RealityChuck

This article from back in July comes to mind: http://www.slate.com/id/2145705/ ]The Cubs Savior Chicago fans wait for their messiah. And wait, and wait � By Justin Peters Posted Friday, July 14, 2006, at 12:22 PM ET After Derrek Lee broke his wrist in April, the Chicago Cubs proceeded to lose games in ways that only Charlie Brown could appreciate. After May and June's cartoonish ineptness�the ball bouncing off the third baseman's head, Neifi Perez bunting for the final out with two men on�the Cubs have fallen to 20 games under .500. The team is now on track for their worst season since Adolfo Phillips roamed the outfield. But the shame Cubs fans feel in watching their team fall apart is counterbalanced by the pleasure they take indulging in a favorite pastime: waiting for the team's best player to return. This is a Cubs tradition as hallowed as creeping ivy and underperforming center fielders. Call it the phenomenon of the Cubs Savior. Every year Cubs fans seem to pin their hopes on one guy�Derrek Lee, Kerry Wood, Sammy Sosa, Ryne Sandberg, Ernie Banks�whose extraordinary talents, they hope, will offset the other players' mediocrity. As waiting games go, this one has been astoundingly futile�the Cubs Savior is less reliable than Godot. But when a team's been aimlessly wandering for 100 years, its fans can be forgiven for seeking some Moses to lead them out of the second division. Cubs fans are uniquely ready to accept this kind of desperate logic. The Cubs have rarely had more than one or two really good players at a time. The Cubs have also never really had a defining team persona, like the Big Red Machine or Go Go White Sox�it's always just Ernie Banks (or whoever the "man" is that year) and a bunch of other stiffs. The one iconic Cubs team, the 1969 Banks-Santo-Williams squad, is best known for choking down the stretch and ceding first place to the Miracle Mets. Banks, the relentlessly cheerful "Mr. Cub," was the face of a dismal franchise in the 1950s and 1960s, hitting 512 home runs in the service of teams that only finished above third place twice in 19 years. Ron Santo and Billy Williams took the team through the mid-'70s. After that there was a long fallow period, notable mainly for producing baseball's all-time best managerial tirade. Sandberg emerged in the mid-'80s, carrying the team for years except when he shared the spotlight with Andre Dawson. The Cubs thought Dawson would give the lineup some punch. He hit 49 homers and won the MVP; the Cubs finished in last place. In the mid-'90s, as Sandberg started to decline, the Sammy Sosa Experience�all chest taps and Flintstones vitamins�started banging its way around the National League. But the messiah complex didn't get really bad until 2003. Blame it on Dusty Baker�Cubs fans blame everything else on him anyway. Baker was arguably the Cubs' biggest free-agent acquisition in 15 years. Before he came to Chicago, many called him the best manager in baseball. When the Cubs went straight to the playoffs that year, the credit went to their big-game manager. Baker's single-season success validated the concept that, while teamwork still won games, highly competent individuals turned teams into champions. And so in the last few years, Cubs fans have put their faith in a string of would-be baseball Jesuses, all of whom failed in their attempts to turn Gatorade into wine. In 2004, Sammy Sosa was supposed to recover from his back spasms and slug the Cubs back into the playoffs�never happened. Meanwhile, everyone waited for Kerry Wood and Mark Prior to get healthy. 2005 was supposed to be the year that Corey Patterson put it all together and became a 30/30 man. Patterson hit his mark: 34 RBIs and 34 fans who didn't hate him by season's end. Meanwhile, everyone waited for Kerry Wood and Mark Prior to get healthy. Fans can be excused for putting great expectations on players�it would be weird if they started fawning over journeymen like John Mabry. But it's inexcusable when management falls for the same delusions as fickle fans. Cubs GM Jim Hendry seems to have embraced the savior concept as much as anyone, surrounding his few stars with aging players, injury reclamations, and rookies from a farm system that isn't as good as everyone thought it was. One can't blame the Cubs' collapse entirely on the team's savior complex�nobody expected Aramis Ramirez to stop hitting, for one thing. But Mark Prior is brittle, Greg Maddux is old, and Kerry Wood's career might be over. By putting his faith in these false idols, Hendry has ensured that it really will take a miracle for the Cubs to contend again. It takes more than one or two really good guys to build a consistent winner. Successful teams either spend the money necessary to sign a stable of reliable superstars (the Steinbrenner Thesis) or construct deep, versatile rosters that can hit situationally, get on base, and keep the ball in the park. If the Yankees had built their late-'90s teams around Derek Jeter and a revolving cast of journeymen like Randall Simon, Jeromy Burnitz, and Todd Walker, then they wouldn't have won very many championships. Embarrassingly enough for the Cubs, some of the best examples of team-building come from their biggest rivals. Take the perennially contending Cardinals. When Albert Pujols got injured earlier this year, the Cards compensated thanks to a deep bench and played nearly .500 ball until Pujols returned. Or take the White Sox. After winning the World Series, they bolstered their already potent lineup by signing Jim Thome. The Cubs, on the other hand, signed Jacque Jones and gave Neifi Perez a multiyear contract, violating the golden rule of baseball management: Don't give Neifi Perez any contract. This would all be OK, though, because they had Derrek Lee. Whoops � Thankfully, there've been signs that, like an Amish kid during rumspringa, Cubs fans might be questioning their faith. In years past, the most popular unofficial T-shirts at Wrigley have been hagiographic togs bearing slogans like "We Got Wood" and "In Dusty We Trusty." This year's big seller depicts Cubs catcher Michael Barrett slugging the White Sox's A.J. Pierzynski in the face. Are rage and bitterness displacing faith and belief in the hearts of Cubs fans? Sounds like the work of the Cubs Antichrist.

