Indians bid for Selig East threepeat

One might protest that the Bud Selig East is an arbitary sampling of teams and that its champion is rather a fluke because of it. But how does that differ from how the Major League Baseball regular season is structured to decide which clubs go to the playoffs?

Terry Francona, the most successful manager in the history of the Bud Selig East, is trying to pilot the Cleveland Indians to their third straight championship (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license).

To begin, we note that the Cleveland Indians, as poorly as they've gone this season, still are making a strong bid to win the Bud Selig East for the third consecutive year.

They happened to lose a tough one Monday afternoon to the Chicago Cubs, who prevailed on a homer by Kris Bryant in the bottom of the ninth for a 2-1 win at Wrigley Field. The Cubs now are 44-31 in the Bud Selig East, with the Indians 3½ games down at 38-32.

Two questions might immediately arise. Both are reasonable. The first would be, "So, what?" The second would be, "In what kind of a league are the Cleveland Indians 38-32?" In the real American League standings, the Indians began Tuesday's games 58-66. That means they are really terrible, 20-34, playing outside of the Bud Selig East.

The Bud Selig East is just a personal thing for the writer, who is happy to share it with the baseball public, though with no expectation that the baseball public wants it. The short explanation of the Bud Selig East is that it's half of a mash-up of the Joe Cronin and Chub Feeney Leagues. The long explanation is here. That's the answer to "So, what?" A shrug.

The second question is more interesting, because it says something about how the competitive integrity of the Major League Baseball (MLB) schedule has been sacrificed since the start of interleague play back in 1997.

Quickly, Indians are 38-32 in the Bud Selig East because that's their record against opponents in the Joe Cronin and Chub Feeney Leagues, which accounts for 15 other clubs across the Major Leagues. Is it not interesting that if you just consider the Indians against a particular cross-section that includes half of the Major League clubs, they're actually pretty good?

If you have any inclination to say that the Indians' work against the unbalanced selection of clubs in its Bud Selig East record is not representative of what the Indians are, we agree. But if we agree on that, we should also agree that the MLB schedule raises the same concerns, perhaps to an even greater degree, and certainly to a more serious degree.

Ever since interleague play began, we have to live with teams fighting for playoff entry on the basis of different schedules, which is inherently unfair and which seriously damages the integrity of that competition. If your interleague opponents are poor and the team against which you are jockeying for a wildcard berth plays good interleague opponents, that is an advantage for your side.

It would seem that about 99.9944 percent of baseball fans don't think it's anything to be concerned about. And if the fans and media don't see a problem, then the MLB offices definitely won't see a problem. Over here, though, we think it's a problem.

Take a look, for example, at the race for the second wildcard in the American League. Basically, it's a scrum of .500ish clubs fighting for survival. But the American League East clubs (the Baltimore Orioles and Tampa Bay Rays) in that mix are at a huge advantage against the AL West clubs (the Angels and Texas Rangers) and the AL Central club (the Minnesota Twins) who are in that fight.

The interleague schedule is set up this year so the eastern divisions play each other, as do the central divisions and the western divisions. So, if you're in the AL East, you're playing interleague against three dreadful clubs (the Atlanta Braves, Philadelphia Phillies and Miami Marlins), a talented club that plays messy baseball (the Washington Nationals) and an underwhelming club with young and talented pitching (the New York Mets).

Three of the six worst winning percentages across MLB are in the NL East, the Nats struggle to stay even and the Mets have only recently advanced from having the worst record among the division leaders. All of that is rather an achievement when one considers that the NL East clubs play 56 percent of their games against each other.

There's not a truly good club in that whole NL East mix, and those are the clubs against whom the AL East clubs are bidding for wins and losses towards a playoff berth that will be decided by a game or two.

The Twins are playing their interleague games against two poor clubs (the Cincinnati Reds and Milwaukee Brewers), as well as an awesome and pretty lucky club in the St. Louis Cardinals, a strong club in the Pittsburgh Pirates and a club on its way to being strong in the Chicago Cubs. If you're the Twins, wouldn't you rather play the National League clubs who the Rays and Orioles are playing? Wouldn't you like your chances better that way?

The Angels and Rangers are playing interleague against the NL West, which includes one bad club (the Colorado Rockies), two decent clubs (the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres) and two good clubs in the Dodgers (who aren't even as good as they should be) and the Giants (who have a way of getting better in the Fall).

So, if you're an AL East club, you get three interleague patsies. If you're in the AL Central, you get two interleague patsies, and you only get one if you're in the AL West.

Entering Tuesday's games, the contenders for the second AL wildcard were the Rangers (64-59), Angels (63-61), Twins (63-61), Orioles (62-62) and Rays (62-62). And here are their interleague records: Rangers (9-8), Angels (7-10), Twins (8-12), Rays (11-6) and Orioles (9-8).

The Orioles and, especially, the Rays are in this thing and might prevail because they have a much easier path than the Twins, Angels or Rangers. And that simply is not in the spirit of how playoff berths should be decided. Sure, the Twins could have won another game or two against the Reds and Brewers, and so forth, but the point is that the Twins, along with the Angels and Rangers, have a much tougher assignment overall to win 90 games, or whatever that number becomes to win a playoff berth.

A little further down the AL wildcard standings, we find the Detroit Tigers (59-65), Chicago White Sox (58-65) and the Indians (58-66). How many of these clubs would be matching the Rays and Orioles at .500 if they played the Braves, Phillies and Marlins instead of the Cardinals, Pirates and Cubs? Could be all of them.

One might suppose that the Twins are at an advantage against the Rays and Orioles because they play a lot of games in the AL Central against the Tigers, White Sox and Indians. But as the point just made shows, that's somewhat begging the question. It is often enough true, though, that the team in a weaker division has an edge for wildcard entry over a team from a stronger division. And that always looms as a possibility in baseball wildcard races, which is one reason why, in this corner, we do not like wildcards at all.

The races for division championships make a little more sense. At least all the teams within a division play all the same clubs. But MLB has even messed that up.

In the AL East, for example, the New York Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays were tied on top at 69-55 before Tuesday's games. But the Yankees play six times against the Mets and three times against the Braves this year, while the Jays play six against the Braves and three against the Mets. And if the Jays win the division by a game and kick the Yankees down to a wildcard, we're supposed to think that didn't make a difference.

But we do think it makes a difference. It's only sensible to think it makes a difference. Hence, the contrivances of the First Division, the Bud Selig East and all of the other competitions created on this site. If MLB believes its regular season competition with all these imbalances is legitimate, then nothing we can dream up with these imbalances is any less legitimate on that basis.

Many years ago, your friendly Major Leagues of professional baseball believed that a championship season called for a balanced schedule, at least an arrangement in which the playoff contenders would play the same schedule towards determining who went to the playoffs.

Seems fair. If one team plays an easier schedule than another, then why should the team prevailing against the easier schedule take a playoff berth from the team that was slightly less successful against a slightly tougher slate of games?

It's an important point, which, like so many others, has been lost by Major League Baseball, in part because the media and the fans don't insist on it. But it is no less important for that.

Way back in time, before expansion, each of the Major Leagues had eight clubs. Each club within a league played each of the other clubs 22 times, adding up to a 154-game schedule.

In 1961 (in the American League) and 1962 (National League), we saw expansions to 10 clubs in each league, and they maintained the principle of balance by having each club play every other club in its league 18 times for a 162-game schedule.

In 1969, each league added two clubs and divided into two divisions. As the division winners were to meet in the playoffs, those teams played out schedules in which each team played every other team within its division 18 times and played every club in the other division 12 times each. The team that you beat (or that beat you) for the division title still played the same schedule that you played.

Even when the American League added two more clubs in 1977, one for each division, the league tried to maintain balance as closely as possible, scheduling each club 15 times against each club in its own division and 10 or 11 times against each of the clubs in the other division.

But the clubs in the west complained that they were losing home gates against the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. In those days, before the business began to figure out television, the team in Minneapolis or Kansas City really suffered that lost gate against the Yankees. So, the AL went away from scheduling heavily within divisions and balanced its schedule as much as possible across the league, so each AL team played every club within its division 13 times and every club in the other division 12 times.

Balance still ruled. And when the National League expanded to 14 clubs in 1993, it followed that 13 and 12 format.

Following the 1994-5 player's strike, MLB began making all sorts of marketplace compromises, including the fool's gold of interleague play and the wildcards, which actually were to begin in 1994 but were postponed by the strike.

