And it don't stop...
One Man Band takes a break from studying for the bar exam to kick out his AL and NL All-Star Roster predictions. Scroll down to the 7/3 and 7/4 posts and see how he did. Damn well, I think -- he certainly got into a Joe Torre mindset by nailing all the Yankees and fingering all the (at that point) probable exclusions. I admire this, because I'm terrible at these kinds of predictions; I'm pretty psyched to read his take on the All-Star game. Pretty soon, his word will be legal, you know.
ESPN Classic is offering a nice warm-up for the upcoming festivities with this list of All-Star contests from 1933-2003. I know I'm not being fair towards expansion and all that, but it strikes me that things have become very bloated with the mid-season classic in the modern era. The rosters have practically doubled since the game's inception. Teams of 18 squared off in 1933, while teams of 34 duked it out last year. Even with the surplus of players, everyone didn't make it into the game in 2002, the year of the infamous overtime tie in Miller Park.
For more comprehensive coverage, definitely check out what's cookin' on mlb.com. Rosters are there, as well as box scores for every contest, mini-recaps, detailed information on injury replacements, and all manner of assorted esoterica-- like this list of all the All-Star rookie starters, as well as the answer to the following question: how many countries have been represented in the All-Star game? Hint: it's more than you'd think (answer posted in comments section).
I have two requests for this year's game. First, please please please let the NL All-Stars win. Yet another AL victory does nothing to promote the world outside of the Yankess and Red Sox, and the NL has the pitching this year to do it. Next, please consider a return to using pitching more judiciously. No more 2 inning starts followed by seven tense innings of sloppy relief. Both sides got through with three pitchers pitching 3 innings each way back in '33. All the NL needs is Clemens, Schmidt and Johnson to throw heat. I'm not holding my breath for either; Christmas (i.e. how everyone else spells "Hanukkah") doesn't come in July.
Friday, July 09, 2004
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
Now, not never
Bobby Abreu finally made it to the All-Star Game in his ninth season as internet voting closed on the final two All-Star selections this evening. 2 million people wanted to see Abreu represent the NL for the first time in his career, and there's at least 2 million reasons why Abreu's the right choice. Hell, I voted for Abreu six times, one for every year he's been snubbed so far -- though I did have some misgivings. Aramis Ramirez, currently batting .326 with 15hr and 56rbi, might've been a strong choice for this year, too; his contributions to the Cubs' offense this year (Dusty Baker has called him the "cornerstone" of the club) are undeniable, and he murdered the ball during the team's pennant run last year. In a just world, he would have made the roster, too (he was neck-and-neck with Abreu in voting yesterday). But in a just world, Barry Larkin wouldn't have been voted in as the starting shortstop this year and Abreu would've gotten his propers long ago.
So back to the man of the hour. Beginning in 1998, when Abreu established himself as a starter in his first season with the Phillies, any of his seasons could've been considered All-Star worthy. He's hit at a .300 clip or better in 5 of those 6 seasons, and has never missed more than 11 games in any of those seasons. In 2001, when his average dipped to .289, he played in all 162 games of the season and ranked top-10 in runs, walks, stolen bases, extra base hits, doubles and sacrifice flies. He got on base less (the only time his OBP has dipped below .400), but compensated with better power numbers.
Before today, Bobby Abreu had the distinction of being the best baseball player never to be included on an All-Star roster. I'm sure he's happy to not have that albatross hanging around his neck anymore. But despite his monstrous stats, Abreu also has the misfortune of being a mercurial player. He always finishes strong at the end of the season, but has a reputation for being frustratingly streaky. A choker. A difficult presence on the field. Undisciplined. Every year, there's a report out of Philly that proclaims that the fans are "tiring of his slack attitude." Sure, the Philly fans give their stars no quarter -- a friend of mine took issue with Scott Rolen in 2001 (in the midst of a fine season) for "only hitting home runs when it doesn't count." Pat Burrell's gotta be happy that he's not the locus of frustrations this year. The only guy who gets it worse than Larry Bowa year in, year out is Abreu. He isa slow starter, but so is Jim Thome.
In the end, it's not sentiment that prevails with the Abreu selection. He's in the midst of his greatest campaign yet with a .301 average, 17hr and 57rbi -- putting him on pace to eclipse previous highs for home runs and driving runs in. His OPS is the highest it has ever been (1.010 -- compare to Moises Alou's .850 this season) and he's getting on base at a torrid pace, suggesting he'll trump his highest runs scored total, as well. Even more importantly, he's 17-for-18 in stolen base attempts. Abreu is lighting on the base paths, but he also gets thrown out a lot and his efficiency rate in that department has traditionally hovered between 50-75%. But he's getting on and staying on...and now he's in. And to all the fans in Houston who stuffed the ballot box to make this happen, the check's in the mail.
Bobby Abreu finally made it to the All-Star Game in his ninth season as internet voting closed on the final two All-Star selections this evening. 2 million people wanted to see Abreu represent the NL for the first time in his career, and there's at least 2 million reasons why Abreu's the right choice. Hell, I voted for Abreu six times, one for every year he's been snubbed so far -- though I did have some misgivings. Aramis Ramirez, currently batting .326 with 15hr and 56rbi, might've been a strong choice for this year, too; his contributions to the Cubs' offense this year (Dusty Baker has called him the "cornerstone" of the club) are undeniable, and he murdered the ball during the team's pennant run last year. In a just world, he would have made the roster, too (he was neck-and-neck with Abreu in voting yesterday). But in a just world, Barry Larkin wouldn't have been voted in as the starting shortstop this year and Abreu would've gotten his propers long ago.
So back to the man of the hour. Beginning in 1998, when Abreu established himself as a starter in his first season with the Phillies, any of his seasons could've been considered All-Star worthy. He's hit at a .300 clip or better in 5 of those 6 seasons, and has never missed more than 11 games in any of those seasons. In 2001, when his average dipped to .289, he played in all 162 games of the season and ranked top-10 in runs, walks, stolen bases, extra base hits, doubles and sacrifice flies. He got on base less (the only time his OBP has dipped below .400), but compensated with better power numbers.
Before today, Bobby Abreu had the distinction of being the best baseball player never to be included on an All-Star roster. I'm sure he's happy to not have that albatross hanging around his neck anymore. But despite his monstrous stats, Abreu also has the misfortune of being a mercurial player. He always finishes strong at the end of the season, but has a reputation for being frustratingly streaky. A choker. A difficult presence on the field. Undisciplined. Every year, there's a report out of Philly that proclaims that the fans are "tiring of his slack attitude." Sure, the Philly fans give their stars no quarter -- a friend of mine took issue with Scott Rolen in 2001 (in the midst of a fine season) for "only hitting home runs when it doesn't count." Pat Burrell's gotta be happy that he's not the locus of frustrations this year. The only guy who gets it worse than Larry Bowa year in, year out is Abreu. He isa slow starter, but so is Jim Thome.
In the end, it's not sentiment that prevails with the Abreu selection. He's in the midst of his greatest campaign yet with a .301 average, 17hr and 57rbi -- putting him on pace to eclipse previous highs for home runs and driving runs in. His OPS is the highest it has ever been (1.010 -- compare to Moises Alou's .850 this season) and he's getting on base at a torrid pace, suggesting he'll trump his highest runs scored total, as well. Even more importantly, he's 17-for-18 in stolen base attempts. Abreu is lighting on the base paths, but he also gets thrown out a lot and his efficiency rate in that department has traditionally hovered between 50-75%. But he's getting on and staying on...and now he's in. And to all the fans in Houston who stuffed the ballot box to make this happen, the check's in the mail.
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Simply the best/ Simplement le meilleur
Tim Kurkjian weighed in with his thoughts on Eric Gagne's save streak last week and I couldn't have disagreed more. I was with Kurkjian when he was comparing and contrasting with Orel Hershiser's herculean 59 consecutive scoreless inning streak in '88, but got soured on the piece when he drew Joe DiMaggio and Cal Ripken's respective streaks into it. Not valid as comparison points, and I don't put much stock in his assertion (seconded by As GM Billy Beane -- sort of) that Gagne's numbers were vastly inflated by the luxury of entering a game with a runner on base in only 17 of 84 opportunities. And the problematic and hotly-contested modern definition of the save shouldn't take anything away from Gagne's accomplishments. I guess Kurkijan was taking a preemptive strike against the hype accompanying the streak, though I do think it's up there with the greatest pitching feats of all time. That's all said and done now, as Kurkjian jinxed the streak with his poopy-pants mojo and Gagne blew his first save in almost two years in a 6-5 loss to the struggling Diamondbacks. Jayson Stark puts things into proper focus in this week's edition of his "Useless Info" column (dedicated entirely to Gagne), simply by showing that everyone else in the league combined to blow 969 saves during the same interval. Stark also reports that Gagne "allowed one hit or none in 92 percent of his saves (77 of 84) -- and gave up zero hits in an amazing 60 percent of them (50 of 84)." End of story. Thank you for setting it right, ESPN.
***
Tim Kurkjian a pesé dedans avec ses pensées sur Eric Gagne's économiser la strie la semaine dernière et je ne pourrais pas être en désaccord davantage. J'étais avec Kurkjian quand il était rivalisant et contrastant avec la strie scoreless consécutive du tour de batte de Orel Hershiser's 59 herculéens dans '88, mais devenu aigri sur le morceau quand il a dessiné les stries respectives de Joe DiMaggio et de calorie Ripken's dans lui. L'invalide comme points de comparaison, et je ne crois pas son affirmation(secondée près comme Dodgers GM Billy Beane -- peut-être) que ce Gagne's des nombres ont été énormément gonflés par le luxe d'écrire un jeu avec un coureur sur la base dans seulement 17 de 84 occasions. Et la définition moderne problématique et chaud-contestée de l'économiser ne devrait prendre rien loin des accomplissements de Gagne's. Je devine que Kurkijan prenait une grève de préemption contre l'exagération accompagnant la strie, bien que j'imagine it's là avec les plus grands exploits de tangage de toute l'heure. C'est tout dit et fait maintenant, car Kurkjian jinxed la strie avec son poopy-pantalon mojo et Gagne a soufflé son premier économiser en presque deux ansdans une perte 6-5 à la lutte Diamondbacks. Jayson Stark rigide met des choses dans le foyer approprié en cette édition de week's de son "Information Inutile" colonne (consacrée entièrement à Gagne), simplement en prouvant que chacun autrement dans la ligue combinée pour souffler 969 économise pendant le même intervalle. Rigide également rapporte que Gagne "a laissé un frappé ou absent en 92 pour cent à lui économise (77 de 84) -- et a donné vers le haut les coups zéro en 60 pour cent stupéfiant d'eux (50 de 84)." Fin d'histoire. Merci de la placer la droite, ESPN.
Tim Kurkjian weighed in with his thoughts on Eric Gagne's save streak last week and I couldn't have disagreed more. I was with Kurkjian when he was comparing and contrasting with Orel Hershiser's herculean 59 consecutive scoreless inning streak in '88, but got soured on the piece when he drew Joe DiMaggio and Cal Ripken's respective streaks into it. Not valid as comparison points, and I don't put much stock in his assertion (seconded by As GM Billy Beane -- sort of) that Gagne's numbers were vastly inflated by the luxury of entering a game with a runner on base in only 17 of 84 opportunities. And the problematic and hotly-contested modern definition of the save shouldn't take anything away from Gagne's accomplishments. I guess Kurkijan was taking a preemptive strike against the hype accompanying the streak, though I do think it's up there with the greatest pitching feats of all time. That's all said and done now, as Kurkjian jinxed the streak with his poopy-pants mojo and Gagne blew his first save in almost two years in a 6-5 loss to the struggling Diamondbacks. Jayson Stark puts things into proper focus in this week's edition of his "Useless Info" column (dedicated entirely to Gagne), simply by showing that everyone else in the league combined to blow 969 saves during the same interval. Stark also reports that Gagne "allowed one hit or none in 92 percent of his saves (77 of 84) -- and gave up zero hits in an amazing 60 percent of them (50 of 84)." End of story. Thank you for setting it right, ESPN.
***
Tim Kurkjian a pesé dedans avec ses pensées sur Eric Gagne's économiser la strie la semaine dernière et je ne pourrais pas être en désaccord davantage. J'étais avec Kurkjian quand il était rivalisant et contrastant avec la strie scoreless consécutive du tour de batte de Orel Hershiser's 59 herculéens dans '88, mais devenu aigri sur le morceau quand il a dessiné les stries respectives de Joe DiMaggio et de calorie Ripken's dans lui. L'invalide comme points de comparaison, et je ne crois pas son affirmation(secondée près comme Dodgers GM Billy Beane -- peut-être) que ce Gagne's des nombres ont été énormément gonflés par le luxe d'écrire un jeu avec un coureur sur la base dans seulement 17 de 84 occasions. Et la définition moderne problématique et chaud-contestée de l'économiser ne devrait prendre rien loin des accomplissements de Gagne's. Je devine que Kurkijan prenait une grève de préemption contre l'exagération accompagnant la strie, bien que j'imagine it's là avec les plus grands exploits de tangage de toute l'heure. C'est tout dit et fait maintenant, car Kurkjian jinxed la strie avec son poopy-pantalon mojo et Gagne a soufflé son premier économiser en presque deux ansdans une perte 6-5 à la lutte Diamondbacks. Jayson Stark rigide met des choses dans le foyer approprié en cette édition de week's de son "Information Inutile" colonne (consacrée entièrement à Gagne), simplement en prouvant que chacun autrement dans la ligue combinée pour souffler 969 économise pendant le même intervalle. Rigide également rapporte que Gagne "a laissé un frappé ou absent en 92 pour cent à lui économise (77 de 84) -- et a donné vers le haut les coups zéro en 60 pour cent stupéfiant d'eux (50 de 84)." Fin d'histoire. Merci de la placer la droite, ESPN.
Friday, July 02, 2004
Odalis or Oliver?
Oliver Perez pitched a hell of a game tonight, a 7 inning, 11 strikeout gem, as the Pirates crushed the surging Brewers 8-1 (knocking Doug Davis, the subject of an earlier post, out after 4 innings). Like JT scanning the papers for news of Britney's impending nuptials, I'm lovin' it. I consider myself to be firmly on the bandwagon after his awesome first half, though I'm too cynical to muster the kind of enthusiasm Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sportswriter Ron Cook displays in this hyperbolic column where he namechecks Bonds, Clemente, Kiner, Stargell and Dave Parker and appears all but ready to retire the young lefty's #48 jersey. His stats haven't set off the four-alarm mania surrounding Dontrelle Willis yet; I'd put the hype somewhere around the level that Odalis Perez started getting in his third season.
And maybe that's not such a bad reference point. At this point in the season, Oliver's ERA, WHIP and BAA (Batting Average Against) are pretty much interchangeable with the numbers for LA starter Odalis. Oliver has a good 40 lbs on his rival, while Odalis has a lankier frame reminiscent of Pedro Martinez. Oliver is having a career year in his 4th season; Odalis was enjoying a good start to his 7th season before a trip to the DL last week. Here's a quiz to gauge your knowledge of the 6'0" lefties. (Answers will be posted in the comments section)
1. Faster fastball?
2. Throws a slider?
3. Best career ERA and WHIP marks?
4. Best career BAA mark?
5. Most complete games since 2003?
6. Career fielding percentage better than league average?
7. Most holds?
8. Lowest career mark in Pitches per Game Started?
9. Highest career batting average?
10. Highest career OBP?
Bonus: Most innings pitched as a rookie?
Oliver Perez pitched a hell of a game tonight, a 7 inning, 11 strikeout gem, as the Pirates crushed the surging Brewers 8-1 (knocking Doug Davis, the subject of an earlier post, out after 4 innings). Like JT scanning the papers for news of Britney's impending nuptials, I'm lovin' it. I consider myself to be firmly on the bandwagon after his awesome first half, though I'm too cynical to muster the kind of enthusiasm Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sportswriter Ron Cook displays in this hyperbolic column where he namechecks Bonds, Clemente, Kiner, Stargell and Dave Parker and appears all but ready to retire the young lefty's #48 jersey. His stats haven't set off the four-alarm mania surrounding Dontrelle Willis yet; I'd put the hype somewhere around the level that Odalis Perez started getting in his third season.
And maybe that's not such a bad reference point. At this point in the season, Oliver's ERA, WHIP and BAA (Batting Average Against) are pretty much interchangeable with the numbers for LA starter Odalis. Oliver has a good 40 lbs on his rival, while Odalis has a lankier frame reminiscent of Pedro Martinez. Oliver is having a career year in his 4th season; Odalis was enjoying a good start to his 7th season before a trip to the DL last week. Here's a quiz to gauge your knowledge of the 6'0" lefties. (Answers will be posted in the comments section)
1. Faster fastball?
2. Throws a slider?
3. Best career ERA and WHIP marks?
4. Best career BAA mark?
5. Most complete games since 2003?
6. Career fielding percentage better than league average?
7. Most holds?
8. Lowest career mark in Pitches per Game Started?
9. Highest career batting average?
10. Highest career OBP?
Bonus: Most innings pitched as a rookie?
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
A Hill of Beanes, Part II
But, wait...there's more.
Orioles get Jason Grimsley on 6/22
The Orioles need everything. Funny how everyone's advocating that the D-backs and Royals get an early start on next season, but the Os have been mostly immune to the same criticism. They're 16.5 games out of first right now, running neck-and-neck with Toronto for last place in the Al East. But no one really expected the Orioles to contend in the war games between the Yanks and Red Sox. So I'm throwing all of my support to the Devil Rays to stop the madness. As far as Grimsley goes, he's desirable because of his limited experience as a starter (72 starts in 13 seasons) and the Orioles need all the help they can get if BJ Ryan gets dangled as trade bait. The Royals got minor leaguer Denny Bautista in return, who could be good a few years down the line, though he may be tipping his pitches and there's some concern over his awkward delivery.
Beltran to Astros, Dotel to As, prospects to Royals on 6/25
Oakland GM Billy Beane must be involved in any trade involving a Royals outfielder. It's actually in the major league rulebook, and it's a necessary condition for his continued membership in this powerful organization. This time out, though, the Royals OF went to the Astros -- fella by the name of Carlos Beltran, formerly the American League's equivalent of Bobby Abreu. Beane got his man with Octavio Dotel, who got his first win of the season with Oakland after giving up 4 runs. Dotel brings the heat, though, and let's face it: even Billy Koch would be a step up from the failed Arthur Rhodes closer experiment. Royals GM Allan Baird spun Beltran into three prospects: catcher John Buck (from Houston) and Mark Teahen and Mike Wood (from Oakland). Buck has been inserted into the starting line-up since the deal and is apparently strong with the glove. Mike Wood got shelled in 3 major league starts last season, but is ready for another trial after two strong seasons in AAA. And Mark Teahen has advanced pretty quickly since the Moneyball draft; like a lot of Beane's draftees, he's thin on power but gets on base...A LOT.
Freddy Garcia to White Sox on 6/28
Back-to-back lackluster seasons have made Garcia's stock fall considerably -- Eric Neel doesn't even rate him in his top go-to guys. Recent struggles aside, Garcia reminds me a lot of Bartolo Colon, who was 65-69 at the same point in his career and on the verge of a breakout 20-8 season. Opponents are hitting just .236 off him this year -- the second lowest figure of his career -- and he ranks 5th in league ERA. Sox GM Kenny Williams has a history of getting spanked on trades, but he never hesitates to pull the trigger on big deals, and this one's a no-brainer. Seattle doesn't get any younger with this deal, but they managed to unload Ben Davis and net a handful of pretty good prospects in return. Catcher Miguel Olivo turned it on this season and has a rocket for an arm. OF Jeremy Reed is considered to be one of the top prospects in the loaded Sox system, but will probably take some time to develop at the major league level a la Aaron Rowand. I don't know anything about AA SS Michael Morse, but the Ms could use added depth at that position, so it makes sense.
Most traded active major leaguer update: Todd Zeile has also been traded five times in his career, tying him with David Weathers and Brad Ausmus. But Terry Mulholland, currently pitching with the Twins, has been traded 6 times in his career. Is there a topper, anyone?