Instant reply really wouldn't do much for baseball. First of all, using it for ball/strike calls is madness -- the game would stop every few pitches in critical situations, a real drawback, especially since the knock against baseball is that it's too slow. Even if you limited it, it would slow down the game more than it would improve it. Then, how many times in a game would plays be questionable? Most defensive plays are clear cut.

I doubt there's any algorithm that's any better. Sabermetrics is piss poor at predicting, and, like any fortune teller scam, only points out their handful of hits and forgets their hundreds of misses.

="DocTee"]] Yes, I've read the article. And I've debated Professor Jensen on this issue, one which I've spent a long time researching. He says there are no signs, but produces a dozen examples?? Read the article. He finds s few, but only out of tens of thousands of advertisements. That's a ridiculously small small sample to claim systematic repression. Compare the number of signs he was able to find out of all those he searched with the number of documented cross burnings. ]Catholic churches were burned, immigrants were denied political opportunity and otherwise marginalized.All immigrants were. There are two issues, discrimination -- which existed for all immigrants -- and the "No Irish Need Apply" signs -- which were extremely rare. ]To turn the situation around and state that myth has replaced reality is wrong.Not when the myth has replaced reality. The fact remains that the words "No Irish Need Apply" hardly ever were used in advertisments of the time, and that they perceived prevelance was due to a popular song. metsmarathon Nov 13 2006 09:10 AM martin wrote: and would you really worry about the conclusions drawn by people who are dumb enough to make decisions about a people based on a team name/mascot? individually, no. but stupid people massed together create a powerful force - a Collective Dumb - that can be at times insuperable. think of the south, and racial attitudes thereof or of teenagers, anywhere. until we find a way to ferret out the stupid and isolate them from each other and insulate the world from them all, you really really do need to worry about what stupid people think. stupid people find themselves voting, and voted into office. they find themselves in positions of importance, and of influence. stupid people shape public policy, and have public policy shaped for them. and more importantly, when you mix stupid people with aggressive behavior, you end up with bad acts being committed against individuals for the failings of a stereotype. Edgy DC Nov 13 2006 09:41 AM "Did you even read the article." "Yes, I've read the article." "Read the article." DocTee Nov 13 2006 10:13 AM Chuck, I think you misread my post. I don't want to get into a pissing contest about which immigrant group had (or has) it worse-- I am just pointing out that even if NINA ads never existed (and they did-- the fact that they are few and far between is not surprising given the largely illiterate nature of the Irish immigrants--- why put in print that they were not wanted when 1. they couldn't read and 2. they couldn't afford the paper if they were literate?!) discrimination did (something even Jensen would acknowledge). As to stereotypes never being adopted by a thinking public, look no further than the Wild West shows of the 1890's, or the tricentennial of Jamestown (1907) where members of the native community were told they were not welcome in the historical exhibits, but could articulute their heritage in the amusement concourse...it is a slippery slope from objectifying someone to liquidating them. We've come a long way, thank God. martin Nov 13 2006 04:42 PM metsmarathon wrote: think of the south, and racial attitudes thereof i am from the south, and my experience is that the south and the northeast are not really different in terms of racism. perhaps you are buying into stereotypes about the south. ]If you've never seen 19-year-old Irish American wearing his Notre Dame jacket on a Thursday night, drunk to the gills and bloodied from brawling, not on any reliable track for a higher education degree himself, and deluded that his stupid behavior is somehow true to his proud ethnic heritage i was thinking of people being offended by being misportrayed, i hadnt considered the dummies who have applied the sterotypes to themselves as part of their cultural identity or whatever. i