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Former Cincinnati Reds and Detroit Tigers manager George “Sparky” Anderson died Thursday at the age of 76. Anderson was a three-time World Series champion and the first manager ever to lead a team from each league to a title.

Anderson went by many nicknames—Sparky became as much his name as any—but was most famous for being “Captain Hook,” a moniker given to him by the starting pitchers he made a habit of removing sooner and more readily than any other manager in baseball history. Anderson started a trend in that regard: The rise of relief pitching and beginning of the end for the complete game essentially coincide with the start of his Cincinnati tenure.

Anderson became one of the giants of the game from the early 1970s to the mid-1990s and changed the way the game is played forever. Who else has fundamentally altered the sport during its history? Which men have meant enough to the game to really change the course of its history? Here are five men who made the baseball world spin on new axes.

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It took all kinds of maneuvering and roster turnover, but the San Francisco Giants fielded the deepest team in the MLB postseason this year and are now World Series champions.

Tim Lincecum and Aubrey Huff are by now household names. The Series also gave a fresh spotlight to players like Edgar Renteria and Juan Uribe, who had about fallen into the baseball ether, and a new stage to young players like Buster Posey and Brian Wilson. Everyone contributed for the Giants, because everyone had to.

GM Brian Sabean began building toward this goal years ago, and a flurry of moves over the past two seasons put the team in position to finally win its first title since moving to San Francisco in the 1950s. Here are 10 of the most important moves made along the way.

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When Texas Rangers manager Ron Washington wrote in Vladimir Guerrero as his starting right fielder for Game 1 of the 2010 World Series, he probably saw things going a bit differently.

Guerrero and the Rangers lost the Series opener 11-7, with starting pitcher Cliff Lee failing to make it through the fifth inning.

Guerrero drove in two runs in the contest, one in the first inning and one in the ninth. That was hardly impressive given his opportunities during the night.

His defense, however, led to at least two San Francisco runs. Guerrero committed two errors in the bottom of the eighth inning, a frame in which the Giants pushed across three runs to put the game far out of reach.

Guerrero played only 18 games in the field this year after playing just twice in right field in 2009. Washington surely would prefer to have Guerrero at his usual designated hitter position, especially because Guerrero’s age and accumulated leg injuries have left him lacking as much for range as for reliability in the field.

Guerrero misplayed or nearly misplayed four balls that did not even show up as errors in the final line and generally looked lost. His arm probably retains some of the fire that intimidated baserunners during his tenure with the Montreal Expos, but the days when he could use that arm and his speed to make up for bad routes and tentative handling of the ball on easy flies and ground-ball singles are long gone.

The Rangers rationalized Guerrero’s misadventures simply by minimizing them: “A couple balls got by him,” said Washington, who added that he plans to play Guerrero again Thursday night in Game 2. He has since reversed that position, though.

Presumably, the real reasoning for keeping Guerrero in the lineup would be to augment the team’s lineup, and on the surface, that logic might hold up. Under more intense scrutiny, though, chinks in Guerrero’s offensive armor in Game 1 become apparent.

In the top of the first inning, Guerrero came up with runners on second and third and one out. He drove in a run on a single in that at-bat, but the hit was a one-hopper off the leg of Giants hurler Tim Lincecum. With two runners in scoring position, Guerrero had gotten just one home and did so in fairly fluky fashion.

Guerrero did not come up with runners on base again until the ninth, this time with the bases loaded and one away. Guerrero earned another RBI, but did so with a sacrifice fly that brought Texas to within one out of losing.

In the end, his line showed Guerrero as a solid hitter with two RBI. Given the four runners in scoring position when he came to the plate, though, and since he gave up an out to record the second, the two RBI are not quite as impressive as they seem. He did a decent job, but no more.

Instead of accepting Guerrero’s nightmarish defense in the hope of getting a breakout performance against Giants right-hander Matt Cain in Game 2, Washington should insert David Murphy in left field and move Nelson Cruz over to right. In the past two seasons, Guerrero’s OPS against right-handed pitching is a shade under .820. Murphy’s is a shade over .830 in the same time frame.

Murphy is just average in left field, but his presence would allow the strong defender Cruz to move over to a spot much more comfortable to him, in right.

Guerrero could be used in a high-leverage pinch-hitting situation, especially against a left-handed reliever, but the Rangers would be better off on the whole by using Murphy to start Game 2. Succumbing to reason< Washington has slotted Murphy in. Keep an eye on this move, which could help the Rangers even the Series on its way back to Arlington.

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The Texas Rangers and San Francisco Giants will square off starting Wednesday in the World Series. In a Fall Classic matchup for the ages, Cliff Lee and Tim Lincecum will face one another as mound opponents for Game 1.