But, wait...there's more.
Orioles get Jason Grimsley on 6/22
The Orioles need everything. Funny how everyone's advocating that the D-backs and Royals get an early start on next season, but the Os have been mostly immune to the same criticism. They're 16.5 games out of first right now, running neck-and-neck with Toronto for last place in the Al East. But no one really expected the Orioles to contend in the war games between the Yanks and Red Sox. So I'm throwing all of my support to the Devil Rays to stop the madness. As far as Grimsley goes, he's desirable because of his limited experience as a starter (72 starts in 13 seasons) and the Orioles need all the help they can get if BJ Ryan gets dangled as trade bait. The Royals got minor leaguer Denny Bautista in return, who could be good a few years down the line, though he may be tipping his pitches and there's some concern over his awkward delivery.
Beltran to Astros, Dotel to As, prospects to Royals on 6/25
Oakland GM Billy Beane must be involved in any trade involving a Royals outfielder. It's actually in the major league rulebook, and it's a necessary condition for his continued membership in this powerful organization. This time out, though, the Royals OF went to the Astros -- fella by the name of Carlos Beltran, formerly the American League's equivalent of Bobby Abreu. Beane got his man with Octavio Dotel, who got his first win of the season with Oakland after giving up 4 runs. Dotel brings the heat, though, and let's face it: even Billy Koch would be a step up from the failed Arthur Rhodes closer experiment. Royals GM Allan Baird spun Beltran into three prospects: catcher John Buck (from Houston) and Mark Teahen and Mike Wood (from Oakland). Buck has been inserted into the starting line-up since the deal and is apparently strong with the glove. Mike Wood got shelled in 3 major league starts last season, but is ready for another trial after two strong seasons in AAA. And Mark Teahen has advanced pretty quickly since the Moneyball draft; like a lot of Beane's draftees, he's thin on power but gets on base...A LOT.
Freddy Garcia to White Sox on 6/28
Back-to-back lackluster seasons have made Garcia's stock fall considerably -- Eric Neel doesn't even rate him in his top go-to guys. Recent struggles aside, Garcia reminds me a lot of Bartolo Colon, who was 65-69 at the same point in his career and on the verge of a breakout 20-8 season. Opponents are hitting just .236 off him this year -- the second lowest figure of his career -- and he ranks 5th in league ERA. Sox GM Kenny Williams has a history of getting spanked on trades, but he never hesitates to pull the trigger on big deals, and this one's a no-brainer. Seattle doesn't get any younger with this deal, but they managed to unload Ben Davis and net a handful of pretty good prospects in return. Catcher Miguel Olivo turned it on this season and has a rocket for an arm. OF Jeremy Reed is considered to be one of the top prospects in the loaded Sox system, but will probably take some time to develop at the major league level a la Aaron Rowand. I don't know anything about AA SS Michael Morse, but the Ms could use added depth at that position, so it makes sense.
Most traded active major leaguer update: Todd Zeile has also been traded five times in his career, tying him with David Weathers and Brad Ausmus. But Terry Mulholland, currently pitching with the Twins, has been traded 6 times in his career. Is there a topper, anyone?
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
A Hill of Beanes, Part I
Wherein I attempt to provide an overview of this month's MLB trades in the most cursory and self-indulgent fashion possible. Sue me -- it's the end of the month, and I've got a quota to fill.
Expos deal Peter Bergeron on 6/13
The Expos have given Peter Bergeron a very long leash. The no-hit, no-field CF has had 1100 at-bats (over parts of five seasons) to prove himself and wouldn't have had a job if the rest of MLB baseball cared enough to grant the Expos a permanent home. And now he doesn't. It's hard to see Bergeron advancing beyond AAA with the Brewers; Scott Posednick is entrenched in center field and the Brew Crew have a host of prospects (Richie Weeks, Prince Fielder) making a credible case for a one-way trip to the Big Show. I actually don't even see Bergeron wearing a major league uniform at any point in the future unless he's willing to stand in for the Bratwurst in the Sausage Races. That's harsh, but no, really: his talent lies with his speed on the basepaths, and he's been thrown out 25 times in 55 career attempts, so no volume discount can be applied. Three other prospects changed hands in the deal, including two guys named Jason, none of whom figure in to their respective teams' long-term plans.
Richard Hidalgo to Mets, David Weathers to Astros on 6/17
This is a classic example of two teams exchanging their problems. Weathers was brilliant with Milwaukee, the Cubs and the Mets in a four-season stretch between 2000 and 2003, but he's been a sub-average innings eater in his other 10 seasons. Middle relief help is always at a premium mid-season, but the Astros didn't really need it with Brad Lidge motoring along and Dan Miceli enjoying a career year -- and not when other, superior arms are reportedly available. Plus, the guy's set to make $4 million this season. Which is not as bloated as Hidalgo $12.5 million contract. A lot of money changed hands in this deal, too, but the Mets bumped their payroll up by at least $4 million this season (plus another $2 million for a buy-out). The idea that has been floated around recently that Hidalgo's a decent gamble for the Mets is, frankly, laughable: he's hitting .260 in 9 games in his new uniform, with 4 multi-hit games and 4 games where he couldn't get on base at all. Watch that average dance back and forth between .250 and .260 for the rest of the season. Hidalgo finished strong last season, but he really hasn't been the same player since his 2000 campaign.
Marlins acquire Billy Koch on 6/17
Billy Koch was the worst reliever in baseball not named Jose Mesa or Mike Williams last year. He is the worst reliever in baseball not named Arthur Rhodes this year, and has been making a credible case to overtake Rhodes in the futility department. A lack of innings and opportunities with the Marlins may hamper this quest, though he's still a wonderful candidate for a pick-up in CNN/SI reporter James Quintong's reverse fantasy league. By the way, he has choked in 4 of his last 5 appearances with the Fish; the team could've waited to pick C.J. Nitkowski off the waiver wire or dealt for Jason Grimsley just a few days later. The White Sox sent $2 million along to cover costs, and basically bought AAA SS Wilson Valdez, who's a little old but has great tools.
Yanks dump Gabe White on Reds on 6/18
I love this. This reminds me of the Red Sox and Pirates swapping Anastacio Martinez for Mike Gonzalez and back again last year, which is basically what this deal amounts to since the Yankees traded White to the Reds for minor-leaguer Charlie Manning, reversing the same trade from last season. What, Brad Ausmus wasn't available? Like Ausmus, White has been traded five times in his career -- I think the two are tied for the top spot on the most-traded list among active major leaguers. Neither have a shot of breaking the mark set by pitcher Bobo Newsom, though: he was traded 16 times in 20 seasons between 1929-1953. Pretty decent pitcher, too. Gabe White, on the other hand, is a lefty -- he doesn't need to be.
Wherein I attempt to provide an overview of this month's MLB trades in the most cursory and self-indulgent fashion possible. Sue me -- it's the end of the month, and I've got a quota to fill.
Expos deal Peter Bergeron on 6/13
The Expos have given Peter Bergeron a very long leash. The no-hit, no-field CF has had 1100 at-bats (over parts of five seasons) to prove himself and wouldn't have had a job if the rest of MLB baseball cared enough to grant the Expos a permanent home. And now he doesn't. It's hard to see Bergeron advancing beyond AAA with the Brewers; Scott Posednick is entrenched in center field and the Brew Crew have a host of prospects (Richie Weeks, Prince Fielder) making a credible case for a one-way trip to the Big Show. I actually don't even see Bergeron wearing a major league uniform at any point in the future unless he's willing to stand in for the Bratwurst in the Sausage Races. That's harsh, but no, really: his talent lies with his speed on the basepaths, and he's been thrown out 25 times in 55 career attempts, so no volume discount can be applied. Three other prospects changed hands in the deal, including two guys named Jason, none of whom figure in to their respective teams' long-term plans.
Richard Hidalgo to Mets, David Weathers to Astros on 6/17
This is a classic example of two teams exchanging their problems. Weathers was brilliant with Milwaukee, the Cubs and the Mets in a four-season stretch between 2000 and 2003, but he's been a sub-average innings eater in his other 10 seasons. Middle relief help is always at a premium mid-season, but the Astros didn't really need it with Brad Lidge motoring along and Dan Miceli enjoying a career year -- and not when other, superior arms are reportedly available. Plus, the guy's set to make $4 million this season. Which is not as bloated as Hidalgo $12.5 million contract. A lot of money changed hands in this deal, too, but the Mets bumped their payroll up by at least $4 million this season (plus another $2 million for a buy-out). The idea that has been floated around recently that Hidalgo's a decent gamble for the Mets is, frankly, laughable: he's hitting .260 in 9 games in his new uniform, with 4 multi-hit games and 4 games where he couldn't get on base at all. Watch that average dance back and forth between .250 and .260 for the rest of the season. Hidalgo finished strong last season, but he really hasn't been the same player since his 2000 campaign.
Marlins acquire Billy Koch on 6/17
Billy Koch was the worst reliever in baseball not named Jose Mesa or Mike Williams last year. He is the worst reliever in baseball not named Arthur Rhodes this year, and has been making a credible case to overtake Rhodes in the futility department. A lack of innings and opportunities with the Marlins may hamper this quest, though he's still a wonderful candidate for a pick-up in CNN/SI reporter James Quintong's reverse fantasy league. By the way, he has choked in 4 of his last 5 appearances with the Fish; the team could've waited to pick C.J. Nitkowski off the waiver wire or dealt for Jason Grimsley just a few days later. The White Sox sent $2 million along to cover costs, and basically bought AAA SS Wilson Valdez, who's a little old but has great tools.
Yanks dump Gabe White on Reds on 6/18
I love this. This reminds me of the Red Sox and Pirates swapping Anastacio Martinez for Mike Gonzalez and back again last year, which is basically what this deal amounts to since the Yankees traded White to the Reds for minor-leaguer Charlie Manning, reversing the same trade from last season. What, Brad Ausmus wasn't available? Like Ausmus, White has been traded five times in his career -- I think the two are tied for the top spot on the most-traded list among active major leaguers. Neither have a shot of breaking the mark set by pitcher Bobo Newsom, though: he was traded 16 times in 20 seasons between 1929-1953. Pretty decent pitcher, too. Gabe White, on the other hand, is a lefty -- he doesn't need to be.
Sunday, June 27, 2004
What the Butler Saw
Interesting piece in the July/August issue of Mother Jones magazine: a list of ambassadorships George W. Bush has granted to his biggest financial supporters since he assumed the presidentiary. 5 of the 19 new ambassadors have baseball ownership connections, including 3 with Bush's home state Texas Rangers: George Argyos (former Mariners owner, ambassador to Spain); Mercer Reynolds III (part of the ownership group for the Rangers and Cardinals, ambassador to Switzerland); Stephen Brauser (co-owner of the Cardinals, ambassador to Belgium); Jeffrey Marcus (Rangers co-owner, lasted just 4 days as ambassador to Belgium); Craig Stapleton (former Rangers co-owner, ambassador to Czech Republic).
Argyos got the best return on his $123,000 investment -- he's still serving in Spain. Reynolds, Brauser and Marcus spent in excess of $275,000 to get their cushy positions in Europe and are back to baseball. And Stapleton grabbed his two-year appointment for only $60,500, though he's married to Dubya's cousin Dorothy. Mother Jones writer Benjamin Leslie also points out that none of the five were fluent in their country's native tongues. Why bother flushing $50,000 down the toilet with a graduate degree in public policy, sweating out the foreign service exam and busting your hump to achieve competency in one or more foreign languages? Even with a distinguished service record, you'll still find yourself building transistor radios out of coconuts somewhere in Bumfuckistan. Just buy an ownership share in a baseball team and pucker up. Who knew it was that easy?
Interesting piece in the July/August issue of Mother Jones magazine: a list of ambassadorships George W. Bush has granted to his biggest financial supporters since he assumed the presidentiary. 5 of the 19 new ambassadors have baseball ownership connections, including 3 with Bush's home state Texas Rangers: George Argyos (former Mariners owner, ambassador to Spain); Mercer Reynolds III (part of the ownership group for the Rangers and Cardinals, ambassador to Switzerland); Stephen Brauser (co-owner of the Cardinals, ambassador to Belgium); Jeffrey Marcus (Rangers co-owner, lasted just 4 days as ambassador to Belgium); Craig Stapleton (former Rangers co-owner, ambassador to Czech Republic).
Argyos got the best return on his $123,000 investment -- he's still serving in Spain. Reynolds, Brauser and Marcus spent in excess of $275,000 to get their cushy positions in Europe and are back to baseball. And Stapleton grabbed his two-year appointment for only $60,500, though he's married to Dubya's cousin Dorothy. Mother Jones writer Benjamin Leslie also points out that none of the five were fluent in their country's native tongues. Why bother flushing $50,000 down the toilet with a graduate degree in public policy, sweating out the foreign service exam and busting your hump to achieve competency in one or more foreign languages? Even with a distinguished service record, you'll still find yourself building transistor radios out of coconuts somewhere in Bumfuckistan. Just buy an ownership share in a baseball team and pucker up. Who knew it was that easy?
Thursday, June 24, 2004
Top of the 8th
Things were not looking good for my first White Sox game of the season. A loss was inevitable. Unofficial Cubs mascot/ drum-banging superfan Ronnie "Woo Woo" Wickers almost ran over me with his bicycle as I was crossing the street the evening before. I knew it was him, too, because the guy wears his specially-tailored Cubs outfit (it even says "Woo Woo" on the back in block lettering) everywhere. He probably sleeps in it. And with the Cubs-Sox crosstown series coming up in a few days, tensions are running high enough in the city that I took it as a warning shot from the Wrigleyville Lush Mafia: watch your back, bra. We don't like your kind.
Still, even with the hit out, I wasn't going to stay in hiding for the rest of the summer like a Windy City Salman Rushide. I needed to get my game on with some of those lower deck reserved outfield seats I love so much, where the fashion of choice among the fashion-conscious is a t-shirt with the word "Chokes" in place of the Cubs logo. I must've seen at least 20 people rocking these tees, along with another half-dozen wearing last year's Cub-baiting model -- where the Cubs logo has been replaced with "Cork." Despite this, I witnessed no overt hostility towards the few souls brave enough to wear actual Cubs gear in the stands. Maybe Sox fans have more Clintonian empathy: we both root for slumping teams, and we feel your pain. Or maybe the Wrigleyville Lush Mafia has sent its undercover spies to infiltrate the White Sox Nation and destroy it from within. I saw something I've never witnessed in 10 years of Sox games: a fan tossing the opposing team's home run ball back on to the field. It's such a chump move -- no wonder they invented it at Wrigley Field.
The game itself featured seven -- count 'em, seven -- jacks, including two Paul Konerko solo blasts and a sweet Ronnie Belliard shot to left field. Of course, the pitching sucked moose tit, and I was so looking forward to getting a chance to see newly-appointed closer Shingo "Mr. Zero" Takatsu baffle hitters. Instead, Mark Buehrle pitched seven maddeningly inconsistent innings: he got lit up for five earned runs, but somehow made it to the 8th with something like 65 pitches. Buehrle is a huge tease: sometimes he looks absolutely dominating (like when he woke up in the 7th inning and retired the Cleveland batting order 1-2-3) and sometimes you can't even trust him to get out of the inning (like in the 6th, when he gave up a pair of home runs and became preoccupied with Jody Gerut's attempts to steal a base).
Sox manager Ozzie Guillen brought Buehrle back for the 8th after a rally in the bottom of the 7th knocked Indians starter Cliff Lee out of the game and pulled the Sox within one run of tying the game. Classic case of devil you know being preferable to devil you don't, but Guillen should have taken him out. Still, Buehrle took the mound and served up a line drive single to Indians catcher Victor Martinez. Give him the hook, Ozzie! Next up: 3rd baseman Casey Blake. Line drive single to exactly the same spot in center. Give him the hook, Ozzie! Travis Hafner comes up to the plate next and makes Buehrle pay for a weak fastball, loading the bases. Give him the hook, Ozzie! Guillen comes out to the pitchers mound to stall for awhile and the bullpen gates swing open. Finally! But it's Mike Jackson, owner of a belly-itching 5.00+ era. Dear god, noooooooooo!
The rest of the story was written when Ronnie Woo Woo tried to leave his track marks on my face. Indians manager Eric Wedge counters the move by pinch-hitting Ben Broussard for fan-favorite Lou Merloni and...Broussard takes Jackson's very first pitch deep for a grand slam. Awful. Game over, man, game over.
Things were not looking good for my first White Sox game of the season. A loss was inevitable. Unofficial Cubs mascot/ drum-banging superfan Ronnie "Woo Woo" Wickers almost ran over me with his bicycle as I was crossing the street the evening before. I knew it was him, too, because the guy wears his specially-tailored Cubs outfit (it even says "Woo Woo" on the back in block lettering) everywhere. He probably sleeps in it. And with the Cubs-Sox crosstown series coming up in a few days, tensions are running high enough in the city that I took it as a warning shot from the Wrigleyville Lush Mafia: watch your back, bra. We don't like your kind.
Still, even with the hit out, I wasn't going to stay in hiding for the rest of the summer like a Windy City Salman Rushide. I needed to get my game on with some of those lower deck reserved outfield seats I love so much, where the fashion of choice among the fashion-conscious is a t-shirt with the word "Chokes" in place of the Cubs logo. I must've seen at least 20 people rocking these tees, along with another half-dozen wearing last year's Cub-baiting model -- where the Cubs logo has been replaced with "Cork." Despite this, I witnessed no overt hostility towards the few souls brave enough to wear actual Cubs gear in the stands. Maybe Sox fans have more Clintonian empathy: we both root for slumping teams, and we feel your pain. Or maybe the Wrigleyville Lush Mafia has sent its undercover spies to infiltrate the White Sox Nation and destroy it from within. I saw something I've never witnessed in 10 years of Sox games: a fan tossing the opposing team's home run ball back on to the field. It's such a chump move -- no wonder they invented it at Wrigley Field.
The game itself featured seven -- count 'em, seven -- jacks, including two Paul Konerko solo blasts and a sweet Ronnie Belliard shot to left field. Of course, the pitching sucked moose tit, and I was so looking forward to getting a chance to see newly-appointed closer Shingo "Mr. Zero" Takatsu baffle hitters. Instead, Mark Buehrle pitched seven maddeningly inconsistent innings: he got lit up for five earned runs, but somehow made it to the 8th with something like 65 pitches. Buehrle is a huge tease: sometimes he looks absolutely dominating (like when he woke up in the 7th inning and retired the Cleveland batting order 1-2-3) and sometimes you can't even trust him to get out of the inning (like in the 6th, when he gave up a pair of home runs and became preoccupied with Jody Gerut's attempts to steal a base).
Sox manager Ozzie Guillen brought Buehrle back for the 8th after a rally in the bottom of the 7th knocked Indians starter Cliff Lee out of the game and pulled the Sox within one run of tying the game. Classic case of devil you know being preferable to devil you don't, but Guillen should have taken him out. Still, Buehrle took the mound and served up a line drive single to Indians catcher Victor Martinez. Give him the hook, Ozzie! Next up: 3rd baseman Casey Blake. Line drive single to exactly the same spot in center. Give him the hook, Ozzie! Travis Hafner comes up to the plate next and makes Buehrle pay for a weak fastball, loading the bases. Give him the hook, Ozzie! Guillen comes out to the pitchers mound to stall for awhile and the bullpen gates swing open. Finally! But it's Mike Jackson, owner of a belly-itching 5.00+ era. Dear god, noooooooooo!
The rest of the story was written when Ronnie Woo Woo tried to leave his track marks on my face. Indians manager Eric Wedge counters the move by pinch-hitting Ben Broussard for fan-favorite Lou Merloni and...Broussard takes Jackson's very first pitch deep for a grand slam. Awful. Game over, man, game over.
