Now, I could go the easy route and talk about the Mitchell Report, that has left baseball in tatters. And if you don't agree, well, arguably the best pitcher and best hitter in baseball HISTORY are being questioned about the legitimacy of their stats. We have a commissioner of ten years and a union president who are admitting fault for allowing a pervasive atmosphere of straight-up cheating in a professional sport, and doing so about ten years too late. And when fantasy baseball experts have to factor in things like, "is he in for a drop in his stats because he's not on the roids anymore," we've come to a sad time in a sport that once gave a country identity and defined a culture.But what I DO want to talk about is the falling apart of two franchises both headed on the same downward trajectory, but yet couldn't be more disparate: the MLB's Oakland Athletics and the NHL's Toronto Maple Leafs.
In spite of my Cardinal and Blue Jay allegiances, I've always halfway rooted for the Oakland Athletics. Maybe it was the clean green uniforms. Maybe it was the sight of Dennis Eckersley falling off his ass, the picture of effort, to throw a fastball for a strike. Maybe it was the under, then slightly over, stated genius of Billy Beane and his Moneyball philosophy, and the fact that for all the naysayers, we couldn't deny that the Beane-led Athletics just kept on winning.
Whatever it was, I respected the Athletics for what they were, which was up until last year a contending outfit. In the new millenium, the Athletics have finished no lower than second in the AL West division, and has made the playoffs five times. But after an injury-plagued, underachieving 76-86 campaign in 2006-07 for a team where success was an expectation, Oakland management blew up the roster, trading away its best (and most popular) hitter in Nick Swisher, its ace pitcher in Dan Haren, heart-and-soul centre fielder Mark Kotsay and rumblings that it could deal star closer Huston Street and starter Rich Harden, all for prospects and picks.
These were not moves that were met with unthinking praise by an already middling fanbase. Haren is a 27-year-old 15-game winner who was the best pitcher of the season's first half; Swisher is also 27, a guy who hit 35 homers in 05-06 and, in this most recent down year, hit for 22 homers and a higher average than the year before.
But even as Oakland readies for a stadium move to the little-known suburb of Fremont, and even though it would've made all the sense in the world to welcome that new stadium with recognizable faces, it took huge cojones for Beane and the others in Athletics management to decide that even if the team wasn't injured, it wouldn't have been enough.
Cojones is exactly what Leaf management, or rather the entire franchise, doesn't own. It has middled at pathetic mediocrity for 15 years, the days of looking to actually improve the team long gone. Last year was the second consecutive year without a playoff appearance for a team with a storied legacy of competitiveness and winning, and they returned after the offseason with a lineup largely unchanged except for the position they regrettably believed to be their weakest, in net. But the problem goes deeper than an Andrew Raycroft proverbially "sucking", or any one player performing poorly. The sad-sack collection of skaters in Toronto are playing to their ability and have no one to blame than a hilariously bad string of administrators and a franchise where staidness has become a team philosophy.
Sadly, I don't really blame them there, after all- why would they make changes if they're going to sell out every game, no matter what kind of half-ass product they present on the ice? At the time of this writing, 10 players are 28 or younger, and none of them are impact players. The most productive is Nik Antropov, who is so injury-prone that he has already beaten my yearly over-under on how long it would take for him to get a year-ending toenail injury (I had bet it'd take 20, tops). Alexander Steen and Matt Stajan, who started off their careers with reasonable promise, both have a meager 19 points more than halfway through the season. Jiri Tlusty, their first-round draft pick from two years ago, has five points in his nine minutes a game.
Free agency is not a long-term, or even really a short-term, fix. Free agency lets you fill in holes on a team that needs only minor tweaks. Still, the Leafs have failed to recognize that teams are built on cultivating youth, trades, and the balls to struggle through the hard times. But the Leafs are so incredibly neutered by the Toronto market, scared to make any move of tangible value and build a long-term power like the ones in Detroit and the up-and-coming ones in Phoenix, Minnesota, and Edmonton. Detroit, especially, proves that you can balance current success with future potential, and because of it boasts two players in the top ten of league scoring, a 29-year-old Pavel Datsyuk and 27-year-old Henrik Zetterberg.
The Athletics have done this before- blown up the whole thing and dealt away two-thirds of their "Big Three" pitchers, Barry Zito, Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson. The year after, they managed to come first in the division, doing so on the back of such young talent as Haren and Swisher. Now, with an assessment that is at the same time brutally honest and perfectly timed--and yes, Toronto, you can have both--the Athletics are primed to thrive with the prospects they received in return, including star-to-be Daric Barton.
It's a lesson that the falling Leafs need to learn. In fact, it makes sense for the Leafs to be able to be the greatest example of that lesson. That I-bleed-blue fan base should allow them to more easily swallow the understandable lows of developing youth and can ascertain their return when that youth hits high gear. Instead, that fan base is a depressing cyclical tragedy, replenishing itself with more blindly rabid fans when fans realize they're supporting the problem. It just allows the team continue to not worry about the little issue of being accountable to their fans. So too does this allow them to ignore the knowledge that when things get stale, and no young, revitalizing talent is coming up the pipeline--a result of years of inadequate drafting--you HAVE to get youth into your team. There's no hope for this team, as it exists, or with any single free agent, to win the Stanley Cup. And if you're only aiming for mediocrity--just enough to get you into the playoffs so you can charge for those ever-expensive playoff tickets--then perpetual mediocrity is exactly what you're going to get.
So while the Athletics may have done the unpopular moves, Athletic fans can know that there's at least hope. The Leafs, meanwhile, are an unwatchable outfit with all the potential for improvement as a hacked-down tree stump.
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