Paul Byrd earned a victory for the fifth time in six starts and the Tribe continued their march to a division title in an 8-3 victory.
• Your daily NL Central update finds the Brewers back on top by a game after beating the Pirates 6-1. Prince Fielder hit his 44th home run and Yovani Gallardo threw six shutout innings to help them back to the top spot. The Cubs lost ground because they lost a big lead in Houston. They led the Astros 4-1 but Jason Marquis couldn't hold the edge and Luke Scott tripled home the winner in the 11th inning for a loss the Cubs really couldn't afford. Check back tomorrow when there's little chance that things will look the same.

(AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Louis Gossett Jr. Is Smiling

Jason Giambi was really feeling the need for a hit when he came up with the bases loaded in the fifth inning of last night's game in Toronto.

“I would have been the guy from “An Officer and a Gentleman” in the shower hanging myself if I hadn’t gotten that hit. They would have found me naked in the shower, cashed out.”

The hit he got, a grand slam, broke open a 4-2 game and sent the Yankees off and running to their sixth straight victory. The win also pushed them 20 games above .500 on the season not that Giambi has contributed all that much to the second-half fun. His two hits in 27 at-bats before the grand slam had me wondering if he wasn't trying to count cards in an oxygen-deprivation chamber instead of taking batting practice. Either that or he was concentrating too much on romancing Jeremy Giambi's former fiancee after his brother went off to Vietnam and never came home. Mike Mussina, the Yankees Mayonnaise, has starts tonight for the first time in a couple of weeks because the Bombers have no place else to go when it comes to finding a pitcher.

Brewers Back On Top

The Brewers opened play on Sunday tied for the Central Division lead with the Cubs. By the fourth batter of the game they seemed a good bet to remain, at the least, in a deadlock for first place. Richie Weeks, J.J. Hardy and Ryan Braun each homered off Phil Dumatrait and the Brewers were off and running on a 10-5 win in Cincinnati. Milwaukee added three more homers in the game and the fireworks paid off in spades when the results from Pittsburgh revealed that the Cubs were losers by the same score.  That returned sole possession of the division lead to Milwaukee in advance of their own trip to PNC Park for three games this week. The biggest obstacle to staying there may not come from on-field opposition. With Yom Kippur looming the Brew Crew must wonder if their splendid rookie third baseman is going to play on September 21 and 22 in games that will go a long way toward determining their playoff status. Braun is clearly the Chosen One but will that outrank his membership in the Chosen People?

• We can't know for sure what role Dave Littlefield's long overdue firing had on the Pirates this weekend but the Brewers will probably send a Thank You note to Pirate ownership nonetheless. The overmatched GM was finally sent packing and the Bucs responded by taking two of three games from the Cubs including yesterday's 10-5 win. Steve Trachsel, the according to Hoyle definition of a last-ditch option, lost his second start since rejoining the northsiders and couldn't get past the second inning. Nyjer Morgan drove in two runs for the Bucs, thrilling his parents beyond belief. It would also thrill this guy if he was still updating his blog. 
• The Mets looked like a team on the brink of implosion after dropping four straight to the Phillies. They were in need of a spark to save their season from disaster and they found one in Pedro Martinez. He won for the second time this week, pitching better than he did in Cincinnati, and the Amazins have won eight of nine to solidify their hold on the NL East. Pedro struck out four in five shutout innings in the 4-1 win and the Mets maintain their comfortable six-game edge on Philadelphia.
• If Dave Littlefield's firing inspired the Bucs the Rick Ankiel revelations seem to have taken the life out of the Cardinal comeback. The Diamondbacks finished off a three-game sweep with Sunday's 6-5 win and dropped the Cards three games behind the Brewers in the Central. The D-Backs hold the same edge on the Padres after Jose Valverde escaped a bases loaded ninth inning jam for his 45th save of the season.
• The score was fitting for the first football Sunday of the year, 14-7, but time looks like it's run out on the Seattle Mariners and their improbable playoff quest all the same. The losing Tigers may be in the same boat after they couldn't get a good start out of Jeremy Bonderman.

