It was a brisk September day in the upper Northwest. Southern Cal was preparing for a game they were all too happy to be playing. Their confidence was riding high after just defeating top ten ranked Ohio State the week before. All of the college football experts around the country were handing them a spot in the BCS national title game. The running game was clicking and the defense looked as solid as it ever had since Pete Carroll first took the coaching reigns.
Sounds like 2009, right? Wrong. That is a description of the week after USC beat Ohio State in 2008. You know, the week of game preparation leading up to their surprising defeat at the hands of the Oregon State Beavers.
The Trojans were confident after dismantling what was believed to be the best team in the country early in the 2008 season in Ohio State. But, they were surprised in Corvallis, Oregon by a well coached, fast team led by a little (he is 5’7”) and little known running back named Jacquizz Rodgers. Rodgers slashed and dashed his way to 186 yards against the Trojans and a pair of scores en route to a 27-21 victory on the strength of a big first half.
Southern Cal’s trip up to the Pacific Northwest must feel familiar to Carroll, even though most of the defense and his young freshman quarterback Matt Barkley do not remember last season. The Trojans are taking on a Washington Huskies team in Seattle on Saturday that has put up 65 points in its first two games this season. The Huskies bear some resemblance to last season’s Beavers, too. The Beavers scored 59 points in their final two games before taking on the Trojans last season.
The Huskies are led by the multi-talented/rarely healthy Jake Locker under center. Locker has already throw five touchdown passes in two games and is completing 60 percent of his passes. What makes Locker such a difficult player to handle is that he is also the team’s second leading rusher with 69 yards and a touchdown in two games.
Like Rodgers last season, Washington has a small (5’11”) and speedy running back that could catch the Trojans off guard. Freshman tailback Chris Polk has already rushed for 170 years and a touchdown on the young season, and has the skills to do some damage against the Trojans.
Washington is also coached by former Trojan offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian. Sarkisian knows the Trojan’s tendencies and their offense inside and out.
The best game of THIS weekend is Southern Cal visiting the Washington Huskies not because of the great history or the high rankings. It is because the third ranked Trojans are a good possibility to get defeated on Saturday by a smart coach with an edge and a group of highly motivated players. Sounds like the ingredients for a delicious upset, and a great football game.
Bleacher Fan makes a valiant effort with an argument about Brad Lidge being ready for the postseason roster for the Philadelphia Phillies this October. The level of depth is impressive, doing research that uncovered the very statistics that are forcing me to award the verdict to Loyal Homer.
America’s sports culture – and the sports culture worldwide, for that matter – has adopted a ‘what have you done for me lately’ mentality. If the subject of that question is Brad Lidge, the answer is ugly. Despite best efforts, Bleacher Fan’s argument draws attention to a specific stat it must have taken some time and research to uncover. While Bleacher Fan tries to mitigate the impact of the six runs in 9.2 innings Lidge has given up this season while facing off against the Phillies likely playoff opponents – the St. Louis Cardinals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Colorado Rockies – by using the word “only,” it is clear to me that what Lidge has done lately is not impressive enough to earn him a spot on the defending champ’s postseason roster.
Six runs in 9.2 innings is a lot to give up, especially for a closer. That is a run, basically, for every four outs recorded.
Pitchers are only as good as their last outing. String several bad outings together – or a season of bad outings – and it is likely that your teammates and your coaches lose confidence in your abilities. It spirals from there, and it is very difficult to simply “snap out of it” come October and perform at a high level. Relief pitchers must remain consistent by having consistent control of their fastball, and especially the slider in Lidge’s case. Lose consistent control, and lose your spot in the bullpen.
As Loyal Homer points out, hitters are better in the playoffs (unless you are Alfonso Soriano). They take more pitchers and put more pitches in play. If players in the regular season are already hitting .300 off of Lidge, that does not bode well for postseason action.
Pitchers, even good pitchers, go through cycles. See John Smoltz. Smoltz has a great legacy and history in the game of baseball, but his recent record was not strong enough to stay with the Boston Red Sox. However, that does not mean Smoltz’s career is over. On the contrary, he latched on with a new pitching coach and his immediate future is brighter.