suspect these people would find some other way to ruin themselves if they are acting out what they saw a mascot doing. in these cases i blame the dummies, not the mascots. the person who needs to change is the guy who thinks of thaq caricature as a role model, not the guy who makes up silly team names. a little personal responsibility is in order, and a little less victim mentality. Edgy DC Nov 13 2006 05:00 PM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Nov 13 2006 10:51 PM Yeah, thanks for assessing my mentality. My mentality is that stupid and misleading crap that spreads ignorance should be called stupid and misleading crap. (And I don't know how you could miss my prior reference to people having a corrupt view of themselves.) martin Nov 13 2006 05:11 PM i meant victim mentality on the part of the person who would claim they are fighting and drunk because they were doing what society's stereotype told them to do. i dunno why are making excuses for this person. i think it is condescending for us to say we shouldnt have goofy mascots because we need to protect people from trying to be like them. "hey irish guy, we were going to have a drunken fighter guy as our mascot, but you would actually do that, so we won't". i wasnt assessing your mentality. metsmarathon Nov 13 2006 05:12 PM martin wrote: ="metsmarathon"] think of the south, and racial attitudes thereof i am from the south, and my experience is that the south and the northeast are not really different in terms of racism. perhaps you are buying into stereotypes about the south. well, then i guess that must surely invalidate my entire point then. martin Nov 13 2006 05:20 PM no it doesnt( validate your point), because you are not assuming i am racist merely because i am from the south. the happy stereotype exists, but we are not applying it to individuals. and, i, being a southerner, am not using my upbringing as an excuse to be racist. so the stereotype isnt really causing any problems on either end. Edgy DC Nov 13 2006 11:02 PM ="martin"]i meant victim mentality on the part of the person who would claim they are fighting and drunk because they were doing what society's stereotype told them to do. i dunno why are making excuses for this person. i think it is condescending for us to say we shouldnt have goofy mascots because we need to protect people from trying to be like them. "hey irish guy, we were going to have a drunken fighter guy as our mascot, but you would actually do that, so we won't". i wasnt assessing your mentality. I never spoke to what anyone would claim. I'm claiming, me, that stupid destructive cultural distortions have stupid destructive consequences and shouldn't be supported. martin Nov 14 2006 12:35 AM earlier you mentioned the irish guy that fights because he thinks that is what his culture is. i thought you meant he is the victim of society's distortions of his people giving him problems with his self-image. he should learn to find more healthy role models, and we as a society are not saddled with the responsibility of making sure our mascots do not trouble him. we dont need to protect everyone from everything. we are misplacing responsibility. notre dame isnt to blame when people think that irish people, including themselves, are drunken fighters. if there was the soccer team called the fat idiot americans, and i decided i would be fat and and idiot, thats my fault, not the soccer team. or if other people bought the stereotype that i was fat and lazy, it would be fun to prove them wrong. but it seems unlikely that i would ever deal with anyone that would think less of me because they got their idea of americans from a mascot. should we have opposed archie bunker when many people missed the point and liked his character and supported his racism? Edgy DC Nov 14 2006 07:29 AM ]we dont need to protect everyone from everything. I object to stupid shit when it happens to come up. How many times do you want to overinterpret that into some sort of social engineering? Or an attempt to legally absolve miscreants of their responsibility for their personal behavior? Their contribition to the marketplace of ideas is a brawling fairy. My contribution is to call that a stupid choice that should be beneath the university. ]but it seems unlikely that i would ever deal with anyone that would think less of me because they got their idea of americans from a mascot. Similar things happen every day. Ignorance is bad. I'm ag'in' it.

There's no reason it can't be "Jackie Robinson Citifield" or "Shea Citifield." The nice thing about "Citifield" as the name is that it's short and allows for adding a name to it.

The nature of baseball contracts is similar to the nature of auctions. Auctions are used to raise money because they generally raise more money for the seller than any other type of sale (especially for rare items). Bidders tend to overbid on what they want, and there's usually someone out there willing to pay too much.

Green has a full no-trade clause. He was willing to waive it to play in the postseason, but it's another issue entirely if the Mets try to trade him anywhere else.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15629267/ ]Sosa's comeback will succeed with Mets BASEBALL After not playing this past season, Sammy Sosa says he feels good physically, and he wants to come back to the big leagues in 2007. The 37-year-old slugger rejected a non-guaranteed offer of $500,000 from the Washington Nationals for 2006. He last played in 2005 with the Baltimore Orioles, batting .221 with 14 home runs. Sosa is 12 home runs shy of 600, and he has said several teams have shown interest in him for next season, but he did not name those clubs. Despite his declining skills and his year away from the game, Sosa will pull off a successful comeback to the majors, and it will be with the Mets. TED ROBINSON: DO YOU AGREE OR DISAGREE? AGREE Sosa will certainly need to offer an explanation for his year-long absence as well as comfort his new employers that his "Entourage" days are behind him. This is the player who lied about leaving Wrigley Field early on his final day and final game as a Cub. And the player who stiffed the Home Run Derby organizers, calling in sick on the day of the event after extorting a deal in which his family and friends were all flown to Las Vegas for a weekend of parties. The sense here is that when it comes to Sosa, the Mets are the buyers. They have the need for corner outfield help, and the personal hook in general manager Omar Minaya's 20-year relationship with Sosa, a player he discovered as a Dominican teenager. Minaya is one of the few who can appeal to Sosa's pride while satisfying his need to be treated with respect. It is no surprise to those close to the Mets that so many older players have excelled in New York of late. Minaya has a touch with players much like Dusty Baker. Sosa will get a spring invite from the Mets, make the team, and find a way to contribute. The horror, the horror.

Confirmation: Yes, it's true, and Gablinger's was a major disaster for the company. A beer ahead of its time. Opinion: Beer is the most vile-tasting alcoholic beverage sold regularly in the US. Fact: The Mets were alerted to Nolan Ryan by a Shea Stadium concession vendor.

Opinion: Williams has the most undistinguisable name in sports. He really needs a good nickname. Dave "The Bruiser" Williams, for instance. Fact: The Mets were the last team for both the last active NY Giant (Willie Mays) and the last active Brooklyn Dodger (Bob Aspromonte)

Opinion: Valentine lost his enthusiasm for managing in New York after 9/11. Fact: Dave Kingman led the league in home runs with the lowest BA of any HR champ.

iramets wrote: member of the Baby Birds staff, with Steve Barber, Fat Jack Fisher, and Milt Pappas before coming to the Mets for a cup of coffee.True. And Estrada's single win as a Met was in relief in the first start of a young starter named Sivver or Sever or Siver. Something like that. Wonder what became of him?

Taught Chad Bradford his pitching motion (well, it certainly looks that way: both were sidearmers). Chuck Estrada.

iramets wrote: so-so hitting shortstop who hit an astounding number of homeruns for the Texas Rangers one year. Alex Trevino Probably the only Mets catcher to also play games at 2nd base. Junior Ortiz

Nice performance by Macy and Baldwin. The concept of "cooler" is silly, but it was fun to see Macy turn from schlub to big shot.

DocTee wrote: Jensen is wrong-- even if NINA signs didn't exist (and they did), anti-Irish discrimination was rampant.Did you even read the article (which was published originally in a well-regarded academic journal)? If the signs existed, can you produce any solid evidence? A photo? An actual contemporaneous account of them (not someone who, probably influenced by the song, said they existed)? Jenson has researched the issue and found only a dozen instances in several hundred thousand pages of documentation? What research have you done on the matter, other than repeat the urban legend? Yes, there was anti-Irish discrimination. There also was anti-Black, anti-Jewish, anti-Italian, anti-Polish, anti-German, and anti-pick-the-ethnic-group-of-your-choice discrimination. The Irish were no worse than any other ethinic group in this regard (and certainly better off than Blacks).

SteveJRogers wrote: ="patona314"]="metirish"]I'm from Ireland....and the Irish were not always looked on as positive...I feel bad for Irish-Americans at times... why Four words: Irish Need Not Apply.That's a myth: http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/no-irish.htm Summarizing, there is no evidence anywhere that this was used in advertisements for workers at any time. All uses of that phrase are tied back to a popular song that used it. Key finding: ]An electronic search of all the text of the several hundred thousand pages of magazines and books online at Library of Congress, Cornell University Library and the University of Michigan Library, and complete runs of The New York Times and The Nation, turned up about a dozen uses of NINA. 17 The complete text of New York Times is searchable from 1851 through 1923. Although the optical character recognition is not perfect (some microfilmed pages are blurry), it captures most of the text. A search of seventy years of the daily paper revealed only two classified ads with NINA�one posted by a Brooklyn harness shop that wanted a boy who could write, and a request for a couple to take charge of a cottage upstate. 18

When he won one of his games, he appeared on Kiner's Korner with Tom Seaver; Seaver did almost the interview. Randy Tate

One of the few players traded directly from the Mets to the MFY. I believe he was the first to do it as a non-waiver trade. Bob Friend.

Of course we should talk to guy. The question is what he wants and if it'll be worth it, but you can't begin to determine that without negotiating.

He was never confused with Pedro Martinez. Sean Fitzmaurice.

