Monday night, the Anaheim Angels of Southern California became the first team in the majors to clinch a spot in the postseason tournament. This will be mentioned again, a bit later.*
* First, though, I have to apologize for making fun of the Angels' chosen nomenclature. Well, it's actually sort of a half-hearted apology. One of those apologies where I apologize if anyone's upset, which of course really isn't an apology at all. The sort of "apology" that translates something like, "Uh, this thing I did that bothers you? I wish it didn't bother you, because now I have to spend some of my precious time explaining myself, and also wondering if maybe I'm an insensitive jerk. Nah. It's you, not me. The Angels of Anaheim really should be mocked until they return to proper geographic and metaphysical usage. And if you're an Angels fan and this true thing really takes something from the joy of Monday night's triumph, well ... Apologies!"
There's a certain lesson that we -- and by "we," I mean people who get paid to write and talk about baseball -- either forget every year, or are expected to ignore every year.
Actually, I'm sure there are a number of such lessons. But today I would like to illustrate just one: the relative unimportance of one player, however good or great, over the course of a few weeks or even months.
Yadier Molina got hurt on July 9. Molina has been considered for a few years the Cardinals' best player. In 2012 and '13, he finished fourth and third, respectively, in the National League's MVP balloting. He was off to another good (if not great) start this season. When he got hurt, the Cardinals were off to a good (if not great) start: 49-42, three games behind the first-place Brewers. Could the Cardinals survive during Molina's absence? He was gone until late August. Without him, the Cardinals went 22-19 and actually gained 1 1/2 games in the standings.
Granted, the Cardinals are 12-6 since Molina's return. They're obviously better with him than without him. But his loss was hardly disastrous.
Or consider the Baltimore Orioles. Entering this season, you certainly could make the case that their four best players were Manny Machado, Chris Davis, Adam Jones and Matt Wieters. Jones has been excellent this season. Davis has been awful. Wieters played only 26 games before retiring from the campaign with a torn elbow ligament. So let's see ... What would you have thought of the Orioles' chances, before the season, if I'd told you that Davis and Wieters would contribute approximately zero to the Orioles' season? Well, Machado also missed all of April, then went down for the season five weeks ago. In Machado's recent absence, the O's have gone 23-10 while lapping the rest of the American League East.
As I'm sure you'll recall, Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper were supposed to form the bedrock of the Washington Nationals. If the franchise were to succeed, it would be largely due to those No. 1 draft picks. This season, the Nationals are the best team in the National League. Strasburg has just a dozen wins -- and, yes, he's pitched well enough to win more, but stick with me here -- while Harper probably would come in seventh if you were picking a team MVP ... not including the pitchers (including Stasburg).
When the Pirates lost Andrew McCutchen in August, they were only 1 1/2 games out of first place in the NL Central. But could they survive without their best player? With McCutchen on the shelf for two-plus weeks, the Pirates went just 5-10 and fell well behind the (then) first-place Brewers. That stretch was hardly debilitating, though; the Pirates currently have a claim on the second wild card, thanks to their 15-9 record since McCutchen's return. Again, they're clearly better off with McCutchen than without him. But any reports of the Pirates' demise were obviously premature.
The San Francisco-South Bay Giants are spending $17 million this season on Tim Lincecum, who probably won't start again this season or make the Giants' postseason roster. If they make the postseason. Which they probably will. They might even win yet another World Series. After all, they've already won two of them while spending huge percentages of their payroll on Barry Zito, who didn't pitch at all when the Giants frolicked through October in 2010.
The East Bay Athletics went out and ... oh, the hell with that. You know what happened after they acquired first Jeff Samardzija and then Jon Lester, with both pitching exactly as well as everyone expected. Except maybe you don't know they're 17-25 with Lester, which leaves them on the verge of going from the best record in the majors to falling out of the playoffs completely.
I promised you the Angels, so here are the Angels. Before the season, we knew their starting pitching was a legitimate concern. We also knew their lineup might be good enough to balance the weak pitching, especially if Josh Hamilton rebounded from a tremendously disappointing 2013.
In 2014, Hamilton has hit exactly zero home runs in Orange County.
But look! There! A red-capped hero rides to the rescue! From almost nowhere, there came Garrett Richards, turning a questionable pitching rotation into a good one!
Richards entered this season with an 11-13 career record in the majors, 4.42 ERA. So nobody expected a Cy Young candidate, 13-4 with a 2.53 ERA in the middle of August.
When Richards was lost for the season on Aug. 20, the Angels already owned the best record in the American League. But they held just the smallest of leads, one-half of a game, over the Athletics. Surely with Richards out, the Angels would pitch into a slump. Or at least a semi-slump, no?
No. A thousand times no. The Angels are 20-6 since losing their best starting pitcher.
I don't know. Maybe this has been an extraordinary season. But then again, they all seem extraordinary to me. I just wish I could take back all those things I said on the radio about Yadier Molina and Andrew McCutchen and Matt Wieters and Jon Lester and Josh Hamilton and Garrett Richards. If anyone was misled, my apologies.
