Walt Jocketty has too much class, is too much of a gentleman to thumb his nose, stick out his tongue and say to the St. Louis Cardinals and their principal owner, Bill DeWitt Jr., “na na na na na.” So I’ll do it for him: Na na na na na.

Dewitt deserves this rude treatment because three years ago, only a year after his Jocketty-built team won the World Series, he fired Jocketty. Now Jocketty’s new team, Cincinnati, is on the brink of dethroning the Cardinals as National League Central champions.

“Personally it would give me great satisfaction should we do that,” Jocketty said. “But I still have a lot of good friends over there whether it’s on the field or guys I worked closely with. But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t give me good feelings. You get some doubts after a while and this shows there was no reason for that to happen.”

During Jocketty’s and DeWitt’s 12-year association in St. Louis, the Cardinals won six division titles, tied for first another time and played in another World Series besides the one they won. They finished in or tied for first six times in a seven-year span, and a year after that stretch Jocketty was fired.

DeWitt did not return a telephone call to discuss his decision to fire Jocketty, who said “not really” when I asked him if he understood why he was fired.

“It was philosophy, the direction they wanted to take the organization, how they put their team together,” Jocketty said. “I didn’t necessarily go along with the thinking. We had a pretty good organization in place. I was given the right to run the organization the way I thought it should be, and I think people would say we had done the right job in scouting and player development and had the right people, quality people, to run it.”

Jocketty was probably the most notable victim of the modern-day baseball war between evaluation and analysis. It mattered not to DeWitt that Jocketty’s belief in player evaluation had worked extremely well for the Cardinals. The owner was seduced by others in the organization into believing that statistical analysis was the way to go.

That was the method created by Bill James and was featured in the Michael Lewis book “Moneyball,” which ridiculed one Oakland scout not for his inability to judge players but for the fact that he was fat.

However, John Schuerholz, architect of the Atlanta Braves’ unparalleled 14-year run in first place, criticized the “Moneyball” concept in his 2006 book, “Built to Win.”

“As portrayed in that book,” Schuerholz wrote, “it is a bogus concept because I know you can’t make baseball judgments entirely on statistical analysis to build a team.”

Nevertheless, younger members of front offices have espoused analysis over evaluation, and the Cardinals were one of the places they succeeded in gaining a foothold, much to Jocketty’s dismay.

Jocketty, however, was not unemployed for long. Bob Castellini, the head of the Reds’ ownership group, had been a minority partner in DeWitt’s ownership of the Cardinals, knew Jocketty well and hired him as a special adviser three months after he left the Cardinals.

“He called me the day after I was fired,” Jocketty said in a telephone interview last Friday evening, when the Reds’ division-clinching number was three. “I wasn’t ready to go to work yet. I went there in the middle of January.”

Jocketty was in his new job for less than four months when Castellini made him general manager, firing another good man, Wayne Krivsky, in the process.

The Reds would suffer their eighth consecutive losing season that year, then their ninth last year. Meanwhile, Jocketty was working to turn things around.

With Castellini having come from the Cardinals, Jocketty said, “it was important for him that we be able to turn it around quickly.”

Easier said than done, but Jocketty has done it quickly. A critical factor in his effort has been the addition of three men who worked for him in St. Louis – Jerry Walker, Cam Bonifay and Mike Squires. These scouts and scouting executives know how to use calculators and computers, but more important, they use their eyes and can evaluate what they see.

Has Jocketty made any changes in his method of operation since becoming the Reds’ general manager? “No, not really,” he said but acknowledged that “you have to use a certain amount of statistics.”

Jocketty didn’t need statistics to make what he called his “single most important acquisition,” the deal at the trading deadline last year that brought the Reds Scott Rolen, Jocketty’s third baseman in St. Louis.

“It’s not just what he does for us on the field offensively and defensively,” Jocketty said, “but what he does for the other players. He’s a role model for the younger guys, and he sets the tone for how we play.”

The Reds struggled in the first month of the season, not getting above .500 to stay until May 4. The Cardinals, meanwhile, won two-thirds of their first 27 games in the same period.

Two weeks later, though, Dusty Baker had his team in first place for the first time, and the teams leapfrogged each other into the division lead until Aug. 15, when the Reds took over and have been there since.

The Reds are there because they have the best offense in the league and just about the best defense as well. They have also had interesting developments with their pitching.