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Rocky Mountain Low
I've been thinking for awhile that I really ought to change this blog's subhead from "I've got mad hits like I was Rod Carew" to "I've got no hits like I was Kit Pellow." But then Pellow got sent back down the minors as Larry Walker was activated from the DL, and like the rest of the Rockies' farm system, he's got no game. What's up with Colorado's pitiful record in producing position players, anyway? Everyone writes about how tough it is to find the right arms to pitch in that thin air and talks about how great Jeff Francis and Chin Hui-Tsao (who Baseball America named the team's top prospect in 3 of the past 4 years -- suspect) are gonna be, but they've only produced 5 position players in 11 drafts that are in a starting line-up in 2004. In no particular order (but with their current teams in parentheses):
Todd Helton, Neifi Perez(SF), Juan Pierre(FLA), Craig Counsell(MIL), Juan Uribe(CWS)
There's also Quinton McCracken and spare parts like Jason Bates, Trenidad Hubbard, Angel Echevarria et al. And you could argue that Colorado played a formative role in Eric Young's career, though his rookie season was with the Dodgers and he never spent any time in Colorado's farm system. It's besides the point, when you take a look at what the Florida Marlins' scouting department came up with in the same number of drafts:
Charles Johnson(COL), Edgar Reinteria(STL), Luis Castillo, Mark Kotsay(OAK), Alex Gonzalez, Kevin Millar(BOS), Mike Redmond, Randy Winn(SEA), Miguel Cabrera
Wow. I may even be missing a couple. Note that this list includes a couple of players who went undrafted and were signed first by the Marlins. Oh, and that's not even counting two of the biggest names: Derrek Lee (Cubs) and Mike Lowell, both highly-touted prospects who broke out with the Marlins. Hmm...so let's take a look at the two newer expansion teams, both of whom have had 7 drafts to make a mark. Arizona Diamondbacks first:
Travis Lee(NYY), Erubiel Durazo(OAK), Junior Spivey(MIL), Lyle Overbay(MIL), Alex Cintron, Rod Barajas(TEX)
Although he started last year, Matt Kata's not on this list because he's not starting now. And Scott Hairston's not here because I'm only considering players who made a major league debut before 2004. As far as Travis Lee goes, he's a funny case because he actually got drafted by another team and got out of his contract with a loophole that hasn't been exploited since -- BUT he started out in the AZ minors, so he's on the list. I never said this was scientific, it's just an excuse to make fun of the Rockies. Anyway, how about those Devil Rays?
Aubrey Huff, Toby Hall, Damian Rolls, Carl Crawford, Rocco Baldelli
Tampa Bay's ownership has had notoriously deep pockets when it comes to the draft/amateur signings thusfar, including throwing wads of $$$ at Matt White (last seen working at Wal Mart, according to Peter Gammons) and Josh Hamilton (struggling with cocaine addiction), two guys who may never wear a Devil Rays uniform. Damian Rolls hasn't had much of an opportunity to showcase his stuff because of injuries this season. But Aubrey Huff, Toby Hall, Carl Crawford and Rocco Baldelli? That's 50% of the offensive starting line-up right there -- and it demonstrates what you can get with great scouting and a fair bit of luck.
I think this article sorta sums up a lot of problems with the Rockies' scouting system. It's overly generous (or rather, expectant) when it comes to folks like Brad Hawpe and Choo Freeman and Matt Holliday (he's looked great this season, though), but the author gets straight to the point when writing "the more comfortable Colorado is with its prospects, the less likely it will trade them before they arrive." I haven't gone back to take a look at scouting director Bill Schmidt's drafts since he took over five years ago, but the article pegs him as a good egg -- and I'm inclined to believe it, since it sounds like he actually has a full-system plan in place.
Take a peek at the team's history in the standings, though. Not good. No one seems to be able to figure out this franchise, and the fans are getting tired of losing teams. Maybe Bill Schmidt's the guy. But if not, I know exactly how to fix things right: move to Northern Virginia.
I've been thinking for awhile that I really ought to change this blog's subhead from "I've got mad hits like I was Rod Carew" to "I've got no hits like I was Kit Pellow." But then Pellow got sent back down the minors as Larry Walker was activated from the DL, and like the rest of the Rockies' farm system, he's got no game. What's up with Colorado's pitiful record in producing position players, anyway? Everyone writes about how tough it is to find the right arms to pitch in that thin air and talks about how great Jeff Francis and Chin Hui-Tsao (who Baseball America named the team's top prospect in 3 of the past 4 years -- suspect) are gonna be, but they've only produced 5 position players in 11 drafts that are in a starting line-up in 2004. In no particular order (but with their current teams in parentheses):
Todd Helton, Neifi Perez(SF), Juan Pierre(FLA), Craig Counsell(MIL), Juan Uribe(CWS)
There's also Quinton McCracken and spare parts like Jason Bates, Trenidad Hubbard, Angel Echevarria et al. And you could argue that Colorado played a formative role in Eric Young's career, though his rookie season was with the Dodgers and he never spent any time in Colorado's farm system. It's besides the point, when you take a look at what the Florida Marlins' scouting department came up with in the same number of drafts:
Charles Johnson(COL), Edgar Reinteria(STL), Luis Castillo, Mark Kotsay(OAK), Alex Gonzalez, Kevin Millar(BOS), Mike Redmond, Randy Winn(SEA), Miguel Cabrera
Wow. I may even be missing a couple. Note that this list includes a couple of players who went undrafted and were signed first by the Marlins. Oh, and that's not even counting two of the biggest names: Derrek Lee (Cubs) and Mike Lowell, both highly-touted prospects who broke out with the Marlins. Hmm...so let's take a look at the two newer expansion teams, both of whom have had 7 drafts to make a mark. Arizona Diamondbacks first:
Travis Lee(NYY), Erubiel Durazo(OAK), Junior Spivey(MIL), Lyle Overbay(MIL), Alex Cintron, Rod Barajas(TEX)
Although he started last year, Matt Kata's not on this list because he's not starting now. And Scott Hairston's not here because I'm only considering players who made a major league debut before 2004. As far as Travis Lee goes, he's a funny case because he actually got drafted by another team and got out of his contract with a loophole that hasn't been exploited since -- BUT he started out in the AZ minors, so he's on the list. I never said this was scientific, it's just an excuse to make fun of the Rockies. Anyway, how about those Devil Rays?
Aubrey Huff, Toby Hall, Damian Rolls, Carl Crawford, Rocco Baldelli
Tampa Bay's ownership has had notoriously deep pockets when it comes to the draft/amateur signings thusfar, including throwing wads of $$$ at Matt White (last seen working at Wal Mart, according to Peter Gammons) and Josh Hamilton (struggling with cocaine addiction), two guys who may never wear a Devil Rays uniform. Damian Rolls hasn't had much of an opportunity to showcase his stuff because of injuries this season. But Aubrey Huff, Toby Hall, Carl Crawford and Rocco Baldelli? That's 50% of the offensive starting line-up right there -- and it demonstrates what you can get with great scouting and a fair bit of luck.
I think this article sorta sums up a lot of problems with the Rockies' scouting system. It's overly generous (or rather, expectant) when it comes to folks like Brad Hawpe and Choo Freeman and Matt Holliday (he's looked great this season, though), but the author gets straight to the point when writing "the more comfortable Colorado is with its prospects, the less likely it will trade them before they arrive." I haven't gone back to take a look at scouting director Bill Schmidt's drafts since he took over five years ago, but the article pegs him as a good egg -- and I'm inclined to believe it, since it sounds like he actually has a full-system plan in place.
Take a peek at the team's history in the standings, though. Not good. No one seems to be able to figure out this franchise, and the fans are getting tired of losing teams. Maybe Bill Schmidt's the guy. But if not, I know exactly how to fix things right: move to Northern Virginia.
Monday, June 21, 2004
Dusty Trails, A Blizzard of Oz
Subway is running a month-long promotion in Chicago wherein managers Ozzie Guillen and Dusty Baker (Sox and Cubs, respectively) were asked to design their own sub sandwiches for a contest. The winning manager (with most sandwiches sold by July 4th, 2004) will receive $5000 towards his charity of choice. Baker's sandwich is more my speed: pepperoni, ham, lettuce, tomato, onion and brown mustard. Tasty. But Guillen's Atkins-friendly atomic pile -- roast beef, turkey, bacon, Swiss cheese, onions, green peppers, tomatoes and Ranch dressing -- is just crushing the competition. Ozzie Guillen's unbridled imagination vs. Dusty Baker's icy pragmatism = a battle of epic proportions.
All this was lost on the girlfriend upon seeing the television commercial for the first time, though. Her allergy to baseball ("Will everybody please stop talking about Barry Bonds?") is notorious (at least in this household), and often quite funny as she distills everything to its bluntest essence. Her observation: "'Dusty' is a pretty dumb name. But who actually names their kid 'Ozzie' anyway? What's it short for? Do parents do that to ensure their child has a successful major league career?"
In the case of Ozzie Guillen and Ozzie Smith, sure. Hell, we'll even throw in two-time All-Star Ozzie Virgil Jr. to balance things out. But with everyone else, not so much. There's Ozzie Virgil Sr., who has the distinction of going undrafted to start his career, but later selected in both the Rule V and minor league drafts (and traded as part of a package for Matty Alou). And two modern era mega-scrubs that I forgot about when trying to recall all of the MLB Ozzies: Jose Canseco's brother Ozzie and Ozzie Timmons. Also, two guys I've never heard of: Ozzie Van Brabant (who tossed 28 2/3 innings from 1954-1955 and weathered the Athletics' move from Philly to Kansas City) and Ozzie Osborn (who pitched in 24 games for the '75 White Sox before a similarly-named guy stole his thunder by biting the heads off of live bats).
And as a point of interest, Ozzie Guillen and Ozzie Timmons were teammates on the 2000 Tampa Bay Devil Rays, probably the only time two guys named Ozzie will ever sit on the same bench. As far as the name game goes, the list of Ozzies yields the following proper names: Osbourne (twice), Osvaldo (three), Oswaldo, Danny (Ozzie Osbourn) and Camille (Ozzie Van Brabant). Even with the influx of Latin talent and rapid development on Central America scouting in the last 30 years, we're unlikely to see a dramatic increase of Ozzies in our lifetime.
Unlike Guillen, though, Dusty Baker has the distinction of being the best player with his nickname. And there's even less Dustys than Ozzies. Turn-of-the-century player Dusty Miller leads the pack with 7 seasons where he racked up 421 rbi, 206 steals and a tidy .301 average, (including a remarkable season in 1895 when he piled up 10hr, 112 rbi, 43 stolen bases and a .335 batting average). There's also Dusty Cooke, who played parts of 8 seasons with the Yankees, Red Sox and Reds from 1930-8 with a short stint as Philly's manager a decade later; Dusty Rhodes, an unremarkable Giants OF from 1952-59; and three guys (another Dusty Miller, Dusty Allen and Dusty Watham) with 220 abs between them. At least Dusty Allen's real name was Dusty.
In a historical series, the Ozzies (with their SS-SS double-play combo of Guillen and Smith) would clearly trounce the Dustys (zero pitching, plus several players actually taking the field in knickers). Doesn't even matter that the Dustys have the tastier sandwich; the secret weapon in the Ozzies' arsenal isn't ranch dressing -- it's history.
Subway is running a month-long promotion in Chicago wherein managers Ozzie Guillen and Dusty Baker (Sox and Cubs, respectively) were asked to design their own sub sandwiches for a contest. The winning manager (with most sandwiches sold by July 4th, 2004) will receive $5000 towards his charity of choice. Baker's sandwich is more my speed: pepperoni, ham, lettuce, tomato, onion and brown mustard. Tasty. But Guillen's Atkins-friendly atomic pile -- roast beef, turkey, bacon, Swiss cheese, onions, green peppers, tomatoes and Ranch dressing -- is just crushing the competition. Ozzie Guillen's unbridled imagination vs. Dusty Baker's icy pragmatism = a battle of epic proportions.
All this was lost on the girlfriend upon seeing the television commercial for the first time, though. Her allergy to baseball ("Will everybody please stop talking about Barry Bonds?") is notorious (at least in this household), and often quite funny as she distills everything to its bluntest essence. Her observation: "'Dusty' is a pretty dumb name. But who actually names their kid 'Ozzie' anyway? What's it short for? Do parents do that to ensure their child has a successful major league career?"
In the case of Ozzie Guillen and Ozzie Smith, sure. Hell, we'll even throw in two-time All-Star Ozzie Virgil Jr. to balance things out. But with everyone else, not so much. There's Ozzie Virgil Sr., who has the distinction of going undrafted to start his career, but later selected in both the Rule V and minor league drafts (and traded as part of a package for Matty Alou). And two modern era mega-scrubs that I forgot about when trying to recall all of the MLB Ozzies: Jose Canseco's brother Ozzie and Ozzie Timmons. Also, two guys I've never heard of: Ozzie Van Brabant (who tossed 28 2/3 innings from 1954-1955 and weathered the Athletics' move from Philly to Kansas City) and Ozzie Osborn (who pitched in 24 games for the '75 White Sox before a similarly-named guy stole his thunder by biting the heads off of live bats).
And as a point of interest, Ozzie Guillen and Ozzie Timmons were teammates on the 2000 Tampa Bay Devil Rays, probably the only time two guys named Ozzie will ever sit on the same bench. As far as the name game goes, the list of Ozzies yields the following proper names: Osbourne (twice), Osvaldo (three), Oswaldo, Danny (Ozzie Osbourn) and Camille (Ozzie Van Brabant). Even with the influx of Latin talent and rapid development on Central America scouting in the last 30 years, we're unlikely to see a dramatic increase of Ozzies in our lifetime.
Unlike Guillen, though, Dusty Baker has the distinction of being the best player with his nickname. And there's even less Dustys than Ozzies. Turn-of-the-century player Dusty Miller leads the pack with 7 seasons where he racked up 421 rbi, 206 steals and a tidy .301 average, (including a remarkable season in 1895 when he piled up 10hr, 112 rbi, 43 stolen bases and a .335 batting average). There's also Dusty Cooke, who played parts of 8 seasons with the Yankees, Red Sox and Reds from 1930-8 with a short stint as Philly's manager a decade later; Dusty Rhodes, an unremarkable Giants OF from 1952-59; and three guys (another Dusty Miller, Dusty Allen and Dusty Watham) with 220 abs between them. At least Dusty Allen's real name was Dusty.
In a historical series, the Ozzies (with their SS-SS double-play combo of Guillen and Smith) would clearly trounce the Dustys (zero pitching, plus several players actually taking the field in knickers). Doesn't even matter that the Dustys have the tastier sandwich; the secret weapon in the Ozzies' arsenal isn't ranch dressing -- it's history.
Sunday, June 20, 2004
Alors! C'est super-bon!
Well, Eric Gagne gave up a solo shot to Jason Giambi (the spell checker suggests "gimpy" as an alternative to "Giambi" -- hah!) in the 9th inning of tonight's Dodgers-Yankees game before retiring the rest to nail the contest. One more run or one more man on base and Gagne would've cut the link in his consecutive saves streak. Instead, Gagne held it together for his 18th save of the season and 81st consecutive save (only regular-season games count in the streak, so getting lit up in the 2003 All-Star game doesn't count). Amazing. The season's about 40% over and the guy hasn't blown a save since 2002. Barring a late season upswing in opportunities, Gagne will probably fail to rack up 50 saves for a third consecutive season, but the guy has the best stuff of any closer I've seen by a wide margin. His fastball is almost as unhittable as Billy Wagner (though Philly fans have lately taken to booing him when his fastball tops out at 98mph) and he mixes in a slick change-up and a better-than-average curveball, to boot. Throw in that Cy Young and his distinction as the fastest pitcher to record 100 saves in MLB history, and we're witnessing the makings of a Hall of Fame career.
Or are we? Baseball Reference doesn't shed much light on Gagne's potential, yet because the comparison points are almost non-existent. It's hard to put too much stock in the site's Hall of Fame monitor, which does a great job of evaluating dead locks (Barry Bonds) or players on-the-verge (Sammy Sosa) but not folks like James Howard Thome. There's really no historical perspective for the closer. Eckersley's in the Hall, of course, but he spent half of his career as a starter. And then there's guys like Goose Gossage (shoulda been inducted as a first ballot) and Bruce Sutter (invaluable in redefining the role of the closer, but iffy) and Lee Smith (most saves ever by a mile, but few dominating seasons also make him iffy) knocking at the door.
The standards for the specialist who pitches in (at best) half the games in a season have been set sensibly high, but Gagne's numbers speak well of his talent -- one Cy Young and another top 5 finish, two All-Star appearances, and 1-2 finishes in the saves and games finished leaders boards in 2003 and 2002. Robb Nen, the best analogue in terms of age and make-up, racked up 314 saves by age 32 with the Marlins and Giants...and then his arm fell-off. Nen hasn't pitched since 2002 and may not see any action in 2004; by the time he comes back, he could be a totally different pitcher. Arm injuries seriously derailed Matt Mantei's career, too, and it's the one thing (knock on wood) that could hamper Gagne's chances. Gagne is way better than either of those guys, though -- his last two seasons were more dominating than any of Nen's best (1996; 1998; 2000). If Gagne can make it to 400 saves (an average of about 35/season through age 35 -- not unreasonable at all) with a few more high Cy Young voting finishes, a few more high appearances towards the top of the saves leaders board and a lengthening of that already exciting consecutive save streak, he's a mortal lock. Hall of Fame voters won't be able to deny his (comparatively) brief, brilliant career.
Well, Eric Gagne gave up a solo shot to Jason Giambi (the spell checker suggests "gimpy" as an alternative to "Giambi" -- hah!) in the 9th inning of tonight's Dodgers-Yankees game before retiring the rest to nail the contest. One more run or one more man on base and Gagne would've cut the link in his consecutive saves streak. Instead, Gagne held it together for his 18th save of the season and 81st consecutive save (only regular-season games count in the streak, so getting lit up in the 2003 All-Star game doesn't count). Amazing. The season's about 40% over and the guy hasn't blown a save since 2002. Barring a late season upswing in opportunities, Gagne will probably fail to rack up 50 saves for a third consecutive season, but the guy has the best stuff of any closer I've seen by a wide margin. His fastball is almost as unhittable as Billy Wagner (though Philly fans have lately taken to booing him when his fastball tops out at 98mph) and he mixes in a slick change-up and a better-than-average curveball, to boot. Throw in that Cy Young and his distinction as the fastest pitcher to record 100 saves in MLB history, and we're witnessing the makings of a Hall of Fame career.
Or are we? Baseball Reference doesn't shed much light on Gagne's potential, yet because the comparison points are almost non-existent. It's hard to put too much stock in the site's Hall of Fame monitor, which does a great job of evaluating dead locks (Barry Bonds) or players on-the-verge (Sammy Sosa) but not folks like James Howard Thome. There's really no historical perspective for the closer. Eckersley's in the Hall, of course, but he spent half of his career as a starter. And then there's guys like Goose Gossage (shoulda been inducted as a first ballot) and Bruce Sutter (invaluable in redefining the role of the closer, but iffy) and Lee Smith (most saves ever by a mile, but few dominating seasons also make him iffy) knocking at the door.
The standards for the specialist who pitches in (at best) half the games in a season have been set sensibly high, but Gagne's numbers speak well of his talent -- one Cy Young and another top 5 finish, two All-Star appearances, and 1-2 finishes in the saves and games finished leaders boards in 2003 and 2002. Robb Nen, the best analogue in terms of age and make-up, racked up 314 saves by age 32 with the Marlins and Giants...and then his arm fell-off. Nen hasn't pitched since 2002 and may not see any action in 2004; by the time he comes back, he could be a totally different pitcher. Arm injuries seriously derailed Matt Mantei's career, too, and it's the one thing (knock on wood) that could hamper Gagne's chances. Gagne is way better than either of those guys, though -- his last two seasons were more dominating than any of Nen's best (1996; 1998; 2000). If Gagne can make it to 400 saves (an average of about 35/season through age 35 -- not unreasonable at all) with a few more high Cy Young voting finishes, a few more high appearances towards the top of the saves leaders board and a lengthening of that already exciting consecutive save streak, he's a mortal lock. Hall of Fame voters won't be able to deny his (comparatively) brief, brilliant career.
