SB Nation - Felix Heredia

Cubs Retro Recap: September 12, 1998

Al Yellon — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:20:16 -0000

The 1998 season was remarkable for many reasons -- not the least of which was the Cubs' first playoff season in nine years, and the first (and so far, only) wild card postseason spot won by the Cubs.

For the last 45 days of the season, no more than one game separated the first- and second-place teams in the NL wild card race -- the Cubs, Mets, and in the final week, the Giants, who the Cubs wound up playing in the memorable tiebreaker game at Wrigley Field.

This game was part of an amazing weekend series with the Brewers, who were in their first year as a NL team. The Cubs won two of three, but both teams scored 10 or more runs in all three games. Orlando Merced, pictured here, played a key role in this game. Why is this photo of him in a Twins uniform?

Primarily because Merced's Cubs career was very brief. The Twins sent him to the Red Sox in a July 31 deadline deal that year (along with Greg Swindell), but Boston released him on September 1. Four days later he was a Cub; he played in just 12 games and had only 10 at-bats. One of them was particularly important.

With all the memories that Sammy Sosa (and Mark McGwire) are making for us this season, it took a man who has been a Cub for just one week to get the most important hit in today's amazing 15-12 come-from-behind win over the Brewers.

Actually, calling it "come-from-behind" doesn't come close to describing what the Cubs did today. After being blasted in a slugfest yesterday 13-11, it looked like more of the same this afternoon, on a lovely sun-kissed 80-degree afternoon, the kind you see in September all the time and say, "Please stick around through the fall!"

Milwaukee hitters pounded Mike Morgan for three home runs in the third inning, one from Geoff Jenkins, one from Jeromy Burnitz and one from Bobby Hughes, who isn't really even a home run hitter. The eight-run inning chased Morgan, who's not anywhere near the pitcher who went 16-8 with a 2.55 ERA in his first incarnation as a Cub six years ago. The inning might have ended with "only" six runs, due to an error by Jose Hernandez that made the last two home runs come after the third out should have been registered.

So the Cubs were down 8-2; the Brewers made it 10-2 and then 12-5 by the time the Cubs bats finally woke up in the bottom of the seventh inning. Sammy slammed his 60th, a three-run job to make it 12-8, and Glenallen Hill followed with a solo shot to cut the deficit to three. Sammy's blast put him back within two of Mark McGwire, who went 0-for-3 today against the Astros.

Felix Heredia -- yes, Felix Heredia -- managed a scoreless eighth, and then Tyler Houston led off the last of the eighth with a homer off Chad Fox to make it 12-10. That was the eighth home run of the day.

Thank heavens for Terry Mulholland, who has done pretty much everything and anything Jim Riggleman has asked of him this year. He got the first two outs in the ninth before yielding to Rod Beck, who gave up a single to Marc Newfield to very deep short -- neither Hernandez nor Gary Gaetti could do anything with it -- before retiring Hughes to set up the bottom of the ninth.

Two singles, a successful sac bunt by Gaetti (what a find! Keep him around for a while!) and a walk loaded the bases for Houston, who singled in a pair to tie the game and sent Mickey Morandini, representing the winning run, to third base with one out.

Up stepped Orlando Merced.

Merced? Some of the crowd looked around, wondering who this guy was. The Cubs just signed him a week ago after the Red Sox let him go. He'd been 1-for-4 as a Cub, a single that drove in a run against one of his former teams, the Pirates, last Wednesday.

Merced hit Bob Wickman's second pitch into the right field bleachers for a three-run walkoff home run.

Seriously, you can't make this stuff up. Merced had a couple pretty good years for the Pirates in 1995 and 1996; he's only 31. Why not keep him around? He's a useful backup first baseman and outfielder.

And he won the game. I think everyone knows who he is now. The win, coupled with the Mets' loss to the Expos, puts the Cubs one game ahead of New York in the wild card race. It's been close like this for more than a month. Tomorrow, Steve Trachsel faces the Brewers' Brad Woodall.

What a year. No matter what happens, we'll always remember the 1998 season.

Trading Deadline Musings: Who Have the Mets Traded With and When?

Eno Sarris — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 16:01:04 -0000

With all the trade rumors swirling, it might seem like all teams in the major leagues trade with all the other teams all of the time. At least, the rumors seem to encompass most of the players on most of the teams in some capacity or another. "Their best player for our worst prospect" might be the rallying cry of the season. Once the deadline passes, we'll all remember really quickly how rare a high-profile trade is. They just don't happen that often, right?

Now Baseball-Reference has given us a great new tool that can help us quantify exactly how rare trades are. This tool allows us to see all the trades that two teams have ever completed with each other in their history. It's fun.

A useful application seemed to be a quantification of trade tendencies. Who have the Mets traded with most? Least? And how long has it been since the last trade with a franchise? Below the jump you'll find some answers.

In order to get around the expansion issues, trades are listed as a yearly rate. The denominator is the number of years that both the Mets and the trading franchise have been in the league at the same time. Also, only trades were counted, not purchases. We'd like to know about the number of times a team was actually willing to swap players with the Mets.

There's not a whole ton we can do with this. Well, except call the Royals and ask what's up. Cause in almost two out of every three years, the Mets and Royals hook up. Maybe there's something about struggling teams with good farm systems in here. The Royals, Diamondbacks, Rockies, Padres and Expos/Nationals could all be described as such. The Mets have often been buyers, and those teams have often had young prospects waiting in the wings to replace the players they trade away.

