The Rangers must to win this one or the whole thing could get away from them.

Let’s see if they can even-up the Serious of if the Cards take a 3-1 lead.

Let’s Go Base-ball.

Babe, Reggie, Albert.

Goodness, gracious me.

Here’s Tom Boswell.

The Whirled Serious moves to Texas. Game Three.

Have at it.

Let’s Go Base-ball!

[Photo Credit: Serious Eats]

From Dayn Perry.

Rangers look to tie it up.

Git ’em, boys.

[Photo Credit: Daniel Danger]

One of the most controversial things about the World Series is how home field is determined. Unlike other sports, which either use a neutral field or assign home field to the team with the better regular season record, baseball has decided to link the extra home game in the Fall Classic to the outcome of the Midseason Classic. To some, this connection borders on the absurd, but does home field in the World Series really matter?

Several studies have been done on this topic, and most, like this one, have concluded that there really is no advantage to home field in the baseball postseason. However, analyses that focus on series outcomes, instead of individual games, can be misleading. After all, if the home team wins four of the first games in a best of seven series, the team without the advantage would emerge victorious.

Root for the Home Team? Postseason, Regular Season Records at Home

* Since 1919
Source: Baseball-reference.com

Not including last night’s opener in St. Louis, the home team has won 339 of 614 World Series games, or just over 55%. In essence, during the Fall Classic, there is a 17-win difference between home and road teams (based on a 162-game season), so where each game is played seems to have a significant impact. Although some might question the sample size, the 55% win rate for the home team is not only in line with the percentage in the entire post season, but also closely mirrors the outcomes of every regular season game played since 1919.

The team with home field advantage has won the World Series 58 of 102 times (excluding four World Series that featured eight games), a percentage that is in line with the 55% per game win rate cited above. However, because the “road team” in a seven game series is the first to host three games (thanks to the 2-3-2 format), conventional wisdom has suggested that only in a deciding game seven does the ballpark really matter. And yet, a closer look into the actual results tells a different story.

Home Team Record by World Series Game

Source: Baseball-reference.com

There have been 35 winner-take-all game 7s in World Series play, and the road team has won 18 of them. However, actually getting to the seventh game hasn’t been as easy. In games 1, 2, and 6, the home team not only enjoys a significant advantage, but it is also much greater than the one exhibited in games 3, 4, and 5. Apparently, in order for a team without home field advantage to win the Fall Classic, survival is the key (over 45% of World Series won by teams without home field came down to a winner-take-all game). Then again, the last eight game 7s have all been won by the home team (the 1979 Pirates are the last team to win a double elimination game as a visitor),  so even this one refuge for the road team has been taken away.

Because baseball has used a random method of assigning home field for most of its history, it’s hard to explain why there hasn’t been much of an advantage in the middle three games. Perhaps it’s because those games are more likely to feature second tier starters, which mitigates the advantage? Or, maybe the momentum (which for many sabermetricians is a dreaded concept) of early success carries over to the rest of the series? Regardless of the reason, it seems clear that home field advantage not only impacts the number of games a team has in its own ballpark, but how well they perform in front of the hometown crowd.

Home Team Performance in the World Series, by Decade

Note: Eight game series excluded from calculations.
Source: Baseball-reference.com

A breakdown of World Series results by decade reveals significant fluctuations in the impact of home field advantage, which shouldn’t be surprising when you consider the random manner in which it was determined for almost 100 years. Nonetheless, it’s interesting to note that in the 1940s, when the road team won 53% of all Fall Classic Series games, the team with home field advantage won 90% of the World Series. Then, in the 1950s, the opposite happened. That decade, home teams won 61% of all games, but 70% of the World Series were won by the team starting off on the road.

Although there seem to be so many conflicts and counterintuitive aspects of the data, we can definitively say that home field advantage in the World Series matters. After all, 23 of the last 30 Fall Classics have been won by the team that hosted game one. Of course, that brings us back to the question of whether such a meaningful reward should be granted based on the outcome of the All Star Game. I would argue yes, but it’s easy to see why others might disagree. Regardless of one’s position, however, what seems clear is that fans, players, and teams should probably starting take the midseason classic a little more seriously because, nowadays, it really does count.

It’s Rangers vs. the Cards. A friend of mine was moaning today because he doesn’t like either team. I suggested that he focus on the loser instead of paying attention to the winning team. He can’t go wrong that way (kind of like Arthur Rhodes getting a ring no matter what). Or something like that. I don’t have any great love or hatred for the Cards or the Rangers so I’m rooting for seven games.

The BP crew has the preview, and Diane has one, too.

Let’s Go Base-ball!