Now, we have each club in the Major Leagues trying to stuff 19 different opponents into a 162-game schedule. Each ends up playing every team in their own divisions 19 times each, every other club across its league six or seven times each, then each of five interleague opponents three, four or six times each. It's a ghastly concoction.

So, we can agree that the Bud Selig East and others like it on these pages smack of being arbitrary and accidental. But they are no more arbitrary and accidental than the playoff races across the Major Leagues, nor are they any more of a departure from the balanced structures that once made the playoff race an even fight. And the Major Leagues shouldn't be especially proud about that.

Bud Selig League standings through August 23

Bud Selig West W     L      Pct.     GB St. Louis 48 27 .640 — Texas 35 28 .556 7 San Diego 31 28 .525 9 DODGERS 28 27 .509 10 Minnesota 27 26 .509 10 ANGELS 24 29 .453 13 Milwaukee 29 37 .439 14½ Houston 25 31 .446 13½

Bud Selig East W     L      Pct.     GB Chicago (NL) 44 31 .587 — New York (AL) 30   24 .556 3½ Cleveland 38 32 .543 3½ Chicago (AL) 33 34 .493 7 Tampa Bay 27 29 .482 7½ New York (NL) 26 29 .473 8½ Miami 21 34 .382 13 Cincinnati 23 44 .343 17

How to get an American League starter into the Hall

On the way to arguing in support of our vote to put Jack Morris into the Hall of Fame, we've got a little more to say. Maybe we need to rethink how we assess American League starting pitchers in these days of relief pitching and designated hitters, lest we should be unlikely to ever put another such performer into the Hall again.

Jack Morris went 3-0 with a 1.80 ERA for the Detroit Tigers during the 1984 postseason (Image from http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Jack-Morris-Detroit-Tigers-with-84-WS-Champs-Inscription-Posters_i8736516_.htm. It is believed this low resolution, cropped and watermarked image of a poster to identify the subject of this story is fair use in the absence of a public domain image of the subject.).

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

What follows is some fallout from a separate piece in which I will discuss the reasons for which I've given Jack Morris still another vote for induction in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, and why I shall again cast that vote next year if it comes to that.

That case will not be made here. However, it seems as though we've settled on a peculiar way of deciding which pitchers are Hall of Famers, and that peculiarity does not favor Jack Morris. We've apparently decided that anyone who hangs around for 25 years and wins 300 games is in, and we don't care if he threw a spitball, pitched in the easier league or wheezed through the last few years of his career to enhance his numbers. The only other way in is a case like Bert Blyleven, about whom it was finally appreciated two years ago that he would easily have reached 300 wins if those Minnesota Twins teams of the early 1970s paid a little attention in the batter's box on the days when he pitched. Blyleven lost 99 quality starts during his career, 48 of them during those first seven years with the Twins.

Blyleven made his debut in 1970. And that remains the most recent debut year for a starting pitcher who is in the Hall of Fame. The next most recent debut year for a Hall of Fame starting pitcher was 1967, Tom Seaver's rookie year. The Hall includes eight starting pitchers who debuted from 1964 through 1967.

The Hall of Fame includes 64 starting pitchers, with their debut years ranging over exactly 100 years, 1871 through 1970, and the pitcher debuts are spaced pretty evenly across those 100 years. Most of the gaps are two or three years, though there are a couple of five-year gaps (1931-35 and 1943-47) in which no starting pitchers who are in the Hall of Fame threw that first big league pitch.

It now is 2013, of course, and we haven't inducted a starting pitcher who debuted in 1971 or later. Now, every starting pitcher who debuted from 1971 through 1983 has come and gone, barely without acknowledgement on any Hall of Fame ballot, except Morris. The next debut year up for discussion is 1984, the year Roger Clemens broke in, and that one is going to be deferred, at least for a while. The next debut year that stands to have launched a starting pitcher towards the Hall of Fame is 1986, the year Greg Maddux began with the Chicago Cubs.

So, we're looking at a window of 15 years, 1971 through 1985, a full generation of starting pitchers, that we have deemed unsuitable for the Hall of Fame. Obviously, no pitcher from that generation produced obvious Hall of Fame numbers. Morris is the only one who has even come close, and the case for him can't be said to rest easily in the statistics. One would believe that our great nation produced a crop of complete pitching deadbeats in the birth years 1952 through 1965. And it is true that in the 1980s, managers and pitching coaches began complaining about a shortage of quality pitchers.

Perhaps, though, that shortage arose not so much from limited supply as from heightened demand, because managers of baseball teams in those years became increasingly risk-aversive, just like the managers of everything else across the country. Unlike the manager of just about anything else, though, the baseball manager's risk is very heavily scrutinized in public. Indeed, the rapid-fire media landscape taking shape in the last 40 years has magnified and dramatized the baseball manager's risk beyond any degree to which ordinary business elites could hope or fear. Thus, the aversion to risk, the leaving of nothing to chance, so commonplace across the American managerial class, is intensified in the case of the baseball manager. (Football coaches are an even more obvious case, which is why quarterbacks never call plays anymore.)

By the early 1980s, the ultimate baseball manager risk averter emerged, the relief closer, who removes from the manager any responsibility for what happens in the decisive ninth inning. But why stop there? After all, it is a risky move to face the best left-handed hitters in key situations without a left-handed reliever. Best to add a left-handed reliever or two to the mix. Along with that, everyone knows that the easiest second guess against a manager is for leaving the starting pitcher in for too long. The starter could be going along great, then he suddenly gives up a couple runs on bouncers, rollers and bloopers to fall behind. It's not the pitcher's fault, and it's not the manager's, either, but the manager will surely catch hell for it. If, in a similar case, the pitcher survives the rough patch for a complete-game victory, all of the glory will go to him, and none will go to the manager for knowing and trusting his guy. Anyway, we almost never get to see that. There's nothing in it for the manager. He is going to make the pitching change.

In 1974, big league pitchers completed 28 percent of their starts. By 1984, that was down to 15 percent. In 1994, it was down to eight percent, then down to three percent in 2004, which is where it stood in 2012. It really can't get much lower than that. In the early 1980s, it was common for a baseball team to carry 10 pitchers. By the early 1990s, it became common to carry 12, and the only reason it has stayed there is because you really do need four or five guys on your bench who can pinch run, put on a glove, hit, something like that.

The risk aversive use of relief pitchers is one huge factor keeping starting pitchers from hitting Hall of Fame numbers. But there are others, and the most evident of all, which passed for a burning controversy 20 years ago, is all but ignored today. In 1973, the American League introduced the designated hitter rule. Now, the AL pitcher has no soft spot in the bottom of the opposing lineup where he can just blow his way out of trouble. The DH in the American League created unprecedented difficulties for pitchers. And that ends up meaning the broad majority of pitchers, because, during these designated hitter years, we've also seen the launch of free agency and the removal of interleague trading restrictions, so pitchers change leagues freely.

Obviously, the general weight of productivity within the game is going to shift towards hitters and away from pitchers when we add a hitter to the lineups of half the teams or more. (During the broad majority of seasons pertinent to the 1971-85 pitching cadres, the AL had 14 clubs and the NL had 12.) Just from following as much baseball research as one could reasonably expect of a hardcore fan, it's not obvious that the shift of this weight has ever been quantified, and it appears to not have been sufficiently accounted for in the Hall of Fame votes.

But there's got to be something to it. When we're leaving 15 years of starting pitchers out of the Hall of Fame, we need to ask ourselves what's wrong with this picture. The guess here is that the designated hitter and management's turn to relief pitching have made it extraordinarily difficult for pitchers who spend significant portions of their careers in the American League to reach the old Hall of Fame targets. It's just harder than ever for starters, and it's going to get worse as we consider starters from the offensively bloated years of unchecked steroid use.

Many would, and should, protest that the 1930s were, in fact, the days of the highest scoring in big league baseball before steroids entered the game. But a good scoring environment is not the same thing as a tough pitching environment. The American League ERA in the 1930s ran from 4.28 to 5.04, with a midpoint of 4.66. The NL ran an ERA of 4.97 in 1930, but from 1931 to 1939 the low was 3.34 and the high was 4.06, putting the NL midpoint between extremes for the decade at 4.15. But it was still possible for good pitchers to work through lineups successfully and consistently in both leagues, and have long careers, in part because there was always a way out at the bottom of the lineup.

Lefty Grove, pitching for the Philadelphia Athletics and Boston Red Sox, won seven American League ERA titles just in the 1930s. Lefty Gomez, pitching for the New York Yankees, won two of the other three. Carl Hubbell of the New York Giants and Dizzy Dean of the St. Louis Cardinals dominated the NL in the 1930s. All four are in the Hall of Fame. They are clearly the best pitchers of the 1930s.