It's also interesting that the Giants and Mets have not completed many trades, but does that make it any less likely that they complete a deal going forward? There have been different leaderships in charge all along, and it seems like folly to ascribe this to the cities rather than the actual personalities involved. As in, it might be true that Omar Minaya and Brian Sabean didn't have a great working relationship, but that doesn't say much about Sandy Alderson.

What we can inspect is the team's tendency to avoid trading within the division. The average trades per year with a team is .35, which actually seems like a lot. That means that the Mets make ten trades per year on average. Since so many are low-level trades, our idea that teams don't like to trade within the division probably has more to do with the profile of the players involved rather than the actual number of in-division trades. Other than Philadelphia, the Mets have completed more than .35 trades per year with every team in their division. Perhaps what this means is that the Mets would trade with a team in their division if that team wasn't competitive, since the Phillies have been the winningest team in the division other than the Braves. Certainly seeing that the Washington/Montreal franchise is a top-six trade partner points in that direction.

A stronger effect can be seen with the Yankees. Even if you correct for the difference between the American and National Leagues -- the Mets have averaged .43 trades per year with NL teams and only .27 trades per year with AL teams -- the Yankees are a rare partner. They only complete a trade with the Mets about once every seven years. Also, not only are they a bottom-three trade partner in terms of volume, but it's been a long time since the last trade with the Yankees. Mike Stanton for Felix Heredia in 2004.

Either way you dice it, the Mets don't seem to love trading with the Yankees. But there are the Giants again. Maybe Brian Sabean is a difficult trade partner, and maybe there won't be a Carlos Beltran trade to the west coast. The fact that the second-most cited team in the Beltran rumors is Philadelphia also seems funny.

Perhaps it's all just one big cycle. Send Jason Isringhausen to San Francisco and Carlos Beltran to Philadelphia and suddenly Oakland is our least likely trade partner. And that would be a shame because that organization has traded away some interesting young talent in recent years.

Cubs Take Series From Rangers; Blackhawks Take Series From Sharks, Go To Stanley Cup Final

Al Yellon — Sun, 23 May 2010 22:37:39 -0000

ARLINGTON, Texas -- What a day for Cubs and Blackhawks fans!

First, congratulations to the Blackhawks on reaching the Stanley Cup finals for the first time in 18 years -- and this time, they should be the favorite to win. Outstanding play by the Hawks in coming from behind today.

Meanwhile, the Cubs roared out to a 4-0 first-inning lead against the Rangers and had to get outstanding relief work from Sean Marshall and Carlos Marmol to hang on for their second straight 5-4 win over Texas. The series win gave the Cubs a 3-2 record on their brief road trip -- all against first-place teams. Who says this Cubs team can't compete?

In their last 12 games, the Cubs have played eight games decided by one run and gone 4-4 in those eight. They really could have won all five games on this road trip, the last four of them all one-run games. The Cubs are now 7-10 for the season in one-run games; most of that is due to the bullpen issues that have dogged this team all year. Even the presence of Bob Howry (whose entry into the game nearly blew up the Cubs Twitterverse) didn't harm the result, although Howry gave up a double that scored the Rangers' fourth and last run of the game. After that Howry got Ian Kinsler to pop up and after an intentional pass, Marshall was summoned to end the inning, which he did by getting Josh Hamilton to hit a soft line drive right at Ryan Theriot.

The Cubs' four-run first was highlighted by Alfonso Soriano's two-run homer, his ninth of the season and 299th of his career. Derrek Lee has 298 career home runs -- perhaps, as Jermaine Dye and Paul Konerko did last year for the White Sox, the Cubs' pair can hit their 300th both in the same game (Dye and Konerko did it back-to-back on April 13, 2009).

But that's a story for another day. Lee had an RBI single in that first inning and looked better at the plate. Aramis Ramirez did not play today and according to this Carrie Muskat tweet, will miss a few more days:

X-rays Sunday of #Cubs Aramis Ramirez's left thumb were negative but he will sit for few days to heal mild sprain/bruise

We can only hope that rest will bring Aramis back to his normal level of performance.

Way above any of our expectations is Carlos Silva, who became the first Cubs starting pitcher to start the season 6-0 since Ken Holtzman in 1967:

Silva is the 11th pitcher to begin their Cubs career at 6-0, and fifth to do so as a starter. The latter list includes Dizzy Dean (6-0 in 1938), King Cole (8-0 in 1910), Jack Taylor (7-0 in 1899) and Fred Goldsmith (7-0 in 1880).

The last pitcher to start his Cubs career at 6-0 was Felix Heredia, who picked up the wins in relief in 1998-99.

Holtzman spent most of 1967 in military service and pitched only 12 starts, on weekend passes -- he wound up that season 9-0. Silva made only one real mistake, a ball Michael Young smacked for a two-run homer, and was lifted in the sixth because of minor neck problems, two outs short of a "quality start".

Carlos Marmol made it interesting in the ninth by walking Kinsler before getting Vladimir Guerrero to end it on a called third strike. All three games in this series had racheted-up intensity -- I wouldn't call it playoff intensity, not in mid-May, but these games felt far more intense than most regular season games. The Cubs rose to the occasion by taking these last two -- let's hope they keep that feeling over the off day, because it won't get any easier during the upcoming homestand.

A big thank you to the Rangers fans, who were friendly and hospitable throughout -- none of the usual Cub-baiting nonsense that one often hears at road games, although I did see someone wearing a T-shirt that he had hand-written "1908 Goat" on. Hey, buddy: get some new material. And to the Cubs fans at Rangers Ballpark who started lifting their "W" flags with two out in the ninth -- don't do that! Major jinx material. The flags don't come out until the game is won.

Which it was today. Enjoy the off day, and remember -- this team, though flawed, is just as good as nearly every other flawed NL team.