The same can happen for Brad Lidge. While he has deep swings downward in his production and value, he also has extremely high swings upward. What his career history reflects, however, is that it is wise for an ambitious team to steer clear of Lidge’s inconsistency when the he is in a downswing. For that reason the Phillies must choose to leave Brad Lidge off of their postseason roster. But keep him around for 2010. He might just pitch a perfect season.
During the season, overall statistics are an excellent measure for the general success or failure of an athlete’s performance. Once the postseason begins, however, those overall statistics must be thrown away. The only thing that matters in the postseason are MATCHUPS.
It is true that Brad Lidge has struggled during the 2009 season. He is pitching with a 7.18 ERA, has given up a total of 42 runs in 52.2 innings (an average of 0.80 runs per inning), and has only 29 saves out of 39 opportunities. He has a 1.75 strike out (K) to walk (BB) ratio, and his opponents’ batting average is .300. However, does it really matter how Lidge pitched against the Houston Astros (27.00 ERA) if he is not even going to face the Astros in the postseason? No, it does not. What DOES matter is how he has pitched against his likely playoff opponents, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Colorado Rockies.
Against those three opponents, Lidge has had much greater success this season. In his ten appearances against the three likely playoff teams, Lidge has allowed only six earned runs in 9.2 innings of work (an average of 0.65 runs per inning), and he is averaging a much more respectable 4.5 K’s for every BB. While Lidge may have struggled for much of the season, against several opponents, his performance against the only teams that he will potentially face in the playoffs has been much better.
In addition to the fact that Lidge matches up well against his likely playoff opponents, there is another issue that must be considered – SUCCESSFUL postseason experience.
Ask C.C. Sabathia or Alex Rodriguez about the value of successful regular season stats once you enter the postseason. C.C. and A-Rod have both recently learned that performance between the months of April and September is worthless when October rolls around. Regular season statistics are relevant only for the regular season. As they say, everything resets for the playoffs. Some players (like C.C. or A-Rod) cannot take the heat of high-pressure playoff situations, while others thrive in that type of a setting. Brad Lidge is among the latter group of players.
In his postseason career (including five different World Series appearances, two of which came last season for the Phillies), Lidge’s ERA comes in at a VERY impressive 2.10. In 34.1 total postseason innings, he has allowed only eight earned runs (an average of 0.23 runs per inning), and has struck out 51 batters to only 12 walks (an average of 4.25 K’s per BB). In the month of October, Brad Lidge is the epitome of reliable pitching!
Why risk the postseason just because a couple other pitchers had better results against the Washington Nationals and Chicago Cubs? It does not make sense. Lidge matches up very well against the current playoff contenders, and he has successfully pitched in high-pressure situations in the postseason for multiple teams over a several year period. A pitcher like Ryan Madson simply cannot match Lidge’s consistent record of success under pressure in the postseason. The smart bet for Charlie Manuel is to trust his veteran who has proven that he knows how to get the job done when it matters most.
My brother is a huge Houston Astros fan, so I have been hearing about Brad Lidge for some time. Just imagine my euphoria when Albert Pujols hit that long run in the 2005 playoffs off of him. It gave me ample opportunity to heckle my brother, which I wanted to happen for quite some time, especially since Lidge had such an impressive start to his career. There is no way that home run only went 412 feet. I am not even sure it has landed yet!!!!
Sports Geek does not care about 2005, though. Neither do the Philadelphia Phillies and their passionate fans. They care about what happens in the 2009 postseason. Sports Geek asked Bleacher Fan and I to decide if the Phillies should have Lidge on their roster. This is relatively simple to me. You put the best players on the team. Right now, Lidge is not one of the best players. Therefore, in order to have the best chance at winning a second consecutive World Series, the Phillies should keep Lidge off of the postseason roster!
As Sports Geek said in the intro, Lidge has an ERA over seven (7.18 through Wednesday’s action). It has been stuck around that seven spot for much of the season. In his last ten appearances, he has given up seven earned runs. When I saw the Phillies and Braves play a month ago in Atlanta, a game that Lidge blew the save in, his ERA was at 7.27. In some sense, he has leveled off. But, leveling off with an ERA over seven is quite different than “leveling off” with an ERA under two. His command of his slider just has not been the same as it was last season and the location of his fastballs have been off.