Friday, June 18, 2004
Starr struck
Man, this Matt Starr thing refuses to die. Starr -- or someone purporting to be him -- called in to Mancow's Morning Madhouse (which I will sheepishly admit to listening to on the hellish drives to work whenever the NPR monotone threatens my road safety) this morning for the FM radio equivalent of a hair shirt. And the callers were, to put it bluntly, merciless, watering down the notions of "good" and "evil" in a way that would make Joe Morgan green with envy. Except one guy playing devil's advocate (for shits-n-grins) who brought up the valid point of how commonplace this is in major league sports. So if we're going to go there, I think it's not too far-fetched to suggest that professional sports promotes this culture of collectibility by building up the mystique of the superstar athlete. People act like assholes because professional baseball players, by and large, act like assholes. People scramble for memorabilia because Mark Prior leaves a line of autograph-seekers high-and-dry at a scheduled signing appearance. One of the coolest things I've ever seen as a fan was the entire Pittsburgh Pirates major league squad come out for a free signing in Point State Park in 1997, the year the payroll barely scratched $9 million (less than what Albert Belle made that year alone). Still display that ball proudly on my mantle.
More of that and lower ticket prices and a more fan-friendly atmosphere would amount to a swift reduction of what Gobo has described as "royal buttmunchitude" as Matt Starr gets punk'd in a hilarious post. Still, I feel even worse for that poor bastard now that his nuts have been caught in a vice grip. Do we, as a nation, have nothing better to do than play armchair Torquemada and continue to make the guy so anxious that he can't even leave his house to collect his mail? I read about this total affront to decency and all I can say is that when the ball rockets towards me in the stands, my elbows will be flying faster than Bill Lambeer at a Specials concert. And, having proven that I have nothing better to do by admitting to listening to the lowest common denominator of drive time radio, I'm gonna steal that little kid's Cracker Jacks, too.
Man, this Matt Starr thing refuses to die. Starr -- or someone purporting to be him -- called in to Mancow's Morning Madhouse (which I will sheepishly admit to listening to on the hellish drives to work whenever the NPR monotone threatens my road safety) this morning for the FM radio equivalent of a hair shirt. And the callers were, to put it bluntly, merciless, watering down the notions of "good" and "evil" in a way that would make Joe Morgan green with envy. Except one guy playing devil's advocate (for shits-n-grins) who brought up the valid point of how commonplace this is in major league sports. So if we're going to go there, I think it's not too far-fetched to suggest that professional sports promotes this culture of collectibility by building up the mystique of the superstar athlete. People act like assholes because professional baseball players, by and large, act like assholes. People scramble for memorabilia because Mark Prior leaves a line of autograph-seekers high-and-dry at a scheduled signing appearance. One of the coolest things I've ever seen as a fan was the entire Pittsburgh Pirates major league squad come out for a free signing in Point State Park in 1997, the year the payroll barely scratched $9 million (less than what Albert Belle made that year alone). Still display that ball proudly on my mantle.
More of that and lower ticket prices and a more fan-friendly atmosphere would amount to a swift reduction of what Gobo has described as "royal buttmunchitude" as Matt Starr gets punk'd in a hilarious post. Still, I feel even worse for that poor bastard now that his nuts have been caught in a vice grip. Do we, as a nation, have nothing better to do than play armchair Torquemada and continue to make the guy so anxious that he can't even leave his house to collect his mail? I read about this total affront to decency and all I can say is that when the ball rockets towards me in the stands, my elbows will be flying faster than Bill Lambeer at a Specials concert. And, having proven that I have nothing better to do by admitting to listening to the lowest common denominator of drive time radio, I'm gonna steal that little kid's Cracker Jacks, too.
Thursday, June 17, 2004
With apologies to Judy Blume
Are you there God? It's me, Doug Davis. I'm starting to thrive in Milwaukee. I'm so scared God. I've never been successful anywhere but here. Suppose no one notices me behind that handsome bitch Ben Sheets? Suppose I never get as much recognition as the Italian Sausage? Please help me God. Don't let this season end.
Yes. I'm talking about that Doug Davis, a total washout in Texas and owner of a not-so-special career 4.57 era and 1.55 whip. If you think Kip Wells is hot shit, please direct your attention to Davis. Dude's never gonna win a Sausage Race, but he has put together quite a run since joining the Brew Crew after getting the boot from Toronto at the end of the last season. Davis is still getting the job done, too -- after 8 strong starts at the end of 2003, there was some speculation that his numbers were inflated somewhat by a move to the (slightly) more pitcher-friendly National League. Here's Davis in the Senior Circuit:
2003 8 G / 8 GS / 52.1 IP / 49 H / 18 R / 15 ER / 21 BB / 35 K / 3-2 W-L / 2.58 ERA
2004 15 G/15 GS/ 91.2 IP / 90 H / 40 R / 35 ER / 31 BB / 60 K / 6-5 W-L / 3.44 ERA
Davis has cut down on the walks and hits this season, though his K/9 ratio isn't as good and he's given up a few more long balls -- hence the ERA inflation. Ben Sheets, who awoke from his career-long slumber this season to record 2 of the 10 most dominating games in MLB this season (including his masterful 18 k start and a 9 inning no-decision), is the top dog in Milwaukee. But Davis's numbers as a #2 starter are better than anyone's in half the rotations in baseball. Why, put together the tail end of 2003 with his starts this season and you've got All-Star worthy numbers: 23 starts, 144 innings, 9-7 W-L record and a 3.15 era. Did I mention that 11 of his 15 outings have been quality starts? That's more than Ben Sheets. And that wicked facial hair throws it over the top: it looks like some bored 6 year old defaced a team photo and drew an upside down Brewers logo on his chin. The guy is fo'real.
Are you there God? It's me, Doug Davis. I'm starting to thrive in Milwaukee. I'm so scared God. I've never been successful anywhere but here. Suppose no one notices me behind that handsome bitch Ben Sheets? Suppose I never get as much recognition as the Italian Sausage? Please help me God. Don't let this season end.
Yes. I'm talking about that Doug Davis, a total washout in Texas and owner of a not-so-special career 4.57 era and 1.55 whip. If you think Kip Wells is hot shit, please direct your attention to Davis. Dude's never gonna win a Sausage Race, but he has put together quite a run since joining the Brew Crew after getting the boot from Toronto at the end of the last season. Davis is still getting the job done, too -- after 8 strong starts at the end of 2003, there was some speculation that his numbers were inflated somewhat by a move to the (slightly) more pitcher-friendly National League. Here's Davis in the Senior Circuit:
2003 8 G / 8 GS / 52.1 IP / 49 H / 18 R / 15 ER / 21 BB / 35 K / 3-2 W-L / 2.58 ERA
2004 15 G/15 GS/ 91.2 IP / 90 H / 40 R / 35 ER / 31 BB / 60 K / 6-5 W-L / 3.44 ERA
Davis has cut down on the walks and hits this season, though his K/9 ratio isn't as good and he's given up a few more long balls -- hence the ERA inflation. Ben Sheets, who awoke from his career-long slumber this season to record 2 of the 10 most dominating games in MLB this season (including his masterful 18 k start and a 9 inning no-decision), is the top dog in Milwaukee. But Davis's numbers as a #2 starter are better than anyone's in half the rotations in baseball. Why, put together the tail end of 2003 with his starts this season and you've got All-Star worthy numbers: 23 starts, 144 innings, 9-7 W-L record and a 3.15 era. Did I mention that 11 of his 15 outings have been quality starts? That's more than Ben Sheets. And that wicked facial hair throws it over the top: it looks like some bored 6 year old defaced a team photo and drew an upside down Brewers logo on his chin. The guy is fo'real.
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Do the Bartman
I love the mob rule mentality in the stands. I suppose I should rephrase that: I don't love it, but I'm completely fascinated by it from a sociological perspective. What makes your company's computer guy (not me) scream obscenities (maybe me) at the asshat wearing Cubs gear (definitely not me) in the U.S. Cellular outfield? Is there a hypnotic pattern in the Jumbotron that commands you to kiss the person next to you or flash your tits (these are the only two choices, sorry) when the camera squares on you for approximately 10 seconds of fame? Ever seen someone leap onto the field during the game and get flying tackled by a half-dozen clearly out-of-shape security guards? Don't even front like it's not fucking awesome.
And then there's the whole ball-chaser archetype. This person is always male, always gets portrayed as an overgrown man-child (because only true villains or mental midgets would want to deny a child a chance at catching a ball) and is always overweight. If you see this infantile fat man lunging for a fly ball at a baseball game within a 10 foot radius of a small child, mob rule commands you to hate him like you've never hated anyone outside of Daryl Strawberry. This may seem like a crass generalization, but this is how Baron von Ball Thief always gets portrayed in the media; here's an excerpt from the AP news wire account of Sunday's Cardinals-Rangers game:
In the ensuing scramble, a husky man jumped over a row of seats and pinned a 4-year-old boy against the seats with his legs while diving to get the ball. To no avail, fans started chanting "Give him the ball! Give him the ball!"
What happens next, of course, is that someone always comes forward to testify that the overeager fan is really not such a bad quy. Usually, it's an elderly relative or an upstanding member of the community. The man in the harsh glare of the spotlight is Matt Starr, a 28 year old landscaper who has (sensibly) refused comment -- but his pastor is right there on the frontlines reminding everyone that he's "not the bad guy he's been made out to be." The video of the catch ain't pretty, but you have to feel sorry for the poor dipshit who won't be able to risk the embarrassment of attending another game this season. It's not like he attacked a first base coach or anything. And the young boy's family should be thanking him -- that 4 year old kid walked away with two game-used bats, a signed Nolan Ryan baseball, free tickets and enough gear to equip a Dominican youth team. Starr would've received something pretty cool, too -- a t-shirt that Cards reliever Steve Kline personalized with the epithets "Tough Guy" and "Ball Stealer" -- if he hadn't been escorted out of the stands two innings earlier. No shame, man, no shame. I'd bid on that shirt on E-Bay.
I love the mob rule mentality in the stands. I suppose I should rephrase that: I don't love it, but I'm completely fascinated by it from a sociological perspective. What makes your company's computer guy (not me) scream obscenities (maybe me) at the asshat wearing Cubs gear (definitely not me) in the U.S. Cellular outfield? Is there a hypnotic pattern in the Jumbotron that commands you to kiss the person next to you or flash your tits (these are the only two choices, sorry) when the camera squares on you for approximately 10 seconds of fame? Ever seen someone leap onto the field during the game and get flying tackled by a half-dozen clearly out-of-shape security guards? Don't even front like it's not fucking awesome.
And then there's the whole ball-chaser archetype. This person is always male, always gets portrayed as an overgrown man-child (because only true villains or mental midgets would want to deny a child a chance at catching a ball) and is always overweight. If you see this infantile fat man lunging for a fly ball at a baseball game within a 10 foot radius of a small child, mob rule commands you to hate him like you've never hated anyone outside of Daryl Strawberry. This may seem like a crass generalization, but this is how Baron von Ball Thief always gets portrayed in the media; here's an excerpt from the AP news wire account of Sunday's Cardinals-Rangers game:
In the ensuing scramble, a husky man jumped over a row of seats and pinned a 4-year-old boy against the seats with his legs while diving to get the ball. To no avail, fans started chanting "Give him the ball! Give him the ball!"
What happens next, of course, is that someone always comes forward to testify that the overeager fan is really not such a bad quy. Usually, it's an elderly relative or an upstanding member of the community. The man in the harsh glare of the spotlight is Matt Starr, a 28 year old landscaper who has (sensibly) refused comment -- but his pastor is right there on the frontlines reminding everyone that he's "not the bad guy he's been made out to be." The video of the catch ain't pretty, but you have to feel sorry for the poor dipshit who won't be able to risk the embarrassment of attending another game this season. It's not like he attacked a first base coach or anything. And the young boy's family should be thanking him -- that 4 year old kid walked away with two game-used bats, a signed Nolan Ryan baseball, free tickets and enough gear to equip a Dominican youth team. Starr would've received something pretty cool, too -- a t-shirt that Cards reliever Steve Kline personalized with the epithets "Tough Guy" and "Ball Stealer" -- if he hadn't been escorted out of the stands two innings earlier. No shame, man, no shame. I'd bid on that shirt on E-Bay.
Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Judas Iscariot Superstar
Big League Chew didn't save me from riding the pine for my high school junior varisty baseball team, though I still have a soft spot for the stuff. And I was surprised to learn recently that Jim Bouton -- whose account of the 1969 season in "Ball Four" made him a persona non grata, baseball's answer to Elia Kazan -- is credited as one of the inventors of the product. Bouton's a really fascinating guy for all sorts of reasons. Apparently, he and pitcher Rob Nelson came up with the idea while teammates on the Class A Portland Mavericks in 1977, designed the packaging and formula together, and pitched it successfully to a candy company in 1980. Too late to save Lenny Dykstra (ever seen those old photos where he looks like he's got a wad of dog shit stuffed into his cheek?) from a lifetime of oral cancer, but enough to give sunflower seeds a run for the money as an alternative opiate.
Oddly enough, the website advertised on current packages -- www.bigleaguechew.com -- hasn't even been registered as a domain. But you can glean a bit of information from Jim Bouton's website, where there's a nifty image of early 80s-era Big League Chew that looks exactly like a package of Red Man Chewing Tobacco. No, really: it even bills itself as "the original tobacco style chewing gum," a tagline which was quickly dropped and replaced with "the ballplayer's bubble gum." How could they get away with that in the Just Say No era? I suspect that Bouton and Nelson didn't even begin to realize the product's potential appeal to the youth market.
By the mid-80s, though, almost all marketing was done directly to kids. You couldn't sit through 10 minutes of cartoons on a Saturday morning without seeing this completely homoerotic commerical, which adheres to the central fallacy of all 1980s advertising: stick this in your mouth and it will turn you into a completely different person! Damn if the jingle wasn't insanely catchy, though. Oh, and props to these enterprising 6th graders for blinding us with science and proving that Big League Chew blows the biggest bubbles. Now how much do I have to stuff in my mouth to turn into Don Mattingly?
Big League Chew didn't save me from riding the pine for my high school junior varisty baseball team, though I still have a soft spot for the stuff. And I was surprised to learn recently that Jim Bouton -- whose account of the 1969 season in "Ball Four" made him a persona non grata, baseball's answer to Elia Kazan -- is credited as one of the inventors of the product. Bouton's a really fascinating guy for all sorts of reasons. Apparently, he and pitcher Rob Nelson came up with the idea while teammates on the Class A Portland Mavericks in 1977, designed the packaging and formula together, and pitched it successfully to a candy company in 1980. Too late to save Lenny Dykstra (ever seen those old photos where he looks like he's got a wad of dog shit stuffed into his cheek?) from a lifetime of oral cancer, but enough to give sunflower seeds a run for the money as an alternative opiate.
Oddly enough, the website advertised on current packages -- www.bigleaguechew.com -- hasn't even been registered as a domain. But you can glean a bit of information from Jim Bouton's website, where there's a nifty image of early 80s-era Big League Chew that looks exactly like a package of Red Man Chewing Tobacco. No, really: it even bills itself as "the original tobacco style chewing gum," a tagline which was quickly dropped and replaced with "the ballplayer's bubble gum." How could they get away with that in the Just Say No era? I suspect that Bouton and Nelson didn't even begin to realize the product's potential appeal to the youth market.
By the mid-80s, though, almost all marketing was done directly to kids. You couldn't sit through 10 minutes of cartoons on a Saturday morning without seeing this completely homoerotic commerical, which adheres to the central fallacy of all 1980s advertising: stick this in your mouth and it will turn you into a completely different person! Damn if the jingle wasn't insanely catchy, though. Oh, and props to these enterprising 6th graders for blinding us with science and proving that Big League Chew blows the biggest bubbles. Now how much do I have to stuff in my mouth to turn into Don Mattingly?
Monday, June 07, 2004
No shirt, no shoes
Bob Brenly got a little punch-drunk during yesterday's D'backs-Dodgers game after starter Steve Sparks couldn't record the final out of the 5th inning. Mike Koplove finished it out with a strikeout, while a combination of 5 pitchers worked the last 4 innings. Melvin's 7th inning strategy was especially fun: Brandon Villafuerte (who pitched the whole of the 6th) got the first out, gave up a single to Cesar Izturis, and got yanked. Randy Choate came on for the next 1/3 of an inning and got Shawn Green to ground into a fielder's choice. And then Scott Service trotted out for the final 1/3 and retired Adrian Beltre with a single pitch.
At the bottom of the 7th, the D'Backs were losing 4-2, but brittle reliever Darren Dreifort got lit up for three runs and the inning ended with the D'backs ahead 5-4. Which made Scott Service -- who was out of baseball for three years before last season and hadn't recorded a victory since the 2000 season -- the pitcher of record in the eventual Diamondbacks victory. One pitch, one out, one win -- not a first (Kyle Farnsworth pulled off the same feat last season), but cool all the same. You know what's even cooler? Last year, Orioles reliever BJ Ryan got a win without throwing a single pitch, when Tigers infielder Omar Infante got caught stealing. Nice.
Bob Brenly got a little punch-drunk during yesterday's D'backs-Dodgers game after starter Steve Sparks couldn't record the final out of the 5th inning. Mike Koplove finished it out with a strikeout, while a combination of 5 pitchers worked the last 4 innings. Melvin's 7th inning strategy was especially fun: Brandon Villafuerte (who pitched the whole of the 6th) got the first out, gave up a single to Cesar Izturis, and got yanked. Randy Choate came on for the next 1/3 of an inning and got Shawn Green to ground into a fielder's choice. And then Scott Service trotted out for the final 1/3 and retired Adrian Beltre with a single pitch.
At the bottom of the 7th, the D'Backs were losing 4-2, but brittle reliever Darren Dreifort got lit up for three runs and the inning ended with the D'backs ahead 5-4. Which made Scott Service -- who was out of baseball for three years before last season and hadn't recorded a victory since the 2000 season -- the pitcher of record in the eventual Diamondbacks victory. One pitch, one out, one win -- not a first (Kyle Farnsworth pulled off the same feat last season), but cool all the same. You know what's even cooler? Last year, Orioles reliever BJ Ryan got a win without throwing a single pitch, when Tigers infielder Omar Infante got caught stealing. Nice.
Saturday, June 05, 2004
The chase for .406
Spent some time wandering around the Printers Row Book Fair in downtown Chicago this morning, and discovered that Leigh Montville, former Boston Globe columnist and one of my favorite Sports Illustrated writers of all time, was appearing in a lecture hall to discuss his new book Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero. Haven't had a chance to pick the book up yet (I'm a paperback kinda guy, and I just got around to reading Moneyball), but one of the things I remembered about Montville as a writer is how excellent he is when it comes to breaking down the barriers professional athletes tend to erect for themselves and approaching his subjects in very human (and humane) terms.
Montville's talk and subsequent Q&A session were pretty illuminating. Despite having one of the worst 1970s era porn star mustaches this side of Jayson Stark, Montville comes off as a pretty regular fella -- he opened by joking about being obsessed with his own Amazon sales rank and detailing some of the critiques he's received of the book (mostly dealing with how he has chosen to order and present some of its facts and information). But his research seems exhaustive: Montville came to know Williams in the 1970s, when he was working as a hitting instructor for the Red Sox, and supplemented his brief interviews with the subject by interviewing all of his wives and a number of his ex-teammates.
Also, Montville's summary of his own book made me realize that I know nothing about Ted Williams, which is consistent with the book's observation that Williams didn't have a chance to shape a lasting public persona in the era before television. Some eye-opening factoids that interested me:
* Williams' mother was Mexican. Williams made no pains to hide or promote his ethnic identity, and it generally wasn't discussed.
* Williams had serious anger management issues. His third wife seems to think he would've been an excellent candidate for Prozac. Montville suggests that personal anger was the single most determining factor in Williams' success as a player.
* Williams served in the armed forces in WWII and, later, the Korean War. I knew this, but what I didn't know was that a) Williams sought a deferment during WWII and was rejected and b) served most of his time stateside as a flight instructor, only briefly reporting to Pearl Harbor after the bomb was dropped in Nagasaki. A point of interest considering how differently this has come to be portrayed in hindsight.
