MLB Alternate Realities: What if the Oakland Athletics Jeremy Giambi slid?
Ever ponder what would have happened if some of the biggest events in baseball history had a different outcome? Ponder no more. What if Jeremy Giambi slid?
The date is October 13, 2001. The Oakland Athletics had just stolen two games at Yankees Stadium against the three-time defending champion New York Yankees in the American League Division Series. Backed by Jason Giambi, the 102-win Athletics returned to Oakland looking to put them away.
Trailing 1-0 with a locked-in Mike Mussina on the mound, Terrence Long ripped one down the right-field line with Jeremy Giambi trucking home to tie the game. In a play of complete incompetence, Shane Spencer overthrows not one, but two cutoff men as the younger Giambi thought he had a clear path to home. Seemingly out of position, Derek Jeter grabs Spencer’s errant throw, flips it backwards to Jorge Posada, who in turn tagged out Giambi. It turned the tide of the ALDS, and the As would continue their four-year trend of being bumped in the first round.
Why was Jeter even there? Some will tell you he was where he was supposed to be. Others will say it was because he wisely had little faith in his right fielder. More importantly, why didn’t Giambi slide under the tag? Most will tell you it’s because he, like everyone else watching, thought there was no chance of a play at the plate.
But what if he did slide? What if he beat the tag and sent the Oakland Athletics to a three-game sweep of the Yankees most recent dynasty. It wouldn’t have only changed the course of history by the bay, but all of baseball history.
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First and foremost, the As were completely reshaped after that season. Fresh off a 2000 Most Valuable Player campaign and leading the AL in home runs in 2001, Giambi switched coasts. Johnny Damon would also head east, becoming part of the Idiots that would change Boston Red Sox lore forever. And Jason Isringhausen would head back to the National League.
Would they have left? The Athletics next opponent, had they won, were the record-setting 116-win division foe Seattle Mariners. Oakland had gone 9-10 against them in 2001, but that record is misleading. The As were amongst a torrid, still MLB-record, second half of baseball. After an abysmal start to the season, they went 63-18 over the final 81 games. They had gone 4-2 over the Mariners in the last month, including a three-game sweep in Oakland.
Had Giambi slid, maybe his brother stays, and his career doesn’t go on the downward spiral it seemed to take once in the Bronx. Maybe they hold onto at least one of Damon or Izzy, or maybe even both. Instead, they lost three key, high-profile players.
Billy Beane’s response, of course, would change baseball history.
The general manager, now void of high-salaried type players, turned his focus to sabermetrics. Instead of big power bats or players who hit for high average, Beane looked to metrics like on base percentage and slugging percentage. Instead of bringing in new fancy free agents, Beane signed Scott Hatteberg for $900,000. Instead of trading for big names like Damon and Jermaine Dye, he went and got Ray Durham at the deadline. Instead of finding a speedy replacement for the loss in his outfield, he signed 36-year old veteran David Justice.
The As would win 103 games that season. Moneyball was born.
Sure, if you watched the movie and skipped the best-selling book penned in 2003, you don’t realize that Beane’s Big Three were primarily responsible. Barry Zito would win Cy Young, and Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder became household names. But a new wave of baseball was born.
Some agreed. Some disagreed. Teams began to move on from scouts and closer to analytics. Theo Epstein became a boy wonder and has broken two curses along the way, blending the new style of analytics and old ways of baseball.
Had the As swept the most dominant team of that era, things could have changed. Had they made it to the World Series, that team may have stuck together. Had they stuck together, they may have been a dynasty. And Michael Lewis’ sports masterpiece may have been The Blind Side, not Moneyball.
Which is why Oakland Athletics fans by the bay must ask themselves every Opening Day:
What if Jeremy Giambi slid?