This Weak in Baseball

Dave Paisley

Well, it’s been a little more than a week since the season started, and an eventful one at that. Sure, there’s the Yankees romping away in the AL East, and the Giants in the NL West, but are they the real stories so far? Obviously the Tigers situation is unusual, with the curious firings of Smith and Garner. It’s pretty evident that Dombrowski didn’t think they would work out anyway, but why wait till now?

But before we get carried away with what’s happening on baseball diamonds around the continent, the question that’s on everyone’s lips (no pun intended) is, "Is the Luis Gonzalez gum story for real?" Here we have an "entrepreneur" that has somehow figured out that in these days of trading anything under the sun on eBay, that gum once chewed by a Major League Baseball player has collectible value. I’m not sure that even Pete Rose would hawk (again, no pun intended) this on QVC.

Still, the story is even weirder than that. The "entrepreneur", Jason Gabbert, was at a D-backs spring training game March 7, where he asked a security guard to retrieve said gum from the dirt near first base where Gonzalez had tossed it. The guard, one "Ponytail John" by name, alleges that he refused to do so. "Ponytail John" works for a security firm run by the aptly named Tony Vigilante.

Is this all starting to sound like a Damon Runyon story? It sure does to me. Gabbert’s story might be a tad more believable if he didn’t have a history of criminal acts involving baseball players. He was convicted in 1993 of forgery after opening a bank account in Minnesota in pitcher Aaron Sele’s name. Suffice it to say that if you seek gum-chewing pleasure, then internet auctions are not the best way to satisfy your craving. Just buy Wrigley’s — at least it still has a vague baseball connection.

Meanwhile, over in the real world of actual baseball games, we can draw no conclusions from what’s happened so far. Well, OK, very few. Not a lot. But we can look at what’s happened so far and see if it has met our expectations. Here’s how the AL teams have done through April 9. All the data in the table are as usual. The last two columns are Pythagorean, or expected winning percentage, based on runs scored and allowed, and actual winning percentage.

TEAM	W	L	OPS	ERA	RS	RA	Pyth W%	Act W%
NY Yankees	7	1	.819	2.15	43	18	.851	.875
Cleveland	7	1	.850	3.04	51	26	.794	.875
Boston	4	1	.940	3.40	30	19	.714	.800
Seattle	5	3	.787	4.38	44	36	.599	.625
Oakland	6	2	.846	3.95	45	37	.597	.750
Chicago White Sox	3	4	.781	4.68	42	35	.590	.429
Minnesota	5	3	.829	5.22	41	41	.500	.625
Tampa Bay	3	3	.600	3.67	22	22	.500	.500
Anaheim	3	4	.613	4.00	26	31	.413	.429
Baltimore	1	5	.506	3.00	14	19	.352	.167
Toronto	2	5	.790	7.43	38	55	.323	.286
Kansas City	2	4	.621	5.77	24	35	.320	.333
Texas	1	6	.648	5.66	26	39	.308	.143
Detroit	0	7	.609	6.11	15	48	.089	.000

Cleveland is having a fine old time as they romp through the early going, in part courtesy of the Tigers. The Tribe leads the league in runs scored and have given up the fifth fewest runs. That isn’t going to last, though. Texas not only has the usual awful pitching, but their offense hasn’t gotten out of the gate, either, with Alex Rodriguez, Palmeiro, Everett and the much touted Hank Blalock all hitting in the sub-Mendoza zone.

Kansas City and Baltimore are all off to predictably bad starts. Baltimore has pitched amazingly well, but an anemic offense has betrayed them.

Tampa Bay, perhaps surprisingly, has avoided the usual early slide into obscurity by getting to beat up on the Tigers early before being pummeled by the Yankees. And therein lies a big problem with the Tigers. Getting swept by the Devil Rays to open the season is a very, very, very bad sign.

Seattle and Oakland look like the real deal again. Despite having to play each other, the two teams have beaten up on their other, mainly divisional rival, competition.

Over in the NL, the picture looks like this:

TEAM	W	L	OPS	ERA	RS	RA	Pyth W%	Act W %
San Francisco	6	1	.795	1.13	41	8	.963	.857
NY Mets	3	4	.663	2.44	33	22	.692	.429
Pittsburgh	5	1	.596	2.04	19	13	.681	.833
Montreal	4	3	.790	3.39	40	30	.640	.571
St. Louis	4	3	.782	3.74	39	31	.613	.571
Houston	4	4	.854	5.47	49	47	.521	.500
Arizona	4	4	.712	3.65	30	30	.500	.500
Chicago Cubs	2	4	.709	2.73	19	19	.500	.333
Los Angeles	4	3	.702	4.14	29	30	.483	.571
Atlanta	4	4	.687	3.79	35	37	.472	.500
Cincinnati	3	4	.675	3.71	26	34	.369	.429
Florida	3	4	.705	4.74	26	34	.369	.429
Philadelphia	4	4	.708	3.75	27	36	.360	.500
Milwaukee	2	5	.727	4.95	28	40	.329	.286
Colorado	3	5	.704	5.96	34	51	.308	.375
San Diego	3	5	.628	4.50	24	37	.296	.375

Score 41, give up 8, and you too can expect to be 7-0. That the Giants lost a game to Hideo Nomo to be a mere 6-1 shows that they’re not quite superhuman. The NL shows a lot less variation than the AL, however. Even the worst teams have respectable records. And indeed with Wednesday’s results, it looks like Milwaukee will sink to the bottom, which should upset absolutely nobody.

The only NL anomalies are Pittsburgh (squeaking out three one-run wins of those five), who will no doubt return to earth in a week or two, and the Mets, who have managed to parlay 33 runs scored and 22 runs allowed into a sub-.500 record so far. Big wins and tight losses are the cause, naturally.

It will take about a month before the teams have played a wide enough variety of opponents to make any pronouncements, but already we can see which way the wind is blowing. And it isn’t blowing towards Detroit.

about the author

So what's weak this week in your world? Why not drop Dave Paisley a line at drdjp@strikethree.com with tales of weakness and insanity. No Bud Selig stories, though. We have enough of those already.