Bleacher Fan is going to write that the Phillies need to bank on the postseason experience of Lidge from last year. What Bleacher Fan will not say is that his postseason experience happened in 2008, when he had essentially a perfect season. “Lights Out” Lidge has given absolutely no indication that he is anywhere near the Lidge of 2008. Therefore, it is appropriate to disregard last year’s postseason. Do not forget that before last season, he struggled both in the postseason (the aforementioned Pujols home run) and in the regular season as well (see 2006 when he had an ERA over five). He was not traded to Philly by Houston because he was dominant. He was traded to Philly because Houston saw something in his command that they no longer liked.
It is also important to mention that Lidge plays in Citizens Bank Park, which is very much a hitter friendly park. If Lidge is just a tad off, he will be exposed. You might be able to get away with being a tad off in the regular season from time to time, but you will not get away with it in the postseason. The teams in the playoffs are too good. The Dodgers, Cardinals, and either the Rockies or Giants will expose any weakness in the National League playoffs.
Manager Charlie Manuel likely feels some type of loyalty to Lidge, and he should. That is probably why he keeps giving Lidge second and third chances as closer. But, Manuel’s job is to do what is best for the team. Lidge is having a miserable 2009 campaign. The best thing for the team is to have Brad Lidge off the postseason roster. The lights should be turned out in 2009 for Brad “Lights Out” Lidge.
The story of Philadelphia Phillies closer Brad Lidge is an interesting one. He broke onto the scene with the Houston Astros in 2003 as a relief pitcher and was impressive enough to earn a fifth place vote in the Rookie of the Year award standings. He followed that campaign 29 saves in 2004 and an eight place finish for the National League Cy Young award. Then, in 2005, he anchored one of the best pitching staff’s seen in the last 20 years in the National League with a 2.29 ERA and nearly unblemished record as a closer and an impressive 13.9 strike outs per nine innings.
Then, Albert Pujols happened. In game five of the National League Championship Series in the 2005 postseason, Brad Lidge hung a slider up in the zone, a pitch Pujols deposited 412 feet away on the train tracks at Minute Made Park. That one pitch foreshadowed a surprising collapse for the All-Star pitcher.
In 2006 Lidge took five losses and also had an ERA over five. He allowed 47 runs that season and saved 32 games. The next season was much worse, saving a mere 19 games, though he did lower his ERA to 3.36.
But, that was enough for the Astros to not resign him. No longer willing to put with the up and down nature of the pitcher’s career, he was cut loose. The Phillies took a flyer on him in the offseason. Man, was that a good decision.
Lidge put together a dream season in 2008. He was nearly perfect, posting a 2-0 record and a tiny 1.95 ERA on the way to a perfect 41 out of 41 save opportunities. He was the back of the bullpen, the trusted anchor to hold any potential lead. He was a starter’s best friend.
But, when the calendar turned to 2009, Lidge’s career turned along with it. The 2009 season has been a nightmare for Lidge, as he has recorded a career high seven losses, a career high 7.18 ERA, and a career high in home runs allowed of 11 in just 60 appearances.
Lidge’s struggles forced the hand of Phillies skipper Charlie Manuel who demoted the All-Star closer from his role and replaced him with Ryan Madson. Madson has performed adequately in the role to close out the 2009 season, but he has never performed under the intense pressure in the World Series like Lidge has… plus he has blown two saves in his short tenure on the bump in the pressure inning.
The Sports Debates is here to help Charlie Manuel manage the team. When rosters are trimmed to 25 for the postseason, what should the Phillies do – add Lidge to the postseason roster as the closer, or leave him off in place of another more reliable pitcher?
Bleacher Fan will argue that the Phillies should keep Lidge on the postseason roster, and Loyal Homer will argue that Lidge’s days as Phillies closer are over because he is too much of a risk.
Batter up, debaters! What is the next chapter of Lidge’s roller coaster career? Does he belong on the Philadelphia Phillies post season roster, or is that move too risky?
The play of the Mountain West early this season really makes this a difficult decision.
The BYU-Oklahoma game in the first week of this young season was a game between ranked programs that really flew under the radar before the season began. Georgia-Oklahoma State and Virginia Tech-Alabama got most of the preseason hype when discussing week one. I think that was because I did not give BYU much of a chance to win that game. I am not sure any people outside of the BYU contingent thought the Cougars had a realistic shot. It was just set up for Oklahoma to win. But no one told BYU! Even with Sam Bradford going down with an injury, it is still a huge upset in my book. The BYU win shows that the Mountain West Conference has elevated its play.
Bleacher Fan argued that, in terms of the evaluation, whatever happened in the conference ten years ago should have no bearing on whether or not the MWC belongs in the BCS, while also breaking down the results of what has happened in the MWC since the beginning of last season.
Meanwhile, Sports Geek argued that the depth of the conference is lacking and the conference as a whole does not have the big stadiums and enough eyeballs to warrant inclusion into the BCS.
I understand what Bleacher Fan is saying in that the MWC cannot be evaluated on how it has performed several years ago. I agree with that. Something that happened in 1999 should have no bearing on what happens in 2009.
However, I am awarding the victory to Sports Geek based on the depth, or lack of depth, in the conference. No one can dispute the fact that the top of the conference is strong, with BYU, TCU, and Utah playing like strong teams. But, I do see a big drop off after that. UNLV, Colorado State, New Mexico, San Diego State, Wyoming, and Air Force do not compare to the mid to lower tier teams in the other BCS conferences. On a neutral field, I do not see these teams being competitive with similar teams from other conferences on a consistent basis.
The MWC is most definitely closing the gap, and there is still time to step it up even more. These mid-tier teams can rise to the occasion and shine a brighter light on the conference. However, until they do the conference does not deserve a guaranteed bid in the BCS!
It is easy to fall into the trap. We all do it. We love fads and trends. The perpetual chase of feeling or looking “cool” is as tempting as it is transient. Whether it is a fashion trend, a technology innovation, or even a TV show, the desire to take advantage of the next hottest thing is always alluring.
Right now, the BCS is deciding if Mountain West Conference football is a passing fad or a bona fide good football conference worthy of a share of the BCS’s vast riches and automatic bids. In order to save time and resources I will help the BCS out – no, the MWC does not belong among the BCS elite.
It is easy to say a lot of negative things about the BCS (even though I actually like it, I can acknowledge it is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination) and the supposed elite collection of conferences. Without getting into a pointless comparison between the Big East, the ACC, and the Mountain West, it is possible to simply highlight a few key points to prove that including the MWC in the BCS is the equivalent of a participation trophy at seventh grade basketball camp.
The Mountain West has some good teams. It seems every season at least one team earns an at-large BCS bowl big, and makes a splash in the game. Like many college football conferences, the MWC has a few excellent programs, but the remaining programs are not very good. Utah, BYU, and TCU have long been the recipient of dark house and “aww, isn’t that little conference cute” comments from pundits like Mark May and Lou Holtz. Sure, those are good programs deserving of the acclaim. However, depth is an issue for the conference.
Air Force is an excellent example of the questionable depth. While they had a successful 9-4 campaign in 2007, and they followed that up with an 8-5 campaign in 2008, this is the same program that languished at 4-8 in 2006, and began this season with a 72-0 drubbing of Nicholls State before losing to Minnesota – a mid-pack program from an elite BCS conference. Colorado State is another example of questionable depth in the MWC. The Rams began this season by surprising Colorado, then following that win with a squeaker at home – over Weber State. Colorado State is 17-23 in the last three seasons (2006-2008) – hardly enough to convince naysayers that the Mountain West has enough depth to compete among the top conference in the land.
The other programs – New Mexico, San Diego State, UNLV, and Wyoming – do not belong among the nation’s best programs, nor do they provide enough of a challenge to the conference’s top programs to warrant further consideration for the Mountain West.
Bottom line, many conferences have elite teams and are rightly labeled top heavy. The Mountain West fits squarely within that label, except that the drop off in quality programs after the top three elite teams is stark, and enough to prevent the conference from being considered among the elite.
It is not just about depth of talent and quality programs, either. Taking on the role of becoming a BCS conference is about selling out big stadiums and generating eyeballs on television to get top dollar for advertising. The Mountain West is an incredibly long way away from that. BYU, which has the largest stadium in the Mountain West (by far) only seats 64,045. While that seems like a lot, it pales in comparison to the cathedrals of the SEC, ACC, PAC-10, Big Ten, Big XII. Utah has the second largest stadium in the conference, seating a comfortable 45,017, so the drop off from first to second is significant.