The 1971-85 generation produced no pitchers of that achievement. The best it could do is Jack Morris, who is, statistically, more along the lines of Ted Lyons and Red Ruffing, the other two pitchers of the 1930s who are in the Hall. It is often noted, in opposition to the Morris candidacy, that his induction would give him the highest ERA in the Hall of Fame at 3.90, surpassing Ruffing (3.80) and Lyons (3.67). But putting Ruffing and Lyons into the Hall really amounts to a recognition that the times were tough on ERAs. That same understanding would have to inform a case for Jack Morris.

We might point to a time in history, a specific, separable slice of the American League that starts in 1977, when the league expanded to 14 teams with new franchises in Seattle and Toronto, until the players' strike in 1994, the year before the first wild card playoffs. It happens that the career of Jack Morris spans precisely those years, all of which he spent in the AL, and he remains, in many respects, the definitive player of that league in that time.

It might be hard for younger fans to grasp how truly separate and different these two leagues were before Bud Selig homogenized everything in the late 1990s and almost every club moved into a new stadium during the last 20 years. These two leagues were different in every way, except they both played a game called baseball, and even that game was substantially different. Each league had its own president and administrative staff, each league had its own set of umpires (who called different strike zones because they took different positions behind the catcher), each league had its own method for scheduling the season (the AL balanced the schedule and the NL played more within the divisions), and each league had its own style of play.

The AL was slow-footed sluggers in pill box ball parks with grass fields. Junk ballers prospered in the AL because they could keep it in the park. The NL was foot speed and power pitching to the distant walls of multi-purpose stadiums with artificial turf. It's not just that there was more incentive to run in the NL. It was absolutely necessary. It also was understood that if you had an assignment in the AL or NL, either way, you were walking into a whole different culture. (The NL guys tended to be solid and professional, while the AL guys tended to be narcissistic and precious.) The two leagues never saw each other except for spring training, the All-Star Game, the World Series and the winter meetings. Oh, and the AL had that damned DH.

So, one wants to be very careful about comparing players across the two leagues from those times, because they were barely playing the same game. Case in point (on another Hall of Fame issue): For about the first ten years of their careers, Rickey Henderson and Tim Raines were practically the same guy, but Henderson’s running game stood out as an anomaly in the AL, while Raines’s running game made him more like first among equals in the NL.

We do have pitchers in the Hall of Fame who worked those years, and exactly none of them can be said to have built his Hall of Fame case on his work against the DH. Blyleven worked six seasons in his 20s without ever facing a DH. He certainly can't be said to have built his case on his later work in the 1980s. Seaver never saw a DH until very late in his career with the White Sox and the Red Sox. Nolan Ryan pitched for 27 years and only had to worry about the DH for 12 of them. Don Sutton pitched for 23 years, five of them, late in his career, in the AL.

Steve Carlton lasted for 24 years, the first 21 of them in the National League, where he took 95 percent of his career starts. Catfish Hunter spent his entire career in the AL -- eight years and 115 wins without the DH and seven years and 109 wins with it. Ferguson Jenkins pitched seven of his 19 seasons in the DH-era American League, but he made his case during his earlier seasons with the Chicago Cubs. Jim Palmer and Blyleven are the only Hall of Fame pitchers who worked the majority of their careers against the DH. And Palmer won 100 games before the DH showed up. Pre-DH, Palmer's 2.72 ERA gave him an ERA-plus of 125. Post-DH, his ERA rose to 2.93, and that made his ERA-plus even better, 126.

Phil Niekro lasted 24 years with his knuckleball, and he never saw a DH until he was 45 years old. Gaylord Perry lasted for 22 years with his spit ball, but only faced the DH in eight of them.

We have some other guys coming up the ballot, the new generation of pitchers that debuted in the mid-1980s, and they follow the same pattern. Not one of the slam dunk guys is an American Leaguer through and through. Chemical Clemens would be a slam dunk guy, of course, and he spent only three of his 24 years in the NL. But we also believe now that the second half of his career was hatched in a laboratory. Maddux will go in on the first try for 23 seasons of greatness, every one of them in the National League. Tom Glavine spent his whole 22 years in the NL. John Smoltz made 723 big league appearances -- 715 of them in the National League. Curt Schilling will never be forgotten for helping to break the Curse of the Bambino, but it already has been forgotten that he spent 13 of his 20 years in the NL. In a similar vein, Pedro Martinez pitched for 18 years, and who knows if he would have lasted that long if he had spent more than seven of them in the AL? Randy Johnson worked for 10 of his 22 years in the National League.

Then we come to Mike Mussina, who raises the same kinds of questions as Morris. Mussina spent his entire career in the American League, and what do you know? He couldn't last 20 years, couldn't get to 300 wins. He and Morris, both finished after 18 years, count for survivors in that American League environment. By the rate stats, we would have to say the best exclusively American League starting pitchers during the Morris years were Dave Stieb and Ron Guidry. But Stieb lasted only 15 years, and he stretched it hard to get there. Guidry was done after 14 years. A couple of other excellent pitchers from the time, Bret Saberhagen and Frank Viola, each pitched 12 years in the AL. But Saberhagen spent five or six years tuning over every rock to reach 16 big league seasons, and Viola hung on tight for three years to reach 15 big league seasons.

Pitchers just do not last in the American League. We should not be one bit surprised by this. Facing a DH instead of a pitcher every day is tantamount to taking a little more than ten percent off of one's career. The difference does not arise for relief pitchers, obviously, because they never face the pitcher, anyway. But it is deadly for American League starting pitchers.

It would behoove us, one believes, to reconsider how we look at American League starting pitchers in the Hall of Fame voting. The way we're voting right now, what we're saying is this: "If you're a starting pitcher and you spend your entire career in the American League, you can forget about the Hall of Fame. Even if you are good enough, you won't last long enough to reach the numbers."

That is surely not good news for the American League.

Angels out, Dodgers still in -- for now

We've come to the time of year when we consider the tiny difference between going to the playoffs and missing them, especially in Los Angeles, where the Angels died Monday and the Dodgers barely stayed alive. Both clubs are so close that big turning points won't explain how they missed. The explanations are tinier.

Now, the Angels are winding down their season. Torii Hunter, 48, becomes a free agent when it ends (photo courtesy of Angels Baseball).

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

So, the baseball season in Los Angeles, half of it, anyway, lives for another day.

That life belongs to the Dodgers, who squeezed out a 3-2 win in the bottom of the ninth against San Francisco Monday night to remain two games behind the St. Louis Cardinals, who held their ground on the second wild card by beating Cincinnati Monday.

Two games out, two to go. Given the scenario in spring training, Dodgers fans would have loved it. But the fans aren't responding to this team, because the team didn't respond to its opportunity when ownership dropped $300 million on players while the Dodgers still were close to the NL West lead. Only 33,000 showed at Dodger Stadium Monday night with the Giants in town and the playoffs within reach.

Suddenly, though, the Dodgers have won six straight. Too little, too late, and too bad, because this is a representative team right now, going 6-5 in the last couple weeks against teams positioned for the playoffs. The Dodgers would be very competitive in the playoffs, playing like they're playing against the best clubs in the NL.

Their problem isn't the contenders. It's the pretenders, the Arizonas and Colorados of the world. The Dodgers are 6-12 this year against Arizona, and 10-8 against last-place Colorado. Just looking at that, the Dodgers should be five games better.

Which shows, again, that the team has to play every opponent, every day. The lesson hits us forcefully at this time of year as we consider the razor-thin difference between making it to the playoffs and not making it to the playoffs.

The Angels are an excellent example. They were eliminated Monday night when Oakland beat Texas. One almost aches for a 91-win team that misses the playoffs, which is how the Angels end if they finish it out with two wins in Seattle Tuesday and Wednesday.

There's always a tendency to seek big turning points for a club like the Angels. Two easily come to mind. They started 18-25, which really isn't such a disaster. The real trouble started on Aug. 1, in Arlington, after the Angels won the first two games of a series there to climb within two games of the Rangers for the AL West lead.

But on Aug. 1, the Angels blew a 7-1 lead in the fifth inning at Texas, which rallied for an 11-10 win in 10 innings. The next day, the series ended with the Rangers winning again, pushing the Angels back to four games out of the lead.

