This year’s Bizarro writeup is more than a month late due to reasons both personal and professional.
Josh Beckett – As a 23-year-old second-year player in 2003, Beckett turned in two of the best postseason performances in recent memory. First, in Game 5 of the National League Championship Series, with his Marlins trailing three games to one and facing elimination, he shut out the Cubs on two hits, striking out eleven and walking just one. Then, thirteen days later (after a similarly dominant but losing effort in Game 3 of the World Series), he closed out the Fall Classic against the Yankees with a five-hit, 2-0 shutout on the road. Four years later, following a disappointing 2006 season with the Red Sox, he once again assumed Mr. October status, winning all four of his starts (including an ALDS complete shutout of the Angels) while allowing just four runs in thirty innings, striking out 35, and walking two.
Heath Bell – After two years in San Diego’s bullpen ahead of Hall of Famer Trevor Hoffman, Bell assumed the role of closer for the Padres when Hoffman left as a free agent after the 2008 season (which I did not remember happening at all). He performed admirably, saving 40+ games each season from 2009-11, but his career went downhill quickly after he signed with Miami as a free agent. He spent one season each with the Marlins, Diamondbacks, and Rays (and also time in the minor leagues with the Orioles and Yankees) before finding himself out of baseball when the Nationals released him before the start of the 2015 season.
Chone Figgins – The most prolific of three base stealers in this year’s Bizarro class, Figgins stole 30+ bases for seven straight seasons from 2004-10, including five seasons with 40+ and a high of 62 in 2005. He didn’t always make the best decisions on the base paths, however, as he was caught 10+ times in each of those seasons and led the league in that category in 2007 and 2009 (he is 119th all-time in steals and 60th in times caught).
Figgins has a World Series ring from his rookie year of 2002, and though he saw limited action in the series (two appearances as a pinch-runner), his impact was undeniable: in Game 6, with the Angels down 5-4 in the eighth inning (following a Darin Erstad leadoff homerun), Figgins pinch-ran for Tim Salmon, took third on Garret Anderson’s single, and scored the tying run on Troy Glaus’s double (which also scored Anderson with the eventual winning run).
Rafael Furcal – The National League Rookie of the Year in 2000 (fellow Bizarros Rick Ankiel, Pat Burrell, and Juan Pierre finished 2nd, 4th, and tied for 6th, respectively), Furcal was a career .281 hitter who stole 314 bases. His world converged with Ankiel’s in the third inning of Game 1 of the 2000 National League Division Series, when Furcal’s foul popfly was one of only two outs record by Ankiel in an inning in which he faced twelve batters, walked four, threw four wild pitches, and allowed three runs before being pulled from the game. Defensively, Furcal made 249 career errors as a shortstop, which seemed like a lot but turns out to be 102nd all-time at the position, fewer than Ozzie Smith and Derek Jeter.
Carlos Pena – In 2006, Pena hit one homerun in 37 plate appearances with the Red Sox. The following year, after he joined the Rays as a free agent, I wrote a post on my old blog about teams that had the longest droughts without a 40-homerun hitter and noted that the Rays didn’t seem likely to end theirs anytime soon. Fast forward to September, when Pena passed that mark, ended up with 46 on the season (19 more than his previous career high), and made a fool out of me. It was the start of a strong five year run with the Rays and Cubs in which he hit 30-100 three times and 20-80 twice.
Brian Roberts – Roberts is one of only five players to hit fifty or more doubles in a season at least three different times. The others? Hall of Famer Tris Speaker (who did it five times), Hall of Famer Stan Musial, Future Hall of Famer Albert Pujols, and Hall of Famer Paul Waner. (They are also 1st, 3rd, 7th, and 14th all-time in two-base hits; Roberts is 256th). He was also an accomplished base stealer, swiping 20+ bags in seven consecutive seasons, with a two year peak of 50 in 2007 and 40 the following year. His career was sad in a Don Mattingly kind of way, though: after a lot of years as a good player on bad teams, he missed the Orioles playoff appearance in 2012 after undergoing hip surgery.
Jose Valverde – Most Bizarro classes feature a closer who racked up a lot of saves. This year’s entry into that sub-group is Valverde, who fell short of 300 career saves (he finished with 288) but still has three years with 40+ on his resume (with three different teams, no less). He was not good in the postseason, with a 9.82 ERA in 14 games. In his only World Series appearance, with Detroit in 2012, he lasted just 1/3 of an inning, striking out the first batter he faced (opposing pitcher Tim Lincecum) before yielding two runs on four straight hits. He didn’t appear in the final three games of the Series, an eventual Giants sweep of Valverde’s Tigers.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment