2013 World Series Teams from the Past!

In a strange departure from video game industry tradition, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment has chosen to release Batman: Arkham Origins, their highly anticipated follow-up to Arkham City, on a Friday instead of Tuesday. I will be picking up my copy at midnight tonight, whereupon I will very likely bring back the live-blog feature I employed for Rocksteady's seminal classic in 2011. Warner Bros. Games Montréal took over development work for the three-quel, in which the lack of truly iconic villains should lead to lower expectations than its predecessor, but I don't doubt that a large contingent of Batman faithful will flock to see the next installment of the series... and I hope that some of them will use this blog to enhance their experience!

But in the mean time, the World Series is still going on. And in honor of Boston's (legitimate or not) Game 1 victory over the Cardinals, I'd like to take a dip into my personal archives and post my lineup documents for the 2000 versions of both competing clubs, the very first year for which I made such lists. Back then I also did a little more legwork, adding up the point totals of each starter (or member of the bullpen) and ranking them compared to the rest of the league - those are the numbers that appear in brackets at the top of each list. First, the winners of nine straight World Series games, the Boston Red Sox:

The squad represented above won 85 games and finished third in the Wild Card standings behind the Mariners and Indians. On an aesthetic note, notice the more descriptive primary logo featuring the two Red Sox (the only part of the logo that survived the 2009 rebrand) set in front of a baseball with the team city and nickname displayed around it. That also means that this team's players had their names and numbers on their road uniforms displayed in the more professional-looking red with blue piping rather than the modern solid blue. The only player in this lineup who stayed with the Red Sox through the rebrand was catcher Jason Varitek, who became their team captain and retired a Red Sox-only player. Varitek was also the most recent offensive member of this team to retire, unless you count 2000 AL batting champ Nomar Garciaparra's tenure as a commentator for ESPN. The only other fantasy-relevant piece of this lineup was journeyman center fielder Carl Everett, who would never again come close to his year 2000 greatness.

The starting staff was basically Pedro Martinez and pray for rain. As evidence of his greatness, I offer this quote that was attributed to an unknown source in this article:

At his peak? I can say without hesitation that I believe that Pedro '99-'00 was the best there ever was and the best there ever will be. I think that no one has ever had as good a two year period as those two Pedro years, and I'm not just talking about pitchers. I don't think anyone's ever been as good at anything as Pedro was at throwing a baseball. I'm talking Einstein's '21 season, Churchill's '41-45 campaign, and Hendrix's '67-68 

Pedro’s ‘99-00 was better.       

To put those numbers in perspective, only five other pitchers eclipsed 3,000 points in a season since 2000: Randy Johnson (who did it four times), Curt Schilling (twice), Clayton Kershaw (twice), Justin Verlander (once), and Johan Santana (once). Johnson is also the only pitcher in that span to break 100 points per game. I don't know if any other pitcher in baseball was ever more deserving of the back-to-back Cy Young Awards Pedro received in those two above-mentioned years. Moving on to the bullpen, star closer Derek Lowe was the only player in this list to play in 2013, and will likely be the last, as he announced his retirement during the season.

Now the Cardinals, who I'm sure will be watching John Lackey's glove/forearm with a pair of high-powered binoculars during tonight's game:

The 2000 Cardinals' 95 wins were enough to win the NL Central, but they fell to the Mets in the NLCS setting up the famous Subway Series. The two biggest offensive producers in this lineup were center fielder Jim Edmonds, in his first year after being acquired from the Angels, and first baseman Mark McGwire, in his penultimate season in the bigs. Looking at Big Mac's PPG average clearly shows that he was injured for much of the year and his game logs confirm a stretch of 56 missed games between July and September - had he played a full season, it's not unlikely that he would have wound up with Garciaparra-esque numbers. The team's best pitcher is also the owner of the team's most tragic story: just two years later, Darryl Kile would be found dead in his Chicago hotel room from coronary disease. He is still sorely missed in the baseball world.

In terms of active players, this team has two legitimate ones and two special cases. The first and most notable special case is that 2000 catcher Mike Matheny is the club's current manager, who has done an admirable job replacing surefire Hall of Famer Tony LaRussa. Utility infielder Placido Polanco was the starting third baseman for the Marlins this year (although no one seems to be quite sure why) and SP2 Rick Ankiel spent time in the outfield with the Astros and Mets before getting released part way through 2013. The other special case is 37-year-old SS Edgar Renteria, who hasn't appeared in a major league game since 2011, but who nevertheless started for his native Colombia in the 2013 World Baseball Classic.

There you have it, a glimpse into the storied past of these two storied franchises. Keep tuning in to the World Series on FOX and watch this space in the coming weeks for a FULL ON ARKHAM MELTDOWN!!!1