And then, the wheels came off of the season. The Angels lost two of three at Chicago, then two of three at Oakland, then they were swept four games at home by Tampa Bay, dropping the Angels to 62-60 overall.

The Angels have rallied. Since the Tampa Bay sweep, the Angels are 27-11. But that hasn't dug them out of the hole they made by losing 13 of 18 after climbing within two games of the Rangers.

All that said, big turning points will not explain how the Angels missed the playoffs, and that's going to drive them crazy this winter. The Angels will miss the playoffs by a slender margin, and that's because of some small turning point, somewhere, that cost them a ball game. There actually are several of these.

Think of all the discrete events in a baseball game, the tiniest little moments. Each game has hundreds of them, call it about 1,500. The pitch is one, the batter hitting the ball to right field is another, the right fielder taking the ball cleanly is a third, the right fielder making a throw on the runner going to third is four, the third baseman taking the throw is five, the tag play gets us to six. So, six discrete events, as we'll call them, on a simple single to right with a runner on first.

The 71 Angels losses so far contain, between them, well more than 100,000 of these discrete events, enough of which went wrong for the Angels. It doesn't have to be much. Maybe the manager left a pitcher in for one hitter too many, maybe the club blew a relay, maybe a runner was too greedy on the base paths, maybe a batter missed his pitch in some at-bat. Very small things.

Get one more of those right, win one more game. Win one more game, go to the playoffs, or, at least, live another day. One or two little plays. That really is the difference between the Angels going to the playoffs, which they aren’t, or sitting at home, which they are. If the right one, two or three of those events that went wrong for the Angels went right this year, they would be going to the playoffs.

That's what's agonizing about the Angels right now. They're done. Missed it by that much.

Chances are, we’ll be thinking the very same about the Dodgers, very soon.

Three up, three down

The Dodgers and Angels both remain alive in the playoff race with three games left in the season. And both are barely hanging on. Both teams basically have to win all the remaining games, and they need the teams they are chasing, basically, to lose all their games. But it's still on.

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

Here we sit on Oct. 1, and Los Angeles is the only town in America with two big league baseball clubs still in the postseason hunt.

On Oct. 1, that's a big deal. On Oct. 2, it might still be. Or, it might not.

The Angels and Dodgers both are just barely alive. The Dodgers are two games behind St. Louis for that wretched, final playoff spot in the National League with three games left. The Angels are three games behind Oakland for that wretched, final playoff spot in the American League with three games remaining. Those three games take place Monday through Wednesday.

The Dodgers play their three at Dodger Stadium against the San Francisco Giants, who stomped to the NL West title and now have absolutely no incentive to win. The Giants are in a real good position now.

The Giants know they're going in as the No. 3 team, which means they're a road team through the playoffs. However, while the league's two top clubs, Washington and Cincinnati, go down to the wire for the NL's best record and the home field advantage going through the playoffs, the Giants are in comfy playoff prep mode.

We suppose, entering the playoffs, that the home field advantage would be well worth it. But what kinds of resources are the Reds and Nationals borrowing from the playoffs during the last few days of the regular season to put themselves in that position? Could be that if Giants manager Bruce Bochy plays his cards right, he will have maybe not the best team, but the sharpest and best rested team going to the playoffs. Could be some upsets in the making, coming from the Giants this fall.

If the Dodgers win three and the Cardinals lose three at home against Cincinnati, which now is tied with Washington for the best NL record at 96-93, then Dodgers are in the playoffs. If the Dodgers win two and the Cardinals lose two, then the Dodgers and Cardinals go to a play-in game, with the winner receiving a one-day trip to Atlanta.

The one advantage for the Dodgers over the Cardinals going to the last three days is the situation of their opponents. Perhaps the blood isn't quite so bad between the Reds and Cardinals since Tony LaRussa retired, but enough lingers to suggest that Reds players would be thrilled if they could secure the playoff home field and knock the Cards from the playoffs all at the same time -- and it would even happen in St. Louis.

The rivalry between the Dodgers and Giants spans three centuries and two coasts. It has to one of the best half-dozen athletic rivalries around the world, and we put it ahead of the Yankees and Red Sox. But the force of this rivalry will not influence Bochy in any way during these next three days. Given a choice between resting a couple players for the playoffs and knocking the Dodgers out, the Giants are resting players.

Maybe, then, if the Dodgers make it in, the Giants will end up regretting that. At this point, that's a rather far-flung scenario.

The Angels go to Seattle needing three wins. They also need Oakland to lose three at Texas. All of that has to happen for the Angels to play Oakland in a play-in for the AL's fifth playoff spot. It won't, but it could.

Seattle is back to losing like a last-place team now that all the other last-place teams are off the schedule. Playing powerfully now, the Angels could sweep three.

The Rangers need one win against Oakland to clinch the AL West. They need at least two wins to clinch the best record in the AL. But will the Rangers need three wins?

It could come down to that for the Angels. How does it play out if we come to Wednesday with the Angels one game behind Oakland for the last wild card spot, but Texas has clinched the AL top seed? Almost certainly, Texas manager Ron Washington would sit some guys. That's his prerogative. Maybe, then, Oakland wins that last game and the Angels miss the playoffs because of it.

Dodgers, Angels, now on death watch

The Angels and Dodgers each needed to at least not lose ground as they took on division leaders this week. Instead, both lost lots of ground, and now their chances of advancing to playoffs are barely conceivable. But there are scenarios.

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

One hates to pronounce death, or even predict it, but it's pretty hard now to escape that conclusion about the Los Angeles baseball teams and their playoff chances.

Each began the week with a three-game series against a division leader needing to at least not lose ground. Each lost ground.

The demise of the Angels figures to be especially swift, the way it's been going. Only a miracle of trend-reversing fortune can save the Angels, who now are 4 1/2 games behind Oakland and Baltimore for a wild card bid after losing two of three at home against Texas. The Angels now face three at home against another division leader, the Chicago White Sox.

The Angels (81-69) are trying to break into a scrum going on about five games above them between the Yankees (86-63), Orioles (85-64) and Athletics (85-64). Between them, apparently, the scrummers are going to claim the AL East title and the two wild card bids. It's gotten so late now -- 12 games left -- that the Angels can't, on their own, rise into that group. Even if the Angels were 10-2 the rest of the way, Oakland or Baltimore would have to finish 6-7 to have a tie. Someone, then, is going to have to fall for the Angels to have a decent chance.

It's not, apparently, going to be Baltimore, which plays the rest of its games against two clubs itching to go home, Boston and Toronto. Lucky as the Orioles have been this year, it's hard to believe they won't win seven of their last 13.

Can it be the Athletics? The Athletics have run into a competitive steamroller, losing three straight to Baltimore and Detroit, and now they go to Yankee Stadium, where the Yankees are fighting for their division title. After that, the A's, take up their own division title. Down four to Texas in the AL West, the A's play seven of their last ten games against the Rangers. Meanwhile, the Angels play six of their last nine against Seattle and the other three against the Rangers.

It's remarkable that the Rangers haven't already clinched the division, but the intensity of the wild card race has been so great that it has lifted the A's into the neighborhood. But now the A's have lost three straight and they play their next seven against the Yankees and Rangers. Could be the path to glory for the Athletics. Could also be a rapid road to their decline, in which case the Angels come back into play. It's hard to think of any other way back in for the Angels.

The Dodgers began the week 1 1/2 games down to St. Louis for the NL second wild card before losing two of three to Washington while the Cardinals feasted on a sweep in Houston. Now, the Dodgers are three down to the Cardinals, and they've been surpassed by Milwaukee, which is 2 1/2 behind after a five-game winning streak. Coming up on the outside is Philadelphia, which now is only one game behind the Dodgers.

The contours of this race will be set by the peculiar circumstances under which the Cardinals are finishing the season. The Cardinals now go on the road for three each in Chicago and Houston, two worst teams in the league. If the Cardinals can't build another game or two into their cushion, then all bets are going to be off because they finish the season at home with three each against Washington and Cincinnati.

The two best clubs in the NL this season, each of which already has clinched playoff berth, the Nationals and Reds will move on to claiming the best record in the NL, which carries home field advantage through the playoffs. These teams are going to want the home field against each other, so they're not done playing. The Cardinals really will have work to do.

And that means that if the Dodgers still are three down to the Cardinals a week from now, they'll have a chance. About the other factors, who knows? Right now, Milwaukee and Philadelphia are surging upwards in the race, while the Dodgers and Pittsburgh are going the other way. Arizona has flat-lined its way into this race, staying alive just by staying even. This whole group of teams -- the Dodgers, Milwaukee, Philadelphia Pittsburgh and Arizona -- is within three games of each other.