(AP Photo/Tom Uhlman)

Choke On This

A little more than a month ago there was some renewed conjecture about A-Rod being a choker. The Yankees had recovered from their early struggles and reentered the playoff race but Rodriguez was struggling to hit homers. He was stuck on 499 homers and couldn't seem to buy a hit when the team needed him to produce. Fast forward to the last five games and the Yankees are in an even more important stretch of the season. They have a Wild Card lead but the Mariners and Tigers remain locked in their rearview mirror and they can't afford even the slightest losing streak if they want to keep a firm grasp on their playoff spot. What's Rodriguez done?

September 4 - 2-4, two runs, home run, RBI, Yankees win 12-3

September 5 - 2-3, two runs, two homers, three RBI, Yankees win 10-2

September 7 - 3-4, run, home run, RBI, Yankees win 3-2

September 8 - 2-3, two runs, two homers, three RBI, Yankees win 11-5

September 9 - 2-5, two runs, home run, two RBI, Yankees win 6-3

That gives him eight homers and 15 RBI through eight September games and leaves him on a pace for his best month of the season. That's stunning when you realize that he hit 14 homers in April, hit .402 with 34 RBI in June and posted a 1054 OPS in August. That's an MVP season and a season that ranks with the greatest of Yankee history. He's two homers away from tying Mickey Mantle's best ever total, he's already got the most homers by a third baseman in a season and the most by a righthander in pinstripes. It's probably not enough to silence those who believe A-Rod chokes in big spots, he'll need a big October in the Bronx to end that once and for all, but it's getting awfully difficult to continue selling that theory.

Bad News For People Who Like Good News

Hasn't it been a hard enough season for the St. Louis Cardinals? Alcohol soaked arrests and death, a career-threatening injury for their ace and an off-year for almost everyone in the lineup has cast a pall over their title defense. Yet through it all they are hanging in the race for the NL Central because of both improved play and the general putridness of the other clubs that share their locale. The face of that grit has been Rick Ankiel's. Infamous for his breakdown on the mound after an encouraging start to his major league career Ankiel rebuilt himself into a power-hitting outfielder. He finally made it back to the major leagues, homered in his first game and has generated just about the only good news out of the heartland all season.

It continued yesterday when he hit two bombs and drove in seven runs to power the Cardinals' 16-4 win against the Pirates. And then the Daily News went to press and the whole story went to shit.

St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Rick Ankiel, baseball's feel-good story of the season, received a 12-month supply of human growth hormone in 2004 from a Florida pharmacy that was part of a national illegal prescription drug-distribution operation, the Daily News has learned.

It's hard not to be sympathetic to Ankiel. In 2004 he was searching for some way to keep doing the only thing he knew how to do. HGH wasn't against baseball's rules at the time and we know that he's not the only player who went that route to gain a leg up. And it was 2004 which doesn't mean that he's still using HGH or any other performance enhancing drugs right now so it doesn't necessarily negate what he's done since returning to the Show.

But all of that is a big, juicy rationalization. Ankiel is now covered in the same cloud that envelops Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and nearly every other prodigious home run hitter of the last decade. It makes the feel-good story of the 2007 season fugazy and further erodes the trust and belief we can have in athletes doing amazing things because of their natural ability. As Will Leitch, Deadspin editor and perhaps the world's biggest Ankiel fan, put it this morning,

Fourteen hours ago, Rick Ankiel was what we loved about sports: His story existed in the black-white world we demand of our sports. His story was pure; it was impossible not to be happy for him.

But as much as we try to make it not so -- and boy, do we try -- the sports world is gray. Ankiel is not a monster or The Bad Guy now that we know he accepted HGH in 2004. But he's not the Guy In The White Hat Here To Save Our Games we all believed -- needed to believe-- he was either. His story is a human one. His story is gray. It always was.

