The Lineup Card

To my 12 loyal readers, we've got some news after spending all of October MIA. Work has been hella busy, that's why I've been unable to keep up with the blog. There's good news.

Here goes, bullet-style:

- The Lineup Card will be returning very soon in some form, though it may have a different name.

- There will be other authors involved.

- It will not be on the AOL platform. (I'm not leaving anytime soon, but for the purposes of this blog it doesn't need to be involved with AOL's products).

- That means I can swear.

- Stay tuned. I'll provide a new link.

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The race for the top spot in the Rankings couldn't be any tighter with one week left in the regular season. Cleveland's run of tremendous play in the second half has them holding on to No. 1 for now, but the Angels, Red Sox and Yankees could all have something to say about that. The 26th edition of AOL's MLB Power Rankings are out, brought to you, the people, by me, your humble editor/producer. I'll be putting these rankings out usually every Monday/Tuesday during the regular season, and each week I'll explain a little bit of my rationale and give the people a chance to basically tell me why I'm wrong. Please be gentle. If you make a good argument, I'm more than willing to address it during the later on in the week.

Surprises and General Oddities

- Barring an epic collapse by one of the top four teams, that will be your top four at the end of next week in some order.

- Where did the Rockies come from? Their weekend sweep of the Padres in San Diego was quite impressive.

- Tough luck for Atlanta. The one thing the Braves couldn't remedy at the deadline was their starting pitching. They've played very well lately, going 6-1 in the past week, but they aren't going to have nearly enough steam to catch the wild-card leaders.

- What about the race for last? The Pirates seemed like a lock to not finish 30th, but they went 0-7 this week and now will need a big finish to stay out of the bottom spot.

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Before I delve into the Power Rankings for Week 26, time to dig into the comments from last week's rankings and give the people a little feedback so they know where I was coming from, and where I'll be going in the future.

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It's all about the AL this week, with the likely playoff teams in the junior circuit grabbing the top four spots in the Rankings. Whichever one of them represents the American League in the World Series will be a prohibitive favorite - and with good reason. The 25th edition of AOL's MLB Power Rankings are out, brought to you, the people, by me, your humble editor/producer. I'll be putting these rankings out usually every Monday/Tuesday during the regular season, and each week I'll explain a little bit of my rationale and give the people a chance to basically tell me why I'm wrong. Please be gentle. If you make a good argument, I'm more than willing to address it during the later on in the week.

Surprises and General Oddities

- The Red Sox stay on top despite another tough weekend against the Yankees. Still, there were a lot of moral victories for Boston. Will it be the third meeting between the ancient rivals in five years?

- If we carry it beyond the top four, there's a clear top nine as well. One of those top nine teams is probably going to win the World Series.

- The A's have put together a nice run as of late and have a good shot at finishing around .500. Maybe Billy Beane won't have to make a drastic overhaul in the offseason?

- And there the Nationals are, back in last place.

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Before I delve into the Power Rankings for Week 25, time to dig into the comments from last week's rankings and give the people a little feedback so they know where I was coming from, and where I'll be going in the future.

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Everyone knows the MLB Draft is screwed up. If it wasn't bad enough before, it's even worse now with the informal slotting system that basically guarantees the rich teams will get the best players. That's probably not the reason Puerto Rico wants out of the draft, though. I'll let P.R.'s Secretary of Sport (cool name!) take it from here:

"The sudden establishment of the Draft, without previous notice nor trial period, did not allow Puerto Ricans to transform their development model to make it compatible with the new statutory reality," Bernier said in his proposal. "On the other hand, after 17 years of presence of the Draft in Puerto Rico, MLB has not been able to transform it into an international Draft. This has left Puerto Rico in a limbo state."

So what does Mr. David Bernier propose? A 10-year moratorium on the Draft on the island so that Puerto Rico can build up a better infrastructure. Bernier's point is well taken. MLB teams see less incentive in building up baseball on the island - think like the baseball academies many teams have in the Dominican Republic and now China and Taiwan - when there's no real advantage in acquiring talent.