But notice that we are talking about a completely phony drama here, a twisted fantasy conditioned by lucky underdogs we’ve seen through the years. We're talking about a group of teams, none of which is a day or two from playoff position. We're supposing one might overcome its mediocre performance thus far and make up three games on the defending world champions with a playoff bid on the line.

It's at least as likely that the Cardinals will storm through this road trip against league doormats, build themselves a four-game cushion, then take a good fight to the Reds and Nationals to clinch their berth with a day or two left, and none of the other teams will be close enough to matter.

Are the Dodgers still in the race? They are, the way the standings look. But they aren't, the way they are playing.

The Dodgers go this weekend to Cincinnati, where they will witness the Reds' division clinching party. Kind of a throwback to those days when the Reds and Dodgers were division rivals. Next, the Dodgers go to San Diego, where the Padres have rallied to the outer fringe of the wild card race.

The Dodgers finish at home with three against Colorado and three against San Francisco. What's to say the Dodgers can't rally back into this race? Nothing. Except that the Dodgers have lost ten of their last 14.

Elite club list changes through season, but how much?

At the start of the season, it was commonly said that six of the best major league baseball clubs are in the American League. Since then, Boston has come off that elite list, and the one NL team on it, Philadelphia, has struggled through injuries to a losing record at this point. Are sudden AL contenders in Chicago, Oakland and Baltimore really good enough to move up to such a list?

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

Entering the season, the perceived dominance of the American League was illustrated by a common observation that the AL included six of the best seven clubs across the major leagues.

We thought it had to be a little crazy. But we went along with it, anyway, because the National League was so badly off. Its mega market franchises in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago all were mediocre or worse on the field, and all were financially constrained from making improvements. Two other NL franchises might have belonged on some such top seven list, but the St. Louis Cardinals lost free agent Albert Pujols to the Angels and the Milwaukee Brewers lost free agent Prince Fielder to the Detroit Tigers. Those two deals, alone, are probably why the Angels and Tigers were in the mythical top seven, and the Cardinals and Brewers weren't.

The point of such a list, of course, was never to say, "Here's a list of the best seven teams across baseball. Oh, look! Six of them are in the American League!" The point was to say more like, "The American League is so much stronger than the National League that the AL has six teams as good as or better than the best team in the NL."

So, maybe your list of the best seven teams across baseball starting this season was like everyone else's, and it included six from the American League. It included, of course, the three teams causing all the fuss in the AL East -- the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays. Then, it would have to include the Texas Rangers, winners of two straight American League pennants. And the other two would be, as mentioned, the Angels and Tigers after making those big upgrades. The only National League club on that list would have been the Philadelphia Phillies, winners of five straight divisions leading to six postseason series victories, along with two pennants and a world championship.

And what are we to say of the AL's position now that the one premium NL franchise, Philadelphia, is struggling after injuries to break even on the baseball field? It would appear that the NL, with its wide open competitive terrain and lack of a big-market winner, is at a disadvantage for producing a competitive power on the scale of the leading AL franchises.

A week after Labor Day, we see a couple discrepancies between the list and the standings, and the final playoff alignment could make the list look silly. But the list is mostly right. Boston has decided it didn't like its chemistry and now is off the list for sure. Philadelphia, destroyed by injuries for three months, has rallied since Ryan Howard and Chase Utley are back in the lineup. The Phillies are waging a playoff campaign. The Phillies probably are worth an injury reprieve and should stay on the list, anyway, but we might also be seeing why they surely belong.

The other five AL teams on the list are still kicking hard. The Yankees are winning the American League East. The Rangers are winning the American League West. The Rays, Tigers and Angels all are within three games of winning a division or some kind of playoff spot.

So, no, the commonly cited list of the best teams across baseball isn't being precisely validated by the standings right now. Yes, there are surprises, and we might end up with only two of our magic seven making the playoffs. But, no, the surprise winners won't, just like that, become entries on next year's list of seven elite contenders.

We’ll talk here and for now only about the AL teams that might be maintained or considered for such a list. It’s evident that NL franchises in Washington, Los Angeles and Cincinnati are making moves to merit such a discussion, and NL franchises in St. Louis and San Francisco should already be on the table. On them, more another time.

As we’re taking down Boston, we’re also reliably confident that events will favor the Yankees and Rangers for sustained inclusion on the short list. Nor would we take down the Tigers, Angels or Rays, who are, after all, contending. They're not playoff clubs today, but that could change a week from now. And it is wild watching the Angels, with all their firepower, digging and clawing for one little lifeline to a one-game wild card playoff, because if their pitching rotation stays together, they can take that line a long way.

The Angels, Rays and Tigers might be on shaky grounds, but why should they be? They are contending in the world's toughest baseball league deep into the season, and that's what is minimally required. If actually making the playoffs were required, our list couldn't include six AL clubs in the first place. Some sense of the club's aspirations must come into play.

Hence, we might still include the Angels, even if they completely miss the playoffs, because you know the ownership is gunning for it. By contrast, we might not include the Chicago White Sox just because they are winning the American League Central. The White Sox are built to be good enough so they'll come in around .500 if the ball doesn't bounce their way, but they'll score runs in bunches and be really hard to beat when it does. The White Sox get their bounces every other year, and this year is one of those years. But that doesn't mean they're a contender next year.

That's the Kenny Williams White Sox, and you can knock it, but why bother? Every other year, he produces a representative team that cards 86 to 90 wins. Only once in 11 years as the White Sox GM has Williams produced a truly bad team. He's had a payroll or two get away from him, but he likes to keep it tucked in around $100 million. It might be enough to go to the playoffs, but it might also just be deep contention into September. The White Sox did put it all together in 2005. Either way, the White Sox are in the mix half of the time at $100 million.

This points to an advantage the Chicago clubs have over their large-market brethren in New York and Los Angeles. The Chicago clubs could very sensibly settle in at the $97 million the White Sox are paying now, which isn't even in the top ten. Paying just about that, and adding for inflation, the White Sox or Cubs can guarantee that they will be in the mix at least every other year because none of their divisional foes has the market resources to make them pay for not spending.

It is almost always disastrous for Chicago’s division competitors to spend $100 million. The Twins topped $100 million last year, and they regretted it. The Tigers might regret their $132 million expenditure this year. Milwaukee is on $98 million without paying Prince Fielder, and the Brewers are regretting it. The Reds won't go there. Neither will Cleveland, Pittsburgh or Kansas City. The Cardinals are spending $110 million, but they know what they're doing.

So large is Chicago relative to its competing markets that the Cubs or White Sox could name the price of a division title, provided they know what they're doing, which the Cubs didn't, which is why they're still digging out of all those contracts. But Theo Epstein trimmed the Cubs from $125 million to $88 million, and one supposes his marching orders sound quite a lot like what we see from Williams.

Set a payroll amount at the lowest level that is easily obtainable in Chicago, but which is perilous for the other markets in the division. Nowadays, $100 million is pretty good. Feel blessed. That's $180 million in Los Angeles or New York. Now, put together a solid team for $100 million and follow the bouncing ball. Other teams will outspend you at their peril. You will have a contender half the time, raking in Chicago revenues after paying closer to Cleveland prices for players. That's a sensible way to run a baseball business in Chicago. We're seeing it at work in the White Sox today. But they won't go the extra mile for premium players, because they don't have to.

The White Sox don't have to aspire to greatness, so they don't. They aspire to run a sound baseball business, squeezing out every last possible dollar, in the spirit of Charles Comiskey himself. Nothing wrong with that. But it's also why the White Sox never seem quite up to elite status. That and, of course, they’re the White Sox.

Likewise, surprise AL contenders this year from Baltimore and Oakland are very unlikely to show up on anyone's list of seven elite contenders before the start of next season, no matter how well they do this season. Both teams are so surprising this year that they would be equally surprising next year.

The Orioles are 82-64, 11 games better than their Pythagorean W-L, which is 71-75. They are 27-8 in one-run games. This is what it has taken for the Orioles to achieve their first winning season in 15 years. One figures that their luck has to run out, except that it's running out of time for their luck to run out. So, right now, they are in a playoff position. But the analysts will look at all those one-run victories and be very afraid of what to expect for this club next year.