Montville didn't comment much on the huge legal struggle that ensured after Williams death, when his estranged son John Henry opted to have his body cryogenically frozen at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation at a cost of $120,000. It supplies the ugly coda for Montville's book, though the story is far from over: John Henry Williams died earlier this year and his body was committed to the same storage facility, where bodies of the deceased are placed in multi-person units and frozen at 328 degrees below zero. Williams' daughter Bobby Jo Ferrell lost her first appeal to have Williams' body removed from the facility, and if you read this interview with Williams' close friend Buzz Hamon, it's easy to see why she's dead set on fulfilling her father's reported wish for cremation. Mike Piazza recently pledged support of the case, and backed off quickly for fear of a lawsuit, though the additional publicity couldn't have hurt the cause. At this point, the greatest pure hitter in baseball is hanging upside down in a tank, naked, in a strip mall around the corner from a Ponderosa. Sorry, it just can't get any worse than that.
Spent some time wandering around the Printers Row Book Fair in downtown Chicago this morning, and discovered that Leigh Montville, former Boston Globe columnist and one of my favorite Sports Illustrated writers of all time, was appearing in a lecture hall to discuss his new book Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero. Haven't had a chance to pick the book up yet (I'm a paperback kinda guy, and I just got around to reading Moneyball), but one of the things I remembered about Montville as a writer is how excellent he is when it comes to breaking down the barriers professional athletes tend to erect for themselves and approaching his subjects in very human (and humane) terms.
Montville's talk and subsequent Q&A session were pretty illuminating. Despite having one of the worst 1970s era porn star mustaches this side of Jayson Stark, Montville comes off as a pretty regular fella -- he opened by joking about being obsessed with his own Amazon sales rank and detailing some of the critiques he's received of the book (mostly dealing with how he has chosen to order and present some of its facts and information). But his research seems exhaustive: Montville came to know Williams in the 1970s, when he was working as a hitting instructor for the Red Sox, and supplemented his brief interviews with the subject by interviewing all of his wives and a number of his ex-teammates.
Also, Montville's summary of his own book made me realize that I know nothing about Ted Williams, which is consistent with the book's observation that Williams didn't have a chance to shape a lasting public persona in the era before television. Some eye-opening factoids that interested me:
* Williams' mother was Mexican. Williams made no pains to hide or promote his ethnic identity, and it generally wasn't discussed.
* Williams had serious anger management issues. His third wife seems to think he would've been an excellent candidate for Prozac. Montville suggests that personal anger was the single most determining factor in Williams' success as a player.
* Williams served in the armed forces in WWII and, later, the Korean War. I knew this, but what I didn't know was that a) Williams sought a deferment during WWII and was rejected and b) served most of his time stateside as a flight instructor, only briefly reporting to Pearl Harbor after the bomb was dropped in Nagasaki. A point of interest considering how differently this has come to be portrayed in hindsight.
Montville didn't comment much on the huge legal struggle that ensured after Williams death, when his estranged son John Henry opted to have his body cryogenically frozen at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation at a cost of $120,000. It supplies the ugly coda for Montville's book, though the story is far from over: John Henry Williams died earlier this year and his body was committed to the same storage facility, where bodies of the deceased are placed in multi-person units and frozen at 328 degrees below zero. Williams' daughter Bobby Jo Ferrell lost her first appeal to have Williams' body removed from the facility, and if you read this interview with Williams' close friend Buzz Hamon, it's easy to see why she's dead set on fulfilling her father's reported wish for cremation. Mike Piazza recently pledged support of the case, and backed off quickly for fear of a lawsuit, though the additional publicity couldn't have hurt the cause. At this point, the greatest pure hitter in baseball is hanging upside down in a tank, naked, in a strip mall around the corner from a Ponderosa. Sorry, it just can't get any worse than that.
Thursday, June 03, 2004
Four on the floor
The great Colorado four-man rotation experiement ended in mid-May with a dull thud -- not enough empirical evidence could be amassesd to judge whether it was a success or a failure. Clint Hurdle talked some smack about limiting innings pitched and pitch counts and getting the most out of his starters and using his relief corps to better effect, but when all was said and done, the Rockies' four-man lasted about 10 days. Shawn Estes didn't even get an opportunity to pitch on "short" rest; mostly, it was confusing, akin to Cincinnati and Toronto's brief flirtations with the four-man last year.
Everybody thinks this a champion idea, mind you. Rany Jazayerli of Baseball Prospectus took a pretty nuanced approach and discovered that it was a nonsensical idea in Colorado, but wrote a three-part series of articles (scroll down to the third paragraph of the article in the previous link, and view his thoughts on the matter) on why it's an exciting notion to entertain overall. Redbird Nation (give this guy a Pulitzer or a Ford Frick Award or a Bloggie or something, seriously) did a really great job of summarizing and analyzing Jazayerli's findings as it might pertain to the Cardinals' rotation this year, basically breaking down the argument to show that the five-man rotation doesn't keep starters any healthier and that there's enough data to suggest that pitchers have better command on three day's rest than four.
My thoughts on PAP and PAP^3 notwithstanding, Jazayerli has taken Craig Wright's assumptions and crafted a really convincing case here. I mean, what's not to like? At this point, MLB teams are saying all the right things when the topic turns to reinstating the four-man rotation, but balking when it comes to walking the walk for practical/ logistical reasons or the purpose of satisfying fragile egos. The weight of the five-man rotation culture is proving a little more difficult to lift than previously expected.
Speaking of, the White Sox had the four-man rotation going in early May for about...four days. Most of us here in Chi-town didn't even notice. But Ozzie Guillen is flirting publicly with the idea of bringing it back for a longer trial run, and looking at the stats for everyone who's started for the pride of the South Side this season, it's easy to see why:
E. Loaiza 11 G / 11 GS / 6-3 W-L / 78.2 IP / 110.5 P/GS / 1.23 WHIP / 3.78 ERA
M. Buehrle 11 G / 11 GS / 5-1 W-L / 76.1 IP / 105.0 P/GS / 1.35 WHIP / 3.30 ERA
Schoeneweis 10 G / 10 GS / 5-2 W-L / 64.1 IP / 104.7 P/GS / 1.37 WHIP / 3.64 ERA
Jon Garland 10 G / 10 GS / 4-2 W-L / 68.2 IP / 105.9 P/GS / 1.38 WHIP / 3.93 ERA
Dan Wright 4 G / 4 GS / 0-4 W-L / 17.2 IP / 88.0 P/GS / 1.98 WHIP / 8.15 ERA
Felix Diaz 2 G / 2 GS / 0-1 W-L / 8.2 IP / 85.5 P/GS / 2.19 WHIP / 11.42 ERA
Jon Rauch 1 G / 1 GS / 0-1 W-L / 3.2 IP / 64.0 P/GS / 3.00 WHIP / 12.27 ERA
Neal Cotts 15 G /1 GS / 0-3 W-L / 19.1 IP / 54.0 P/GS / 1.40 WHIP / 4.66 ERA
Top four speak for themselves. Buehrle's having a great season, Garland had a terrific May, and all four have ERAs under the league average. Everyone in the fifth slot = terrible. Dan Wright's back in AAA after getting battered in 4 starts, while Felix Diaz and Jon Rauch got smoked in limited duty. Now reliever Neal Cotts is the latest to get thrown into the fray. Think he'll be any better? Well, White Sox fifth starters are 0-8 in 2004, and -- as reported by Peter Gammons -- the Sox haven't had a win from a fifth starter since 2002. Ouch.
Across town, the Cubs have a great fifth starter -- fella goes by the name of Greg Maddux. Every other team in MLB is not so blessed. Jazayerli and Rob Neyer and every blog author in the whole damn universe seems to think that the best way to dust off the four-man rotation might be to use a control group of some shitty baseball team. I say the Sox are in perfect position to implement it -- they're obviously getting nothing from the #5 spot (actually, worse than nothing -- a guaranteed loss) and they've got a winning team with momentum (the loss of Magglio smarts, though). Going four-man for the rest of the season would give Loaiza and Buehrle 6 more starts and Schoeneweis and Garland 5 more starts, maybe 30-40 extra innings for each. I believe that the projection I saw for Loaiza had him topping the list with 250 innings on the season, assuming no trips to the DL. Plus, Guillen seems to be regulating their pitch counts. That's not bad. The kids, as the marketing campaign from a few years back should remind us, can play.
The great Colorado four-man rotation experiement ended in mid-May with a dull thud -- not enough empirical evidence could be amassesd to judge whether it was a success or a failure. Clint Hurdle talked some smack about limiting innings pitched and pitch counts and getting the most out of his starters and using his relief corps to better effect, but when all was said and done, the Rockies' four-man lasted about 10 days. Shawn Estes didn't even get an opportunity to pitch on "short" rest; mostly, it was confusing, akin to Cincinnati and Toronto's brief flirtations with the four-man last year.
Everybody thinks this a champion idea, mind you. Rany Jazayerli of Baseball Prospectus took a pretty nuanced approach and discovered that it was a nonsensical idea in Colorado, but wrote a three-part series of articles (scroll down to the third paragraph of the article in the previous link, and view his thoughts on the matter) on why it's an exciting notion to entertain overall. Redbird Nation (give this guy a Pulitzer or a Ford Frick Award or a Bloggie or something, seriously) did a really great job of summarizing and analyzing Jazayerli's findings as it might pertain to the Cardinals' rotation this year, basically breaking down the argument to show that the five-man rotation doesn't keep starters any healthier and that there's enough data to suggest that pitchers have better command on three day's rest than four.
My thoughts on PAP and PAP^3 notwithstanding, Jazayerli has taken Craig Wright's assumptions and crafted a really convincing case here. I mean, what's not to like? At this point, MLB teams are saying all the right things when the topic turns to reinstating the four-man rotation, but balking when it comes to walking the walk for practical/ logistical reasons or the purpose of satisfying fragile egos. The weight of the five-man rotation culture is proving a little more difficult to lift than previously expected.
Speaking of, the White Sox had the four-man rotation going in early May for about...four days. Most of us here in Chi-town didn't even notice. But Ozzie Guillen is flirting publicly with the idea of bringing it back for a longer trial run, and looking at the stats for everyone who's started for the pride of the South Side this season, it's easy to see why:
E. Loaiza 11 G / 11 GS / 6-3 W-L / 78.2 IP / 110.5 P/GS / 1.23 WHIP / 3.78 ERA
M. Buehrle 11 G / 11 GS / 5-1 W-L / 76.1 IP / 105.0 P/GS / 1.35 WHIP / 3.30 ERA
Schoeneweis 10 G / 10 GS / 5-2 W-L / 64.1 IP / 104.7 P/GS / 1.37 WHIP / 3.64 ERA
Jon Garland 10 G / 10 GS / 4-2 W-L / 68.2 IP / 105.9 P/GS / 1.38 WHIP / 3.93 ERA
Dan Wright 4 G / 4 GS / 0-4 W-L / 17.2 IP / 88.0 P/GS / 1.98 WHIP / 8.15 ERA
Felix Diaz 2 G / 2 GS / 0-1 W-L / 8.2 IP / 85.5 P/GS / 2.19 WHIP / 11.42 ERA
Jon Rauch 1 G / 1 GS / 0-1 W-L / 3.2 IP / 64.0 P/GS / 3.00 WHIP / 12.27 ERA
Neal Cotts 15 G /1 GS / 0-3 W-L / 19.1 IP / 54.0 P/GS / 1.40 WHIP / 4.66 ERA
Top four speak for themselves. Buehrle's having a great season, Garland had a terrific May, and all four have ERAs under the league average. Everyone in the fifth slot = terrible. Dan Wright's back in AAA after getting battered in 4 starts, while Felix Diaz and Jon Rauch got smoked in limited duty. Now reliever Neal Cotts is the latest to get thrown into the fray. Think he'll be any better? Well, White Sox fifth starters are 0-8 in 2004, and -- as reported by Peter Gammons -- the Sox haven't had a win from a fifth starter since 2002. Ouch.
Across town, the Cubs have a great fifth starter -- fella goes by the name of Greg Maddux. Every other team in MLB is not so blessed. Jazayerli and Rob Neyer and every blog author in the whole damn universe seems to think that the best way to dust off the four-man rotation might be to use a control group of some shitty baseball team. I say the Sox are in perfect position to implement it -- they're obviously getting nothing from the #5 spot (actually, worse than nothing -- a guaranteed loss) and they've got a winning team with momentum (the loss of Magglio smarts, though). Going four-man for the rest of the season would give Loaiza and Buehrle 6 more starts and Schoeneweis and Garland 5 more starts, maybe 30-40 extra innings for each. I believe that the projection I saw for Loaiza had him topping the list with 250 innings on the season, assuming no trips to the DL. Plus, Guillen seems to be regulating their pitch counts. That's not bad. The kids, as the marketing campaign from a few years back should remind us, can play.
Sunday, May 30, 2004
Spinning around the bowl
What's wrong with Derek Jeter? He's been in a season-long slump ever since his buddy A-Rod donned a Yankees uniform. Maybe the Boss went after the wrong Jeter. Babyface's average is sagging faster than Mariah's boobies, though he's come alive over the last three days with a series of multi-hit games that have dragged his average above the Mendoza line. Assuming a couple more nights like last, he'll probably end the month of May batting around .225 -- predictable numbers if your name (god forbid) is Neifi Perez, heresy for a career .313 hitter. Still, if Jeter hits at his career clip over the rest of the season, he'll pull that average back up to a more-than-respectable .285, mirroring Marvin Benard's 2001 huge May-September shift of +.066 average points. Aaron Gleeman crunches the numbers in his excellent analysis and explains why it's safe to assume that Jeter will take a defibrillator to his average in June. Mike Cameron's season is totally in the toilet, though.
What's wrong with Derek Jeter? He's been in a season-long slump ever since his buddy A-Rod donned a Yankees uniform. Maybe the Boss went after the wrong Jeter. Babyface's average is sagging faster than Mariah's boobies, though he's come alive over the last three days with a series of multi-hit games that have dragged his average above the Mendoza line. Assuming a couple more nights like last, he'll probably end the month of May batting around .225 -- predictable numbers if your name (god forbid) is Neifi Perez, heresy for a career .313 hitter. Still, if Jeter hits at his career clip over the rest of the season, he'll pull that average back up to a more-than-respectable .285, mirroring Marvin Benard's 2001 huge May-September shift of +.066 average points. Aaron Gleeman crunches the numbers in his excellent analysis and explains why it's safe to assume that Jeter will take a defibrillator to his average in June. Mike Cameron's season is totally in the toilet, though.
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Operation Shutdown 2: Electric Boogaloo
What a fucking jerk! How long did it take for him to retract his statement that he was going to sit out the entire season? Sorry, MLB needs to step in and bar this guy from playing this season. At least these rabid Dodger fans are having a change of heart about Mondesi's replacement. By the way, www.raulmondesisucks.com has not been registered as a domain...yet.
What a fucking jerk! How long did it take for him to retract his statement that he was going to sit out the entire season? Sorry, MLB needs to step in and bar this guy from playing this season. At least these rabid Dodger fans are having a change of heart about Mondesi's replacement. By the way, www.raulmondesisucks.com has not been registered as a domain...yet.
If the glove doesn't fit...
Fans of the River City Rascals (of the independent Frontier League) shed a collective tear when a "Sports Criminals Night" promotion scheduled to take place on June 2nd got shut down less than two days after it was announced. You say: shockingly poor taste. I say: genius marketing. Broadcast announcer Phil Giubileo, who came up with the idea as part of the team's "Wacky Wednesdays" decided to mark the 10th anniversary of OJ Simpson's arrest on double-homicide charges with a special $1 "jailhouse" meal consisting of bread and water. Mmmm, sounds tasty! Though a bit overpriced, since I recall reading a statistic that suggested it only cost around $0.40 each day to feed an inmate. But that's pretty close to the meal (add a glass of milk and a rotten lemon, and you're right there) that prompted a group of Arizona inmates to stage a jail-wide hunger strike in 2001. Apparently, prisoners in Indiana don't get to eat anything that isn't made with a cornmeal base, so gimme the bread and water any day. There was a trivia contest and a grand prize trip to Jamaica (with Al Cowlings at the wheel and 100 lbs of marijuana in the car trunk) planned, too, but the upstanding citizens of O'Fallon, Missouri will now have to go elsewhere to find their fun.
Fans of the River City Rascals (of the independent Frontier League) shed a collective tear when a "Sports Criminals Night" promotion scheduled to take place on June 2nd got shut down less than two days after it was announced. You say: shockingly poor taste. I say: genius marketing. Broadcast announcer Phil Giubileo, who came up with the idea as part of the team's "Wacky Wednesdays" decided to mark the 10th anniversary of OJ Simpson's arrest on double-homicide charges with a special $1 "jailhouse" meal consisting of bread and water. Mmmm, sounds tasty! Though a bit overpriced, since I recall reading a statistic that suggested it only cost around $0.40 each day to feed an inmate. But that's pretty close to the meal (add a glass of milk and a rotten lemon, and you're right there) that prompted a group of Arizona inmates to stage a jail-wide hunger strike in 2001. Apparently, prisoners in Indiana don't get to eat anything that isn't made with a cornmeal base, so gimme the bread and water any day. There was a trivia contest and a grand prize trip to Jamaica (with Al Cowlings at the wheel and 100 lbs of marijuana in the car trunk) planned, too, but the upstanding citizens of O'Fallon, Missouri will now have to go elsewhere to find their fun.
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
An arm and a leg
I've been haunted by a huge cardboard cut-out of Sammy Sosa and his incredible shrinking neck for the last two weeks while stopping at the local convenience store for coffee to keep myself awake on the drive to work. Some company is running a promotion to meet the man, the myth, the legend in person and the timing's all wrong with his recent trip to the DL. Two sneezes, and suddenly Todd Hollandsworth is a starting outfielder. And the same scenario keeps running through my sleep-addled brain with a lucky contest winner fighting off the urge to woof cookies with the acrid stench of Ben Gay and liniments running through the clubhouse. Worst...prize...ever. Sosa's allergies are nothing to sneeze at, though: baseball has had a long, very colorful history of freak injuries. Some personal favorites include Marlins infielder Bret Barbarie burning his eyes with jalapeno juice while making nachos and arachnophobe Glenallen Hill's lacerations from falling through a glass table after a nightmare about being eaten by giant spiders. How the hell do you top that? You can't, but Rickey Henderson getting frostbite in the middle of the summer and Steve Sparks dislocating his shoulder while trying to emulate a motivational speaker by tearing a phone book in half come mighty close. There's even more schadenfreude-inducing goodies here and here.
I've been haunted by a huge cardboard cut-out of Sammy Sosa and his incredible shrinking neck for the last two weeks while stopping at the local convenience store for coffee to keep myself awake on the drive to work. Some company is running a promotion to meet the man, the myth, the legend in person and the timing's all wrong with his recent trip to the DL. Two sneezes, and suddenly Todd Hollandsworth is a starting outfielder. And the same scenario keeps running through my sleep-addled brain with a lucky contest winner fighting off the urge to woof cookies with the acrid stench of Ben Gay and liniments running through the clubhouse. Worst...prize...ever. Sosa's allergies are nothing to sneeze at, though: baseball has had a long, very colorful history of freak injuries. Some personal favorites include Marlins infielder Bret Barbarie burning his eyes with jalapeno juice while making nachos and arachnophobe Glenallen Hill's lacerations from falling through a glass table after a nightmare about being eaten by giant spiders. How the hell do you top that? You can't, but Rickey Henderson getting frostbite in the middle of the summer and Steve Sparks dislocating his shoulder while trying to emulate a motivational speaker by tearing a phone book in half come mighty close. There's even more schadenfreude-inducing goodies here and here.
Saturday, May 22, 2004
The dead horse has been flogged
More on pitch counts: John Kruk -- who Langstaff describes as Mark Madden without the intellect in one of his recent posts -- dropped the hammer on pitch counts in this Page 2 commentary. Kruk won my heart over as a sharp Letterman guest during his tenure as a player, though his everyman analysis seems better suited for commenting on monster truck racing and professional wrestling. Kruk seems to enjoy playing the role of the provacateur, spewing verbal diahrrea with the intent of creating controversy -- and while he's totally right in saying that pitch location and guile matters much more than speed (ever seen Jamie Moyer in action?), his thought on pitch counts don't quite hold.
