Baseball 2004 Review
October 9, 2004

Baseball's regular season has been over for a week, so to take a break from the playoffs, I'm going to take a look back to the six months that led up to now. I'm going to do this in a little bit of an unorthodox way -- by taking individual league leaders and building notes off of their performances.

Let's start with the most obvious stat leader of them all.

Barry Bonds led the National League in batting average (.362), walks (232), on-base percentage (.609), slugging (.812), OPS (1.422), intentional walks (120) and walk-to-strikeout ratio (5.66). OK, so Bonds didn't lead the league in homers or RBI this year. Big deal. Even at 40, even if he's on steroids, whatever, this is the Barry Bonds era. When people talk about baseball in this decade, when they tell their grandchildren about it, they're going to talk about Bonds first and everyone else afterwards. With Bonds, the Giants finished one game out in the NL West, one game out in the wild card race. Without him, they're barely a .500 team. I'm sure of this. He had more intentional walks than everyone else had regular walks except for Bobby Abreu, Todd Helton and Lance Berkman. And really, you can't blame the rest of the NL for not pitching to Barry. When they did, there was an 81 percent chance that he was going to wind up at least on first base anyway. The list of players to go over .750 slugging is pretty short: Bonds, Ruth, Gehrig, Hornsby, McGwire, Bagwell (who did it in the strike-shortened 1994 season). And for just a little perspective about how good Bonds was about putting the ball in play, his walk-to-strikeout ratio was more than three and a half times as good as the American League leader, Scott Hatteberg, who typified the Moneyball ethos with a 1.50 mark.

Speaking of Hatteberg, his Oakland teammate, Eric Chavez led the AL with 95 walks. The only teams in the league that drew more walks than the A's 608 were the Yankees (670) and Red Sox (659). But more than anything else, Oakland's hallmark in its four straight trips to the playoffs was pitching. It's no coincidence that the A's September tumble coincided with the total collapse of its Big Three. Mark Mulder led the AL in double plays and runners caught stealing, but he went from a mortal lock for the Cy Young Award at the All-Star break to not even being in the conversation at the end of the season.

The guy who should be a mortal lock for the Cy Young is in the National League, even though Randy Johnson wasn't even supposed to stay on the Diamondbacks all season. He wound up leading the NL in starts (tied at 35), strikeouts (290), quality starts (26), WHIP (0.90), opponents' batting average (.197), opponents' on-base percentage (.240), opponents' slugging percentage (.315), opponents' OPS (.555) and opponents' triples (9). OK, maybe that last one doesn't qualify him for the Cy Young, but the fact that he had a record of 16-14 for a team that lost 111 games is amazing. That's one win short of being a full third of his team's victories. Oh, I almost forgot, Johnson led the league in perfect games, with one.

Which reminds me, Johnson's perfecto came a day after Ben Sheets, the NL leader in strikeout-to-walk ratio at 8.25, a far sight better than AL leader Curt Schilling's 5.8, struck out 18 Braves. At that point of the season, people were wondering what had happened to the Braves. They weren't just going to miss the playoffs for the first time since 1990, they were outright bad. Well, scratch that. They won the NL East for a change, teaching me a valuable lesson. I will never pick against the Braves again until somebody else in that division actually proves they can win it.

Of course, the Braves' struggles weren't the only early-season anomaly. At the end of April Jorge Posada was leading the American League in home runs. He wound up being the only Yankee to lead the AL in any category, pacing the Junior Circuit in double play grounders with 24 (tied with Miguel Tejada). That's pretty much anything anyone would want to know about the Yankees' offense this season. They have perhaps the most dangerous lineup in baseball, but not a single league leader in any positive category. They won over 100 games without ever seeming like a dominant team, even when they had a double-digit lead in the AL East. Maybe the point of having so many All-Stars in the lineup is that they can't all slump at the same time, and the Yanks wind up having enough firepower to get the job done in almost every game they play. It just comes back to whether they can get it done with their pitching -- and the starting rotation had nobody lead the league in anything, unless you count Jose Contreras' 16 wild pitches, Kevin Brown's one hand broken by punching a wall or Mike Mussina's million complaints about his bed in Japan being uncomfortable.