Across major league baseball today, the Oakland Athletics are, absolutely and without qualification, what is happening. Since June 13, the A's are 56-27, the best record in baseball. This club has been a treat to watch all year, and it really bears watching now that it has surged to the top wild card spot, even breathing on the Texas Rangers in the AL West. The Oakland pitchers don’t walk people and they keep the ball in the yard. The offense is next to nothing, but you can be sure Coco Crisp is involved when it is something. The A's win games in the margins, which is thrilling to see. It's also why one expects a comedown for their young players next year.

So, even if we wanted to remove the Angels and Rays from the elite seven, no one in the American League has emerged who would compel us to do so. Indeed, we wonder sometimes, as we survey the game’s cellar dwellers, if the AL might not also have six of the seven worst teams. Minnesota and Cleveland would surely be on that list, Kansas City is making no progress just because the Twins and Indians suddenly are worse than they are, Boston is starting all over and looks terrible these days, and Toronto lacks luster even when it peaks as a .500 team. A tournament of AL losers for the second half would be won by Seattle, which is 21-3 against these other five lightweights since the All-Star break. With all that said, it’s hard to remove NL franchises in Chicago and Houston from any list of the game’s worst teams right now.

But might candidates emerge from the NL to break the AL stranglehold on elite franchises? To that, we shall soon turn.

NL All-Star team ... uh, can we try this again?

The National League All-Star team playing Tuesday night in Kansas City is, at least measured by WAR, not very good. In fact, if we were to pick a team of NL WAR Stars and compare it with the real team of NL All-Stars, we would end up with only ten players in common.

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

Our task here is to produce a National League 25-man All-Star team based on WAR (wins above a replacement-level player) as calculated by baseball-reference.com.

We'll jump right into it. For a rationale about why this might be worth doing, as well as the American League version of our WAR All-Star teams, check here.

To begin, we will make up a 25-man National League All-Star team based mainly on WAR, deviating only to fill every starting position and make sure each team is represented by at least one player. After that, we will add five players (three position players and two pitchers) for a 30-man roster, then four more players for a 34-man roster, which brings us up to the roster length that will be in action Tuesday night in Kansas City.

Here is the 10-man pitching staff for the 25-man NL WAR team. The pitcher's WAR so far in 2012 follows his name:

Johnny Cueto, Cincinnati (3.6), R.A. Dickey, New York (3.6), Jordan Zimmerman, Washington (3.1), Mark Buehrle, Miami (2.9), James McDonald, Pittsburgh (2.8), Gio Gonzalez, Washington (2.7), Ryan Vogelsong, San Francisco (2.7), Matt Belisle, Colorado (2.6), Ryan Dempster (2.6), and Kyle Lohse, St. Louis (2.6).

Unlike the American League, for which the starting pitchers on the real All-Star team lock step with WAR all the way through, the NL pitching staff diverges widely from a staff that would be picked by WAR.

The most glaring example is Cueto, tied with Dickey as the NL's best pitcher this year by WAR. Retired St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa, managing the NL All-Stars, left Cueto completely off the All-Star team, which can only be described as a farcical, petty omission. It goes back to the rivalry between the Cardinals and the Reds, which has gotten nasty through the years. This move by LaRussa, snubbing a foe like this after retirement, shows just how nasty that rivalry turned.

But maybe we're too harsh here, because Cueto isn't the only WAR warrior left off the team in Kansas City. Indeed, it you believe and support WAR (what a terrible acronym), then you are fuming about this NL All-Star pitching staff going to Kansas City, because it is terrible. The NL has included only one of its top 10 pitchers by WAR, which would be Dickey. Further down the list, we find only six of the top 20. So, we have a very low performing All-Star pitching staff relative to the right now.

Now watch them throw a combined no-hitter against the American League in Kansas City.

Here, now, is the starting lineup, and the batting order, for the NL WAR Stars:

Leading off is our right fielder, Atlanta outfielder Michael Bourn (3.9), fifth in NL WAR among position players. Following Bourn is Pittsburgh center fielder Andrew McCutchen, third in the league with his 4.4 WAR. Batting third is the great Cincinnati first baseman Joey Votto, second in the league at 4.5. Cleaning up for the NL is New York third baseman David Wright, who leads the NL at 4.7 WAR.

Whew. And this lineup doesn't quit. Batting fifth is the reigning NL MVP and the most booed player in the game right now, Milwaukee left fielder Ryan Braun, eighth in the NL at 3.6. The No. 6 batter is the designated hitter, St. Louis left fielder Matt Holliday, sixth in the NL at 3.7. Batting seventh is Philadelphia catcher Carlos Ruiz, fourth in the NL at 4.0. The No. 8 hitter is Chicago shortstop Starlin Castro, 11th in the NL at 3.0. And the No. 9 hitter, Chicago second baseman Darwin Barney, seventh in the league at 3.6.

Surprising, eh? Who would have thought that the last-place Chicago Cubs could put three players just on the WAR pitching staff and starting lineup? That's an awful lot of talent for such a terrible team. It tells us that Cubs general manager Theo Epstein has a nice building block in his double-play combination, and that he has an awful lot more work to do.

And what a great batting order. Sadly, that is not the batting order, or even the lineup, that will appear for the NL in Kansas City. Among the players in our lineup, the fans selected only Votto. Then, the NL decision makers initially left Bourn, Holliday and Barney off the real NL All-Star team completely. Bourn and Holliday have since been added as replacement players, but Barney has not.

As we fill out the 25-man NL team with reserves, we will pass over some better players by WAR because we need to represent every club. The list here includes are San Francisco outfielder Melky Cabrera (ninth among NL hitters at 3.4), St. Louis catcher Yadier Molina (2.9, 13th), Dodgers catcher A.J. Ellis (2.4, 17th), San Diego third baseman Chase Headley (2.3, tied for 18th), Arizona first baseman Paul Goldschmidt (2.2, tied for 20th) and Houston shortstop Jed Lowrie (2.1, tied for 25th).

There, we have it, our best 25-man NL team by WAR, complete with three catchers and at least one player from every team. None of our WAR reserves was named to the real NL All-Star team. Thus, out of 25 players on the NL WAR stars, only eight are on the real NL 34-man All-Star team.

Adding five more players for a 30-man roster, we start with two outfielders, Atlanta's Martin Prado (3.2) and Miami's Giancarlo Stanton (3.0). We should add an infielder to this mix, and now comes a hard case. Atlanta rookie shortstop Andrelton Simmons has played in only 33 games, and we should rightly argue that 33 games isn't enough to make an All-Star team. But his production is off the charts. Much as we ooh and ahh about the Angels' Mike Trout and his 4.6 WAR in 64 games, Simmons is sitting on 2.5 WAR in 33 games. Going by WAR, we have to include Simmons. The two additional pitchers are Clayton Kershaw of the Dodgers and Matt Cain of the Giants, who are tied for 11th among NL pitchers at 2.4 WAR.

Kershaw, Cain and Stanton all were named to the real NL All-Star team, but Simmons and Prado were not. Stanton has since been scratched due to injury.

Four more players get us to 34. Going down the list, we pick Carlos Beltran of St. Louis and Jason Heyward of Atlanta, both tied for 14th in the NL with Simmons at 2.5. The additional pitchers are Washington's Stephen Strasburg and Milwaukee’s Zack Greinke at 2.4 WAR, tied with Cain and Kershaw. Beltran is in the real NL starting lineup, Strasburg is on the real NL staff, and Heyward isn't on the real team at all.

The real originally named NL All-Star team and the 34-man NL WAR team have only 10 players in common -- Votto, Beltran, Cain, Dickey, Kershaw, Strasburg, Bourn, Braun, Castro and Cabrara. Add in Holliday, a replacement, and it gets up to 11.

Rather amazing how much disparity we have, even as the new metrics have crept into the front offices, between what the real NL roster says and what WAR says. 

The real NL roster includes four relief pitchers -- Cincinnati's Aroldis Chapman, Atlanta's Craig Kimbrel, Colorado's Houston Street and Pittsburgh's Joel Hanrahan -- with a combined WAR of 4.9. Again, managers love relief specialists, and WAR does not.

The rest of the real NL team, according to WAR, includes such howlers as Chicago's Bryan LaHair and San Francisco's Pablo Sandoval, both wandering around at 0.9 WAR. Other real NL All-Stars include such weak WARriors as Rafael Furcal of the Cardinals (1.1) and Cincinnati's Jay Bruce (1.3).

The combined WAR for the NL WAR Stars is 103.3. The combined WAR for the real NL All-Star team is 70.2. Naturally, we should expect a team selected on the basis of WAR to have a higher WAR than a team that isn't. But the difference here is hard to swallow. We're looking at a difference of 30 games in a period of a half season.