="Edgy DC"]If you don't like a criteron I choose, let me know you don't like it and why.But doesn't that make the entire thing just what I said it was: subjective? If I don't like your criterion, then that's a subjective choice. If you prefer your criterion, then that's another subjective choice. Yet you claim that it's all objective numbers. Clearly not. ]Embracing the latter comment is... terrible.I agree. Yet it's done all the time. A player slumps because mathematically, it's regression to the mean, or that a batter that age is over hill, or that a hitter who hits .256 will go through stretches where he hits .125. It's not because he has messed up his swing, or he's overcompensating, or he's got an injury. Let me give a clear real-life example: Jose Reyes. A year ago, Baseball Prospectus said Reyes was a bad leadoff hitter because his OBA was too low and castigated Willie for batting him first. They said that, at his age, he was too old to learn to be a patient hitter (with the statistics to prove it), and that Willie's patience was a sign that he wasn't up to the mangerial job. Sports Illustrated even brought up the idea that maybe the Mets need to turn to Anderson Hernandez as their leadoff man. Remember? Then someone came along and said, "If you look at runs scored per times at bat, Reyes's numbers are pretty good." So here's someone picking a new criterion to prove his point. Then Reyes started becoming more selective at the plate and raised his OBA to levels that made statheads happy. But I never saw anyone who claimed Reyes couldn't do it say "I was wrong." Because, after all, to admit their mistake would be to admit that i numbers don't tell the story. It's the same thing with a Baseball Prospectus report on Dan Uggla, who said, essentially, "he's doing much better than his PECOTA (aka "Pulling Every Conclusion Out The Ass") would indicate." That meant the PECOTA was wrong. But you'd never see anyone at Baseball Prospectus ever speak such heresy. Now, let me make this clear: I grew up a baseball statistics freak. (Now I've outgrown the stage, but never mind.) And the various ways of analysis can be very useful in analyzing past performance. If you wonder why the Mets lost to the Cards, their lack of two-out hits with runners in scoring position is a key factor, for instance. You can discover all sorts of useful information about players through it. However, Sabermetrics are no good at explaining anything. Nothing in it explains why Guillermo Mota pitched poorly for the Indians, but pretty well for the Mets. All the numbers could conclude is that he did. But why? Was his bad numbers with Cleveland due to his being over the hill? I'm sure Baseball Prospectus concluded they were. Were his good numbers for the Mets due to a regression to the mean? If they were, why didn't anyone predict it? Or were his bad numbers with Cleveland due to his tipping his pitches and his good numbers with NY due to steroid use? Statistics can't say, or even come to a conclusion about it. Finally, Sabermetrics is piss poor at predicting. PECOTA doesn't even claim to be all that good -- the numbers given are supposed to be in a range. Given a big enough range, one can predict anything accurately (I predict next year Jose Reyes OBP will be between .000 and .500), but why not just give a range? Say that PECOTA predicts a BA of .257-.267? No, they give a single number that is only a range if you read the fine print. That's intellectually dishonest. A coach might predict a player hits around .250, and that's no different from a PECOTA score, but because of the extra significant digit, PECOTA sounds more authoritative. Also, do they ever compare the PECOTA predictions with actual on a systematic basis? I've seen it on an individual basis, but does anyone go through all predictions and find how well their doing? And how do these match with a baseline? Take this one: I predict all players will put up the same numbers in 2007 that they did in 2006. Is PECOTA any better than that, given the same measuring criteria (i.e., same range they use for each criterion)? Is Baseball Prospectus doing this sort of comparision?

Vic Sage wrote: come on Edgy, you know who a stathead is. its anybody who tries to justify their subjective views with objective criteria.Or anybody that Chuck happens to be pointing to when he says "statheads".True on the latter, and, as to the former, it's someone who tries to justify their subjective views with subjectively chosen criteria. This includes most sabermatricians, because, basically, with all the many metrics they keep inventing each day, you can pick and choose whatever statistics you want in order to prove whatever you want -- and then claim that, because they're using numbers, they are more precise than just a wild-ass guess. It's also people who refuse to believe that baseball players are human beings and that their statistics reflect personality, preferences, changes in they play, and mistakes.

metirish wrote: Yeah, and does clutch only exist in late innings? Certainly not*. But there is no way to define "clutch" that will include all instances that you consider a clutch performance and will also exclude all instances you don't consider clutch. We need to parallel Damon Knight's definition of science fiction and say, "A clutch performance is what I am pointing to when I say, 'That is a clutch performance.'" That would drive the statheads nuts. *What were probably the most clutch baskets in New York Knick history? Willis Reed's two baskets in the 1970 finals. They made the score an insurmountable 4-0, Knicks.