[Picture of Ron Washington Jack O’Latern:  Big League Stew via High Leverage Inning]

Over at Baseball Prospectus, our pal Diane Firstman has a piece about baseball and scrabble. Check it outski.

Oh, and here’s a fun post by Mike Axisa over at River Ave on the five longest Yankee home runs of 2011.

By Ben Belth

“Bring the wiffle-ball bat,” I say to my son, Luke, but he wants the aluminum one. “Let’s bring a few tennis balls,” I say. He shakes his head. He wants the hard balls. I admire his courage, but I take a few tennis balls anyway.

When we lived in the city, we would walk a block to the park, find a quiet corner and take BP. He always insisted on running bases, a tree for first, a hat for second and his mitt for third. “He’s like a Boarder Collie, run him out,” our family counselor Ronda tells me. “He needs it to regulate his emotions.”

We live in the country now, and there’s no park down the block. Our yard is too small, so we get in the car and drive to the school field. But it’s Sunday and the soccer leagues are in full blossom. Kids in orange or green jerseys swarm on the field. The parking lots are crowded with parents and expensive cars. We don’t know any of them yet. There’s no room for us.

We go to each ball field in town and find the same scene. Luke’s getting sleepy in the backseat (when he feels out of place: he dozes). So I take him down to the park by the river – a long stretch of landfill on the other side of the Metro North tracks. It’s dotted with families, mostly Latino. There’s plenty of room for us.

“What if I hit the ball in the river?” Luke asks. I give him a wink. He’s good, got a natural lefty swing, but he’s not that good. He slashes the ball to all fields but rarely hits it in the air. I’m not worried about the river.

We start in with the hardballs. “Baseball is a hard game,” I say. He tips the ball, fouls another, and misses a lot. “Underhand,” he says. He gets into one but it’s off the end of the bat and the vibrations unnerve him. He drops the bat and runs to me in a sobby bundle. His hands hurt but it’s more than that.

“I quit. I wanna go home.” he tells me. I repeat it, like Ronda taught me, “You wanna go home.” He looks directly at me. “No I wanna go home. Where my friends are. Where we can walk to the park and where I used to hit home runs.” I nod. “You miss the city,” I say. He falls into my chest, letting it all out.

I want to tell him everything will get better, that he’ll meet new friends, and that next year, he’ll be playing soccer with all the other kids. He’ll find his spot and this will start to feel like home soon enough. But he’s only seven-years-old. So instead I bring out the tennis ball and urge him back to the bat, which is not easy because I just want to keep hugging him. “That’s coddling”, Ronda says, “It makes you feel better, not him.”

“Bat up,” I say. “Plant that back leg.” He follows the directions.

“Coming overhand,” I say and let one go. He drills it, right back to me. A smile breaks across his face. I take a few steps back and throw another pitch, this one with a little more heat. He fouls it straight back. “Got another one,” I say, holding up the hardball. I let it go and he pounds it into the ground, the foul side of first base, but nice. It hits a stone, veers right, pops over a rock, and disappears into the Hudson.

I look back at him, my eyes wide. I’m silly happy but he doesn’t notice. He’s too busy running the bases.

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach begins in the middle of a streak. Scrawny shortstop Henry Skrimshander has never made an error. Not in Little League, not in high school. And when he matriculates at a small, venerable, liberal arts school called Westish College, he remains perfect.

The streak exists not only during games but in between as well. He’s never made a bad throw in practice; a ball has never hit a pebble and skipped past his glove during drills; never lost a ball in the sun while having a catch. He’s been flawless for fifteen straight years.

Henry works hard at the game, perhaps harder than anybody, since nothing else matters to him besides playing baseball. He’s memorized Hall of Famer and personal hero Aparicio Rodriguez’s book, The Art of Fielding and internalized the practical advice on positioning, balance, and physical preparation. The meaning of the more philosophical passages has eluded him as he starts college, but he’s memorized those too.

The book starts percolating when scouts and agents descend on Henry as he scoots up the draft board towards the first round. In the game he’s set to match his idol’s college errorless streak his errant throw sails into the dugout and shatters his roommate’s eye socket.

The first bad throw of Henry’s life spawns others and he unravels. By the time a ballplayer counts 15 years experience, he’s learned the humbling nature of the sport. The paltry rates of success that stand for excellence and the failure to constantly replicate even the most routine gestures bend a player’s expectations. But since Henry’s never made an error, he’s never had to confront this essential truth about the game and his identity collapses when he fianlly does.

The meat of the book is about how Henry and his estranged mentor, catcher Mike Schwartz, the guy responsible for bringing him to Westish in the first place, attempt to overcome the errors. But Mike, distracted by his new girlfriend Pella and brimming with resentment from Henry’s lurking draft day success, offers only warmed-over platitudes for Henry’s soul and countless sets of stadium stairs for his legs.