While the Washington Nationals kept their pitching prodigy, Stephen Strasburg, in the minors for the first two months of the season because, they said, he had had no professional experience, the Reds put Mike Leake in their starting rotation from the start of the season despite his lack of professional experience.

The right-handed rookie responded with an 8-4 record in 22 starts before he was shut down Aug. 24. By then Jocketty had promoted another rookie pitcher, Travis Wood, who has a 5-4 record in 15 starts.

But Jocketty saved his pitching piece de resistance for last, summoning Aroldis Chapman Aug. 31. Earlier in the year Chapman, a Cuban defector, was a highly sought left-handed pitcher, the kind that usually costs a lot of money and the Reds shy away from.

But Jocketty liked what he heard from his scouts and convinced Castellini he was worth the $30.25 million the Reds gave him.

“We signed him as a starter and we feel that’s his future,” the general manager said, “but at mid-season we converted him into a reliever because we thought that’s how he could best help us this year.”

In his first seven relief appearances, the 22-year-old Cuban was virtually unhittable, throwing pitches that regularly exceeded 100 miles an hour. But major league hitters demonstrated that speed doesn’t always kill. Chapman was the losing pitcher in two of his next four outings.

The night before his second loss Chapman threw 25 pitches, every one 100 or faster. One reached 105 and three 104.

Chapman may have to work on getting more movement on his pitches, but Jocketty expects him to be an important part of the Reds’ future as well as their post-season present.

Asked if he had reason to believe before the season that the Reds had a chance to make the playoffs, Jocketty said, “We tried to tell the players in spring training we thought we had a team that had an opportunity to win but it was up to them to carry it through. I told them I thought we had a team that would be in contention and would be for some years to come.”

Bill DeWitt has to wonder if the Cardinals will be there with them.

 

PHILS’ COLUMN THAT WASN’T

For a couple of months I had an idea for a column I wanted to write but never got to it, and I regret not having written it. As far back as the third or fourth week of July, even when the Philadelphia Phillies were struggling, I felt certain that they would repeat as division champions. But I didn’t write it then, and I never wrote it. They beat me to it.

The Phillies, who have been in the World Series the past two years, are an impressive bunch, and Charlie Manuel is an impressive manager.

The Phillies were seven games from first July 22, cut that deficit in a week and were only a game behind Atlanta Aug. 6. It took another month for the Phillies to supplant the Braves at the top of the National League East, but as far as I was concerned, there was never any doubt that they would.

Once they did, they took off on a sprint to the finish line, winning 11 in a row at one stretch, including a three-game sweep that buried the Braves.

They have done a lot of this, staying in the race as well as winning it, despite injuries to many of their best players.

Shortstop Jimmy Rollins has been plagued by leg ailments all season, spending extended time on the disabled list twice, playing all of only two months (July and August), playing only 82 of the team’s 155 games (through Saturday) and, most recently, playing no games since Sept. 8. His status for the post-season is uncertain.

Second baseman Chase Utley missed 46 games, thanks to a sprained thumb ligament. Catcher Carlos Ruiz missed nearly three weeks with a concussion. In one part of August, Utley, center fielder Shane Victorino and first baseman Ryan Howard were on the disabled list together.

Members of the pitching staff have also served time on the disabled list, including starters Jamie Moyer and Joe Blanton and relievers Brad Lidge, J.C. Romero and Ryan Madson.

Yet the Phillies will be there when the playoff bell rings next week.

 

THE SIGHS HAVE IT

Only one week remains for contenders to state their cases for the Sigh Young award. The field is crowded.

Kevin Millwood of Baltimore appears to be the front-runner, leading the majors in losses with his 3-16 record plus a 5.29 earned run average that helps his case.

These pitchers are his primary contenders:

• David Huff, Cleveland, and Charlie Morton, Pittsburgh, each 2-11, Huff with a 6.21 e.r.a., Morton 8.11
• Ryan Rowland-Smith, Seattle, 1-10, 6.90
• Kenshin Kawakami, Atlanta, 1-10, 9.15
• Felipe Paulino, Houston, 1-9, 4.84
• Jason Marquis, Washington, 2-9, 7.18
• Ross Ohlendorf of Pittsburgh has a 1-11 record, but he basically disqualifies himself with a 4.07 e.r.a.