While the Big East will not win any stadium size competitions between the nation’s elite conferences, they will win plenty of television market competitions, boasting New York (the undisputed number one television marketing), Pittsburgh (23rd largest television marketing), and Philadelphia (fourth largest television market), among others. The Mountain West’s largest television market is Salt Lake City, a mere 33rd in the rankings.
While the brand of football is certainly improving in the Mountain West, and the Western region of the United States is large enough for another power college football conference to emerge, it is not happening yet. At the end of the BCS evaluation period no school will have larger seating capacity at their stadium, local television markets will not be transformed into massive “can’t-miss” markets that demand top advertising dollars, and the depth of talent likely will not have changed a great deal. I know fans of college sports love a good Cinderella story – myself included. But in this case, the shoe simply does not fit.
It is hard to argue against performance on the field. All the posturing, polls, history, and rankings in the world become irrelevant once two teams set foot on the field to play ball.
Just ask Alabama, Oklahoma, UCLA, Washington, Arizona, Virginia, Stanford, Iowa State, Arizona State, Michigan, Oregon State, and Tennessee (whew, that was a long list), all of whom are schools from “power” conferences that have lost to the Mountain West Conference in 2008 and 2009 (so far).
In fact, the Mountain West’s record against the six current automatic-BCS Conferences (ACC, Big East, Big 10, Big XII, PAC-10 and SEC) over the past two seasons is the best of any conference in the football bowl sub-division (FBS). Their record of 16-13 against the six power conferences is a greater winning percentage than even the SEC (13-16), and the Big XII (12-14), which are generally regarded as the two best conferences in college football. As for the non-power conferences, the Mountain West is miles ahead of the WAC (6-28), MAC (11-57), Sun-Belt (5-43), and Conference USA (4-44) in quality inter-conference play.
What that means is that the schools in the Mountain West are performing better against the “quality” conferences than any other conference in the nation, INCLUDING those quality conferences themselves.
It is important to note that I am not only speaking about the quantity of wins against the power conferences, though. Some of those wins came against struggling programs (Washington, Iowa State, etc.), but the Mountain West has also beaten some of the best within those conferences. The two most notable examples are when Utah defeated SEC runner-up Alabama (who spent much of the 2008 season ranked as the number one team in the nation) in BCS play last year, and when Brigham Young topped the #3 ranked Oklahoma Sooners in week one of the 2009 season.
Need more proof that the Mountain West has performed well enough during this evaluation period to warrant an automatic BCS bid? Look no further than the top ten rankings.
Following the conclusion of the 2008 football season, the top ten spots in college football were owned by five different conferences (each claiming two of the spots). Those conferences were the SEC (Florida and Alabama), Big XII (Texas and Oklahoma), PAC-10 (USC and Oregon), Big Ten (Ohio State and Penn State), and you guessed it – the Mountain West (Utah and TCU). That means that the ACC and Big East (both current BCS conferences) could not even place a single team among the top 10 in the nation (Virginia Tech came closest at #15). As a side note, Utah was also the only team in the entire FBS to finish the season undefeated.
As for 2009, you can expect more of the same. In the most recent rankings for the 2009 season, Brigham Young currently sits among the top ten (ranked at seventh in the nation), with TCU (#16) and Utah (#18) not far behind.
All of those examples point to a single fact – the Mountain West currently is one of the best conferences in college football. They have certainly performed better than the Big East and the ACC, and have arguably been better than the PAC-10 or Big Ten in recent years. They have been the most successful conference in the NCAA when facing the current “power” conferences in football, and their best teams match up just as well as (or better than) the best teams from any other conference in the country (including national championship contenders such as the aforementioned Alabama and Oklahoma).
For the purposes of a BCS evaluation, taking recent history into account is VERY important. The BCS is a system that exists for the sole purpose of ensuring that the best teams in the nation play against each other during the college football bowl season. The best teams and conferences from ten years ago should have no influence on a decision about which team is CURRENTLY playing the best football. Recent history has proven that the Mountain West can be relied upon to consistently produce some of the best teams in college football. It is now time for the BCS to recognize that contribution by guaranteeing a BCS bid for the Mountain West champion every year.