It will likely be a great series, with two strong teams capable of beating one another in myriad ways. At the beginning of the season, though, it seemed a long shot for either to seriously threaten the powers that were in their respective leagues. In fact, neither team was even the favorite in the League Championship Series. The fact that both have made it this far is stunning.

It isn’t the first time the World Series has matched two unlikely combatants. Since the advent of the Wild Card and two-layer league playoffs, of course, there have been a fair number of upsets in early rounds of postseason play. Even before that era, thrilling pennant races featuring unlikely collapses and surprising upstarts produced many improbable twosomes.

Which 15 World Series have featured the least likely foes? How do the Rangers and Giants stack up? Where do legendary teams like the 1964 Cardinals and the 1969 “Miracle” New York Mets rank? Read on.

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Cliff Lee has done alright for himself this season.

The left-handed ace starter of the Texas Rangers hits free agency this winter, with rumors already swirling that the New York Yankees are preparing a mega-offer for him. He will have the attention, if not the courtship, of virtually every big-league team.

Lee’s 2010 stats look impressive enough entirely out of context: 12-9, 3.18 ERA, 212.1 innings and a staggering 10.28 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Consider, though, that Lee did all this despite missing the first month of the season. In fact, though he finished just 10th in the American League in innings pitched, he was easily first in innings per start.

Lee’s command and aggressiveness make him extraordinarily efficient, and his playoff performances so far (3-0, 24 innings, 34 strikeouts and just one walk through Monday) prove he has the entire package. Any of the 30 teams in Major League Baseball would get much better by signing Lee.

This is not utopia, though, and many teams simply have no chance. Who’s out of the running? Who might sneak in as a dark horse? Could the Yankees really land another top free agent? Read on.

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The San Francisco Giants can smell the pennant.

After an impressive Game 3 win behind Matt Cain and Cody Ross, San Francisco has a 2-1 edge in games in the 2010 NLCS against the Philadelphia Phillies. Game 4 will be played Wednesday in San Francisco, where the teams will also duel in Game 5 before (potentially) heading back to Philadelphia.

The Giants have to feel good about taking the lead for the second time in this series, after the two-time defending National League champion Phillies rallied to rout the G-men at Citizen’s Bank Park in Game 2 of the set. Manager Bruce Bochy looks like a genius for the myriad adjustments he has made as the series has progressed, and the offense has done just enough to support the stellar pitching staff.

Going into Game 4, the Giants have their foot on the throat of Charlie Manuel’s crew. The series become a very dicey proposition with a Phillies win, but if San Francisco can pull out a victory to go up 3-1, the series is all but over. Ten things will make or break the Giants’ effort to move within shouting distance of their first pennant since 2002. What are they?

Read on.

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Derek Jeter is a surefire Hall of Fame shortstop, the man who will be forever emblematic of the fifth Yankee dynasty and a career .314/.385/.452 hitter. Dubbed “the Captain” and “Mr. November,” he has come through in series after World Series for the New York Yankees.

He has 651 career plate appearances in postseason play, by far the most ever and enough to prove a long-held theory: If you put a guy into a given situation often enough, he ends up performing about as well in that situation as he does in all others. Jeter is a career .312/.381/.475 hitter in October (and, yes, November), eerily close to his career benchmarks.

He also has a certain invincibility in the hearts and minds of baseball people. No one ever questions that Jeter will deliver. He is as steady as the rain, as dependable and as persistent as the Postal Service, or so say the masses. If the nickname weren’t off the table before he arrived in the big leagues, they might have called him “the Mailman.”

With a rate hike on postage threatening to further cripple the massively indebted U.S. Postal Service at the dawn of 2011, though, the mail may not come the same way it used to for very long. Just so, Derek Jeter may not be long for his term as baseball’s prime superstar.

Wile and Wit and Quick with a Stick

Jeter was once among the game’s best offensive shortstops: From 1998 to 2003, he batted .324/.397/.478, an overall offensive performance 28 percent better than league average. During that era, though, he cost the Yankees 83 cumulative runs with his steady but limited play in the field. To remain effective, Jeter would need to balance out his game.

As he turned 30 and his plate prowess began to feel the first ravages of age (he would hit .310/.379/.442 over the next seven years, nothing to laugh at, but not as dominant as had been in the past), Jeter focused on improving his work with the glove. From 2004 to 2010, Jeter cost his team “only” 32 runs on defense, shortcomings his lessened offensive output still easily offset.