Kruk: "The other day everyone was talking about Mike Stanton pitching in his 900th game -- same as Cy Young. One small difference: Mike has about 800 innings under his belt while Cy had 7,500."
Translation: "Mike Stanton is a pussy."
And maybe Stanton is a pussy, though you can't fault him for his specialized, albeit limited, role. I do (and anyone who thinks Grady Little made the right choice in keeping Pedro on the mound in that champion ship series will) appreciate Kruk's reactionary stance on pitch counts, though, especially when he says that "you can't respect a manager for taking out a guy just because some computer printout says after a certain pitch count he's a sitting duck."
More on the Phillies: I started this blog by calling for manager Larry Bowa's dismissal after a 3-6 start. The Phillies have since cruised to a 20-11 record on the hot bats of Chase Utley and Bobby Abreu and the return of David Bell. The record now stands at a not-so-shabby 23-17, though it's early enough in the season that the Dodgers losing 6 straight has been cause to sound the alarm. The Phils' middle relief has been really great (even in the absence of Billy Wagner), a welcome *ahem* relief from the make-it-to-the-sixth-and-pray-for-rain mode of last year. I should've also pointed out that the Phillies have been notorious slow-starters for the past few years, so a more thoughtful analysis should've waited until May. The 1-2 part of the order scares me, though: Marlon Byrd has yet to find his form and Jimmy Rollins has been dreadful. I'll stand by my pre-season analysis that this is a good team that needs one more big bat. Lou Pinella yielded Randy Winn in trade a couple of years ago; I wonder what might come of dangling Bowa on the waiver wire.
More on pitch counts: John Kruk -- who Langstaff describes as Mark Madden without the intellect in one of his recent posts -- dropped the hammer on pitch counts in this Page 2 commentary. Kruk won my heart over as a sharp Letterman guest during his tenure as a player, though his everyman analysis seems better suited for commenting on monster truck racing and professional wrestling. Kruk seems to enjoy playing the role of the provacateur, spewing verbal diahrrea with the intent of creating controversy -- and while he's totally right in saying that pitch location and guile matters much more than speed (ever seen Jamie Moyer in action?), his thought on pitch counts don't quite hold.
Kruk: "The other day everyone was talking about Mike Stanton pitching in his 900th game -- same as Cy Young. One small difference: Mike has about 800 innings under his belt while Cy had 7,500."
Translation: "Mike Stanton is a pussy."
And maybe Stanton is a pussy, though you can't fault him for his specialized, albeit limited, role. I do (and anyone who thinks Grady Little made the right choice in keeping Pedro on the mound in that champion ship series will) appreciate Kruk's reactionary stance on pitch counts, though, especially when he says that "you can't respect a manager for taking out a guy just because some computer printout says after a certain pitch count he's a sitting duck."
More on the Phillies: I started this blog by calling for manager Larry Bowa's dismissal after a 3-6 start. The Phillies have since cruised to a 20-11 record on the hot bats of Chase Utley and Bobby Abreu and the return of David Bell. The record now stands at a not-so-shabby 23-17, though it's early enough in the season that the Dodgers losing 6 straight has been cause to sound the alarm. The Phils' middle relief has been really great (even in the absence of Billy Wagner), a welcome *ahem* relief from the make-it-to-the-sixth-and-pray-for-rain mode of last year. I should've also pointed out that the Phillies have been notorious slow-starters for the past few years, so a more thoughtful analysis should've waited until May. The 1-2 part of the order scares me, though: Marlon Byrd has yet to find his form and Jimmy Rollins has been dreadful. I'll stand by my pre-season analysis that this is a good team that needs one more big bat. Lou Pinella yielded Randy Winn in trade a couple of years ago; I wonder what might come of dangling Bowa on the waiver wire.
Thursday, May 20, 2004
Pitching a fit
Gobo's fun thinkpiece on falling in love with Randy Johnson and his related fears of what high pitch counts will do to Jason Schmidt's arm got me to thinking about the relationship between pitch counts and injuries. Higher pitch counts would seem to suggest a higher rate of arm fatigue, and therefore a higher potential for serious arm (elbow, rotator cuff, etc) injuries. I still think there's some sense in this; the problem becomes how to divine the magic number of pitch counts and get a sense of where pitchers traditionally run into trouble if you assume equal access to conditioning methods, etc.
Bobby Cox usually gets pegged as a guy who protects his pitchers. Here's where the Braves rotation falls in P/GS (pitches per game started) with their ERAs following in parentheses.
Mike Hampton: 95.4 (6.36 era)
John Thompson: 96.0 (5.01 era)
Russ Ortiz: 95.4 (5.18 era)
Jaret Wright: 94.4 (3.55 era)
Horacio Ramirez: 103.3 (2.25 era)
Dusty Baker usually gets pegged as a guy who abuses his pitchers. Here's where the Cubs rotation falls in P/GS with their ERAs following in parentheses:
Greg Maddux: 84.0 (4.44 era)
Matt Clement: 103.9 (2.53 era)
Carlos Zambrano: 105.1 (2.08 era)
Kerry Wood: 100.9 (2.82 era)
Sergio Mitre: 86.1 (4.93 era)
Let's leave Greg Maddux out of this for now, because he's an anomaly. And Jaret Wright isn't so interesting from a statistical perspective. Looking at everyone else, the guys with the highest pitch counts (Ramirez, Clement, Zambrano, Wood) are also averaging the highest number of innings per start. Ramirez, for example, has tossed more innings than Hampton in less starts. The other half (Hampton, Thompson, Ortiz, Mitre) have lower P/GS averages because they aren't going as deep into games because they simply haven't been as effective. Verdict: inconclusive evidence. One might suggest that both Cox and Baker are within the bounds of fair use on their rotation's arms.
Historical data on pitch counts is notoriously hard to come by, though we know that the 100-pitch benchmark is an invention of the candy-ass modern era because it held no place in the era of the 4-man rotation. So the difference between John Thompson's 96.0 P/GS and Carlos Zambrano's 105.1 isn't of much concern -- it's reflective right now of how successfully they've pitched. And that only amounts to a +/- differential of 5%. It's more about extremes. What excites and scares us is what happens when Kerry Wood throws, say, 120 pitches in a game. And then what happens when he throws, say, another 120 pitches in the following start. And what effect a certain amount of stress might have on his arm when he's averaging only about 100 pitches per start.
Rany Jazayerli of Baseball Prospectus used the 100-pitch benchmark as the basis for his Pitcher Abuse Points (PAP) study in the late 1990s. Rob Neyer (a frequent collaborator) hyped PAP considerably upon arrival and maintains his virulent distaste for high pitch counts; Jazayerli issued a retraction in 2001 and Baseball Prospectus has since removed the initial study from their website. No knocks against the brilliant Jazayerli, but he definitely bit off more than he could chew. You may recall this point-by-point evisceration of PAP done by Don Malcolm; if not, it's definitely worth following the link and reading up on the historical problems associated with developing a formula for weighing pitch counts.
One of the more interesting ideas that came out of Malcolm's response was the notion that multi-start windows were a better way of divining the injury risk that comes with high pitch counts. Malcolm and company settle upon 350 pitches / 3 starts (or an average of 115 pitches per start) as the cut-off, citing Jim Leyland's use of Alex Fernandez (397 pitches / 3 starts = career-ending injury) as an example of the effects of high pitch counts. Watch the magic number creep from "100" to "115" just like that!
Those guys at Baseball Prospectus sure are tenacious, though. Keith Woolner picked up where Jazayerli left off with using pitch counts to predict stress and issued his own revision called PAP^3. Woolner assumes that "all pitchers have the same physical reaction to a given number of pitches" and comes up with a lovely polynomial curve to illustrate his findings. It does not, however, draw a distinction between the types of pitches thrown or make any provisions for delivery/mechanics. Which is problematic.
What's interesting about the study is his consideration of "high endurance" pitchers -- a class which might currently include folks like Kerry Wood, Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling and Jason Schmidt. Here's the shocker: the difference between a 90 pitch start and a 129 pitch start with a well-traveled arm is imperceptible. As the fine folks at Baseball Reference point out in their analysis of Woolner's work, this class of pitcher actually sees a slight improvement from pitch 120-129, pushing the "danger zone" to 130 pitches and above. So under that logic, Jason Schmidt's 144 pitch outing of a couple nights back could be dangerous in a broader context.
PAP^3 earns higher marks than PAP, but even Woolner is quick to point out that his theories are begging for refinement. There's enough to like from all of the work done so far on pitch counts:
* Nothing has disproved the long-held supposition that high pitch counts ruin young arms. What would be intriguing is a specific study on exactly how high pitch counts affect young pitchers, perhaps by pulling a nice sample of rookies and comparing their progress/degradation by comparing what transpires, say, before the first 150 career innings pitched and after. Step two might be to get a sense of when to keep young pitchers to a strict pitch count and when to relax the restrictions.
* "100" is a nice, clean number -- but a misleading choice for a benchmark. Research done thusfar supports a higher total, perhaps with a +/- differential to account for some/all other mitigating factors.
* And the move from considering a pitcher's workload on a start-by-start basis to weighing workload in larger clusters or over a 30 start period is sensible.
It's telling that the saaviest sabermetric theories from the Baseball Prospectus camp over the course of the past decade have centered on offensive production/ defensive range/ how individual contributions relate to team contributions. Pitching is not so easy to consider. Then again, pitch counts have only been recorded on the books for about 15 years, less than the lifespan of some of this generation's finest arms. More accrued data can only help, though I also get the sense that this is one problem that even the great Bill James couldn't crack.
Gobo's fun thinkpiece on falling in love with Randy Johnson and his related fears of what high pitch counts will do to Jason Schmidt's arm got me to thinking about the relationship between pitch counts and injuries. Higher pitch counts would seem to suggest a higher rate of arm fatigue, and therefore a higher potential for serious arm (elbow, rotator cuff, etc) injuries. I still think there's some sense in this; the problem becomes how to divine the magic number of pitch counts and get a sense of where pitchers traditionally run into trouble if you assume equal access to conditioning methods, etc.
Bobby Cox usually gets pegged as a guy who protects his pitchers. Here's where the Braves rotation falls in P/GS (pitches per game started) with their ERAs following in parentheses.
Mike Hampton: 95.4 (6.36 era)
John Thompson: 96.0 (5.01 era)
Russ Ortiz: 95.4 (5.18 era)
Jaret Wright: 94.4 (3.55 era)
Horacio Ramirez: 103.3 (2.25 era)
Dusty Baker usually gets pegged as a guy who abuses his pitchers. Here's where the Cubs rotation falls in P/GS with their ERAs following in parentheses:
Greg Maddux: 84.0 (4.44 era)
Matt Clement: 103.9 (2.53 era)
Carlos Zambrano: 105.1 (2.08 era)
Kerry Wood: 100.9 (2.82 era)
Sergio Mitre: 86.1 (4.93 era)
Let's leave Greg Maddux out of this for now, because he's an anomaly. And Jaret Wright isn't so interesting from a statistical perspective. Looking at everyone else, the guys with the highest pitch counts (Ramirez, Clement, Zambrano, Wood) are also averaging the highest number of innings per start. Ramirez, for example, has tossed more innings than Hampton in less starts. The other half (Hampton, Thompson, Ortiz, Mitre) have lower P/GS averages because they aren't going as deep into games because they simply haven't been as effective. Verdict: inconclusive evidence. One might suggest that both Cox and Baker are within the bounds of fair use on their rotation's arms.
Historical data on pitch counts is notoriously hard to come by, though we know that the 100-pitch benchmark is an invention of the candy-ass modern era because it held no place in the era of the 4-man rotation. So the difference between John Thompson's 96.0 P/GS and Carlos Zambrano's 105.1 isn't of much concern -- it's reflective right now of how successfully they've pitched. And that only amounts to a +/- differential of 5%. It's more about extremes. What excites and scares us is what happens when Kerry Wood throws, say, 120 pitches in a game. And then what happens when he throws, say, another 120 pitches in the following start. And what effect a certain amount of stress might have on his arm when he's averaging only about 100 pitches per start.
Rany Jazayerli of Baseball Prospectus used the 100-pitch benchmark as the basis for his Pitcher Abuse Points (PAP) study in the late 1990s. Rob Neyer (a frequent collaborator) hyped PAP considerably upon arrival and maintains his virulent distaste for high pitch counts; Jazayerli issued a retraction in 2001 and Baseball Prospectus has since removed the initial study from their website. No knocks against the brilliant Jazayerli, but he definitely bit off more than he could chew. You may recall this point-by-point evisceration of PAP done by Don Malcolm; if not, it's definitely worth following the link and reading up on the historical problems associated with developing a formula for weighing pitch counts.
One of the more interesting ideas that came out of Malcolm's response was the notion that multi-start windows were a better way of divining the injury risk that comes with high pitch counts. Malcolm and company settle upon 350 pitches / 3 starts (or an average of 115 pitches per start) as the cut-off, citing Jim Leyland's use of Alex Fernandez (397 pitches / 3 starts = career-ending injury) as an example of the effects of high pitch counts. Watch the magic number creep from "100" to "115" just like that!
Those guys at Baseball Prospectus sure are tenacious, though. Keith Woolner picked up where Jazayerli left off with using pitch counts to predict stress and issued his own revision called PAP^3. Woolner assumes that "all pitchers have the same physical reaction to a given number of pitches" and comes up with a lovely polynomial curve to illustrate his findings. It does not, however, draw a distinction between the types of pitches thrown or make any provisions for delivery/mechanics. Which is problematic.
What's interesting about the study is his consideration of "high endurance" pitchers -- a class which might currently include folks like Kerry Wood, Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling and Jason Schmidt. Here's the shocker: the difference between a 90 pitch start and a 129 pitch start with a well-traveled arm is imperceptible. As the fine folks at Baseball Reference point out in their analysis of Woolner's work, this class of pitcher actually sees a slight improvement from pitch 120-129, pushing the "danger zone" to 130 pitches and above. So under that logic, Jason Schmidt's 144 pitch outing of a couple nights back could be dangerous in a broader context.
PAP^3 earns higher marks than PAP, but even Woolner is quick to point out that his theories are begging for refinement. There's enough to like from all of the work done so far on pitch counts:
* Nothing has disproved the long-held supposition that high pitch counts ruin young arms. What would be intriguing is a specific study on exactly how high pitch counts affect young pitchers, perhaps by pulling a nice sample of rookies and comparing their progress/degradation by comparing what transpires, say, before the first 150 career innings pitched and after. Step two might be to get a sense of when to keep young pitchers to a strict pitch count and when to relax the restrictions.
* "100" is a nice, clean number -- but a misleading choice for a benchmark. Research done thusfar supports a higher total, perhaps with a +/- differential to account for some/all other mitigating factors.
* And the move from considering a pitcher's workload on a start-by-start basis to weighing workload in larger clusters or over a 30 start period is sensible.
It's telling that the saaviest sabermetric theories from the Baseball Prospectus camp over the course of the past decade have centered on offensive production/ defensive range/ how individual contributions relate to team contributions. Pitching is not so easy to consider. Then again, pitch counts have only been recorded on the books for about 15 years, less than the lifespan of some of this generation's finest arms. More accrued data can only help, though I also get the sense that this is one problem that even the great Bill James couldn't crack.
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
A Confederacy of Dunces
Bill Bavasi has to be the least popular guy in Seattle right now; the way things are going in his first year as GM, fans wouldn't even accept a demotion to hot dog vendor. And this is no mean feat: despite an impressive string of 90+ win seasons under his belt, outgoing GM Pat Gillick was routinely savaged for his inability to pull the trigger on deadline deals. And after two consecutive 93-69 seasons where the team failed to make the playoffs because of strong AL West competition, fans got it right by running Gillick out of town.
ESPN posted this discouraging bit a few days ago under the header "New GM Watch":
Paul DePodesta, Dodgers, 22-11, .667 [last year .525]
Dan O’Brien, Reds, 17-17, .500 [last year .426]
Bill Bavasi, Mariners, 12-22, .353 [last year .574]
To be fair, O'Brien is inheriting a team on the upswing of a rebuilding phase; the record hints that he's done a decent job of keeping the team treading water...or maybe even a little bit better considering the fire sale that occured during the last half of '03 and Austin Kearns's freak injury. I can't say enough good things about what DePodesta has done in his short tenure with the Dodgers; the turnaround owes a little to luck and everything else to his offseason moves. Bavasi, though, came in with an awful lot to work with (the Mariners are #12 in league payroll this year) and had a disastrousoffseason. He made moves to shed payroll and compete for a middle of the pack finish. You understand the temptation here: the Mariners lost Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey and Alex Rodriguez and bounced back nicely. But Bavasi's in denial...it's time, right NOW, for the Mariners to enter dealing and rebuilding mode.
I don't even know where to begin when it comes to pinpointing the locus of frustrations, though Sunday's box score is illustrative of exactly what kind of team the Mariners are: Pineiro tosses his best game of the season, scattering 5 hits over 8 innings but the team loses 2-1 with the only run coming off of a Scott Spiezio solo shot. Pineiro and Gil Meche have struggled mightly this season and the middle relief corps (outside of Eddie Guardado) is shaky, but the pitching's good enough to keep them in games. This team can not score runs, though. Take a look at the BA/ OBP/ SLG splits for the regular line-up:
Ichiro Suzuki .317/ .363/ .371
Raul Ibanez .254/ .320/ .464
E. Martinez .248/ .350/ .387
Bret Boone .248/ .287/ .426
Randy Winn .244/ .314/ .315
Rich Aurilia .240/ .290/ .298
John Olerud .246/ .364/ .331
Scott Spiezio .268/ .317/ .446
Dan Wilson .319/ .343/ .447
Dan Wilson, the catcher, has the highest OPS (on-base percentage + slugging average, perhaps the best indicator of total offensive productivity) and rbi totals of the lot. Ibanez, Aurilia, and Spiezio aren't validating their off-season contracts and everyone else seems to be having an off-year. Even Ichiro Suzuki, who Alan Schwartz describes as a player in rapid decline in his excellent and thoughtful analysis on ESPN.com today.
The starting line-up is a giant black hole right now, akin to fielding an entire team of Brad Fullmers. Worse, there's no way Bavasi could right the innumerable wrongs by mid-season. There's nothing to trade in AAA Tacoma, currently populated by a handful of career minor-leaguers and major-league rejects. And one of the oldest teams in MLB just broke a tie with the Mets to slide cleanly into 2nd place (mean age of 31 years, just behind the Yankees) with the addition of 41 year old catcher Pat Borders. The team ranks in the bottom third of all MLB teams in team ERA and almost dead last in team batting. No team not named the Mets can be this bad, but a sub-.500 finish is almost guaranteed. Poor Bob Melvin...it's going to be a long, cruel summer.
Bill Bavasi has to be the least popular guy in Seattle right now; the way things are going in his first year as GM, fans wouldn't even accept a demotion to hot dog vendor. And this is no mean feat: despite an impressive string of 90+ win seasons under his belt, outgoing GM Pat Gillick was routinely savaged for his inability to pull the trigger on deadline deals. And after two consecutive 93-69 seasons where the team failed to make the playoffs because of strong AL West competition, fans got it right by running Gillick out of town.
ESPN posted this discouraging bit a few days ago under the header "New GM Watch":
Paul DePodesta, Dodgers, 22-11, .667 [last year .525]
Dan O’Brien, Reds, 17-17, .500 [last year .426]
Bill Bavasi, Mariners, 12-22, .353 [last year .574]
To be fair, O'Brien is inheriting a team on the upswing of a rebuilding phase; the record hints that he's done a decent job of keeping the team treading water...or maybe even a little bit better considering the fire sale that occured during the last half of '03 and Austin Kearns's freak injury. I can't say enough good things about what DePodesta has done in his short tenure with the Dodgers; the turnaround owes a little to luck and everything else to his offseason moves. Bavasi, though, came in with an awful lot to work with (the Mariners are #12 in league payroll this year) and had a disastrousoffseason. He made moves to shed payroll and compete for a middle of the pack finish. You understand the temptation here: the Mariners lost Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey and Alex Rodriguez and bounced back nicely. But Bavasi's in denial...it's time, right NOW, for the Mariners to enter dealing and rebuilding mode.