The inadequacy of their response is obvious to any baseball fan. How can they recover magic that they made no attempt to understand in the first place?

Unfortunately, not one character in the book is in the least bit curious about the source of Henry’s supernatural fielding ability. And anyone that has played one season of baseball at any level would instantly recognize 15 years of perfection as supernatural.

In The Art of Fielding however, even die-hard ballplayers accept the perfection without comment. And when Henry’s first error touches off a crisis of confidence and eventually a total systemic failure, the other players treat him like a player in a bad slump, expecting hard work or the right attitude adjustment will eliminate the errors and restore his factory settings.

But he’s already the hardest worker and already has the best possible attitude. So how’s that supposed to fix the problem? Perfection at this absurd length cannot be earned through practice. And if his ability is indeed supernatural, with all the hard work running parallel at best, then the sudden loss of his ability requires a different treatment than this book imagines.

A ballplayer could react to a terrible slump in a number of ways. But all of them should be vastly different to a person reacting to the loss of a supernatural gift. A slump usually begins with the wrong mix of flawed mechanics and dumb luck and spirals into Adam Dunn-level tragedy when the player gets trapped inside his own head. Henry’s situation is closer to Prometheus and his gift of fire than it is to Adam Dunn and his buck-fifty batting average.

Because all of the characters ignore this essential difference, the baseball in the book loses integrity – a distraction that I could not tolerate.

I’m sure Harbach has loftier intentions than examining Henry’s fielding ability, but he wrote a book around a baseball team – and from what I can tell, nobody’s been shy promoting it as a baseball book. At the very least, the context of the baseball season should serve as the binder of the story, but since the author doesn’t get the baseball right, the binder dissolves. What’s left is still good enough to carry your interest for a while, but since the baseball is palpably unreal, it taints the other stuff too.

And what was gained by Henry’s lifetime of perfection if the source of that gift is not an element of the story? So that his error can be an original sin? An expulsion from his Diamond of Eden? The extreme nature of Henry’s predicament lends itself more easily to that metaphor, but for me, a similar construct was still achievable without involving the miraculous.

Harbach would have been better served if he had taken Henry to the natural limits of baseball. An outstanding fielder in the midst of a record-tying streak. And when that guy flubs a throw and falls into a bottomless slump, Henry’s story could play out as it does without the necessity of an eye roll.

It’s not just the unspoken presence and sudden disappearance of magic that serves to dislodge the baseball fan from making an intimate connection with this book. Henry’s teammate (and roommate) Owen Dunne gets away with reading books on the bench until such time as their red-ass Coach Cox tells him to pinch-hit.

Owen’s homosexuality is accepted by the team without the slightest hesitation. That’s probably not plausible at a college in a state that elected Scott Walker Governor; even the most enlightened eighteen year olds are prone to confusion and snickering when they find themselves spending a lot of time in cramped locker rooms.

But let it slide in the interest of progress. Still, there’s not a competitive baseball team in the country that’s allowing a bench warmer to clip a reading lamp to the brim of his cap so he can curl up in the corner of the dugout with a steaming cup of herbal tea and the latest Barbara Kingsolver novel.

That’s not Division III college baseball. That’s not even the Amherst English Department’s softball team. Perhaps Tanner Boyle lacked the SAT scores to play at Westish, but he’d have that reading lamp sticking out of Owen’s ear before the end of the first inning. Or he’d end up in the garbage can trying.

These things could have transpired in a different kind of book. In a funnier book. In a book that was candid about its alternate, enhanced reality. In science fiction, perhaps. But this story takes place in a crafted, hyper-reality, a reality that breaks with ours for effect only before darting back under a mutual cover. The physics of this world are the same as ours, and under those rules, we know that baseball players can’t be perfect for long.

If W.P. Kinsella conceived of a shortstop that didn’t make an error for 15 straight years, someone else in the story would have noticed.

Over at the Captain’s Blog, our man William looks at how lousy the starting pitching has been for the Rangers and Cardinals this October.

When you play baseball in New York City, you cannot spend too much time dwelling on postseason failures. It’s simply time to move on quickly, to think about what changes need to be made to improve the team, so as to avoid future playoff disappointment. That is the situation the Yankees face these days, even as four other major league teams continue their pursuit of a world championship.

The first priority is determining the future of CC Sabathia. Everyone in the free world expects Sabathia to opt out of his current contract, which has four years remaining. The Yankees will obviously try to re-sign their ace, but they also need to be careful. Before they bestow a five or six-year deal on Sabathia, they need to remember that they are already stuck with two ridiculously long contracts in Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira. Giving Sabathia more money per year would be acceptable, but lengthening the contract of a pitcher with weight problems and a recent past of postseason failure should come with several caution flags.

