Sound the cymbals and bang the drum, though not slowly. It’s time to announce the winner of my Sigh Young award.
This was not an easy choice. There were a lot of bad pitchers in baseball this year, as there are every year. But someone has to be designated the worst, and I’m up to the task.
There will be disagreement with my selection, and that’s all right. I imagine someone has even devised a new-fangled formula to show mathematically who is the worst, but it’s my award and I’ll do it any way I want.
One reader sent in a suggestion nominating Oliver Perez of the Mets, who this year has been a dreadful pitcher and an equally dreadful team member. I seriously considered Perez, and if I had heard that he beat his dog (I don’t know if he even has a dog), I might have selected him.
I also almost declared him the winner after the Mets manager, Jerry Manuel, desperate for a reliever, brought him into the last game of the season four innings after it should have ended.
Having last pitched about four weeks earlier, Perez showed that he was the same old OIlie, just in case anyone had forgotten in his lengthy absence. Perez hit a batter and walked three more batters, forcing in the losing run.
That encore performance gave Perez this record for his $12 million salary: 0 wins, 5 losses, 6.80 earned run average, 42 walks in 46 1/3 innings, 19.43 baserunners per 9 innings.
(Note that I wrote baserunners per 9 innings. I don’t follow the standards of WHIP, one of the staples of the stats guys. I prefer using baserunners per 9 innings for starters, and I include hit batters. They compute hits and walks per inning, and they omit hit batters, as if they don’t exist.)
But Perez doesn’t get the award. I’ll designate a special award for him and name it after him: the Ollie.
Now to Sigh Young. Kevin Millwood of Baltimore (4-16, 5.10) is the runner-up. The winner is A.J. Burnett, who for the $16.5 million he has received from the Yankees this year has produced a 10-15 record, a 5.26 e.r.a., 14.51 baserunners per nine innings, a career-high 19 hit batters and a strikeouts-to-walks ratio that isn’t even 2 to 1 (145 to 78).
In his next-to-last start of the season, Sept, 27, when the Yankees were trying to figure out what to do about their post-season pitching, Toronto battered Burnett for seven hits, including two homers, and seven runs in 2 1/3 innings. It was the 10th time in 27 starts that he had given up six or more earned runs.
If a plaque accompanied this award, it would be inscribed with the words of Brian Cashman, the Yankees’ general manager, speaking a few weeks ago about him.
“He’s earned it.”
AVOIDING A MAGIC NUMBER
The new magic number appears to be 146, and unlike the mathematical formula that determines clinching a first-place finish this number is to be avoided.
Last year the Detroit Tigers spent 146 consecutive days alone in first place in the American League Central until suddenly Minnesota caught them on the next-to-last day of the season.
The Twins were in first place on two days in the first week of the season, then didn’t see first again until that penultimate day, 175 days later, when they pulled into a tie with Detroit.
The Tigers spent 80 percent of the season leading the division, then lost a 12-inning playoff game to the Twins, who went to the post-season while the Tigers went home.
This season produced a similar scenario, though with different teams. The San Diego Padres spent 146 days on top of the National League West, including 90 days in a row, but had to play until the final day in their attempt to secure a post-season spot.
They didn’t get it. They won the first two games of their decisive three-game series with San Francisco but were shut out in the third game as Jonathan Sanchez pitched five shutout innings.
The Padres’ last-day loss not only made the Giants division champions but it also made the Atlanta Braves the N.L. wild-card winner.
The Braves, playing for Bobby Cox for the last time, led the N.L. East for 99 days in a row, from May 31 until Sept. 7, then held the wild-card lead for 22 days but reached the final day uncertain if they would be able to extend Cox’s career. But they did, without needing a playoff game with the Padres.
Then there were the twin terrors of the American League East, New York and Tampa Bay. For much of the season, they had the best won-lost records in the majors. But they both played so poorly in the final stage of the season that it appeared that neither one wanted to win the American League East title.
The Yankees lost 17 of their last 26 games and their 2 ½-game lead over the Rays. The Rays lost 15 of their last 28 but nevertheless outlasted the Yankees and dethroned them as division champions by a game.
Advancing to the playoffs on the strength of their play in the first five months, the defending champion Yankees were threatened with real problems, namely their starting pitching.
Why a team with a $206 million payroll should have pitching problems is inexplicable. It becomes even worse when you realize that the Yankees’ five starters earn a collective $64.5 million, which is more than the entire payrolls of nine teams.
The Yankees don’t have to worry about CC Sabathia, but beyond him, hmmm. Andy Pettitte has been one of the best post-season starters of all time, but he has recently returned from a two-month hiatus with to a groin injury, and in three starts he allowed 10 earned runs in 13 1/3 innings.
A.J. Burnett has been awfully inconsistent or just plain awful. He finished the season with a 10-15 record and a 5.26 earned run average. In his last 28 starts teams have scored 6 or more earned runs 10 times.
