In defense of strength up the middle

Sporting News, The, Oct 6, 1997 by David Falkner

One day early last month, Davey Johnson was asleep on a sofa in the visiting manager's office in Yankee Stadium. Snoring, on his back, he was hardly the picture of elegance. There was a knot of reporters waiting outside for him to roll over, wake up and begin talking about a pennant race that never was. The Orioles, heading down the September stretch, were many furlongs ahead of the Yankees and the "crucial" weekend series upcoming between the two teams had little real drama for anyone. Still, when Johnson finally returned from dreamland, the inevitable questions began. Like an old second baseman, he fielded them all--remarkably still seeming to be asleep. "Yeah, sure, every game's important, that's why we play 162 games." Yawn. "Crucial? Hey, if I could walk out of here right now with us taking two and the Yankees taking two, I'd do it in a minute. How's that for crucial?" Yawn. And yawn again.

But then, someone asked Johnson how he assessed his team heading into post-season. The Orioles at that point had lost five in a row and were not playing well Suddenly the scales seemed to fall from his ridded eyes, his recessed chin seemed to jut. "What we really need is for us to get healthy," he said. "We're not healthy up the middle right now. We need to get Robby (Alomar) back, we need to have Brady (Anderson) 100 percent. This is a different team than a year ago. (Mike) Bordick's been here all year, and that's a dramatic change for us, we've gotten so much better defensively. We're doing all the little things now, we've played good in close ballgames. Robby's been out approximately a month, and I just don't know. If we get him back, if we can just get him in there, we can go a long way. He's that important."

Alomar, indeed, is back for the Orioles' playoff series against the Mariners, yet as the regular season wound down, he continued to show signs of the nagging groin strain that sidelined him six weeks.

Still, what was so interesting about Johnson's response was his idea of what strength up the middle could mean to his team's chances. Usually managers talk about pitching and hot hitting at this time of year. The idea that a team's fortunes might somehow be tied to defense seemed a little novel--even quaint.

Was he right--or just old-fashioned? Does "strength up the middle" mean that much in this age of movable rosters and spare-part ballplayers built around Lloyd's of London pitching staffs and big-name home run hitters? Most of the players and managers we talked to on teams vying for the postseason this year strongly supported Johnson.

"If you want to understand just how important strength up the middle is," says Dusty Baker of the Giants, "think of it this way. It's like your vertebrae, it's what holds the rest of your team in the field together."

How so?

"Stars with your pitcher and catcher. If you get some offense out of your catcher, fine," Baker says, "but if you have a guy back there who's going to hound pitchers, block balls in the dirt so pitchers won't be afraid to throw breaking balls with men on base, that's a big plus--same as being able to throw out runners. If your pitcher can field--just that--that's completely overlooked and so helpful. Pete Rose's theory of hitting was that he would always try to hit the ball back up the middle right at the guy least able to field it--the pitcher. Because behind him was the biggest hole in the field. You take a look at Greg Maddux and all those Braves pitchers, and you'll see the difference. Those guys are all extra infielders for their team."

The numbers bear out Baker. Of the graves' starting rotation of John Smoltz, Denny Neagle, Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux, only Smoltz will not approach or surpass 40 assists this season. Maddux, the N.L Gold Glove winner last season when he recorded 71 assists, won't reach that number this year, but he will have more than 50 for the eighth time in nine seasons (the one exception being the strike-shortened '94 season).

Once the ball gets past the pitcher, Baker says, good teams have top players waiting. "Your shortstop's the guy who's going to handle more balls than anyone, the better he is, the more balls your team is going to stop, the fewer runs you're going to give away; your second baseman has got to turn the double play; the center fielder, if he's a real defensive captain out there, it's also like having an extra infielder in the outfield. You want him to catch everything, to know how to play every hitter, to be like a wide receiver who loves to run."

Dodgers manager Bill Russell points out that his team, realizing the importance of middle defense, tried to strengthen itself coming down the stretch by adding a second baseman, Eric Young, and a center fielder, Otis Nixon. "So much of the game is in the middle of the field," Russell says, "that's where the action's at" Alas, it was too little, too late (and, in fact, a crucial passed ball here, a critical error or misplay there cost the Dodgers dearly as they went from two games up on the Giants to two games down in the span of a week on the home straightaway).