Immersed in a fight with two other teams for the division title and with three teams for the wild-card spot, the San Francisco Giants just might wish they had forgotten about Buster Posey’s free agency six or seven years hence and made this season their priority.

Instead of calling up the talented Posey earlier than they did, the Giants left the catcher in the minors because they were playing the game clubs love to play to manipulate players’ major league service time and delay their eligibility for salary arbitration and free agency.

From the day he arrived in San Francisco (May 29), Posey has been an offensive force and an all-round valuable member of the team and surely could have helped the Giants win another game or three or four, the games he couldn’t help them win because he was in the minors.

In Posey’s case, salary arbitration was not a factor because the 33 days he spent in the majors at the end of last season pretty much assured him of being a Super Two, meaning he would be among the top 17 percent of service time for players between two and three years of service.

Free agency, however, was another matter. By keeping Posey in the minors, the Giants insured that they would control him through the 2016 season, having him for seven years, instead of having him be eligible for free agency after 2015, the requisite six seasons.

When I wrote about this issue earlier this season, citing Posey as the central example of the clubs’ legal but dubious practice, Giants’ fans responded in nearly one voice. They supported the Giants because what they did insured that Posey would be with the team an extra year, and they preferred that year to a handful of games this season.

My point, which remains my point, is that if and when a team has a chance to win, that is, get to the post-season, it should do what it can to get there. Not that I have surveyed most baseball people, the types who work in front offices and are responsible for building teams, but based on conversations I have had, I believe that most subscribe to the practice that when the playoffs might be in sight, don’t blink.

Are the Giants and their fans really going to look to 2016 when 2010 is within their grasp? Are they going to wait to see what Posey does in 2016 when they could have seen what he might have done for them in May 2010?

Just the other day Posey hit a home run that beat the Cubs, 1-0. In that victory, which kept the Giants in first place in the National League West by half a game, Posey also threw out a runner trying to steal second and guided Matt Cain and three relievers through the shutout.

The victory also gave the Giants an 85-66 season record. Before Posey, the Giants had a 25-22 record. That means they have a 60-44 record with Posey. Who knows what that record might have been had the Giants promoted Posey, say, May 1?

Maybe Posey would have struggled in those four extra weeks, and maybe he would have produced at a similar rate to what he has done in 98 games since May 29 (through Tuesday): .324, 15 home runs, 62 runs batted in.

I would bet on Posey, and with the Giants locked in races with the Padres, the Rockies and the Braves, I would hope the Giants’ fans would see the wisdom of having summoned Posey sooner. If they don’t, they can’t care how their team fares in the two races.

Brian Sabean, the Giants’ general manager, certainly cares about his team’s fate in the races, but he didn’t care enough to fortify the team with Posey prior to May 29. Maybe he figured then that it wouldn’t matter now, that his team wasn’t good enough to contend for a playoff spot. But surprise, here it is.

I haven’t spoken with Sabean since the last column (posted July 21), but at that time he denied any manipulative motives for leaving Posey in the minors.

“Eligibility has nothing to do with it; that’s a moot point,” he said. “The biggest factor was he hadn’t played much professional baseball. He was learning the catching position. We wanted to make sure he was comfortable at the plate.”

The problem with that explanation was it was similar to the explanations of executives with other clubs that kept good young players in the minors longer than was probably necessary, players such as Mike Stanton of Florida, Stephen Strasburg of Washington, Jose Tabata and Pedro Alvarez of Pittsburgh, Jake Arrieta of Baltimore and Carlos Santana of Cleveland.

They all became “comfortable” around the same time, late May and early June, which was just late enough to insure that the players wouldn’t qualify as Super Twos for salary arbitration.

By not using these good young players when they could have, I suggested, teams were undermining the integrity of baseball by not doing everything they could to win.

They scoffed at that accusation, of course, but the Posey case is Exhibit A. We can’t have a do-over to prove the point, but if the Giants fail to reach the playoffs after coming this close, they will look pretty weak, not to mention guilty, and maybe even to their fans.

But then they can initiate the cry throughout the Bay area and the Peninsula, “Wait ‘til 2016.”

Once upon a time, Bobby Cox was a general manager.

“I remember those days,” Cox said. “Ted asked me. He asked Toronto for permission. I lived in Atlanta so it was a pretty easy family decision to pull out of Toronto, which I hated to do. I loved it up there. I loved Beeston, Gillick, the team, the organization, the people were outstanding. But it was a chance to be home with your family, too.”