Somebody didn't pick the right team here. If WAR didn't pick the right team, it means WAR is deeply flawed. If the fans and LaRussa didn't pick the right team, then they are, at least in this respect.

Our hunch is that the NL team playing in Kansas City Tuesday night  isn't nearly as good as it could be. Then again, neither is the AL team.

How to create new chases and keep the old ones

What would you say to a new baseball alignment that preserves the American and National Leagues, creates three new regional league pennants, all but eliminates wild cards and makes interleague play really matter? If you would say, "That's a great idea!" then read on.

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

The interleague play season has just passed with its usual mixed offering of natural meetings across town and its majority of games in which there is no good reason for the two teams to play against each other.

The true goal of interleague play, the one selling point for those opposed, was to create greater regional intensity across Major League Baseball. Despite some good ticket sales at times, it certainly hasn't worked as well as it could. Major League Baseball has captured mere drips of the juice from regional competition. You can boil more blood and make more money by getting civic pride involved and, for most cities, that's a regional stage.

But regional rivalries require more than just regional games, which is why it will always feel flat under the present system, year after year, when the Dodgers play Seattle or Oakland, or when the Angels play Arizona or Colorado. The games count in the standings, but they don't count the same emotionally because each team answers to different standings.

For years, MLB has floated realignment proposals that would group teams regionally. The proposals would blow up the American and National Leagues, perhaps maintaining them in name but changing what the names mean and, thus, discontinuing much that goes with them. That would seem to be the price of full-blown regionalism and other realignment plans. The game would lose much of its absent past as an active presence, as a hack might say. Baseball does trade on its continuity, and the leadership should not fritter it away.

We believe it is possible to maintain the American and National Leagues as they will be in 2013 (when Houston jumps to the AL), divisions and all, while holding concurrent pennant races in three regional leagues. The winners of every league -- five leagues, we propose -- would go to the eight-team post-season tournament, with deference to the traditional nationwide leagues. Except in fascinating cases, every division winner across the traditional leagues will survive the regular season, as will most (and, very likely, all) division winners in regional leagues. A wild card might survive, too, but almost never.

The origin of every great baseball rivalry is two teams frequently fighting over the same championship. Thus, the way to create more rivalries is by creating more championships. The creation of regional championships will create regional rivalries. And we do have room for more championships, as we now are including four wild card teams in the playoffs. On the principle that it is better to have a champion than a wild card in the playoffs, we propose to all but eliminate wild cards and replace them with regional champions.

Here's how it works. First, we keep the existing major leagues and their divisions just the way they are set for 2013. Now, we transpose our three new leagues on them. The teams in the eastern divisions of each major league would form an Eastern League. By next year's alignment, with Houston moving to the American League West, the two central divisions would compose a Central League. Then, we take the two west divisions, with Houston included, and that becomes the Western League.

Now, we make an adjustment in the schedule. In 2013, by the coming alignment, each team will play 80 games within its division, (20 against each club), 20 interleague games and 60 other games across its own league, give or take. That would change.

As an example, take the Dodgers. They would play ten games per year against all the other western teams, within their own NL West, and in the AL West. So, they would play only 40 games per year in the NL West, but they would have a complete 90-game schedule in the new Western League. Add to that another six games per year, one home-and-home series annually, against every other team in the National League.

Here, in 150 games, we have the outlines for a complete 90-game Western League schedule, and a 100-game National League schedule. If you want to count all the Western League games as NL games, same as how interleague games are counted now, then we can call it a 150-game NL schedule.

From here, we have flexibility. It seems there's no going back from the 162-game schedule. However, with career and single-season records having been so recently compromised, now might be as good of a time as any. But the proposal here is to stay with the 162-game schedule and fill it in with interleague games.

Notice that under the proposed system, it's no longer an interleague game when the Dodgers play Oakland. That now becomes a Western League game. The list of "foreign" teams that are in neither league with the Dodgers would fall to 10 (the teams in the AL East and AL Central), as it would for every major league team. So, those games between foreign teams would be the new interleague games. It would be easy enough to have the Dodgers play two foreign teams for three games home-and-home each year. Put the teams on a rotation and each foreign team across MLB plays each other home-and-home every five years. And it gets the regular season up to 162 games.

One more wrinkle. The new AL-NL interleague games between foreign teams will be important, because the league that wins the most of the resulting 180 interleague games will receive the top seed in the playoffs for its pennant winner and all subsequent advantages in the seeding process.

In addition to reading the AL and NL standings every morning, you now also will read the standings for the Eastern, Central and Western Leagues. We combed through the head-to-head results for this year, when the interleague schedule happens to match the proposal as closely as it can, and developed standings for how each of the regional leagues would look right now, based on those results. In the regional leagues, we're counting only head-to-head results within each one.

For example, the Eastern League standings would look like this:

Eastern League	W	L	Pct.	GB
New York AL	22	14	.611	--
Washington	24	16	.600	--
New York NL	24	18	.571	1
Tampa Bay	27	23	.540	1 1/2
Baltimore	25	22	.532	2 1/2
Boston	22	22	.500	3
Toronto	20	23	.465	5 1/2
Atlanta	16	21	.432	6 1/2
Philadelphia	14	23	.378	8 1/2
Miami	14	26	.350	10

The standings obviously aren't as balanced as they would be under the proposal, but we get a little flavor of what that race would look like. We have no divisions here, as the schedule would be balanced and the best overall record wins the pennant. Divisions do come into play for these leagues later in the seeding process, but they might not matter at all in some years, except for bragging rights.

For the Eastern League, we would have a northern division with the Yankees, Mets, Philadelphia, Boston and Toronto. The southern division would be Washington, Baltimore, Atlanta, Miami and Tampa Bay.

Now, a look at the Central League standings:

Central League	W	L	Pct.	GB
Pittsburgh	22	14	.611	--
Chicago AL	24	17	.583	1/2
St. Louis	24	17	.583	1/2
Detroit	21	18	.538	2 1/2
Cleveland	23	21	.523	3
Minnesota	18	19	.486	4 1/2
Cincinnati	18	20	.473	5
Milwaukee	15	22	.405	7 1/2
Kansas City	14	21	.400	7 1/2
Chicago NL	13	25	.342	10

As it stands, Pittsburgh would win the Central League pennant and very likely a top-half tournament seed. Minnesota, which looks like a goner in the AL Central, is only 4 1/2 games down in the Central League. But look at how poorly Cincinnati is doing in the Central League. The Reds are winning the NL Central at the moment. They would still go to the playoffs that way, joined now by Pittsburgh, which isn't presently a wild card by the NL standings.

The northern division is Minnesota, Milwaukee, the two Chicago teams and Detroit. The southern division is Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Kansas City.

For the Western League, we shall put the standings by division, just to illustrate:

Western League North	W	L	Pct.	GB
Arizona	22	18	.550	--
San Francisco	24	20	.545	--
Oakland	23	21	.523	1 1/2
Seattle	21	23	.477	3 1/2
Colorado	19	28	.404	6 1/2

Western League South	W	L	Pct.	GB
Texas	25	16	.609	--
ANGELS	24	16	.600	1/2
DODGERS	25	22	.532	3
San Diego	19	28	.404	9
Houston	8	18	.307	9 1/2

Texas, with the best overall record, wins the Western League pennant, but the Angels, down 4 1/2 games in the AL West, are only 1/2 game behind in this competition. The Dodgers are doing much better in the NL than in the WL. Arizona, Oakland and Seattle are contenders in the northern division, which is what they aren't right now in their respective traditional leagues.

Indeed, the proposal would add many more teams to the mix. Today, we have 13 clubs within four games of a division lead, pretty much exhausting the presumptive playoff contenders. Four other teams are hanging on for wild card berths that will last for one game. Under the proposal, we have 19 teams within four games of division leads, with the winners earning full entry to the quarterfinals.

Assuming the standings for all of our leagues remain as they are at the end of the season, we would now qualify eight teams for the postseason tournament. We begin by seeding the pennant winners for the American and National Leagues. Here, we're going to hold our nose and make a compromise, declaring the team with the best overall record in each league its pennant winner. It's not altogether fair because the schedules would be so imbalanced. If we want, we can just count the 100 games within each nationwide league. For the example, we'll stick with the 162-game standings. Calling it a 100-game American (or National) League season makes sense for a lot of reasons, but we can do it either way. There's more said about all of this a little later.

