American Hooligans

You know, I sat down and looked at American Hooligans today, and I said, “Man, nothing’s going on in sports lately. I sure wish I had something to write about!” But since there’s really nothing worthy of commentary right now, I shut the fuck up. Lucky for me, though, Mike Bauman doesn’t have the same filter.

You see, everything in sports has changed, folks. The Red Sox have turned the corner on the Yankees.

Baseball’s biggest rivalry has not only changed, it has been set on its head, turned inside out, inverted and fundamentally altered.

It is still the Yankees and the Red Sox, except that it is not. It is now the Red Sox and the Yankees, very clearly in that order. This is not necessarily a permanent condition. But it certainly is a different condition.

Yeah, see. Finish in first place one year in the past two decades, and win the World Series twice in 90 years, and suddenly you’re cock of the walk. I guess narrowing the World Series gap to 26-7 means you’re a winner in that short bus way.

When the two teams meet this weekend in Fenway Park for three games, the new order of things will be given something of a test drive. It is true that neither of the teams will be in first place in the American League East when the series opens on Friday night. It is also true that neither of them will bring even a winning record to this occasion.

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What a comeuppance! Both teams are playing .500 ball and have shaky everything right now. Total dominance.

for the moment, when the rest of baseball gazes up to see the best in the game, they see the Red Sox.

Or the Yankees, Mets, Indians, Blue Jays, Angels or even Diamondbacks. The league has more parity now than it has in years, and not because teams are getting worse.

The Sox, in addition to being the defending World Series champions, are the only team to have won two World Series in this relatively new century. The Yankees are eight years removed from their most recent Fall Classic victory. The Yankees, in fact, have not won a postseason series in over three years. The postseason turning point seems to have been the epic 2004 AL Championship Series in which a 3-0 New York advantage turned out to be not quite enough.

Oh, this “relatively new” century. When less than 10 percent of a century has passed, it’s new. As it turns out, if it were possible to consider the Sox’ two wins in eight years a “pace,” they’d win 25 World Series in the 21st century, you know, assuming China doesn’t blow us off the face of the map in 2012. The Yankees won 26 in the same amount of time. They obviously suck now.

As far as the postseason goes, let’s look at the Yankees’ pitching over the past three years:
2004:
Javier Vasquez, ERA+ 92
Jon Lieber, ERA+ 104
Mike Mussina, ERA+ 98
Kevin Brown, ERA+ 110
Jose Contreras, ERA+ 80
Orlando Hernandez, ERA+ 136 (Started 15 games)
Esteban Loaiza, ERA+ 53 (Started 6 games)
In the pen were Rivera, Quantrill and Gordon; 231, 95, 204 respectively.

2005:
Randy Johnson, ERA+ 112
Mike Mussina, ERA+ 96
Carl Pavano, ERA+ 97 (Started 17 games)
Chien-Ming Wang, ERA+ 105 (Started 17 games)
Kevin Brown, ERA+ 65 (Started 13 games)
Jarret Wright, ERA+ 70 (Started 13 games)
Shawn Chacon, ERA+ 149 (Started 12 games)
Al Leiter, ERA+ 77 (Started 10 games)
Aaron Small, ERA+ 132 (Started 9 games)
In the pen were Rivera, Gordan and Sturtz; 307, 169, 89

2006:
Randy Johnson, ERA+ 90
Chien-Ming Wang, ERA+ 124
Mike Mussina, ERA+ 129
Jaret Wright, ERA+ 101
Shawn Chacon, ERA+ 65 (Started 11 games)
Cory Lidle, ERA+ 88 (Started 9 games)
Jeff Karstens, ERA+ 119 (Started 6 games)
In the pen were Rivera, Proctor, Farnsworth; 251, 128, 104.

2007:
Andy Pettitte, ERA+ 110
Chien-Ming Wang, ERA+ 121
Mike Mussina, ERA +87
Roger Clemens, ERA+ 107 (Started 17 games)
Philip Hughes, ERA+ 100 (Started 13 games)
Kei Igawa, ERA+ 72 (Started 12 games)
Tyler Clippard, ERA+ 71 (Started 6 games)
Matt DeSalvo , ERA+ 72 (Started 6 games)
Darrell Rasner, ERA+ 111 (Started 6 games)
In the pen were Rivera, Viscaino, Farnsworth; 142, 104, 93.

P.S. The 2007 Yankees’ pitching is why my liver looks like cork board. Only in 2006 was the team ERA+ above average, and much of that was due to Mussina having a ridiculous year. Obviously, the Red Sox caused all this to happen.

Last year, the Red Sox, before they even reached the level of October triumphs, had broken the Yankees’ nine-year stranglehold on first place in AL East. Thus, there could be no contending that the 2007 Red Sox were, in the way of the 2004 Boston club, a Wild Card team that became hot at precisely the right moment. The 2007 Red Sox were better than the 2007 Yankees for roughly seven months.

Ladies and gentlemen, your 2007 New York Yankees:
Month by Month
Split W L WP
April 9 14 .391
May 13 15 .464
June 16 11 .593
July 19 9 .679
August 18 11 .621
September 19 8 .704

And your 2007 Boston Red Sox:
Month by Month
Split W L WP
April 16 8 .667
May 20 8 .714
June 13 14 .481
July 15 12 .556
August 16 13 .552
September 16 11 .593

So, actually, the Red Sox were better than the Yankees for two months; it’s just the Yankees were so incredibly bad during those two months, they lost the division by two games. But hey, nice try making a point there and failing miserably.

The Red Sox also have two young pitchers — Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz — in their rotation. Over the course of the season, the success of both teams will be determined not only by the development of their young pitchers, but by the depth and quality of their entire staffs. This is the area in which the Red Sox, after years of chasing, finally caught and surpassed the Yankees.

Let’s look at this year’s rotation by order, shall we?

Beckett/Wang. Beckett’s more of a traditional pitcher, but they’re both in the top three for wins over the past three years. Granted, that stat means dick, but I’m tired of trawling Baseball Reference like a monk. I’d like Beckett more the playoffs, however, despite his proneness to injury and getting fatty fat fat fat.

Matsuzaka/Mussina. No contest. Dice-K has some good years ahead of him. In Mussina’s prime, this would be a much more interesting bullet point.

Hughes/Lester. Barring Hughes’ bizarre injury, they’d both have a no-no under their belt. Hughes also pitched like a dynamo in relief in the post season, and if I had to guess at futures here, Hughes seems to have the better upside.

Kennedy/Wakefield. Longer-term, obviously Kennedy, since Wakefield is about two years from mandatory retirement at GM plants the world over. This season, it’s a toss up. Wakefield relies on weather and feel, and Kennedy needs to learn how to stand up to hitters.

Pettitte/Bucholz. Raise your hand if you’ve had cancer in the past two years. Thanks, Clay.

In relief, I like Rivera/Chamberlain better than Papelbon/Okajima, and I’d give the long/middle guys to the Yanks, even if Farnsworth and Hawkins are train wrecks. Ohlendorf is gonna be good, and Bruney’s Subway diet seems to have paid off this year.

So ultimately, that’s two pitchers in each direction, with the swing in the No. 3 slot, and the bullpen edge going slightly to the Yanks. Ultimately, neither team’s pitching is exactly stellar, and both are over-reliant on young guys that got called up arguably too soon, thanks to bad deals from previous years.

Now we come to the 2008 edition of The Rivalry. For the moment, the roles have changed, but the intensity, the meaning, the stakes — none of that will be altered.

And since Mike ended on a weird, listless note without any affirmation, I’ll do the same.