It's no secret, I'm a huge fan of FJM.  On FJM, the writers highlight sports journalism (on-screen, on-line, and in print) gone awry.  Joe Morgan, the baseball HOF second baseman, is the poster boy because he is the analyst on the lead broadcast of the leading sports network - and he seemingly has done no homework on the game since 1994.

Never is this lack of research more apparent when Joe is asked to take part in an online chat.  Joe's analysis always ends with a "lack of consistency" to explain a hitter's regression from the previous year.  Joe, always consistent, is able to explain away every team's slow start - there just aren't "any great teams anymore."  The impact of that phrase is two fold.  One is the face value.  The other is the implication that there were once great teams, presumably the ones he was playing on or happened to lose to during his career.

I read this phrase enough to finally examine Mr Morgan's theory.  Is directly answering someone's question not worth your time because there simply aren't any great teams playing nowadays?  It's time to put Joe to the test.

Heading into this week of play, the Boston Red Sox were playing at a .596 clip.  They are considered the great team of today, but if no teams are actually great today, then one must presume that .600 is the threshold.  After all, .700 has only been achieved twice since Joe Morgan was involved in Major League baseball.  Those times?  The 1998 Yankees and the 2001 Mariners - well after Morgan's playing career ended.  So, in some sense, end of article.

Anyway, let's look at this .600 threshold.  Twenty-four teams did it in the 1970s.  Fifteen did it in the 1980s.  Including this season, seventeen have done since 2000 - with a year and a half to get it to twenty.  The point?  There is no correlation between decade and winning percentage.  It is akin to calling someone clutch.  A person could bat .500 with 2 out/RISP in season A,and spend seasons B-D hitting .200.  But the clutch label is hard to shake (to the benefit of Mr Jeter and to the chagrin of Mr Rodriguez).

Now, let's look at the 2008 Red Sox versus the 1978 Red Sox - who needed a 163rd game to be eliminated from the playoffs.  The 1978 Red Sox had a winning percentage of .607 and finished second in the AL East with a record of 99-64.  Applying the .596 win percentage at the beginning of this week, the 2008 Red Sox would finish in first place with 96 wins.  Their ExWL is 95-67 if you want to use that instead. 

So what's the difference in greatness?  Three wins.  Are today's teams simply three wins worse than teams of the 1970s?  Or could something actually be in play here?  I'm willing to bet that realignment and interleague play are factors - both of which have created the unbalanced schedule.

The 1978 Red Sox played fifteen games against the Detroit Tigers and ten games against the Seattle Mariners.  This season, the Sox play seven games against the Tigers and nine against the Mariners.  Teams play between six and nine games against intraleague non-division teams.  I picked the Mariners because they were bad then and they are bad now.  The Tigers were mediocre then and pretty bad right now.  If the Red Sox were to have those nine games back (instead of three game sets against the Phillies, Cardinals, and Diamondbacks), it could be reasoned that the Sox would post a 6-3 record in those games, but would wind up around the .500 mark against that NL competition.  The Red Sox have also added three games against the Yankees between 1978 and 2008.  If those three games were given to the Royals (from ten games to seven between 1978 and 2008), the Sox would be more likely to post a 2-1 record in those games.  Those scenarios give you the three wins Boston needs to be great in Joe Morgan's eyes.

Now, shouldn't greatness be measured by run differential, ERA+, OPS+, or anything that transcends eras?  How are two wins three decades apart the barometer of great when expansion, interleague play, three divisions, etc all have an affect?