A few weeks ago, Jason Giambi led the Yankees to a dramatic come from behind victory with a two out, two run walk off home run. Fans cheered, the Yankees grinned from ear to ear, and for five minutes, everyone forgot the terrible start by Chein-Ming Wang.
It’s a turning point in the season, people exclaimed. This is the kind of game that turns a club around. This game will push them forward despite a lackluster first few months.
It would be nice if that were the case and, Yankee Gods willing, it might have even happened. If it did, it would have been coincidence.
People like to talk a lot about momentum in sports. It’s almost comical, really. What happened was, many years ago, people realized that they couldn't rationally explain the ups and downs of a professional sport team. Why would a team win five in a row one week, then lose four in a row the next? The usual reasons (and usually correct reasons) based on performance weren't very sexy and a little too after the fact. People needed to be smarter.
Enter momentum. The theory is that winning games creates momentum. When a team wins a particularly dramatic game, even if they give up eight runs like the Yankees did that day, they have built character, confidence, and therefore, momentum (C+C=M for those taking notes).
This theory is great in the unaccountable world of sports commentating. You get to sound like you have some insight into how the game is played while giving fans hope by regurgitating a tired old cliché that doesn't mean anything. And four days later, when the "momentum team" has lost four in a row, you can simply ignore it and discuss how their pitching still stinks.
And that's really the point. I'm sure Giambi's home run made all of the Yankee players really happy. But will that happiness make Cano hit better over the next week? Will Wang's next start be better because Giambi bailed him out this time? Will Jeter gain an extra step up the middle while riding the high of Thursday's win?
Doubtful. Momentum goes as far as the next game's starter. If the next Yankee pitcher throws a good game, that will contribute a heck of a lot more to winning than momentum. Of course, Yankee pitching has been a bit of a hodge podge, with the resurrected Mike Mussina becoming the improbable ace of the staff. But all of the Yankees' pitchers are capable of giving a quality start, and when a couple of pitchers in a row have good games, next thing you know, you have "momentum."
Winning breeds momentum and confidence and chemistry and all the intangibles we can't substantiate in sports, not vice versa. But like everything else in life, we feel a need to explain the unexplainable. That inability to explain everything is what makes it fun.
Momentum naturally segues into another conversation, one that centers on team chemistry. Like character and confidence, chemistry begins with a "C." It's also about as difficult to define as its consonant brethren.
I've often been mystified about team chemistry because it seems so detectible to the naked eye. When baseball players are celebrating good plays on the field, they appear to have chemistry. When they can't hit or pitch worth a lick and hang their heads, they seem to lack chemistry. All of which leads me to believe that chemistry, much like momentum, is something built on success. Everyone is happy when everyone wins.
I found myself in a drawn out discussion with a fellow Internet user a while ago regarding chemistry. They were nice enough to visit my little blog and read my bio, in which I stated that I thought chemistry was a myth. I didn't clarify that I actually believe chemistry can be a good thing but that it does not, in fact, lead to inflated statistics by players. This reader lambasted me for such an ignorant observation and claimed that the Blue Jays pre-Joe Carter and Roberto Alomar and post Carter/Alomar were proof of chemistry.
Proof of chemistry? The Holy Grail of baseball lore? I had to investigate.
I quickly looked up the early 1990's Blue Jays, hoping to see team chemistry jump out at me. I dug and dug and dug, and decided that the only way to figure out if the Blue Jays had truly used team chemistry to overhaul their roster and make themselves better was to compare the team before the trade for Carter and Alomar in 1990 to the World Series team in 1992.
Here's what I found:
Of the 29 main contributors to the 1990 "bad chemistry" team, defining a main contributor as at least 70 at bats or eight appearances as a pitcher, 19 of those players returned for the 1991 season, for a 34% roster turnover.
That's a lot but not to bad.
The 1990 team scored 767 runs and allowed 661 for a team ERA of 3.84 and a run differential of 106, which is pretty good.
The 1991 team scored 684 runs (-83) and allowed 622 (-39) for a team ERA of 3.50 and a run differential of 62, which is less than 1990.
So while the pitching improved, it didn't makeup for the turnover in offense and actually made the Blue Jays 44 runs worse than before the trade.
Of the 1992 roster, the first of two World Series winners, there were eleven players leftover from the 1990 "bad chemistry" team, for a turnover of 62%, more than half the roster.
The 1992 team scored 780 runs, up 96 from 1991 and 13 from 1990, and allowed 682 runs, down 2 from 1990 and up 60 from 1991, for a team ERA of 3.91, worst of the three years. The run differential, however, was back up to 98, which is pretty good.
Now, with this complete makeover in roster in the name of team chemistry, one would expect that, with chemistry better, the existing players from 1990 would perform better on the 1992 team. So let's break that down.
1990 Avg OBP Slg
Greg Myers .236 . 293 .332
John Olerud .265 .364 .430
Kelly Gruber .274 .330 .512
Manuel Lee .243 .288 .340
Pat Borders .286 .319 .497
Total 1.304 1.594 2.111
ERA W L
Dave Stieb 2.93 18 6
David Wells 3.14 11 6
Duane Ward 3.45 2 8
Jimmy Key 4.25 13 7
Todd Stottlemyre 4.34 13 17
Tom Henke 2.17 2 4
Total 20.28 59 48
1992 Avg OBP Slg
Greg Myers .230 .279 .377
John Olerud .284 .375 .450
Kelly Gruber .229 .275 .352
Manuel Lee .263 .343 .316
Pat Borders .242 .290 .385
Total 1.248 1.562 1.880
ERA W L
Dave Stieb 5.04 4 6
David Wells 5.40 7 9
Duane Ward 1.95 7 4
Jimmy Key 3.53 13 13
Todd Stottlemyre 4.50 12 11
Tom Henke 2.26 3 2
Total 22.68 46 45
Difference between 1990 and 1992:
Avg -.056
OBP -.032
Slg -.231
ERA +2.40 (went up)
W –13
L –3 (less losses)
In every statistic except losses, the players who were on the 1990 team performed worse as a group than they did in 1992. Meyers, Olerud, Ward, and Key saw their statistics improve, although Meyers only had 61 at bats and Olerud was 23, finishing his third season at a young age and priming to break out in 1993.
While the chemistry may have been better on the team, it didn't positively impact the players that played on both teams to perform better in 1992.
So what have I proven? Not much, probably. Realistically, trying to prove chemistry or momentum as aberrations is an impossible task, because like so many things in baseball, they're rooted in human nature. It's natural for Joe Fan to want to look at his team and see good chemistry when they're winning. He feels good when they win and so do the players. He feels momentum when his team wins a few games in a row and so do the players. We see it because we feel it. It makes us a part of the game because we're sharing in that elation with our team.
That doesn't mean I can play centerfield for the New York Yankees.
Scott Ham can be reached at scotth23@hotmail.com