Javier Vazquez has squandered any confidence the Yankees might have had in him. His 10-10 record and 5.32 e.r.a. have been enough to do that.
Joe Girardi sent Vazquez to the bullpen for two weeks last month, but when he started him again in what could have been an audition for a post-season start, he gave up 7 runs and 10 hits, including 3 home runs, in 4 2/3 innings.
That leaves Phil Hughes, who was the Yankees’ second most effective starter with an 18-8 record and 4.19 e.r.a.
The pitching staff has the highest earned run average, 4.06, among the four A.L. playoff teams, but it’s the sixth lowest in the league and not appreciably higher than the playoff teams’ e.r.a.’s: Tampa Bay 3.73, Texas 3.93, Minnesota 3.95.
PLAYOFF PAYROLLS SPREADING OUT
Contrary to what many people always believe, payrolls are not the dominant factor in the makeup of the playoffs. It would have been more interesting had San Diego edged San Francisco for the N.L. West title.
The payroll rankings of the eight playoff teams:
AMERICAN LEAGUE
| Yankees | 1 |
| Twins | 11 |
| Rays | 21 |
| Rangers | 27 |
NATIONAL LEAGUE
| Phillies | 4 |
| Giants | 10 |
| Braves | 15 |
| Reds | 19 |
The Padres are No. 29 in the payroll rankings, which means if they had replaced the Giants, two of the bottom four, three of the lowest 10 and four of the bottom 12 would have been in the playoffs.
SOME LAWYERS SHOULDN’T SPEAK
Criminal defense lawyers usually 
have a tough job defending their clients, especially when it’s obvious that they are guilty, but sometimes they go too far in their acceptably zealous defense. The lawyer for the drunk driver who killed Nick Adenhart, the Angels’ promising rookie pitcher, and two of his friends last year provided one such example after he was convicted of murder last week.
“I think it’s tragic,” Jacqueline Goodman told reporters, apparently referring to the verdict, not the drunk driving and the resulting deaths. I think there’s been a miscarriage of justice.” She had previously said her client, Andrew Gallo, did not intend to kill anyone.
But the 23-year-old construction worker should very well have known the consequences of driving drunk both for himself and for others. It was Gallo’s second conviction for drunk driving, and he was said to have been warned by family members and friends about the dangers of driving drunk.
He faces 50 years to life in state prison. That stiff sentence is the best way to prevent him from doing it a third time.
CARDS LIKE SCOUTS, OWNER SAYS
Bill DeWitt, principal owner of the St. Louis Cardinals, says that people have the wrong idea about the basis on which the Cardinals run their baseball operation.
The misconception, he said in response to a column I wrote last week, arose from the team’s dismissal of Walt Jocketty as general manager three years ago.
“We don’t run the baseball operations on statistical analysis,” he said. “It’s a tool. Four, five years ago the Cardinals decided we needed a strong system. Scouting was critical to that. We had a misunderstanding based on that.”
He added: “I think if you don’t use all the tools you do yourself a disservice. But we don’t run the organization on statistical analysis. It’s not the main driver of how our baseball operation is run.”
Meanwhile, Jocketty became general manager of the Cincinnati Reds and has them in the playoffs as N.L. Central champions, who dethroned the Cardinals.
“I’m happy for the guys in Cincinnati,” said DeWitt, whose private equity business is in Cincinnati. “I have a lot of friends who are with the team.”
CONSISTENCY’S NEW NAME IS MYERS
Brett Myers was coming off hip surgery (June 2009), and Ed Wade, the Houston general manager, signed him as a free agent because he knew him from their time in Philadelphia together. It turned out to be one of the best free-agent signings of last winter.
Myers, a 30-year old right-hander, not only turned in a creditable 14-8 record with a 3.14 earned run average but also did it in style.
He pitched at least six innings in each of his first 32 starts and fell only a third of an inning short of completing his season’s worth of starts in that grand, consistent manner. He pitched 5 2/3 innings in his 33rd and last start Sept. 30 against Cincinnati, being removed after Johnny Gomes hit the second home run that inning for an 8-1 Reds lead.
Myers’ streak of 32 starts of 6 innings or more was a club record, the Astros said, and was the longest such streak in the majors since Curt Schilling did it in 35 starts for Arizona in 2002.
MLB STILL GETS FAILING GRADE
Major League Baseball and its clubs continue to fail their young Latin players. Last week three players were suspended for 50 games each, effective at the start of next season, for testing positive for steroids.
As in most cases of steroids suspensions, the three suspended players are Latin, two of whom played in the Dominican summer league and one in the Venezuelan summer league.
Baseball says it educates all young players about the use of steroids and the penalties they will pay if they use them, but they obviously have to do a better job with young Latins. At the rate baseball is going, it gets a failing grade in steroids education.