Maybe it is unfair to put that White Hat on any one athlete. How many O.J.'s, Vicks, Barrys and, yes, Ankiels do we need to understand once and for all that there are, at the very least, two sides to every story? In the end I think it says something good about American fans that they have a belief in the better nature of our sporting angels. That doesn't make it any easier to find out something dark about one of these idols, it just means that like anyone who has true faith they believe in the face of evidence to the contrary. Does that make us gullible or stupid? Perhaps but faith isn't something rational or there would be no faithful anywhere in the world. It would be nice if the faithful weren't always the ones taking a beating, though.

Peavy's Heroic Ode Becomes A Tragedy

Give Jake Peavy a lot of credit for heart, grit and all those other adjectives that go along with making a bad decision because you want to support the team. He volunteered to pitch on short rest in the last game of a showdown series with the Diamondbacks. If he'd won the great citizens of the whale's vagina would have named streets in his honor, written epic poetry about his thunderous right arm and turned him into a folk hero. Alas, it wasn't to be. Peavy gave up eight runs in four innings, Arizona won 9-6 and the Padres fell a game behind in the NL West race. He had a 5-4 lead entering the fifth but sandwiched three walks around an Orlando Hudson triple, leaving the game with the bases loaded and the score tied. Chris Young cleared the bases against Doug Brocail and cleared the squares of San Diego town.

• The Braves were looking pretty good this time last month with a brand new middle of the lineup bat and replenished relief corps. They didn't capitalize, though, and dropped from the ranks of the contenders as quickly as they came. That leaves only the role of spoiler, a role they played with aplomb against the Phillies last night. With the Mets taking a loss in Cincinnati the door was open for the Phils to regain a game in the division and with an 8-2 lead entering the bottom of the eighth that seemed a fait accompli. But Tom Gordon and Brett Myers combined to allow seven runs culminating in Matt Diaz's bases-loaded double that may be the latest entry in the City of Brotherly Love's book of woe. The 9-8 loss leaves them five games out of first and still searching for answers in a bullpen that's been thorny all season.
• Mark Mulder's first nine pitches of 2007 couldn't have gone any better. He cruised through the first inning and it looked like he might be the latest member of La Russa's comeback express. His next 50 pitches, though, told a different story. The Pirates pounded him for eight hits and six runs over the next three innings and took an 8-2 win. The only two Cardinal runs came on Rick Ankiel's latest blast, his seventh since returning to the majors.
• If the Brewers can't recover from their slide and catch the Cubbies at least they know that their lineup will have enough power to keep them in the race for the next four or five years. Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun and Corey Hart each hit a three-run homer, sending the Astros to a 14-2 loss and keeping pace with the bunch from Chicago.
• Cleveland Indians, thy division is yours. The Tribe swept the Twins for the second time in as many weeks with a 6-2 win and unless the calender reverts to 2005 overnight they have the Central firmly in their pocket.

(AP Photo/Paul Connors)

On MRIs and MVPs

Moments after the seventh inning wrapped up last night a group of Caltech scientists announced that they would begin studies to determine the effects of MRIs on professional athletes. Alex Rodriguez got one just before the Yankees faced off with the Mariners and, judging by his performance, MRIs do to sluggers what gamma rays did to Bruce Banner.

He homered twice in that seventh inning, first tying the game at 2 and then capping an eight-run barrage. The explosion continued unabated through six members of Seattle's expanded bullpen and may have cemented A-Rod's second MVP as a member of the Yankees. With 48 homers and 134 RBI and most of a month left to play it's hard to imagine anyone else inserting themselves in front of the player having the best salary drive in the history of sports. His heroics overshadowed the first win of Joba Chamberlain's career and the continuation of the most impressive debut for a Bomber pitcher since Jim Bouton in 1962. Joba's not likely to write a book as good as Ball Four, few of us are, but he could well end up being the better pitcher of the two when all is said and done. The same may be true of Phil Hughes who quelled some nerves in the Bronx with his best start since returning from the disabled list. If Ian Kennedy can do the same on Friday the loss of Roger Clemens won't loom quite so large while the Yankees try to eliminate the Mariners from their rearview mirrors.

A-Rod complained after the game that the MRI interrupted his pregame routine but the training staff was probably calling ahead to Kansas City hospitals to schedule some tube time for the third baseman. The only thing that could stop him at this point would probably be the Incredible Hulk and at last check he wasn't a part of any American League pitching staff.

