Resigned to Failure

Dave Paisley

Lots to talk about this week. Johnny Oates resigns in early May, the Braves still under .500, the Phillies still leading the NL East. The Cubs hanging in there in the NL Central. What on earth is happening in the world of baseball? It's also getting a little too late to start calling these occurrences flukes.

First, the not so shocking shocker of Johnny Oates resignation. It's not so shocking for three reasons.

First, Oates wasn't having too great a time last year when the Rangers pitching really fell off a cliff. He doesn't seem to be the kind of guy who can go out there and manage regardless of whether his team is in contention or not. So his heart wasn't in it any more.

Second, when a high profile, big spending team gets off to a lousy start there has to be a scapegoat. Often, said scapegoat is usually the general manager, who has often done a lousy job of assembling talent. Such is the case here. Of course, the self-same GM is also usually the one who gets to pick the scapegoat. Guess how often that turns out to be himself... Not often enough is my view. So Oates jumped before he was pushed.

Third, who could possibly bear to watch the Rangers pitching staff day after day? The Dallas Morning News sponsored a competition to find a nickname for the Rangers pitching staff. One of the top five is "Texas Toast" and that's exactly what they've been, although toast doesn't quite convey the extent to which these guys have been scorched. Coming into the season the staff was billed as "Rogers and Helling and three days of shelling," although it appears a better slogan would be, "Shelling, more sHelling then three more days of shelling."

Kenny Rogers is their "best" starter and his ERA hovers just above 6.00. Rick Helling, their one-time ace, has an ERA over 8.00 while Tim Crabtree, their erstwhile closer, had an ERA of 5.79 before he went on the DL. At 12-19, the Rangers are about to be passed by the equally hapless Oakland A's. At least the Rangers collapse has been totally predictable, with way too much faith in a rag-tag pitching staff. It seems every pitching move that the Rangers have made has turned to dust. Except getting Pat Mahomes. He's had some great outings in middle relief (and believe me he's worked harder than just about anyone on that staff.) Still, when you're pitching in middle relief after your starter got shelled, and you're handing the game over to short relievers who are about to get shelled, it's a pretty obscure, thankless task.

Pity GM Doug Melvin couldn't find a better use for that $252M. In a pre-season interview, he said the following.

"We obviously knew looking back at last year that our defense needed to be improved. We made 83 errors between second base, shortstop and third base. We felt that we needed to improve upon that to make our pitching better. You can make your pitching better by adding pitching, but once Hampton and Mussina were off the market, we just felt that there wasn't the quality of pitching out there that was going to dramatically make us better. So we took the stance to improve our defense. We hope to cut those 83 errors in half at those positions."

I bet he wishes he could have some of those words back. He could hire me and I could make the pitching dramatically better. Well at the very least I'd make the rest of them appear to be dramatically better.

But that's enough of the AL West woes. It's on to the NL East, where the Philadelphia Phillies are surging under the tutelage of Larry Bowa.

And they're doing it with pitching. Jose Mesa appears on the surface to be making a big comeback, but the numbers say Ricky Bottalico is far outperforming him by a wide margin. I expect to see Mesa reverting to sucking and Bottalico restored as the Philly closer within a month or so. Mind you, Bowa had to suffer through seeing Mesa the last few years in Seattle, so maybe he's immune.

The real problem for the Phillies is in the offense. Of the eight regulars in the batting lineup, only one has an OPS over .800 -- Travis Lee (.901). Bobby Abreu and Pat Burrell are a smidgen over the .750 mark, while former heroes Scott Rolen and Mike Liberthal are both in the mid .600 range. It's little wonder that they're not making more headway. Still, if they ever do start to hit - watch out. But here's a tip for Larry Bowa - whatever the question is, Brian Hunter's not the answer.

The Phillies have a decent 5 game lead over the Braves, Marlins and Mets, with the big surprise being the relative collapse of the Braves, still two games under .500 as I write this. In 6 starts Greg Maddux is a mere 3-2 despite a 1.94 ERA. That's a big hint that the offense is having a pretty rough time so far, and it is indeed the case. For once, the Braves staff has been unable to compensate for weak offense. Like the Phillies, the Braves have only one regular in the lineup with an OPS over .900 (Chipper Jones, 1.021) with only two others over the .700 mark (Andruw Jones, .804, Brian Jordan, .770). That leaves Javy Lopez (.656), B. J. Surhoff (.604), Rico Brogna (.643), Rafael Furcal (.625) and Quilvio Veras (an awful .557) way down there in Rey Ordonez territory. I expect Surhoff and Lopez will bounce back soon, but the rest are either unproven or never very good in the first place. With the pitching staff in more disarray than usual this may be the first year in forever that we don't get to see Braves fans not show up to playoff games. That'll teach them to take it for granted.

Next time, in installment three of Miracles Never Cease, I'll take a look at the Cubs sudden rise to the top of the NL Central.

about the author

Want to try out for the Rangers pitching squad? Dave Paisley is taking names to send on to Rangers GM Doug Melvin. Why not let him know you're interested at drdjp@strikethree.com.