Admittedly I'm no expert on the politics of international baseball, but there does seem to me to be a disadvantage to getting rid of the Draft. Namely, it guarantees no money to the players taken who would have been taken in the later rounds. Sure, this will get the better players in Puerto Rico even more money, but what about the guys fighting for their life in the baseball world.

That said, the demise of the Puerto Rican Winter League is sad and if baseball on the Island isn't on par with high school baseball in the states, maybe it's a good thing to take PR out of the entry draft. Anyone more knowledgable than me with an opinion on this?

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I wrote a column for AOL Sports on Monday about the three award races still very much up for grabs in the majors. The column received a lot of good feedback ... some of it good, most of it run-of-the-mill crap, and two of the comments were good enough to make me think.

(As a complete aside, I love the award races. No, no one remembers who won the award even three or four years down the line. 2002 AL MVP ... I have no idea. Ichiro? So why do I love them? Because they force people to debate what makes a player good. It's one of the best applications of sabermetric analysis this side of team-building.)

The first comment on the NL Rookie of the Year race:

ricksellshomes 01:06:22 AM Sep 12 2007 Report This! Ryan Braun should not be rookie of the year (NL). He makes an error 1 out of every 9 chances. Troy Tulowitski (Rockies) makes an error 1 of every 66 chances. It should be more than hitting stats. And Troy is no slouch at the plate either. He set the NL record for homeruns by a rookie shortstop. He leads all shortstops in several catagories. And his on base percentage is nearly the same as Braun. He takes a lot more walks than Braun.

I've got to admit I didn't give much consideration to anyone else in the NL, mostly because Braun's numbers are so freakin' gaudy, but the defensive argument has some merit. Braun is a butcher and Tulowitzki is outstanding at a tougher position.

Tulo actually ranks third among NL rookies in VORP, which adjusts for position but does not reward actual defense, behind Braun and Hunter Pence. Fortunately we've got WARP, which includes defense and, as such, can settle this once and for all. (For some reason these aren't showing up on Baseball Prospectus' Web site, so we'll turn to Win Shares, which also include defense.) Braun clocks in at 18 win shares, Tulowitzki clocks in at 20, while Pence clocks in at 17. Maybe there's more to this race than I first saw. It's still possible Braun could pass Tulo in win shares by the end of the season.

Onto Chien-Ming Wang. I got a lot of comments about dismissing him so casually, but this was the best, even with all the lame puns and clear homer-ism.

fgrambs 10:22:33 PM Sep 10 2007 Report This! Wang is a pitcher of a different ilk...why do these writers look at strikeouts instead of outs? If you strike out 10 for every homerun you give up, and lose...that ain't good for the home team...Wang's sinker, slider, fastball and curves have sent te American League batters to the looney bin..sure he gives up hits, but also gets more than his share of ground ball outs and DP's..and when he really needs that strike out gets it! When the Yanks need a win the last two years, it's been a wangful situation...and he produces. Even when he gets hit it's usually on pitches he got what they were intended..ground balls, which found the holes in the infield or A-Rods glove. If he wins his next two starts, he deserves the CyWang award..without im, the Yankees would be begging for CLEMENCY....lol.

I can explain pretty simply why writers look at strikeouts. It's a sign of dominance. It's a sign that pitchers are getting outs on their own instead of relying on defense (and by extension, luck).

There is truth to what fgrambs is saying, though. Wang gets so many groundballs (59 percent of the time according to The Hardball Times) that we have to treat him differently. That said Wang's only real case for the Cy Young is that he has 18 wins, and as I pointed out Monday, he gets the fourth best run support of any pitcher in the AL with over 100 innings pitched. In fact, (and I can't believe I'm about to quote this person) as Steve Phillips pointed out on Baseball Tonight, only three of Wang's wins have come in games decided by three runs or less. That's another way of saying a pretty average pitcher taking Wang's turns in the rotation would have at least 15 victories.

Now I don't care about the wins either way. They're a worthless stat in terms of evaluating pitchers. If Wang had an ERA below 3.50 (close to the other contenders), I'd say he would deserve more consideration. He doesn't right now, so there's no way he deserves the Cy Young.

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We've known the playoff schedule will be different this year for awhile. It'll feature a few more off days so that the World Series will start on a Saturday. What we didn't know, until the New York Post reported it on Tuesday, is that the team with the best record in each league will be able to decide its schedule for the division series.