Sabathia is 31. A five-year contract brings him to age 36. A six-year deal extends him to age 37. I’d be very careful about going that deep with any pitcher, especially a pitcher who put on weight during the season.

If the Yankees can re-sign Sabathia at a reasonable length, they will still need to add pitching. That’s why free agent C.J. Wilson, whose outgoing personality looks to be a good fit for New York, should be the No. 1 target. If the Yankees cannot bring back Sabathia, then they really need to sign two free agent pitchers: Wilson and either the durable Mark Buehrle (with 11 straight seasons of 200-plus innings) or the underrated Edwin Jackson. The Yankees’ staff needs to become more left-handed in 2012, making Wilson and Buehrle especially appealing targets. Ideally, the Yankees’ 2012 rotation would look like this: Sabathia and Wilson followed by Ivan Nova, Phil Hughes, and A.J. Burnett. As FBI Special Agent Johnson said in Die Hard, “I can live with that.” Indeed, that’s the kind of rotation that should put the Yankees back in the postseason mix.

Still, there are other areas to address. The Yankees’ offense is aging and showing some decline. The easy solution–and the sensible one at that–is to promote Jesus Montero to the DH role and let him bat behind A-Rod and Teixeira. The Yankees need to stop shopping Montero for pitching and realize what they have: a young, difference-making hitter who can change the complexion of an old lineup.

The next step is to pick up the option on Nick Swisher’s contract and then begin shopping him around both leagues. Swisher has trade value; his power, his patience, and his defensive improvement in right field make him an attractive player. A number of hitting-starved teams could use Swisher, including the Angels, the A’s (his former team), the Braves, the Cubs, the Dodgers, the Padres, and the Giants. If any of them can offer a solid No. 4 starter or a top left-handed reliever, or a couple of good prospects, then the Yankees should make the deal.

If Swisher is traded, he’ll have to be replaced. The Yankees can do that with free agents like Mike Cuddyer (a .338 hitter in the postseason) or Brooklyn native David DeJesus (a superior defender in right field). I particularly like the versatile Cuddyer, who would also give the Yankees a potential backup at third base for the increasingly fragile Rodriguez.

As with Swisher, the Yankees need to make a decision with Russell Martin, whose contract is up. Martin looked terrible at the plate in the playoff series with the Tigers, but his defensive play is just too good to surrender. He blocks everything in sight, frames pitches skillfully, throws well, and basically does everything he can to make the pitcher’s job easier. I’d like to see Martin return as the No. 1 receiver, backed up by Montero and perhaps a veteran backup from the free agent list. The Yankees shouldn’t count on Francisco Cervelli, in part because of his concussion problems and in part because he simply cannot throw out opposing baserunners.

So that’s my off-season plan for the Yankees. Like all plans, it’s one that will change based on free agent wishes and the availability of certain players in trades. But it’s a starting point for what figures to be an interesting winter of comings and goings in the Bronx.

Bruce Markusen writes “Cooperstown Confidential” for The Hardball Times.

The Brew Crew looks to stay alive tonight at home. Won’t be easy, but let’s hope they can stretch the NLCS to a Seventh Game.

Let’s Go Brat-Wurst.

[Photo Credit: The Most Incredible Comic Book Artwork site]

The Tigers are up against it, man. Lose tonight and their season is over. Here’s rooting for Game 7.

Let’s go Baseball!

[Photo Credit: Christian Rosa]

Baseball, that is. Should be a good one, Game Five of the NLCS: Cards vs. the Brew Crew.

Sit back, relax, enjoy the show!

[Photo Credit: Negroni]

Curt Schilling lowers the boom on the Bosox.

Here’s Dave Kindred on Walter Payton. Good read.

Tony Dorsett was my favorite offensive football player when I was a kid. I had his jersey. My friend Matt was a Sweetness guy and had Payton’s jersey. We wore those jerseys out, man. I was really into the NFL during the 1980s and think that Walter Payton and Lawrence Taylor were the greatest football players I ever saw.

Could this be the end of the line for the Tigers? Their ace hopes to keep their season going. But I say the series ends today.

Let’s Go Base-ball!

[Photo Credit:  WLLLy Volk]

The Tigers need to win today, man, if n they are gunna make a series out of this. By I think the Rangers will take it.

And tonight, the Brewers and Cards move to St. Louis.

Let’s Go Base-ball!

Red Sox Wednesday continues with the news that Theo Epstein is headed to Wrigley Field.