The Wild, Wild West

Hillary-Obama may be the only race hotter than the one in the NL West. The Diamondbacks moved back into a virtual tie with the Padres with a 9-1 win on Tuesday night. The Snakes beat up on Chris Young to get the win. It's the second time in a week that they've pounded the tall righty in less than a week and the latest in a string of poor performances by Young since he came off the disabled list in early August. Young has a 7.32 ERA and three losses against the D-Backs this year, compared to a 9-3 record and 1.88 ERA against the rest of baseball. You could probably pick a better team to struggle against than your closest competitors. Eric Byrnes hit a three-run homer to break open a 2-0 game and Doug Davis picked up his eighth win in nine decisions with a seven-inning stint. The only good news for the Friars came when they caught catcher Chris Snyder stealing. It snapped a streak of 32 straight successful steals against them.

• John Edwards could still make that Democratic race a three-horse affair and if he does he will be following in the footsteps of the Dodgers. After stumbling through most of the last month and falling into fourth place, Grady Little's bunch finds themselves just three games out after topping the Cubs 6-2. Since the Brewers actually found a way to win a game the Cubs lead has dwindled to a half-game after Brad Penny stifled their bats.
• Until last night the only headlines Paul Lo Duca made this season were because of his big mouth. He finally made some with his play, though, by driving in seven runs to help the Mets outlast the Reds 11-7 in Cincinnati. The catcher hadn't homered in more than two months but connected for two longballs on a night that the Mets needed their offense to pick up a dismal start by Oliver Perez.
• The Yankees wouldn't be anywhere near the playoff race without the contributions of Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes and Shelley Duncan. The Red Sox would probably be just where they are even if Clay Bucholz didn't throw a no-hitter or if Jacoby Ellsbury wasn't batting .452 since being recalled from Pawtucket. He had three hits, including a homer, and two RBI to support Josh Beckett's 17th win, a 5-3 victory against the Blue Jays. Those five names should probably make the rest of the American League quake with fear for the rich just keep getting richer.
• The Red Sox would probably make the Joel Piniero for Clay Bucholz trade every day of the week and twice on Sunday but the jettisoned righty is making all the difference for the Cardinals. He won for the fourth time in six starts, beating the Bucs 6-2, and brought the Redbirds within a game of the division lead. It's not quite so hot as the race in the West. What with the teams trying to suck less than their opposition it's more like the Republican primaries.

(AP Photo/Paul Connors)

Wang Stiffens In Yankee Win

Former rotation chum Dave Eiland is in the Bronx to help his minor league charge Phil Hughes make some adjustments before tonight's start against the Mariners. The team may actually need him to make a start if the current group of hurlers keeps coming up lame. Chien-Ming Wang joined Roger Clemens in the trainer's room last night when he left the 12-3 win with a stiff back. It was in the top of the eighth after the Yankees spent the bottom of the seventh scoring seven runs, pounding 12 hits and waiting through two pitching changes.

Hopefully it was just the extended time on the bench that caused Wang to stiffen...er, caused Wang's back to seize up and he won't miss a start. The Yankees can hardly afford to find yet another starter with Clemens facing a cortisone shot and the Wild Card lead at a less than secure two games. At least the bats returned to life. The seventh inning was the big explosion but the Bombers racked up 20 hits overall after a stretch that saw them struggle to find hits against the Rays and Felix Hernandez. Bobby Abreu homered and he, Jorge Posada and Robinson Cano rapped out four hits apiece. But as with the pitching not all the news was good on the offensive side. Alex Rodriguez hit his 46th home run but hurt his ankle on a slide in the seventh and left the game. X-rays were negative but it's unclear if the best Yankee bat will be in the lineup for the series ender tonight.

Brad Pitt and Spike Lee made it through the game unscathed as did the squirrel who climbed the rightfield foulpole in the sixth inning. It's unclear if it was the same squirrel who appeared at the Stadium last week when the Red Sox were in town. You can be sure that none of the three paid for their tickets though.