I don't even know where to begin when it comes to pinpointing the locus of frustrations, though Sunday's box score is illustrative of exactly what kind of team the Mariners are: Pineiro tosses his best game of the season, scattering 5 hits over 8 innings but the team loses 2-1 with the only run coming off of a Scott Spiezio solo shot. Pineiro and Gil Meche have struggled mightly this season and the middle relief corps (outside of Eddie Guardado) is shaky, but the pitching's good enough to keep them in games. This team can not score runs, though. Take a look at the BA/ OBP/ SLG splits for the regular line-up:
Ichiro Suzuki .317/ .363/ .371
Raul Ibanez .254/ .320/ .464
E. Martinez .248/ .350/ .387
Bret Boone .248/ .287/ .426
Randy Winn .244/ .314/ .315
Rich Aurilia .240/ .290/ .298
John Olerud .246/ .364/ .331
Scott Spiezio .268/ .317/ .446
Dan Wilson .319/ .343/ .447
Dan Wilson, the catcher, has the highest OPS (on-base percentage + slugging average, perhaps the best indicator of total offensive productivity) and rbi totals of the lot. Ibanez, Aurilia, and Spiezio aren't validating their off-season contracts and everyone else seems to be having an off-year. Even Ichiro Suzuki, who Alan Schwartz describes as a player in rapid decline in his excellent and thoughtful analysis on ESPN.com today.
The starting line-up is a giant black hole right now, akin to fielding an entire team of Brad Fullmers. Worse, there's no way Bavasi could right the innumerable wrongs by mid-season. There's nothing to trade in AAA Tacoma, currently populated by a handful of career minor-leaguers and major-league rejects. And one of the oldest teams in MLB just broke a tie with the Mets to slide cleanly into 2nd place (mean age of 31 years, just behind the Yankees) with the addition of 41 year old catcher Pat Borders. The team ranks in the bottom third of all MLB teams in team ERA and almost dead last in team batting. No team not named the Mets can be this bad, but a sub-.500 finish is almost guaranteed. Poor Bob Melvin...it's going to be a long, cruel summer.
Sunday, May 16, 2004
Double trouble
Uh oh. My doppelgänger just got a call up from AAA Richmond to fill in at 2B. According to the dominant motif in 19th century German Romantic literature, very bad things will happen to both of us if I ever go to a Braves game. Those of you with a less moribund personality may prefer C.G. Jung's interpretation, wherein he discusses the opposition between the "shadow" and the "self," and suggests that the doppelgänger is merely a mirror image who embodies contradictory characteristics. My double went 1-4 with a run batted in in his Major League debut, which is not too shabby. Whereas I spent most of my day watching paint peeling. Turns out I've been the shadow all along; anyone care to lend me $5601.01 to reclaim myself/ my self?
Uh oh. My doppelgänger just got a call up from AAA Richmond to fill in at 2B. According to the dominant motif in 19th century German Romantic literature, very bad things will happen to both of us if I ever go to a Braves game. Those of you with a less moribund personality may prefer C.G. Jung's interpretation, wherein he discusses the opposition between the "shadow" and the "self," and suggests that the doppelgänger is merely a mirror image who embodies contradictory characteristics. My double went 1-4 with a run batted in in his Major League debut, which is not too shabby. Whereas I spent most of my day watching paint peeling. Turns out I've been the shadow all along; anyone care to lend me $5601.01 to reclaim myself/ my self?
Friday, May 14, 2004
Totally Looped
The Mets and the Marlins pulled off an odd switch this past off-season, with each team signing the other team's deposed closer. Armando Benitez enlisted with the Fish after losing his job with the Mets and getting traded twice at the end of '03. He has been amazingly unhittable this year: 14 saves, 1 blown save, 0.43 era and 1.00 WHIP. His fastball's back to premium velocity and he's made the most of every save opportunity. He's hella good.
Meanwhile, the Mets -- who have a recent history of spending money in the stupidest possible fashion -- inked the Marlins' never-quite-closer-of-the-future Braden Looper to a 2-year/ $6.75 million deal, looking for a stop-gap measure until Orber Moreno or Royce Ring or another talented AAA arm would be ready to step up and choke. At this writing, the Mets' record is 17-19, which is what you get when you trot out an outfield that contains Karim Garcia (no offense) and/or Shane Spencer (sorry, dude) every night. Looper has a perfect 0.00 era in 16 appeareances and 18 2/3 innings pitched, though. That looks hella good, and Looper's performing way above expectations, but he hasn't been anywhere near as valuable to his team despite the similarities in these two guys' numbers.
The chink in Benitez's ERA comes from two shaky innings, including his Marlins debut and (later) his one blown save of the season. Looper has a blown save, too -- from his first save opportunity of the season on April 9th -- but his ERA stands pat at a perfect 0.00 because he walked the tying run in and that run got charged to the guy he relieved. Hey, that's the rules. Anyway, Looper has been lights-out in every appearance since, and I'm certainly rooting for him to maintain that 0.00 era for as long as possible, but he hasn't been given nearly as many opportunities to justify his paycheck.
Looper has 6 saves in 7 opportunities, and the Mets have only created 7 save opportunities in 17 wins over 36 games. Boo. I know it's folly to suggest that the value of a closer is tied to his save total, I know it's not, but I'd like to see what happens to Looper's numbers when he's placed in more situations where he has to work to preserve the lead. Three of Looper's saves have come against les Expos; all six have come against teams with inferior records. I should note that Looper has been a more efficient pitcher than Benitez so far (tossing 15% less pitches, or an average of 3 per inning), but pitch economy doesn't matter when your team sucks. This is the best money that the Mets spent in the off-season by a longshot, but that contract couldn't go up in flames faster if Vince Coleman held a lit firecracker to it.
The Mets and the Marlins pulled off an odd switch this past off-season, with each team signing the other team's deposed closer. Armando Benitez enlisted with the Fish after losing his job with the Mets and getting traded twice at the end of '03. He has been amazingly unhittable this year: 14 saves, 1 blown save, 0.43 era and 1.00 WHIP. His fastball's back to premium velocity and he's made the most of every save opportunity. He's hella good.
Meanwhile, the Mets -- who have a recent history of spending money in the stupidest possible fashion -- inked the Marlins' never-quite-closer-of-the-future Braden Looper to a 2-year/ $6.75 million deal, looking for a stop-gap measure until Orber Moreno or Royce Ring or another talented AAA arm would be ready to step up and choke. At this writing, the Mets' record is 17-19, which is what you get when you trot out an outfield that contains Karim Garcia (no offense) and/or Shane Spencer (sorry, dude) every night. Looper has a perfect 0.00 era in 16 appeareances and 18 2/3 innings pitched, though. That looks hella good, and Looper's performing way above expectations, but he hasn't been anywhere near as valuable to his team despite the similarities in these two guys' numbers.
The chink in Benitez's ERA comes from two shaky innings, including his Marlins debut and (later) his one blown save of the season. Looper has a blown save, too -- from his first save opportunity of the season on April 9th -- but his ERA stands pat at a perfect 0.00 because he walked the tying run in and that run got charged to the guy he relieved. Hey, that's the rules. Anyway, Looper has been lights-out in every appearance since, and I'm certainly rooting for him to maintain that 0.00 era for as long as possible, but he hasn't been given nearly as many opportunities to justify his paycheck.
Looper has 6 saves in 7 opportunities, and the Mets have only created 7 save opportunities in 17 wins over 36 games. Boo. I know it's folly to suggest that the value of a closer is tied to his save total, I know it's not, but I'd like to see what happens to Looper's numbers when he's placed in more situations where he has to work to preserve the lead. Three of Looper's saves have come against les Expos; all six have come against teams with inferior records. I should note that Looper has been a more efficient pitcher than Benitez so far (tossing 15% less pitches, or an average of 3 per inning), but pitch economy doesn't matter when your team sucks. This is the best money that the Mets spent in the off-season by a longshot, but that contract couldn't go up in flames faster if Vince Coleman held a lit firecracker to it.
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Derek Bell + Sam Horn = Mark Bellhorn?
When's the last time you could, if ever, make a credible argument that a guy with a .229 average is his team's most valuable player? I'm still stifling a laugh as I write this, because that guy is journeyman second-baseman Mark Bellhorn -- but right now he's making Theo Epstein look like a genius. Or so it would seem. Here's Bellhorn's numbers since being thrust into the lead-off role:
21ab 1r 4h 1hr 1bi 7bb 9so .414 OBP .381 SLG .190 AVG
Not bad, not bad. I know it's only a week's worth of games, but look at that on-base percentage. And marvel at those walks! That has been the key for Bellhorn so far this season, who doesn't make consistent contact (hence the abysmal batting average) but is showing that he knows how to judge a pitch. Right now, he's on pace to break Ted Williams' team record for walks, which is simply astonishing. But before we all go patting Epstein on the back for the master stroke, let's take a look at what former Billy Beane acolyte Paul DePodesta and manager Jim Tracy recently engineered in Dodgertown, shifting Milton Bradley into the lead-off role while Dave Roberts (who has been very effective) rubs Ben Gay on his joints. Here's Bradley's numbers at the top of the batting order:
18ab 1r 5h 1hr 1bi 2bb 4so .350 OBP .500 SLG .278 AVG
Hey, wait a second here -- that looks pretty similar to me. Bradley has reached 1st base on balls a lot less, but he has also struck out a lot less than Bellhorn. Bradley's OBP was actually excellent last year with Cleveland; he's chasing more pitches in a different (until recently) line-up slot with L.A. Has Bellhorn been sniffing incense and consulting with Tibetan monks on the art of plate discipline? Or has Milton Bradley been equally effective in sinking battleships and creating monopolies in exactly the same role?
What Epstein and DePodesta are doing is playing the percentages and (generally speaking) penciling the guy with the absolute best possible chance of reaching 1st base into that particular spot in the line-up. It's smart, because it's pragmatic. And it's certainly anathema to the conventional wisdom of batting the fastest guy on your team in the lead-off spot, with the hope that he can get on base and then motor over to 3rd with a clean hit or a sacrifice. Because Pokey Reese is that guy on the Red Sox, and it's very clear his .283 OBP is ill-suited to the lead-off role.
They're making the move that they should be making, but the obvious seems exceptional because of how entrenched baseball managerial dogma is and how eager we are in assigning a totemic importance to the idea of the lead-off hitter. The difference between the lead-off hitter and any other guy on the team is maybe 30-50 at bats over the course of the season. So the guy batting first in the order is likely to have about 10% more trips to the plate than whomever is slotted, say, 8th.
Interestingly enough, Tony LaRussa considered a more holistic approach to dealing with this same problem a few years back by rearranging the line-up card to bat his pitcher (in the AL, substitute your team's lightest-hitting middle infielder) 8th and shifting his catcher to the bottom of the line-up, with the idea that the #9 hitter might get on base and set the table for the lead-off hitter. That experiment didn't pull the Cardinals out of their collective funk, but the basis of LaRussa's thought there was to move the automatic out (any pitcher not named Darryl Kile) to the place where it could do the least damage and use someone with a better probability of reaching base in front of the lead-off hitter should he have the opportunity to lead off the inning instead.
I think the reason the media -- outside of Boston, the city that hypes -- isn't making a bigger deal out of this is the principle of parity. What's great about what Bellhorn is doing now is that he's getting on base and tiring pitchers out by taking more pitches. Mark Bellhorn won't break Williams' team record because he's, well, Mark Bellhorn. And over the course of a full-season, Bellhorn is the best possible choice for the Sox, but he won't/wouldn't be any more effective in that role than someone like Bradley. Probably less, when you consider career numbers. Is that self-congratulatory jerk Joe Morgan correct in reminding us how "streaky" all hitters can be "when finding an individual groove"? In this case, yeah -- it's something that the stats just don't take in account. But don't let that stop you from riding the hot hand, Theo.
When's the last time you could, if ever, make a credible argument that a guy with a .229 average is his team's most valuable player? I'm still stifling a laugh as I write this, because that guy is journeyman second-baseman Mark Bellhorn -- but right now he's making Theo Epstein look like a genius. Or so it would seem. Here's Bellhorn's numbers since being thrust into the lead-off role:
21ab 1r 4h 1hr 1bi 7bb 9so .414 OBP .381 SLG .190 AVG
Not bad, not bad. I know it's only a week's worth of games, but look at that on-base percentage. And marvel at those walks! That has been the key for Bellhorn so far this season, who doesn't make consistent contact (hence the abysmal batting average) but is showing that he knows how to judge a pitch. Right now, he's on pace to break Ted Williams' team record for walks, which is simply astonishing. But before we all go patting Epstein on the back for the master stroke, let's take a look at what former Billy Beane acolyte Paul DePodesta and manager Jim Tracy recently engineered in Dodgertown, shifting Milton Bradley into the lead-off role while Dave Roberts (who has been very effective) rubs Ben Gay on his joints. Here's Bradley's numbers at the top of the batting order:
18ab 1r 5h 1hr 1bi 2bb 4so .350 OBP .500 SLG .278 AVG
Hey, wait a second here -- that looks pretty similar to me. Bradley has reached 1st base on balls a lot less, but he has also struck out a lot less than Bellhorn. Bradley's OBP was actually excellent last year with Cleveland; he's chasing more pitches in a different (until recently) line-up slot with L.A. Has Bellhorn been sniffing incense and consulting with Tibetan monks on the art of plate discipline? Or has Milton Bradley been equally effective in sinking battleships and creating monopolies in exactly the same role?
What Epstein and DePodesta are doing is playing the percentages and (generally speaking) penciling the guy with the absolute best possible chance of reaching 1st base into that particular spot in the line-up. It's smart, because it's pragmatic. And it's certainly anathema to the conventional wisdom of batting the fastest guy on your team in the lead-off spot, with the hope that he can get on base and then motor over to 3rd with a clean hit or a sacrifice. Because Pokey Reese is that guy on the Red Sox, and it's very clear his .283 OBP is ill-suited to the lead-off role.
They're making the move that they should be making, but the obvious seems exceptional because of how entrenched baseball managerial dogma is and how eager we are in assigning a totemic importance to the idea of the lead-off hitter. The difference between the lead-off hitter and any other guy on the team is maybe 30-50 at bats over the course of the season. So the guy batting first in the order is likely to have about 10% more trips to the plate than whomever is slotted, say, 8th.
Interestingly enough, Tony LaRussa considered a more holistic approach to dealing with this same problem a few years back by rearranging the line-up card to bat his pitcher (in the AL, substitute your team's lightest-hitting middle infielder) 8th and shifting his catcher to the bottom of the line-up, with the idea that the #9 hitter might get on base and set the table for the lead-off hitter. That experiment didn't pull the Cardinals out of their collective funk, but the basis of LaRussa's thought there was to move the automatic out (any pitcher not named Darryl Kile) to the place where it could do the least damage and use someone with a better probability of reaching base in front of the lead-off hitter should he have the opportunity to lead off the inning instead.
I think the reason the media -- outside of Boston, the city that hypes -- isn't making a bigger deal out of this is the principle of parity. What's great about what Bellhorn is doing now is that he's getting on base and tiring pitchers out by taking more pitches. Mark Bellhorn won't break Williams' team record because he's, well, Mark Bellhorn. And over the course of a full-season, Bellhorn is the best possible choice for the Sox, but he won't/wouldn't be any more effective in that role than someone like Bradley. Probably less, when you consider career numbers. Is that self-congratulatory jerk Joe Morgan correct in reminding us how "streaky" all hitters can be "when finding an individual groove"? In this case, yeah -- it's something that the stats just don't take in account. But don't let that stop you from riding the hot hand, Theo.
Sunday, May 09, 2004
Golden (glove) showers
If a kid who fucks apple pies can graduate high school, achieve normalcy in college, settle down with a loving woman who just happens to enjoy sticking strange things in her vagina and still capture America's hearts, than no one should be outraged over the fact that Cubs OF Moises Alou has been pulling out his dinkus and urinating on his own hands as a strengthening regimen. As an alternative to wearing batting gloves. Sure, sure, folk medicine is full of strange uses of everyday products like, um, butter and toothpaste. And the susperstituous baseball mind is a well-documented phenomenon. Still, I don't care if the guy's batting near .300 over his career; to quote this kid in my high school who described what happened when a rat accidentally fell into a deep fryer at the fast-food restaurant he worked at, it's just nasty. I wouldn't do this in a box, wearing socks or with a fox -- I wouldn't even do it in a post-apocalyptic future where my very survival depended on it. Pity the poor president who might have to shake this guy's hand if the Cubs win the World Series this year.
If a kid who fucks apple pies can graduate high school, achieve normalcy in college, settle down with a loving woman who just happens to enjoy sticking strange things in her vagina and still capture America's hearts, than no one should be outraged over the fact that Cubs OF Moises Alou has been pulling out his dinkus and urinating on his own hands as a strengthening regimen. As an alternative to wearing batting gloves. Sure, sure, folk medicine is full of strange uses of everyday products like, um, butter and toothpaste. And the susperstituous baseball mind is a well-documented phenomenon. Still, I don't care if the guy's batting near .300 over his career; to quote this kid in my high school who described what happened when a rat accidentally fell into a deep fryer at the fast-food restaurant he worked at, it's just nasty. I wouldn't do this in a box, wearing socks or with a fox -- I wouldn't even do it in a post-apocalyptic future where my very survival depended on it. Pity the poor president who might have to shake this guy's hand if the Cubs win the World Series this year.
Box score of the new millennium
Yankees cast-off/ back-end rotation filler Adrian Hernandez carried a no-hitter through 4 1/3 innings in yesterday's Brewers-Mets game. Matt Kinney and Luis Vizcaino followed up by scattering 2 hits over a combined 3 2/3 innings, before closer Danny Kolb slammed the door shut with a flawless, seven-pitch 9th. End result: the Brewers' four pitchers combine forces on a 2-hitter (topping the Mets 6-4) in one of the strangest games I've seen since Andy Hawkins tossed a no-hitter in a 4-0 loss.
Hernandez's line for the night ensured an extended holiday in middle relief:
4 1/3 IP 0h 3r 2er 7bb 4k 0 hr 80-34 pc-st
Kinney (who got the win) and Vizcaino were a bit more effective in preserving the lead, because the opposing starter -- rookie Tyler Yates -- also got lit up in five innings of work. It's worth noting, however, that each of the five pitchers the Mets trotted out (even Yates) threw a greater percentage of strikes. And when the dust settled, the Hernandez-Kinney-Vizcaino trinity had more walks (9) than Ks (8). The non-earned run in Hernandez's line came when third-baseman Wes Helms bobbled a grounder in the 4th inning, but still -- the Gods of Baseball must've been attending to other business to let the Brewers get away with a win that ugly.
Yankees cast-off/ back-end rotation filler Adrian Hernandez carried a no-hitter through 4 1/3 innings in yesterday's Brewers-Mets game. Matt Kinney and Luis Vizcaino followed up by scattering 2 hits over a combined 3 2/3 innings, before closer Danny Kolb slammed the door shut with a flawless, seven-pitch 9th. End result: the Brewers' four pitchers combine forces on a 2-hitter (topping the Mets 6-4) in one of the strangest games I've seen since Andy Hawkins tossed a no-hitter in a 4-0 loss.
Hernandez's line for the night ensured an extended holiday in middle relief:
4 1/3 IP 0h 3r 2er 7bb 4k 0 hr 80-34 pc-st
Kinney (who got the win) and Vizcaino were a bit more effective in preserving the lead, because the opposing starter -- rookie Tyler Yates -- also got lit up in five innings of work. It's worth noting, however, that each of the five pitchers the Mets trotted out (even Yates) threw a greater percentage of strikes. And when the dust settled, the Hernandez-Kinney-Vizcaino trinity had more walks (9) than Ks (8). The non-earned run in Hernandez's line came when third-baseman Wes Helms bobbled a grounder in the 4th inning, but still -- the Gods of Baseball must've been attending to other business to let the Brewers get away with a win that ugly.