Pepsi All-Clutch Team Wright and Beltran are on it. No A-Rod, for some reason. ]Pepsi announces 2006 All-Clutch team MVP candidates Pujols, Ortiz, Jeter highlight list By Dean Chiungos / MLB.com Some players are known for being opportunistic. Others have built their reputations on rising to the occasion. But only a select few have earned the right to be called "clutch." The clutch player makes the late innings his time, the big moment his stage, the big play his routine. And it never gets old. The Pepsi All-Clutch Team honors the Major Leaguers who embody the winning spirit by making the most of their chances with the game on the line. Though no statistical analysis can truly encapsulate the meaning of "clutch," some numbers speak volumes about a player's performance when it counts. An introduction of the 2006 All-Clutch Team follows: First base: Albert Pujols, St. Louis Cardinals -- Pujols led the Cardinals to their first World Series title in 24 years. The reigning National League MVP lived up to his billing, batting .397 with runners in scoring position and .435 with runners in scoring position (RISP) and two outs. Second base: Ray Durham, San Francisco Giants -- At 34, Durham enjoyed a career year, notching career highs in homers (26), RBIs (93) and slugging percentage (.538). The two-time All-Star batted .331 with RISP and .364 in close-and-late situations (seventh inning or later in a one-run or tie game, or with the tying run on base, at the plate or in the on-deck circle). Shortstop: Derek Jeter, New York Yankees -- True to his nickname, "Captain Clutch" did his damage when it mattered most, ranking first among shortstops in on-base plus slugging (OPS) with RISP (1.063). After leading the Yankees to an American League-high 97 victories, Jeter batted .500 with four doubles and a home run in the Bronx Bombers' American League Division Series against the Tigers. Third base: David Wright, New York Mets -- Wright displayed poise well beyond his 23 years for the NL East champions. He amassed four walk-off hits, batted .348 in close-and-late situations and ranked second among third basemen in OPS with RISP and two outs (1.057). Catcher: Joe Mauer, Minnesota Twins -- A pure hitter, Mauer powered the Twins to an improbable AL Central crown. The 23-year-old phenom batted .360 with RISP and .408 with RISP and two outs en route to an AL-leading .347 average. Left field: Carl Crawford, Tampa Bay Devil Rays -- An emerging superstar, Crawford batted .348 with RISP. The speedy 25-year-old slugged .857 with RISP and two outs and led the Majors under those circumstances with a .413 average. Center field: Carlos Beltran, New York Mets -- Beltran smashed three grand slams and a pair of walk-off homers, sparking the Mets to their first NL East title since 1988. He sported a 1.130 OPS with RISP and two outs, tops among center fielders. Right field: Jermaine Dye, Chicago White Sox -- Dye made an improbable splash in the AL MVP race with a career season for the ages. The 32-year-old led right fielders in RBIs (120), OPS with RISP (1.138) and slugging percentage with RISP and two outs (.642). Designated hitter: David Ortiz, Boston Red Sox -- Securing his place among the most clutch hitters of all time, Ortiz led the Majors (and five other teams) with five walk-off hits, including three homers. In close-and-late situations, Big Papi ranked first among designated hitters with 29 RBIs. Starting pitcher: Johan Santana, Minnesota Twins -- Santana captured the pitching Triple Crown, leading the Majors with a 2.77 ERA and 245 Ks and tying for the big-league lead with 19 victories, six of which came after a Twins loss. The AL Cy Young Award favorite went 10-1 with a 2.54 ERA in the second half and 7-1 with a 2.10 ERA over the final two months. Closer: Joe Nathan, Minnesota Twins -- Nathan made good on 36 of 38 save opportunities to post the highest conversion percentage among regular closers (.947). The fireballing right-hander rounded out a near-perfect season with a 7-0 record and a 1.58 ERA. At one time or another, every elite Major Leaguer delivers under pressure. But the player who does it time and time again is more than just an All-Star -- he's All-Clutch.