A Devil Of A Baseball Season

Note: Mark Starr is on leave. His column will return in January, 2009

I'm not comfortable with the modern grading system—I don't like to dispatch 'A's too readily. But this baseball season, with four down-to-the-wire division races and one tight wild-card fray, has, at the very least, been a solid A-. Major League Baseball has once again proved as adept as the NFL in creating new winners and losers every season. And if in the rise-and-fall category, there were more examples of the latter—New York Yankees, Detroit Tigers, Cleveland Indians, Colorado Rockies, San Diego Padres—but the most dramatic and surprising entry is certainly one of the former: the playoff-bound Tampa Bay Rays, whose rise is more akin to a resurrection.

Moreover, at the risk of playing the naïf (hardly the first time), it seems we have moved into the post-steroids or at least post-something era. Whatever players may be on today doesn't appear to have warped the game in the same fashion that steroids and other performance-enhancers of recent vintage did. I haven't missed the prodigious feats and age-defying performances of Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens one iota and have found comfort in a game that bears some resemblance to that of my youth.

Here's my take on the highlights, lowlights and interesting trends of the 2008 season (along with my fervent hope that the best still awaits us).

What the Devil: Unless the Cubbies break their century-long championship drought—rather than, once again, their fans' hearts—the Rays are the story of this season. The ascension of Tampa Bay— a franchise that has never even had a winning season—to the top of baseball's toughest division, is beyond something of a miracle, a reminder that this game is always about pitching. A lot of folks doubted the Rays, when they traded Delmon Young, regarded as an elite, young, offensive talent, to the Minnesota Twins, for a promising but unproven starting pitcher, Matt Garza. But Garza and the rest of the Tampa rotation all came of age this season and a laughingstock bullpen was suddenly lights out. On a personal note, I recently sat through 14 innings at Fenway Park in what likely was the pivotal game of the division race. Despite my hard-wired Red Sox loyalties, I walked away at 1 a.m. following the loss saying, "This isn't like the Yankees. I didn't mind losing to Tampa."

Dynasty ' s End: Lucky for the Yankees that the long goodbye to the stadium ultimately overshadowed the team because Yankee fans also said goodbye to the longest current post-season streak—13 seasons, since 1995 when the playoffs expanded to eight teams. The biggest payroll in baseball was a bust. There was an obvious problem with putting too much faith in young pitchers—Philip Hughes and Ian Kennedy were overmatched and Joba Chamberlain didn't appear in shape for his new load as a starter—and an old catcher, Jorge Posada, who broke down as old catchers are wont to do. In fact, the Yankees showed their age all over the field, notably at shortstop. But nothing can take away from Derek Jeter's storied career in pinstripes, which is more than can be said for A-Rod's. Alex Rodriguez once again established himself as the best rotisserie player in the game, but absolutely the last Yankee player New York fans want coming to the plate in a critical situation. By now, most Yankee fans wish he had left the team when he said he would, instead of just leaving his wife. Still, the failures can't all be blamed on the curse of A-Rod. This Yankee team simply didn't resemble the classy, savvy, hustling baseball aggregate that its predecessors have been. And it may take more than a few big-buck, free-agent signings to right the franchise.

The Magic Number is 40: You have to go back to the 1992 season to find a player winning a league home-run crown with fewer than 40 round-trippers. In fact, in the previous 13 seasons, there were only two years in which no player hit at least 50 home runs. But the Phillies' Ryan Howard may be the only slugger to reach 40 and the American League leader will wind up hitting 30-something (though the young White Sox star Carlos Quentin likely would have topped 40 had he not punched a wall). You can provide whatever explanation pleases you for the dip, but suffice it to say it seems a healthy trend. There are other historic implications if it continues: With A-Rod's home-run total in the mid-30s this season rather than last year's mid-50s, his pursuit of Barry Bonds career home-run mark seems far less of a sure thing. He would have to continue his 2008 output for six more seasons, or until he was 39, to catch the non-retired, unemployed Bonds.

The Magic Number is 20: For the first time since 2005, both leagues can boast 20-game winners. Success on the mound can be fleeting. Back in 2005, the two pitchers who topped the league were Dontrelle Willis and Bartolo Colon. This year Colon won just four games and was suspended when he quit the Red Sox in the final weeks. Willis' ERA was above 10 and he didn't win a single game with Detroit, landing the big lefty, at age 26, back in single A ball. All sports can be cruel, but baseball leads the way when it comes to rendering such indignities. As for this year's winners, Arizona's Brandon Webb was a predictable standout. But how about Cleveland's Cliff Lee at 22-3, a lefty with a reverse Dontrelle story? He showed flashes a few seasons back. But in 2007, with a playoff-bound Indians team, Lee won just five games and spent much of the season in the minors; last year's sigh is this year's Cy Young winner.