Friday, May 07, 2004
Sound and Fury
So the proposed marketing deal between MLB and Sony to put small red-and-yellow webbing logos on the bases during the weekend of June 11-13 has fallen through. That was fast -- fast enough that Commissioner Bud Selig had already put the kibbosh on the deal before all of the pundits even had time to formulate proper responses. Eric Neel gave it a half-hearted go on ESPN, and while I generally love his writing, you could tell that his heart wasn't really in it: he advocates forming a big posse and taking it to the streets as a demonstration of displeasure with MLB's avarice. Well, shit, they were practically flipping cars over and burning down businesses in Detroit when the news was announced -- no one needs an excuse for a riot.
The response that Rob Neyer formulated on the subject disappointed me a little, too. Neyer's brutal as ever in dismantling MLB President Bob DuPuy's preposterous claim that outfield signage/ advertising enhances the experience of watching a ballgame, but his basic message is that the message MLB is sending with a money grab is damaging to the kids. But Rob, your son doesn't care about the intersection of commerce and ethics as it relates to MLB -- he just wants to see Spider-Man in five weeks. The children of America would be thrilled to see their favorite players dress up like Spider-Man for a weekend and horse around. Don't bring the kids into this; that old Roger Angell "I pine for the days when the pure-hearted game of baseball was played on the sandlots" saw is just boring.
My main man Gobo thinks Ralph Nader and the rest are making too big of a deal about nothing, though: "I just don't care if there are ads on the bases, or on the field, or on the players' jerseys, or whatever. It's all gonna happen eventually. I'd much rather have the team owners (in any sport) trying to squeeze out extra money that way than by adding playoff rounds or moving teams. Those things actually compromise the game, the ads just look silly until we get used to them. These things are much more common in Europe and especially Japan, where teams are named after sponsoring companies rather than cities."
And he's sort of right -- Europeans are more inured to the idea of corporate sponsorship, because advertising is everywhere. I watched shampoo commercials in the middle of a tram in Amsterdam and looked around to see if anyone else was irritated by this Orwellian bombardment -- they weren't. There is a growing consciousness to this sort of thing, though, if you consider the movement to scale back on advertising in the European stock car circuit. The most analogous example here in the States is, well, NASCAR and Richard Petty's STP logo is a distant blur from the nosebleed seats. The root of Gobo's argument is that it's ok as long as MLB isn't sticking it to the fans.
But MLB is already all about sticking it to the fans, so it's a reductive argument. I will (somewhat begrudgingly) acknowledge that licensing and marketing deals are a necessity to keep the sport afloat. I'm even ok with the idea of corporate branding and stadium naming rights, because it's stealth marketing. But there's a huge, huge disconnect between what happens off and on the field within the microcosm of the professional sports area -- you could (with some effort) tune out the advertising that's all around you and simply concentrate on what's happening on the field, though that's an impossibility if your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man has left his sticky fingers all over 1st, 2nd and 3rd base. It's all about where you choose to draw your line in the sand. This is the same reason why I don't necessarily object to crass product placements in movies, but why I will steadfastly refuse to go to a movie theater that shows commercials before the previews. I don't like the idea of paying 20 bucks to see a game and having to be subjected to MLB teams padding their coffers in such an overt and repellent way. It's a personal choice, but that's my line.
So the proposed marketing deal between MLB and Sony to put small red-and-yellow webbing logos on the bases during the weekend of June 11-13 has fallen through. That was fast -- fast enough that Commissioner Bud Selig had already put the kibbosh on the deal before all of the pundits even had time to formulate proper responses. Eric Neel gave it a half-hearted go on ESPN, and while I generally love his writing, you could tell that his heart wasn't really in it: he advocates forming a big posse and taking it to the streets as a demonstration of displeasure with MLB's avarice. Well, shit, they were practically flipping cars over and burning down businesses in Detroit when the news was announced -- no one needs an excuse for a riot.
The response that Rob Neyer formulated on the subject disappointed me a little, too. Neyer's brutal as ever in dismantling MLB President Bob DuPuy's preposterous claim that outfield signage/ advertising enhances the experience of watching a ballgame, but his basic message is that the message MLB is sending with a money grab is damaging to the kids. But Rob, your son doesn't care about the intersection of commerce and ethics as it relates to MLB -- he just wants to see Spider-Man in five weeks. The children of America would be thrilled to see their favorite players dress up like Spider-Man for a weekend and horse around. Don't bring the kids into this; that old Roger Angell "I pine for the days when the pure-hearted game of baseball was played on the sandlots" saw is just boring.
My main man Gobo thinks Ralph Nader and the rest are making too big of a deal about nothing, though: "I just don't care if there are ads on the bases, or on the field, or on the players' jerseys, or whatever. It's all gonna happen eventually. I'd much rather have the team owners (in any sport) trying to squeeze out extra money that way than by adding playoff rounds or moving teams. Those things actually compromise the game, the ads just look silly until we get used to them. These things are much more common in Europe and especially Japan, where teams are named after sponsoring companies rather than cities."
And he's sort of right -- Europeans are more inured to the idea of corporate sponsorship, because advertising is everywhere. I watched shampoo commercials in the middle of a tram in Amsterdam and looked around to see if anyone else was irritated by this Orwellian bombardment -- they weren't. There is a growing consciousness to this sort of thing, though, if you consider the movement to scale back on advertising in the European stock car circuit. The most analogous example here in the States is, well, NASCAR and Richard Petty's STP logo is a distant blur from the nosebleed seats. The root of Gobo's argument is that it's ok as long as MLB isn't sticking it to the fans.
But MLB is already all about sticking it to the fans, so it's a reductive argument. I will (somewhat begrudgingly) acknowledge that licensing and marketing deals are a necessity to keep the sport afloat. I'm even ok with the idea of corporate branding and stadium naming rights, because it's stealth marketing. But there's a huge, huge disconnect between what happens off and on the field within the microcosm of the professional sports area -- you could (with some effort) tune out the advertising that's all around you and simply concentrate on what's happening on the field, though that's an impossibility if your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man has left his sticky fingers all over 1st, 2nd and 3rd base. It's all about where you choose to draw your line in the sand. This is the same reason why I don't necessarily object to crass product placements in movies, but why I will steadfastly refuse to go to a movie theater that shows commercials before the previews. I don't like the idea of paying 20 bucks to see a game and having to be subjected to MLB teams padding their coffers in such an overt and repellent way. It's a personal choice, but that's my line.
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
Rickey Henderson on Rickey Henderson being Rickey Henderson
Rickey's back. As reported on ESPN/ CNNSi on Sunday, 45 year old OF Rickey Henderson signed a contract with the Newark Bears of the Atlantic League, the same team that donated a roster spot last season before a mid-season call-up with the offense-starved Dodgers. This is great news for comedian David Cross, who now gets a renewed lease on one of the funnier bits from his double-CD concert album Shut Up, You Fucking Baby!, an indictment of Rickey Henderson's solipsistic need to refer to himself in the third person at all times:
"Well, you know, Rickey Henderson needs to do what’s best for Rickey Henderson. If Rickey Henderson needs to tape his bat up higher to be the best Rickey Henderson that Rickey Henderson can be, then Rickey Henderson is going to tape his bat up higher in a way that Rickey Henderson can perceive as Rickey Henderson can to be the best Rickey Henderson that Rickey Henderson can or will or wants to be..."
This is great news, as well, for the Newark Bears, an indipendent minor league team that has tendered contracts to Jose Canseco and his profoundly untalented brother Ozzie and Jose "Lima Time" Lima. Indipendent leagues with unaffiliated teams like the Atlantic and the Northern (more on this in a second) don't receive funding of any sort from MLB or its affiliated teams; these leagues have served as audition stages for the majors in the past (Kerry Lightenberg being one such example), but traditionally exist as a home for past-prime former MLBers and/or prospects in loathesome contract disputes (J.D. Drew being the best example here). Without having the cache of next-generation MLB stars drawing fans, how better to cram butts in seats than sign a first-ballot Hall of Famer like Henderson or someone with some sort of magnetizing name recognition?
This is bad news for Rickey Henderson, because Rickey Henderson clearly wants to be the best Rickey Henderson that Rickey Henderson can be on a Major League team. And going by his stats since his last productive season with the Mets in 1999 (at the ripe age of 40), the number of takers in the pool is dwindling. The Mariners, the Red Sox, the Padres and the Dodgers won't get fooled again, and Henderson would be wasting a bench spot on every other team.
Rickey's speed has dwindled and his ability to make consistent contact is down. In 1050 abs since reaching age 40, his average is barely above the Mendoza line and his OBP dipped to .321 last season. I don't doubt that Rickey Henderson would look splendid in some MLB team's uniform in 2004 and might manage some spectacular plays, and it's not like Fred McGriff, Andres Galarraga or Julio Franco are getting any younger, but those guys still have the ability to hit around .300. It doesn't even look like Rickey could do a good job coming off the bench at this point. Those certainly aren't the kind of numbers you'd want from a pinch-hit specialist, and most NL teams would rather not carry someone to act exclusively as a pinch-runner.
One interesting thing to note about Rickey Henderson that Rickey Henderson would like you to know about Rickey Henderson, is that he's the first baseball player to legitimately play in four different decades, since his career began in 1979 and has continued well into the 2000s. Minnie Minoso is the only other guy who can lay claim to such a glorious thing, as he played games in five different decades, even if his career really only spanned three and fruitcake White Sox owner Bill Veeck had to pull him out of mothballs in 1976 (at age 53!) and 1980 (at age 57!) to do so. But if someone like Mike Veeck -- who shares his daddy's talent for shameless promotion -- gets his hands on a Major League team in, say, 2010 -- Rickey might get a chance to do the same.
But it's mainly bad news for Rickey Henderson because the quest for one more summer catch is delaying his sure-fire induction into the Hall of Fame. Which is the only place we want to see him right now. Sign up for the AARP card and hang up the spikes, old man -- I know I'm bracing myself for what could be the greatest induction speech ever.
Rickey's back. As reported on ESPN/ CNNSi on Sunday, 45 year old OF Rickey Henderson signed a contract with the Newark Bears of the Atlantic League, the same team that donated a roster spot last season before a mid-season call-up with the offense-starved Dodgers. This is great news for comedian David Cross, who now gets a renewed lease on one of the funnier bits from his double-CD concert album Shut Up, You Fucking Baby!, an indictment of Rickey Henderson's solipsistic need to refer to himself in the third person at all times:
"Well, you know, Rickey Henderson needs to do what’s best for Rickey Henderson. If Rickey Henderson needs to tape his bat up higher to be the best Rickey Henderson that Rickey Henderson can be, then Rickey Henderson is going to tape his bat up higher in a way that Rickey Henderson can perceive as Rickey Henderson can to be the best Rickey Henderson that Rickey Henderson can or will or wants to be..."
This is great news, as well, for the Newark Bears, an indipendent minor league team that has tendered contracts to Jose Canseco and his profoundly untalented brother Ozzie and Jose "Lima Time" Lima. Indipendent leagues with unaffiliated teams like the Atlantic and the Northern (more on this in a second) don't receive funding of any sort from MLB or its affiliated teams; these leagues have served as audition stages for the majors in the past (Kerry Lightenberg being one such example), but traditionally exist as a home for past-prime former MLBers and/or prospects in loathesome contract disputes (J.D. Drew being the best example here). Without having the cache of next-generation MLB stars drawing fans, how better to cram butts in seats than sign a first-ballot Hall of Famer like Henderson or someone with some sort of magnetizing name recognition?
This is bad news for Rickey Henderson, because Rickey Henderson clearly wants to be the best Rickey Henderson that Rickey Henderson can be on a Major League team. And going by his stats since his last productive season with the Mets in 1999 (at the ripe age of 40), the number of takers in the pool is dwindling. The Mariners, the Red Sox, the Padres and the Dodgers won't get fooled again, and Henderson would be wasting a bench spot on every other team.
Rickey's speed has dwindled and his ability to make consistent contact is down. In 1050 abs since reaching age 40, his average is barely above the Mendoza line and his OBP dipped to .321 last season. I don't doubt that Rickey Henderson would look splendid in some MLB team's uniform in 2004 and might manage some spectacular plays, and it's not like Fred McGriff, Andres Galarraga or Julio Franco are getting any younger, but those guys still have the ability to hit around .300. It doesn't even look like Rickey could do a good job coming off the bench at this point. Those certainly aren't the kind of numbers you'd want from a pinch-hit specialist, and most NL teams would rather not carry someone to act exclusively as a pinch-runner.
One interesting thing to note about Rickey Henderson that Rickey Henderson would like you to know about Rickey Henderson, is that he's the first baseball player to legitimately play in four different decades, since his career began in 1979 and has continued well into the 2000s. Minnie Minoso is the only other guy who can lay claim to such a glorious thing, as he played games in five different decades, even if his career really only spanned three and fruitcake White Sox owner Bill Veeck had to pull him out of mothballs in 1976 (at age 53!) and 1980 (at age 57!) to do so. But if someone like Mike Veeck -- who shares his daddy's talent for shameless promotion -- gets his hands on a Major League team in, say, 2010 -- Rickey might get a chance to do the same.
But it's mainly bad news for Rickey Henderson because the quest for one more summer catch is delaying his sure-fire induction into the Hall of Fame. Which is the only place we want to see him right now. Sign up for the AARP card and hang up the spikes, old man -- I know I'm bracing myself for what could be the greatest induction speech ever.
Sunday, May 02, 2004
An out is an out except when it's not an out
I'm down with OBP and OPS and Win Shares. Sometimes I'm even down with OPP. But I'm having the damnest time trying to wrap my head around POP (or Productive Out Percentage), a psuedo-sabermetric formula that Buster Olney discusses in a recent issue of ESPN the Magazine. ESPN and Elias Sports Bureau -- who collaborated on the metric -- define a "productive out" as such:
1) A baserunner advances with the first out of an inning.
2) A pitcher sacrifices with one out.
3) A baserunner is driven home with the second out of an inning.
And "POP" is a ratio of "productive" outs to total possible "productive" outs, i.e. if 3 of a player's 10 outs are deemed "productive" by the above standard, his POP is .300.
Ok, but what the fuck does this mean? Olney goes on to rank the top six and bottom six teams in POP to illustrate his thesis -- the Tigers, Diamonbacks, and Pirates are at the top of the list above .400, while the Yankees, Red Sox and Oakland As are at the bottom of the list. Oakland's cumulative POP appears to be pretty galling at .137, until you remember that Oakland:
a) doesn't favor bunts, stolen bases or the hit-and-run
b) compensates by stressing plate discipline and walks and OBP, and
c) has averaged 100 wins per season over the last three seasons with this "bias"
Last I checked, the Yankees and Red Sox have won a few games with their POP-allergic methods, because, oh yeah -- they actually get people on base. Ha ha ha, this makes absolutely no sense as a standard for efficiency/ productivity -- even with as little as I know about statistics -- because it's based around such a small, quirky sample size. Olney writes that "Through Monday, the Tigers led the majors in POP, at .430, with 37 productive outs among 86 made in those situations." So what happens when you base this against a team with, say, 70 or 100 such situations? Is there a quantitative way of defining which team is doing a better job? Maybe in these particular situations, but it's not a metric that considers what a player/team is doing in every at-bat or inning pitched. Ergo, I hate it.
I'm down with OBP and OPS and Win Shares. Sometimes I'm even down with OPP. But I'm having the damnest time trying to wrap my head around POP (or Productive Out Percentage), a psuedo-sabermetric formula that Buster Olney discusses in a recent issue of ESPN the Magazine. ESPN and Elias Sports Bureau -- who collaborated on the metric -- define a "productive out" as such:
1) A baserunner advances with the first out of an inning.
2) A pitcher sacrifices with one out.
3) A baserunner is driven home with the second out of an inning.
And "POP" is a ratio of "productive" outs to total possible "productive" outs, i.e. if 3 of a player's 10 outs are deemed "productive" by the above standard, his POP is .300.
Ok, but what the fuck does this mean? Olney goes on to rank the top six and bottom six teams in POP to illustrate his thesis -- the Tigers, Diamonbacks, and Pirates are at the top of the list above .400, while the Yankees, Red Sox and Oakland As are at the bottom of the list. Oakland's cumulative POP appears to be pretty galling at .137, until you remember that Oakland:
a) doesn't favor bunts, stolen bases or the hit-and-run
b) compensates by stressing plate discipline and walks and OBP, and
c) has averaged 100 wins per season over the last three seasons with this "bias"
Last I checked, the Yankees and Red Sox have won a few games with their POP-allergic methods, because, oh yeah -- they actually get people on base. Ha ha ha, this makes absolutely no sense as a standard for efficiency/ productivity -- even with as little as I know about statistics -- because it's based around such a small, quirky sample size. Olney writes that "Through Monday, the Tigers led the majors in POP, at .430, with 37 productive outs among 86 made in those situations." So what happens when you base this against a team with, say, 70 or 100 such situations? Is there a quantitative way of defining which team is doing a better job? Maybe in these particular situations, but it's not a metric that considers what a player/team is doing in every at-bat or inning pitched. Ergo, I hate it.
Saturday, May 01, 2004
You can do it!
"I'd bet on Rick Ankiel," remarked Tony LaRussa in an ESPN interview during spring training, and I'm inclined to trust him. I'm not racing to pull out my wallet, mind you, but LaRussa's one of those GMs (Dusty Baker and Art Howe, I'm also looking at you) who gets by further on intuition than anyone should. Not sure what's making LaRussa's spider-sense all tingly about Ankiel: as of this writing, he's been out of the major leagues for three years and he won't throw a pitch until at least August after reconstructive elbow surgery. That's sorta been the drill with Ankiel : surgery, followed by racing to come back too quickly, followed by injury relapse, ad infinitum. This time will be the real test. No really, this time it's for real; I think it all hinges on what happens in 2005. After a meltdown in his first six starts of the 2001 season, Ankiel has been all kinds of awful. He finished 2001 out by getting demoted from AAA, missed all of 2002, sucked it up in AA at the beginning of the 2003 and then missed the rest due to surgery. I can't even think of a good precedent for Ankiel's struggles, aside from the obvious Steve Blass-Mark Wohlers points of comparison. But there's at least two things that won't make LaRussa look like a fool: Ankiel's fastball is nasty, and with a lot of strengthening, he'll probably recover that velocity and might make it as a 7th or 8th inning specialist. Oh, and the fact that Todd Van Poppel, another mega-hyped prospect who has seen his share of ups and downs boasts a career ERA a full point over league average and has already qualified for his major-league pension. With no amazing pitching prospects in the wings, it's about all the Cardinals have to pin their hopes on.
"I'd bet on Rick Ankiel," remarked Tony LaRussa in an ESPN interview during spring training, and I'm inclined to trust him. I'm not racing to pull out my wallet, mind you, but LaRussa's one of those GMs (Dusty Baker and Art Howe, I'm also looking at you) who gets by further on intuition than anyone should. Not sure what's making LaRussa's spider-sense all tingly about Ankiel: as of this writing, he's been out of the major leagues for three years and he won't throw a pitch until at least August after reconstructive elbow surgery. That's sorta been the drill with Ankiel : surgery, followed by racing to come back too quickly, followed by injury relapse, ad infinitum. This time will be the real test. No really, this time it's for real; I think it all hinges on what happens in 2005. After a meltdown in his first six starts of the 2001 season, Ankiel has been all kinds of awful. He finished 2001 out by getting demoted from AAA, missed all of 2002, sucked it up in AA at the beginning of the 2003 and then missed the rest due to surgery. I can't even think of a good precedent for Ankiel's struggles, aside from the obvious Steve Blass-Mark Wohlers points of comparison. But there's at least two things that won't make LaRussa look like a fool: Ankiel's fastball is nasty, and with a lot of strengthening, he'll probably recover that velocity and might make it as a 7th or 8th inning specialist. Oh, and the fact that Todd Van Poppel, another mega-hyped prospect who has seen his share of ups and downs boasts a career ERA a full point over league average and has already qualified for his major-league pension. With no amazing pitching prospects in the wings, it's about all the Cardinals have to pin their hopes on.
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