Cox managed the Toronto Blue Jays from 1982 through 1985 and became fond of the club president, Paul Beeston, and the general manager, Pat Gillick. But before he went north, he spent four years (1978-1981) managing the Braves, who were owned by the flamboyant Ted Turner, media mogul, yachtsman, sportsman.

But Turner was the reason Cox was available to go to Toronto. He fired him after three losing seasons and a barely winning one (81-80). Why did he hire him four years later? “I don’t know,” Cox said of the man no one ever claimed to be able to figure out. “We had a great relationship.”

As he begins the last two weeks of his brilliant 29-year managerial career (plus perhaps some extra time for playoffs) it can be said that Cox made it easy for people to have great relationships with him. He never let his job or his success change him or the way he treated people, and no player has ever been heard to speak critically or disparagingly of him.

But what if he had remained in the front office and not returned to the dugout in 1990? “I don’t know,” he said in an interview in the visiting manager’s office at Citi Field. I just know John did a great job for us. He did a great job getting players in.”

John Schuerholz succeeded Cox as general manager. He came from Kansas City, where he produced one World Series championship, two American League pennants and six division titles. Had he and Cox remained in their respective jobs, might baseball history, as we know it, been altered?

“You’ve got to find Obi-Wan Kenobi and ask him,” Schuerholz said of the Star Wars character. “The reality is we do know the results.”

And they have been good: an unprecedented 14 consecutive division titles, five National League pennants and one World Series championship.

According to Stan Kasten, who was the Braves’ president during the run of division titles, at least one of the basics would have remained the same, “I think Bobby would have been the manager,” said Kasten, who bears no resemblance to Obi-Wan Kenobi. “I heard repeatedly around the game that Bobby was such a good manger. We hoped that Russ Nixon would work out, but it didn’t happen. I thought about Bobby being the next manager, but I was concerned that we were doing it too early, before the team was good enough, but we had some building blocks.

“I told Bobby he would remain general manager and take the whole thing. John Mullin would handle the paperwork, but at the end of the year it’s likely you’ll be one or the other.”

But, Kasten added, “I had my mind pretty much made up. All of the candidates liked Bobby as manager.”

Schuerholz said Kasten told him in their interview that they planned to keep Cox as the manager (he had replaced Russ Nixon during the season and did both jobs).

“How do you feel about that?” Schuerholz said Kasten asked him.

“I said if he wasn’t the manager I might not take the job,” Schuerholz said he replied.

“We knew each other well,” Schuerholz said in our telephone conversation. “We had met and talked at meetings. We had a personal relationship and were comfortable with each other and felt good about it.”

How did Schuerholz wind up in Atlanta when he had signed a lifetime contract with the Royals and the new 50 percent owner of the team, Avron Fogelman?

“The landscape began to shift; the ground beneath our feet began to move,” Schuerholz said. “A lot of people weren’t comfortable with what was happening. It was uncertain who Avron Fogelman would be. I became one of them. I was Avron’s guy. He had picked me to be the voice and face of the administration. But it became more and more bothersome.”

Fortuitously for Schuerholz and the Braves, his disenchantment with the Royals was growing around the time Kasten was looking for a general manager.

The two men were serving on a baseball committee (of which George Bush was also a member) and met during the summer of 1990. They got to know and like each other.

“We went to a game at Yankee Stadium and spent the afternoon talking about baseball,” Kasten related. “I felt really good about John. We met more throughout the summer.”

Kasten asked Schuerholz for recommendations for the job he wanted to fill.

“I thought about it,” Schuerholz recalled, “and almost like a cartoon, a light went on over my head. I decided I would be interested in pursuing it.

“The first week of September John asked me more questions,” Kasten recalled, “and I said, ‘John, is this something you’re thinking about?’”

Schuerholz was definitely thinking about it but ultimately told Kasten he couldn’t take the job. Two days later, a Sunday, Kasten got home from a morning workout, and his wife said that Schuerholz had called.

“Stan, I made a mistake,” Schuerholz told him when he returned the call. “If the job is still available, yes, I’ll take it.”

That was 20 years and 14 straight division titles ago. Now Kasten is president of the Washington Nationals, Schuerholz is president of the Braves and Cox is retiring.