A Summer Song

In this last year of his latest Yankee contract, however, the Ageless One has looked aged. He did not slump through the harsh summer months; he did not seethe through a tough, cold spring before turning on the burners in the warmth of June. Jeter struggled uniformly, from the first to the final game of the 2010 season.

He has never been worse at the plate, unless you count a rough-hewn 15-game showcase in 1995. Jeter hit .270/.340/.370. He had the lowest line drive rate of his career and the highest ground ball rate in the Majors. He looked, well, ordinary, and that may be too kind. One year after a season in which he seemed to have found the fountain of youth, he reverted to the pattern of decline that had seemingly begun in 2008. One year after the best season he ever had as a defensive shortstop, he reverted to something very like the old, bad Jeter with the leather.

Still, as the ALCS draws nigh, Jeter stands on the precipice of history: His next run scored will be the hundredth of his playoff career—obviously, that’s another record. Two more doubles would tie him with his old teammate Bernie Williams for the postseason record in that category. He has half a dozen other records, and they’re all probably safe. There will not be many more guys who get to play an entire season’s worth of October baseball in their careers.

What does it all mean, though? It may mean that we should take a long look at Jeter and decide just how long he deserves to be the man in New York. It may mean that, just 76 hits shy of 3,000, Mr. November’s December is coming. It may mean that an old breed of shortstop now stands poised to reclaim the limelight, and (if Jeter is indeed the king of playoff baseball) dethrone His Majesty, the Captain.

All Shook Up

Jeter fundamentally changed the way baseball analysts, fans and executives viewed the shortstop position. He was neither the first nor the last of his kind, but without doubt, he was the most visible and sustained exemplar. He formed the mold into which all potential shortstops were formed for years.

Now, another mold has been cast. The men of this new generation are raw, unpolished. They are athletic and rangy but in need of more tutoring than Jeter (or his contemporaries Nomar Garciaparra or Alex Rodriguez) ever did. They have flashy games and flashy names—names like Starlin, Hanley and Elvis.

Ah, yes. Elvis. Here he is. If anyone is to unseat the Captain and claim primacy in the new shortstop order, who better to do it than a man who bears the name of a king?

Elvis Andrus is 22 years old, and he has a long road before him. The Texas Rangers shortstop is the anti-Jeter: His youth and his temperament make no allowance for Jeter’s tenacious consistency. Andrus is mercurial, exuberant and energetic, but he fizzled as the season wound to a close: The sometime stud who boasted of a .311/.398/.350 line on May 31 would stumble at length and fall hard, hitting just .245/.317/.279 for the remainder of the season.

With the changing of the leaves, however, comes a chance to change one’s skin, and for the young, the playoffs can be an opportunity to shed the shell of a serpentine season. Andrus tallied eight hits in 24 plate appearances in the Rangers‘ ALDS win over the Tampa Bay Rays. He stole three bases, notched a double and an RBI. It was not until the decisive fifth game, however, that Andrus subtly announced his designs on Jeter’s throne.

Desert Snake

Cobras are methodical killers. They are hunters of method that stalk their prey, identifying vulnerabilities and coaxing their subject into a trap. When they strike, though, they are able to kill only because nature has crafted them to do it, giving them all the skills and physical advantages they need to do the deed.

In the first inning of Game 5, Andrus began hunting. He stalked David Price, the opposing starting pitcher. Price was vulnerable; Price was his target.

Step one was easy: Wait for his pitch (a 2-1 fastball; Price threw far too many fastballs in his Game 1 loss, and he threw four straight to Andrus to open Game 5), hit it. Line drive, right field. Base hit.

That was when Andrus began his assault. He struck first by stealing second base. He stole it easily. He only needed to wait for a curve ball, and Price obliged him. Now he was in scoring position. The defense was tense, taut, out of sorts. Andrus had created chaos for his adversary. He went in for the kill.

As Price delivered again to Josh Hamilton, Andrus took off for third base. Hamilton hit a ground ball deep to the hole at first base—perfect. Andrus slowed only long enough to watch first baseman Carlos Pena field the ball and ensure he’d flip to Price for the out at first base. He took off again.

Third base coach Dave Anderson put up the stop sign. Andrus ran through it. Pena flipped to Price, who knew Andrus was heading home. Everyone knew Andrus was heading home. It made no difference. Price whirled as he stepped on the bag to retire Hamilton, then just held onto the ball. There would have been no play. The Rays were dead on the field. Andrus, with speed as his weapon, had struck, cobra-like.

Execution by Emulation

Jeter had such a heads-up play. It remains perhaps his most indelible performance. In Game 3 of the 2001 ALDS, he sprinted across the field to collect a relay throw, flipped to the catcher and got an improbable out on a sensational play at home plate. Like Andrus’s Rangers, Jeter’s Yankees on that night had no momentum and were in danger of elimination. Like Jeter’s Yankees, Andrus’s Rangers won convincingly after the tides turned. 