But what does it all mean Basil?

There are two schedules, Series A and Series B. Peep the difference below:

Game	Series A	Series B
1	Oct. 4	Oct. 4
2	Oct. 5	Oct. 6
3	Oct. 7	Oct. 8
4	Oct. 8	Oct. 9
5	Oct. 10	Oct. 11

So what do you do if you win home-field advantage, and the right to choose your schedule in the first round? Obviously, you've got to go with what's best for your team in the first round and what puts your opponent at the biggest disadvantage. At least that's what you'd think unless you were the New York Post, and as a result convinced that a Red Sox-Yankees ALCS is destiny and Boston is obsessed with avoiding New York.

But is it such a stretch to think that the Red Sox, who went into last night leading the Angels by 2½ and the Indians by 3½ for the league's best record, wouldn't jump at the chance to play the eight-day series if for no other reason than to require the Yankees to play the seven-day series so Joba Chamberlain would only be available for three games, instead of the four in which he'd be allowed to pitch in the extended version?

I will concede that Larry Brooks raises an interesting point about trying to shelve Joba Chamberlain in the ALCS as much as possible, but that really assumes a lot. Namely that: A) Your team will make the ALCS. B) The Yankees will get by the Angels and into the ALCS. C.) The Yankees will abide by the "Joba Rules" in the postseason.

But it really is a stretch. Winningthe American League is going to be really tough. Frankly I'd give each team an equal chance of winning its series, which means there's only a 25 percent chance that the Red Sox would meet the Yankees. Needless to say, Boston will have to take care of business against Cleveland and selecting the eight-day series just to duck Chamberlain is utterly preposterous. The Red Sox have a deeper rotation than the Indians, who happen to be extremely top-heavy. If they chose Series A, they'll likely only have to face C.C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona three times. In Series B, they might have to face Sabathia and Carmona in four out of five games. It behooves Boston to choose Series A, regardless of a hypothetical eighth-inning meeting with Joba down the line. Would it kill a New York writer to show a little levity and common sense?

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Unless you're a Red Sox fan (and thus prone to bouts of panic about, well, everything), then you probably haven't been worrying too much about Boston's pitching. It's been pretty much the best in the AL all season. That said, there is cause for concern in the form of expensive Japanese import Daisuke Matsuzaka, not because his struggles could cost the Red Sox the AL East, but because he's supposed to start Game 2 of the ALDS.

Here are the ugly numbers from Matsuzaka-san in his last three starts: 14 1/3 IP, 22 hits, 20 earned runs, 5 home runs, 12.56 ERA and 1.058 OPS against. That's right, Dice-K has basically made opposing hitters look like A-Rod the last three times out. Some are worried that as he goes through his previous career innings high he's hitting a wall. Others are concerned he just isn't that good.

It does appear to me that Dice-K has begun to tire a little. Just watching him on the mound you can see him laboring. But he's also exacerbating the problem by not throwing his changeup or curveball at all. We've seen those pitches in the past, but he's not throwing them at all now. That's a big problem for someone who isn't overpowering and who's biggest strength coming over was his ability to throw any pitch in any count.

Health is a concern, but not a big one says Baseball Prospectus' Will Carroll:

As for Matsuzaka's recent slump, I do think he's tiring, but that it's more akin to a dead-arm phase than a danger zone. Matsuzaka's mechanics remain very steady. One other factor is that teams are getting more and more video and scouting on him, which will force him to adjust. Given his repetoire and history, I'd put my money on Matsuzaka adjusting more quickly than hitters.

It probably wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for Dice-K to skip a start. The Red Sox are going to the postseason whether he makes all of his scheduled starts the rest of the regular season or not. (And he'd miss the Yankees, which could come in handy should they meet in the ALCS).

There's really no reason to cut bait on Matsuzaka yet. He had a similar three-start stretch from April 22 to May 3 in which he allowed 17 earned runs over 18 innings. His next three starts? Matsuzaka went 3-0 with a 1.88 ERA. I'd give him his next start off, then bring him back for his final two turns. And even with all his struggles, he'd still be my Game 2 starter if I was Terry Francona.

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