After a brief hiatus, the roundtable of Bloguin’s best baseball writers is back to touch on three topics from around the sport. This week, we chat about the man that may be the best pitcher in the big leagues, the team that may be the most hopeless, and the “R” word that’s on everyone’s minds in baseball. And no, it’s not Runelvys…
Strike One: Justin Verlander carried a no hitter into the 8th inning last night, his third impressive run at a no-no this season. It was also the best statistically pitched game of the season by game score. Is he the best in the game right now?
Joe Lucia: He’s definitely a top five pitcher, as I wrote about in the Dugout Digest on Wednesday morning. But there are *a lot* of great pitchers in baseball right now. Verlander doesn’t have the individual accolades as a Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, or Felix Hernandez, but I think this is the year where people start mentioning his name in the same breath as those guys.
Pat Lackey: I don’t know if Verlander is the best pitcher in baseball right now, but I do think he’s the most dominant. Meaning that he’s not quite as consistent from start-to-start as, say Roy Halladay, but on any given night there’s a chance that you’re going to see him take the mound and leave his opponent with absolutely no chance to win.
Garrett Wilson: I don’t know if he is, but he is at least in the conversation. I think the true test though is who you would pick if it were the seventh game of the World Series and my gut still says the Roy Halladay is the guy.
Daniel Moroz: He’s certainly well up there – partially due to being a terrific pitcher, and partially due to the workloads he’s been able to handle – but Doc is still #1. However, Verlander is right there with Cliff Lee, Tim Lincecum, Felix Hernandez, et al. which is a fine place to be. And he might be the one to take over the top spot before long, given that he’s only 28 years old.
Brian Packey: Without a doubt, he belongs in the conversation. As a Tigers fan, I’ve had the distinct privilege of watching close to all of his starts over his first five-plus seasons and I can comfortably say that he has always possessed “best in the game” type stuff. At just 28-years-old, it’s not surprising to see that he’s finally getting rid of that one bad inning you’d see in so many of his starts and is stringing all the positives of his arsenal together. With a fastball that can touch 100 as deep as 130 pitches into the game (which some of his peers said last year was the best fastball in the game) and a curve ball that might be even better and can buckle a viewer’s knees on a couch at home, he’s always been capable of simply dominating a game. At 28, Verlander has exactly the same ERA as Roy Halladay had through his age 28 season (3.70) with a better K/9 rate and WHIP (albeit marginally). I’d even argue Verlander’s age 26 season, when he struck out 269 batters in 240 innings, was a better overall season than what Halladay put up at 26, the year he won his first Cy Young. Verlander might not be the best right now, but he’s well on his way.
Strike Two: The Yankees visit Wrigleyville this weekend in interleague play with the Cubs nowhere close to contending once again this year. What would you do to rebuild the Cubbies and bring hope to the Wrigley faithful?
Daniel: Try to be the Red Sox. Emulate what that organization has done, which probably means trading off some pieces, starting from scratch, and building up from there. It may take a little while, but hey, it’s not like they haven’t been waiting as it is.
Joe: The thing about the Cubs is that they have so many awful contracts that there’s not a lot you can do. Those Soriano and Zambrano deals look crippling like now. The Cubs faithful won’t tolerate a loser, so the team needs to do something rash. They need to identify which young players on their team they can build around, and jettison everyone else. They also need to determine if they can do anything about those aforementioned contracts. The Blue Jays somehow got out from the albatross of Vernon Wells, maybe the Cubs can do the same.
Brian: More thrifty spending, less Carlos Zambrano. In all seriousness, there needs to be more emphasis on cultivating talent within the system, although I was fine with the Matt Garza deal in January that saw the Cubs giving up on five prospects, including Sam Fuld and Chris Archer. If the team’s willing to spend, and it’s clear they are, there can be a happy medium between splurging and homegrown talent.
Garrett: It is time to blow up the Cubs. Actually, it was probably time a few years ago, but now it seems unavoidable. The only problem is that they don’t actually have a lot of tradeable assets. Aramis Ramirez is finally playing OK, but is refusing to waive his no-trade clause and most of the other position players stink, aside from Starlin Castro who is probably the one guy they should keep. That pretty much leaves them selling off Marlon Byrd, Carlos Marmol and essentially their entire rotation. After that, the Cubs just need to learn to stay away from big free agent expenditures so that they actually have some financial flexibility once their prospects start reaching the majors.
Pat: I think the comparison to the Red Sox is apt; just having an unlimited amount of money isn’t a guarantee of success in baseball. They need to start thinking about how they’re spending money, rather than just dumping it on guys like Soriano without much plan. They need to develop a pipeline of minor leaguers to either build around or trade when the right time comes. The problem is, as noted, that they have so much money tied up in Soriano and Ramirez and Zambrano that they’re not really in a good place right now. I suppose if I were running the Cubs, I’d be dumping the bad contracts in any way I could (I mean … someone took Vernon Wells, anything is possible) to try and make some room for shrewder free agent signings over the summer to try and shore things up in the short-term.
Strike Three: Realignment has been all the rage this week. Are you in favor of any change, and if so, what would it be?
Garrett: It will never happen, but I actually like the idea of splitting into an Eastern Conference and Western Conference. That would require a lot of league switching and probably making the DH universal, but I do think it would help foster more regional rivalries, which I am always a fan of. I know some people hate the DH, but it isn’t ever going away, so rather than always have interleague play, the should finally just give in and let everyone have a DH to make it an even playing field.
Pat: I like a lot of the basic ideas laid out; it’s ridiculous that the leagues are different sizes and the divisions are unbalanced. It’s not fair, and it’s dumb to boot. I actually also kind of like eliminating the divisions; I think the unbalanced schedules aren’t terribly fair as constructed and I feel like divisions are both a relic of an era when travel was more difficult and a way to play to people’s pride as fans (2010 NL Central Division Champion Cincinnati Reds sounds much better and will sell more t-shirts than 2010 NL Playoff Qualifer #3). Balanced, 15 or 16 team leagues where everyone plays everyone the same number of times and you can make a fair and quantitative judgment of who’s the best team based on records seems like the best way to do things to me, though it’s admittedly a long shot. And I do share the worry that two 15-team leagues will force the DH on the National League, which is something I’ve been having nightmares about since I was like five years old.
Brian: I’m all in favor and pretty much agree with everything my -ackey brother Pat said.
Daniel: I like having an equal number of teams in each league and a balanced schedule, but I don’t like interleague play much (and scheduling would almost have to include it, and daily). Giving the best teams in each league the chance to make the playoffs is a good step, though I’m still not in love with expanding it from 4 to 5. Still, it’s good that MLB is thinking about ways to improve the sport, and whether the general idea is good or not matters less than the specific implementation.
Joe: I like adding two teams, and doing four divisions of four teams in each league. Sure, it’ll penalize a division that has two strong teams by not having a wild card, but a more divisional heavy schedule would take care of that. I would also like adding two teams and going back to the way things were pre-expansion, with two divisions in each league. You could then take the two next best records as wild cards, and roll like that. This would also necessitate the addition of two teams in each league, because I really don’t want year-round interleague play.