Nor are the cerebral nature and graceful elan of the two men’s greatest playoff moments the only logical point of comparison. Jeter, let no one forget, hit more balls on the ground this season than any other hitter in baseball. Andrus finished second. Andrus, like the young Jeter of the mid-1990s, has an infectious personality that makes him very much a part of a team fraught with veterans who might normally disdain such a brash and confident youngster.

Are Andrus’ stats on a par with Jeter’s, even in the elder man’s rookie year? Not at all, or at least not offensively. Then again, Jeter didn’t attain a real big-league job until he was almost 22—or roughly the time Andrus hit the wall in his sophomore season. Used to be, heirs apparent had to work as lowly royal apprentices a bit longer. Andrus, like the other princes of his day (Justin Upton, Jason Heyward and Starlin Castro jump to mind), caught the fast track to his throne.

What Kind of Day Has it Been?

Ultimately, Andrus’ season is far from over. He has at least four more games left in which to salvage a dreadful offensive campaign, and to boot (or not to boot), he is already a better defender of that most crucial defensive slot than Jeter ever was.

He has not cut his hair since March in deference to the team’s great performance all year—given the season he had, the inversion of Samson’s tale could hardly be more complete. Andrus is just 22; his future won’t hinge on this series. If the Rangers win, Jeter’s might.

The common parsing is to call Jeter the best shortstop of this generation. The premise of excellence is accurate; the parameters of time may not be any longer. Andrus is of this generation. Jeter is of another.

Matt Trueblood is a student at Loyola University Chicago and B/R College Writing Intern. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

With the Philadelphia Phillies and San Francisco Giants ready to get the 2010 NLCS underway Saturday night, the Phillies are the heavy favorites. San Francisco beat a fiercer first-round foe than did Charlie Manuel’s club, but the Phillies are a full-fledged National League dynasty. They will attempt to reach their third straight World Series this fall, after already having claimed their fourth straight division title.

This year’s team may have the best shot at winning it all–even though they actually did win it all in 2008. The 2010 Phillies have balance unlike those before them, with a three-headed monster atop their starting rotation that looks to be unmatched by any team still standing.

The ace of that staff, of course, is right-hander Roy Halladay. Halladay no-hit Cincinnati in the first round, but that tells only a part of the story of his historic debut season in the National League.

That campaign has also seen him throw a perfect game (against Florida in May), win a league-high 21 games (finishing nine of them and shutting out the opponent four times, also NL bests), top 250 innings and set new career high-water marks for strikeouts and walks per nine frames–all at the age of 33. If he was not a Hall of Fame pitcher to begin this season, he may be a Cooperstown shoo-in now.

Assuming (and it seems a safe assumption) that Halladay will get a chance to make two starts in the NLCS, the Phillies ought to win, and Halladay (in his very first opportunity to earn a postseason award) has a very real chance to be NLCS MVP. Here are ten reasons Doc will be crowned king of the NLCS.

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Poor Brooks Conrad.

The Atlanta Braves second baseman, whom the team was forced to place considerable faith in when they lost infielders Chipper Jones and Martin Prado to season-ending injuries, could not have had a harder time of it during Atlanta’s four-game loss to the San Francisco Giants in the NLDS. He collected just one hit and committed four extraordinarily costly errors, including three in the team’s Game 3 loss alone.

By the fourth and final contest, Cox could not even justify starting Conrad, and the man who had very nearly become a folk hero during a strong regular season now looks like the biggest playoff goat in Atlanta since Lonnie Smith.

Believe it or not, though, Conrad might not be the biggest goat of this year’s postseason. Several key contributors of whom much more was expected faltered nearly as badly as their teams made first-round exits, and thus Conrad has plenty of company. Where among the top five losers of the 2010 playoffs does he rank? Read on.

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If the Wild Card system in Major League Baseball had any remaining detractors entering this season’s Division Series round of postseason play—and it did—the pair of excellent series (San Francisco-Atlanta and Texas-Tampa Bay) may have wooed them all.

Even aside from Roy Halladay’s historic October debut, there were great performances by batters and pitchers alike all around the playoff circuit. Cliff Lee, Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte solidified their sterling playoff reputations, while Buster Posey, Tim Lincecum and Curtis Granderson began building their own October legacies.

The Rangers may be the best story entering the 2010 Championship Series round, having won their first-ever postseason series. But there are plenty of individual superstars who will vie for the bright spotlight of postseason glory. Through the first round, these five men have made the best cases.

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