Patterns

When you watch enough baseball, you start to notice patterns.

For example, when Ramon Ramirez and Manny Delcarmen come into a game back to back, one of them will melt down. Usually it is Ramirez, who has become about as reliable as that other guy named Ramirez that we used to have.

And if you are watching the game on NESN, you will notice the Dave Roberts pattern: whatever Don Orsillo says, Dave Robert repeats. Don says, “Great catch there by Jacoby Ellsbury.” Dave says, “Jacoby Ellsbury made a great catch there.”

In the games against the Rays this week, the pattern developed that Joe Madden couldn’t keep his ass on the bench and had to come out to change pitchers three times an inning. No wonder the games ran close to four hours. Instead of fining Jonathan Papelbon for taking longer than 2:25 to get ready (that’s two minutes and 25 seconds. It only seems like two hours and 25 minutes), MLB should institute a rule that a reliever coming into a game must pitch to a minimum of three batters or finish the inning. That would likely eliminate two of Joe Madden’s pitching changes and save nearly five minutes of down time. While they’re at it, make the pitchers stay on the mound and stop walking around the infield rubbing the ball after every pitch. When you have a 40-pitch inning and you have to walk around in circles after every one, the inning is excruciating, Dice-K.

Oh, and where were all the “wonderful, loud and enthusiastic” Rays fans that everybody talked about in the playoffs last year, packing the Trop with their cowbells? The total attendance for three games was about enough to fill the place once. Apparently, in Tampa Bay, success breeds apathy. With this year’s edition of the Rays stuck in third place in both the AL East and the Wild Card, the fans have gone back into the woodwork and it’s more like the old days there. Next thing you know, they’ll start calling themselves the Devil Rays again and that crazy guy that used to sit behind the plate and yell at the players will be back.

Look at this as another pattern. Cinderella teams like the 2008 Rays usually slip back the next season. Sometimes it’s because the season was a fluke. The 2007 Colorado Rockies put together that incredible winning streak at the end of the season and rode it into the World Series. The next year they were 74-88, and when they started 2009 18-28, manager Clint Hurdle was fired. The 1969 Miracle Mets followed their World Series win over the Orioles with three consecutive 83-win third-place finishes before returning to the Series in 1973 (ironically after winning only 82 games in that regular season).

The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox also followed the slip-back pattern, finishing fourth in 1968 as Cy Young winner Jim Lonborg broke his leg skiing and went from 22 wins to six, Tony Conigliaro continued to recover from being beaned and Fireball Fred Wenz was one of their bullpen options. At least the Sox managed to stay above .500 for the next 15 seasons, although they only made the post-season once during that period.

This year’s Sox team is also following a pattern that has happened several times over the last few seasons. Boston starts out strong, builds a lead in the division, and gradually blows the lead as the Yankees overtake them somewhere around the beginning of July. The Sox then end up as the Wild Card team. If you think about it, the same pattern happened in 2007, even though the Sox won the AL East that year. The difference was that the Sox’ 11 ½ game lead was too great for New York to overcome, and the Yankees finished two games back. If the season had gone on for another week, the Sox likely would have finished second.

This season is following the old pattern for Boston. Early lead, start to stumble, get swept by the Yankees in a four or five game series, lose the lead, fight for the Wild Card.

With a month to go in the season, the fight is on. Taking two of three this week in St. Pete has given the Sox an edge and pushed the Rays to the edge.