If the BCS truly wishes to provide matchups between the best teams in the country, then the Mountain West MUST be an annual part of those matchups.
We are two weeks into the 2009 college football season and we are starting to see separation between the pretenders and contenders and the “haves” and “have nots.” Some of these pretenders are in BCS conferences while some contenders are in non-BCS conferences like the Mountain West Conference.
The MWC is starting to get national support in terms of getting a BCS berth. Teams like Utah, TCU, and BYU are competing in and winning showcase games on a consistent basis while the ACC and Big East continue to float around in mediocrity. This is the second year of a four year evaluation period in which…
“The 2008-2011 regular seasons will be evaluated under the same standards to determine if other conferences will have annual automatic qualification for the games after the 2012 and 2013 regular seasons.”
The MWC got off to a good start last year with an undefeated season by Utah in which they beat Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. This year, BYU’s defeat of national championship contender Oklahoma has amplified the call for an possible automatic BCS bid for the Mountain West champion.
The Sports Debates has already debated the legitimacy of the Big East being in the BCS. Now, it is time for my colleagues to debate whether or not the MWC deserves a spot in the Bowl Championship Series. Quite simply, does the Mountain West Conference deserve a spot in the BCS?
Bleacher Fan will argue that the MWC deserves a spot in the BCS while Sports Geek will argue that the MWC does not deserve a spot yet. We would, as always, love some feedback from Mountain West Conference supporters.
I have some advice for Eric Mangini: When you make a decision that almost NOBODY agrees with, it is probably safe to assume that they (not you) are correct.
The victory for this debate goes to Sports Geek.
Sports Geek hits the nail right on the head. Mangini over-thought the situation, and ended up hindering his own team rather than the opposition. When looking at the mistakes that caused the most problems for the Cleveland Browns on offense, every one of them could at least partly be attributed to a lack of comfort or familiarity between quarterback Brady Quinn and his teammates.
When Quinn threw his only interception of the game, it was clearly the result of miscommunication between him and wide receiver Braylon Edwards. Quinn threw the ball believing Edwards would cut left, but Edwards instead cut right believing that Quinn was throwing elsewhere. The result was a ball thrown to a place where no receiver could catch it, and it was easily intercepted by the Vikings. The Browns were also called for four false-start penalties, several of which came at very costly times. Perhaps if the offense had more time to familiarize themselves with Quinn’s cadence, they would have been more prepared during a game situation, and would have jumped less in those critical moments.
Do not get me wrong, Mangini’s decision to keep his starter a secret is not the sole reason why the Browns lost on Sunday, but he did not do the team any favors. His decision to keep his choice a secret actually backfired, because it created AT LEAST as much confusion for his own team than it did the Minnesota Vikings.
Loyal Homer’s argument, in theory, is absolutely correct. Mangini as head coach of a professional football team should be doing everything in his power to give his team every possible advantage that he can gain for them (especially with the 2009 Browns, who will likely need all the help they can get). The problem that I have with Mangini’s decision in this case is that his choice negatively impacted his own team just as much as it did the Vikings. Eric Mangini, in addition to his responsibility of trying to gain every tactical advantage that he can, also has a responsibility to protect the weaknesses of his own organization. The latter was sacrificed last Sunday, and the Browns paid the price.
I have no problems with a coach trying new, innovative, or even unorthodox tactics to gain an edge. But, it is irresponsible to take those measures when it impedes your own team’s ability to develop. Mangini’s FIRST responsibility is to create a cohesive and productive unit that will successfully compete on Sunday afternoons. This was simply a matter of putting the horse before the cart.
Those tactics of gamesmanship and subversive communication are rarely successful when used to mask a team’s deficiencies. Secrecy works for Bill Belichek and the New England Patriots because they function successfully as a team. Fundamentally they are a sound organization, and have consistently proven that they can succeed in almost any situation. For a team like that, the strategies of misinformation and misdirection are successful because they are being used to support strong performances, rather than mask poor ones. Eric Mangini should first focus on developing a fundamentally sound team. Until then, he should forget about the mind-games.
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