Surprisingly, Carl Crawford's name was at the top of a couple of lists. Actually, it's hardly surprising that the Tampa Bay speedster would lead the AL in triples (19), stolen bases (59) and caught stealing (15). But Crawford also led all 23-year-olds in the majors with a .296 average, helping the Devil Rays to avoid last place for the first time in franchise history.

Another franchise first could come from a much older franchise, the Pittsburgh Pirates, whose left fielder, Jason Bay, led NL rookies in home runs (26), RBI (82), total bases (226), extra-base hits (10), hit by pitch (10) and strikeouts (129). Despite that high whiff rate, Bay could be the Pirates' first-ever Rookie of the Year. And what's with Pirates being plunked? Craig Wilson led the majors by being hit 30 times, while Jason Kendall was hit 19 times, twice more than AL leaders Kevin Millar and Travis Hafner. Maybe people don't like Wilson's mullet.

Back to the NL rookie race. I was really rooting for the Padres in the West for a while, and not just because of David Wells. Every time I saw the Padres this season, I was very impressed by shortstop Khalil Greene, who led NL rookies in walks (53), on-base percentage (.349), slugging (.446), OPS (.795) and intentional walks (8). The Padres were an interesting team this year, not least of all for introducing the most garish road uniforms since, well, their own road uniforms of the 1970s.

Then there was Victor Zambrano's garish walk total. Despite being traded to the Mets at the end of July, Zambrano tied Miguel Batista for the AL lead with 96. Unbelievable. Then there was Sidney Ponson leading the majors by giving up 265 hits, 24 more than NL leader Jason Jennings. Roy Halladay led the league in hits allowed in 2003 and won the Cy Young Award. I don't think the same is in order for Sir Sidney, who will have to settle for the title of Most Hits Ever Allowed By A Big, Fat, Bald Dutch Knight From Aruba.

Clearly, Ponson is a big influence on the Orioles staff. Erik Bedard gave up 149 hits to lead all major league rookies. Not content to just let runners on base, Bedard was also the easiest rookie to run against, giving up 10 stolen bases. Teammate Daniel Cabrera issued 89 walks in 147.2 innings, both of which led all AL rookies. Cabrera somehow managed to win 12 games, and the Orioles finished third in the AL East. I have no idea how this happened, or how they were over .500 against the Red Sox. I saw Baltimore play several times this season, and that was an awful team. Just awful.

The Seattle Mariners were also awful, but at least they had Edgar Martinez, who led all 41-year-olds with a .263 average, 12 homers and 63 RBI. Wait a minute... Edgar was the star of the team when the Mariners were good. The new star, well, not that he hasn't been a star, but the new star of the Mariners, that is, the only reason to watch the Mariners this season was Ichiro Suzuki, who led the AL in average (.372), hits (262), intentional walks (19) and dinky singles through the infield (894). OK, I made that last one up, and I don't want to insult Ichiro's breaking an 84-year-old record. It was impressive, and he had a great second half of the season. If Ichiro keeps it up for a few more years, he'll go to the Hall of Fame. He's just not your prototypical Hall of Famer, a guy who makes you darn near soil yourself when you try to figure out how you're going to beat him. Ichiro's a great ballplayer, but there isn't a spray singles hitter alive who can carry a team.

No, give me Albert Pujols, who led the NL with 99 extra-base hits. Pujols also led the NL in runs (133) and total bases (389). Pujols was the anti-Edgar Martinez as well, leading 24-year-olds in all three Triple Crown categories. The other Age Triple Crown winners: Aramis Ramirez (26), Todd Helton (31), Jim Edmonds (34, tied for homer lead), Jeff Kent (36, tied for homer lead), Moises Alou (38), Steve Finley (39) and Bonds (40).

See? It all comes back to Barry.


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