Half-way To a Big Market World Series?

At the All-Star break, the 2010 World Series looks like it will be a battle between major market teams; Los Angeles Dodgers vs Boston Red Sox—at last.

Or maybe not.

This is a very strange season. Attendance is down, but most teams are “still in the pennant race”, or put differently, “buyers not sellers” going into the trade deadline. The Yankees supposedly “bought the championship”, investing mega millions to get the best of the free agents, but then they can’t beat the Red Sox.

Texas was tipped to fire their manager on the way to the cellar, but that hasn’t worked out at all. Maybe Nolan Ryan has been able to turn the organization around. Detroit comes out of their coma at the same time as the rest of their division discovers inconsistency.

A lot of teams are playing in hard luck, but the Angels actually had a player die. 2009 is a tough year.

At the break, only three AL teams are 10 games over .500. The AL East will produce two playoff teams—Red Sox and Yankees. The order could go either way, but probably Boston first and NY second.

Boston has crushed rival New York in their head to head meetings. They are the best managed team in the American League. They are the strongest team when their regular line up is on the field. Pitching, led by Josh Becket and Jon Lester, has been phenomenal. Hitting and defense are strong too.

Their weaknesses are on the left side of the infield. Julio Lugo continues to be disappointing and the deteriorating left hip of Mike Lowell is uncertain. But with the (slight) return of David, no-longer “Big Pappi,” Ortiz, and the continued high level pitching of Tim Wakefield, Brad Penny, and the return of John Smoltz—they will probably cruise to the American League Pennant.

The loss of Daisuke Matsuzaka has been covered by the re-emergence of Penny and Smoltz. The Yankees seemed to be waiting for Alex Rodriguez to play good baseball. Even with their huge investments they are still short of pitching.

The AL Central has been led by the Tigers. The Twins and White Sox are close enough to the front to make a run, but they both seem short of horses in the race.

The AL West is led by the Angels. The Angels seem to have their legs under them, ready to take the division and be a force in the playoffs. Texas has discovered pitching, and the combination of offense, defense, pitching, and a drive for excellence from above makes them a very interesting story line for the second half.

Seattle has so many good young pitchers, they have a great future. The new manager and GM have brought a calm to the team. 2009 may not be their year to put it all together but they are a welcome relief after last year.

The AL Pennant should be decided between Boston and New York.

Midway, the Dodgers have the best record in baseball at .640 and they were not majority choice among the writers. (Maybe testing for baseball writers should be mandatory—some chose Arizona to win…)

The Giants and Padres were picked for last in the west. The Padres are working hard to justify those predictions, and willing to sell any player (except Tony Gwynn's son) to achieve their goal. But the Giants with their pop-gun offense and stellar pitching has the second best record in the league.

Pablo Sandoval has picked up the team and carried them to 10 games over 500. He is a “bad ball” hitter, and that makes a strategy for getting him out more difficult. Then there are the head shaking Rockies. The Rockies played some of the worst baseball you could find.

Then they fire the manager who was considered smarter than he looked, the Hero of the 2007 season, and replace him with Jim Tracy (who would be out gunned by a plant in an IQ contest) and they go on a win streak not seen since, well 2007.

The league leading, West leading, Dodgers coasted to the break with Manny Ramierez's 50 game penance paid and a seven game lead over the Giants. They are the easy choice to face Boston in the World Series.

Maybe the lesson of their 24 games over .500 record is a “W” is the product of two factors. One team wins and one team loses. An example of this equation was the Mets vs Yankees. The game is a simple catch, an easy pop up from a Met victory…there is A-rod throwing down the bat  in frustration—but wait there’s more. Rodriquez watches in shock then runs to first base as the ball hits the turf and two runs score.

The Mets' determination to lose kicked in and Mets lose. The Dodgers won a lot of games against teams playing so poorly asthey were 13-0 at home. But that was then, and now Chad Billingsley has had six starts without a victory, and the Dodger starters look like journeymen.

The bullpen is beginning to burn up under the load. Jeff Weaver is this year's returned from the dead pitcher and the word journeyman comes to mind when looking at the Dodger staff of Hiroi Kuroda, Randy Wolf, and Claudio Vargas? Only Clayton Kershaw and Billingsley have been on track to be elite pitchers.

The “best offense” in the NL has been streaky, even with Manny. Russell Martin and RafFurcal are not hitting and Hudson has been cooling off for a month. Seven games may not be enough of a pad to coast to the playoffs. The Dodgers need pitching and some RISP hitting or they will be the Wild Card.

The Giants have so much pitching—which is the factor in the second half—if the Dodgers don’t catch their second wind, and start beating teams over .500, the seven game lead could evaporate quickly.

The NL Central Division is really up for grabs. The Cubs are picked to win, and have the talent to win, but it is the Cardinals, playing their Albert Pujols card, who are winning.

The Brewers can play ‘just-over-.500’ baseball and that is enough to contend. Even the creaky Astros think they are in the pennant race, particularly when they beat the Dodgers. The Cub strategy of hiring Milton Bradly to lead them to the pennant must seem as silly to them as it did to everyone else. The physical return of Aramis Ramirez and hitting presence of Derek Lee, and Alfonso Soriano should carry the Cubs to the Division Title

The NL East is the Phillies to lose. Atlanta, Florida and the Mets seem to beat themselves as much as lose to the other teams. The hiring of "The Pedro” adds to the interesting story lines for the second half, but the Phillies don’t seem to have the pitching they had last year. Cole Hamels is not the pitcher he was and Brad Lidge is trying to come in out of the rain.

None of the Eastern power teams can be counted out of the World Series, but betting any of them will make it is a long shot.

The National League Pennant winner will probably come from the West. Probably either LA or San Francisco, but crazy things can and will happen. Improbable winning streaks and stunning collapses. It is hard to choose against a pitching staff that loses a frontline starter to injury and his replacement throws a no hitte, but Joe Torre has seen it all and maybe he can steer the ship past the rocks (and Rockies).

Normally this would be the end of the MLB analysis, sadly there is another factor to be examined.

Never in 50-plus years of watching baseball games have I seen such terrible umpiring. The old saw “it all evens out” is out of date. Bad calls are deciding games. Umpires with their personal strike zones are changing the outcome of games. Missed calls on the bases used to be rare, but now every game seems to produce one or more.

Some of the calls are real head scratchers.

Teams that depend on speed have to at least consider what will happen if they are called out when they clearly are safe. There are unwritten rules like if the ball gets there before the runner he is out—even if the fielder doesn’t tag the runner?!

An umpire who is guessing on the outside corner can consistently call pitches several inches off the plate a strike forcing the hitter to swing at anything. Or call everything not across the heart of the plate a ball and creating batting practice.

Major League Baseball security should examine tapes of the 16 inning game between Cincinnati and San Diego, the ninth inning saw David Weathers not get a single strike call and walk the bases full, then walk in a run. Broadcasters with “strikezone” technology have to tred lightly, to not "show up" the umpire because the umpire calls do not match the pitches.

Replays often show the umpire in the right position, but is just wrong in his call. There is a reliable alternative and it is going to have to be used. Unfortunately, the technology won’t be used until the MLB has an NBA type scandal.

A recent Boston game with “strike zone” capability showed Penny’s pitches several inches off the plate were called strikes. But the calls were not evened out and clearly changed after a few innings. Some umpires love some pitchers and call anything thrown on that side of the diamond a strike.

Players and managers get thrown out of games for arguing nad calls. This alters the game outcome and the pennant races.

There is a solution that creates fairness and it needs to be implemented.