Anyway, to move this forward, we'll call Texas (48-29) the AL pennant winner and Washington (43-31) the NL pennant winner. Because the AL has won the most interleague games, Texas goes in as the top seed, with Washington as No. 2.

Now, we go to the regional leagues. The New York Yankees win the Eastern League by head-to-head tie breaker (3-0 this year) against Washington. Pittsburgh wins the Central League. So, the Yankees and Pirates are in. Texas, winner of the Western League, already is in as the AL pennant winner. Now, all the nationwide and regional league winners are in, but we still have to decide which of the Yankees or Pirates go in No. 3 and which is No. 4.

The first tie-breaker between the regional leagues is always head-to-head games. The Yankees and Pittsburgh don't play this year (they would play every five years as foreign teams). The next tiebreaker, then, is record against common opponents. The Yankees and Pittsburgh have nine common opponents this year -- five in the AL and four in the NL. The Yankees are 31-15 in those games, while Pittsburgh is 23-18. So, the Yankees are No. 3. If we need to break ties between three regional pennant winners, we run three-way tiebreakers. If we're just trying to work out a playoff seed, we'll keep running tiebreakers until we come to a decision. When playoff berths are on the line -- just getting into the playoffs, rather than seeding teams that already are in -- we would hold a one-game playoff.

Now, we need four more teams. We have seeded the pennant winners and now we are into the division winners. We start with the nationwide leagues and, as always, the AL gets to place its teams first for winning the interleague games during the season. Division winners from New York and Texas are already in, but now we qualify the Chicago White Sox, the AL Central winner, as the No. 5 playoff team. Next, we seed the NL division winners. Washington, winner of the NL East, already is seeded. But NL Central winner Cincinnati and NL West winner San Francisco aren't. The Giants get the nod by the tiebreakers and go in No. 6, while the Reds are No. 7.

We need one more team, so we go to the regional league divisions. By now, both Eastern League division winners (the Yankees and Nationals) are in, as are both Central League division winners (the Pirates and White Sox). Texas, winner of the Western League's southern division, also already is in, now, like Washington, as something of a triple qualifier.

But look at the Western League's northern division. We have a tie at the top right now between San Francisco and Arizona. Oakland and Seattle are close behind. San Francisco already is qualified. If the Giants and Arizona remain tied, we could just call Arizona the co-champion and rubberstamp the Diamondbacks into the playoffs. Or, we could put it to tiebreakers, in which Arizona wins the first by a 5-4 head-to-head advantage and goes in at No. 8. If they still were tied after record against common opponents, we would hold a one-game playoff.

The Giants would have no incentive to win the game and might grumble about having to play it, but that's the price they pay for not winning the division outright. The Giants might think about just letting Arizona have this division so they don't take the strain of an additional game, but they can't afford to jake a game when they're also trying to stay ahead of the Dodgers in the NL West. They could end up blowing both of their chances that way. And, finishing tied for a division lead, Arizona would deserve a chance to play for a playoff berth.

Suppose San Francisco wins a tiebreaker with Arizona. Then Arizona is out. And we now resort to a new level of teams for filling out the playoff bracket -- the nationwide league wild cards. Again, the AL goes first for winning the interleague games. Its top wild card is Baltimore. So, Baltimore is the final team in the playoffs. What happens to the top NL wild card? Should have won those interleague games, fellas.

Consider another peculiar case. Suppose that the Yankees and Nationals win the traditional eastern divisions, but the Mets win the Eastern League. And that Cincinnati and the White Sox win the central divisions, but Pittsburgh wins the Central League. And that Texas and San Francisco win the western divisions, but the Angels win the Western League. We have nine clubs for eight playoff berths. Because league titles trump division titles, we qualify the Rangers, the Nationals, the Mets, the Pirates and the Angels. Now, we dip into the major league division winners. We have three spots to fill and four traditional league division winners left to fill them. But, the AL gets dibs, so the Yankees go in No. 6 and the White Sox are No. 7. We are left with the Reds and the Giants for one remaining spot. Again, in tiebreaker order, it's head-to-head, common opponents, one-game playoff. One is in and one is out. Again, to the NL, it pays to win those foreign games for playoff consideration.

Now we move on to the World Series Tournament, in which each round is best-of-seven, because that's the right length for a playoff series. In the first round, based on today's standings, we get No. 1 Texas against No. 8 Arizona/Baltimore, No. 4 Pittsburgh against the No. 5 White Sox in a revival of the Central League pennant race, No. 2 Washington against No. 7 Cincinnati and the No. 3 Yankees against the No. 6 Giants as they resume a long-lost postseason rivalry.

We can imagine how it might play. The tournament shall be called "The World Series Tournament" and the finals shall be called not "The World Series Finals," but just "The World Series." And the World Series isn't always going to be AL-NL anymore. Sometimes, it will be EL vs. CL. Sometimes, it will be NL vs. NL and WL vs. CL. Sometimes, it will be AL vs. NL and EL vs. WL. And so forth.

That's the basic template. Details remain to be decided. The biggest question, discussed briefly above, is how to count the 162-game season. Using the Dodgers, again, as an example, they would play 90 true Western League games, 100 true National League games and 12 interleague games for a total of 162 games.  The totals don't add up, of course, because the games within the NL West would count doubly as Western League and National League games.

Keeping the Western League standings, we would only count the games within the Western League. But do we count the NL standings by counting only the 100 games within the NL, or do we count all 162 games, with all the imbalances that invites, the way we do it now? The sample scenarios already described assume that we do the latter.

It would seem that we have a dilemma. If we keep the 162-game NL and AL standings and thereby decide the pennant winners for each of those leagues, the schedules will be so wildly imbalanced that it will pose basic questions of fairness. We already have those problems, in a less exaggerated form, and it doesn't seem to bother anyone too much. If we go with the more balanced approach, counting only the 100-game NL and AL standings to determine their pennant and division winners, then we lose the 162-game standings and all they have come to mean. In addition, our interleague games wouldn't count in any standings anywhere.

A way to split that difference and keep everything in play would be to count only the 100-game AL and NL standings for determining their pennant and division winners, then add a provision for the team with the best 162-game record in each of those leagues to guarantee they will be in the playoffs. If, say, the Dodgers don't win the 90-game Western League or 100-game National League pennants, but they have the best 162-game record in the NL, then they would be entered as a playoff team after the five pennant winners are entered and before we begin entering the division winners from the traditional leagues. Chances are, the Dodgers would win the NL West and qualify, anyway, but this gives them a little more reward and incentive for being the best over 162 games.

The Dodgers scenario just described is almost never going to be an issue, but it can be, and we need a provision. We would hate a situation like the strike-split season in 1981, when the Cincinnati Reds had the best record across the NL, but were denied a playoff berth because they didn't win their division in either half of the season. The guarantee for the teams with the best 162-game records in the AL and NL would take care of that, and it also would maintain some reasonable congruence between the standings and the 162-game individual player records.

One drawback to this system, this overlay of regional leagues onto the traditional nationwide league, is, for example, is that the Dodgers and Giants would play each other only 10 times, instead of the 18 or 20 that they've always played. That does hurt. However, we get a lot back in the trade. The fewer games between the Dodgers and Giants would be even more critical because they would count in two pennant races, instead of one. And, for losing eight or ten games between the Dodgers and Giants, we would add great depth and seriousness to the games they play against the Angels, Oakland, Texas, Houston and Seattle, who become Western League rivals. We lose games between the traditional rivals, but those fewer games become much thicker, and we add five truly competitive rivals for each team. Also, there's always the chance that the Dodgers and Giants could meet in the playoffs, advancing by different routes. They could even play each other in the World Series, with one entering the postseason as, say, the Western League champion, and the other entering as the NL West champion.

It has been objected, reasonably, that the system described here is complicated. But it really isn't. With a little familiarity, it becomes pretty simple to understand. One compelling upside is that it gives more clubs more paths to the playoffs. More scenarios inevitably means there is more to keep track of for baseball people. But one characteristic of baseball people, particularly fans, is that they really don't mind keeping track of stuff and anticipating from a kaleidoscope of possibilities. They love doing it.

And, with these little modifications, which don't require anybody to move anywhere, with just these little adjustments in scheduling, we can accomplish a great deal. We can maintain the 162-game NL and AL competitions as we love them, we can maintain their pride of place as we salute them, we can add intense regional competitions as we want them, we can all but eliminate wild cards as we wish, we can make AL-NL interleague games truly matter as we must, we can create new meanings and keep all the old ones, and we can have regional leagues criss-crossing with nationwide leagues. We can, without subtraction, add value to every game.