“I always liked the uniform a lot better, a lot better,” Cox said of his job preference. “It’s a lot more fun. Being a general manager is a lot of work these days. It’s not like it was 50 years ago where after the winter meetings you went your way. It’s a 12-month, year-round job for these guys. It’s tough. It’s not easy any more. I love the guys, the field. There’s nothing better than when the game starts.”

Fay Vincent, the former commissioner, offered another reason for Cox’s preference for managing. “Cox would not be going to the Hall of Fame if not for the change,” Vincent said. “Not many general managers go to the Hall.”

 

BOOM BOOM BAUTISTA

With 49 home runs at the start of the next-to-last week of the season, Jose Bautista was poised to become the 26th major league player to hit 50 in a season. If this were a few years earlier, skeptics would be suggesting his possible use of steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs, but the Toronto outfielder has not come under suspicion as some others have.

Nevertheless Bautista’s performance has been puzzling, not to mention rare. Before this year, Bautista’s 16 home runs for Pittsburgh in 2006 were the most he had hit in a season. How many players have gone from 16 to 50? One.

Before Cecil Fielder slugged 51 home runs in 1991, he had played in parts of four seasons and had hit 14 in 1987. That was his best pre-51 performance. None of the other 24 players who have reached the 50 plateau hit fewer than the 21 Brady Anderson hit in 1992 before he stunningly swatted 50 in 1996.

Prince Fielder joined his father in the 50 club in 2007, making them the only father-son duo at that level, connecting for 50 after he had hit 28 the previous year, his first full season in the majors.

Three players came closest to 50 before hitting 50, each hitting 49: Mark McGwire in 1987 (52 in ’96), Ken Griffey Jr. in ’96 (56 in ’97 and Jim Thome in 2001 (52 in ‘02). Note the years for Griffey and Thome, indicating a consistency, unlike McGwire, who needed nine years and perhaps chemical assistance to get there.

 

FLASH: HE WALKS, TALKS AND GETS HIT

Biggest discovery of the week: Aroldis Chapman is actually human. The 22-year-old Cuban pitcher whose fastball exceeds 100 miles an hour, relieved for Cincinnati in a game against Houston, threw 12 pitches, got no one out.

With the game tied 3-3 in the seventh inning, Jeff Keppinger stroked a pinch-hit single, Anderson Hernandez drew a pinch-hit walk, Michael Bourn beat out a bunt single and Angel Sanchez rapped a two-run single for what became a 5-3 Houston victory.

 

HELPING TEAM BUT NOT TEAMMATE

His teammate is undermining Carlos Gonzalez’s chances of winning the National League most valuable player award. Gonzalez has been having a productive and most valuable season for Colorado, but now Troy Tulowitzki comes along and seems intent on carrying the Rockies on his bat right into the playoffs.

Tulowitzki, the Colorado shortstop is having a stupendous September. He whacked 14 home runs in 15 games and has driven in 34 runs in 18 games.

Opting to use my own thinking and not the mathematical formulas of the new wave of statistics zealots, I have always felt that the more good, or m.v.p. type, players, a team has, the less valuable each one is. Tulowitzki has certainly made a significant contribution to the Rockies’ late-season surge, meaning Gonzalez has had help in a big way.

Adrian Gonzalez of San Diego, Joey Votto of Cincinnati and Albert Pujols of St. Louis have not had Tulowitzki-type help this month. With the month he has had, Tulowitzki himself will receive consideration himself.

 

FIRST-TIME ZEROES FOR NEW YORK TEAMS

On the evening of Sept. 13 the Mets played the 7,789th game in their history and the Yankees played their 7,785th game since the Mets began life in 1962.

That night, for the first time in all of those games, according to Elias Sports Bureau, the Mets and the Yankees went into extra innings in scoreless games. In July 2001 the teams played into the 10th inning of a scoreless interleague game, and the Mets won in the 10th.

In their separate scoreless games last week, the Yankees lost to Tampa Bay, 1-0, in the 11th inning, and minutes later the Mets ended their rain-interrupted game in the 10th inning with a 1-0 victory over Pittsburgh.

Those were the 54th and 55th 1-0 games of the season. The next night Los Angeles edged San Francisco for No. 56 and the seventh 1-0 game in five days, the busiest flurry for 1-0 games this year.