The Whiz Kid's Baseball Wisdom

Breaking the Silence

2009-12-07T23:22:00.001-05:00

To Everyone --

I cannot be any more sorry that I have neglected this blog as long as I have.

More important than anything is that I have neglected myself. I have been struggling mightily with depression and anxiety these past few years and am sorry to say that I was losing the battle there for a while.

The things that interested me the most – baseball, movies, books, etc. – no longer held sway. On top of that, I felt a duty to keep working and maintaining this blog – which celebrated its 4th anniversary recently – and the longer I neglected that duty the tougher it became to break the silence and return to it.

Consider the silence broken.

Writing had become too much of a job for me. The anxiety I was dealing with in my everyday life was the worst factor, of course, but I also felt a duty to write first and foremost for Blogcritics.com, and unfortunately that just became more of a chore than a joy. I haven’t yet decided if I will return to Blogcritics, but I have decided that my first duty is to have fun – and that happens right here, first and foremost. If that means that writing will always be an amateur passion for me, so the hell be it.

I very much hope that, having partially relieved my anxiety with this post, I can return to writing about what I love. My first project – and I use that word hesitantly given the connotation with work – will be the postseason recap that’s been a feature of this blog for four years now. In the meantime, I hope to discuss the offseason Hot Stove, namely the MLB Winter Meetings now taking place.

I sincerely hope that I can just go back to having fun. Then I can start conveying that fun to other people, which is what the whole damn thing was about in the first place.

Thank you – sincerely and mightily – for your support.

Best regards,

Aaron “W.K.” Whitehead

P.S. I’m seriously contemplating a “re-branding” of this blog. I like the catchiness of “whiz kid,” but I’ve never been comfortable with the arrogance inherent in calling myself that. Plus, I’m not really a kid by any means now. I may be back to discuss my thoughts or just go for something new on a whim. Feedback is always appreciated.

BP Idol Entry: I Miss Skip & Pete

2009-05-25T02:20:00.008-04:00

Author's Note: Recently, the Baseball Prospectus website asked for submissions for a new contest, Baseball Prospectus Idol. The editors would pick the ten best submissions, and the BP readers would vote off one writer each week. Unfortunately, I did not make the cut. Still, I was very proud of my submission. Since it won't be shown at BP, I'd like to introduce it here.

"Eleven to four
That's the score
And now the Braves
Will try for more."
-- Skip Caray

I can only think of four times over the past five years that I have been "giddy." Please understand that I am not a naturally giddy person; my level of emotion ranks somewhere between "shy and reserved" and "Vulcan." But I remember vividly what it was that made me, Sam the Eagle, giddy with joy like a little kid. It's no surprise that it was usually something to do with baseball:

1. Yankee Stadium. April 19, 2007. The Yankees are losing to the Indians, 6-2, in the 9th inning. Cleveland turns the game over to its – for lack of a better word – closer, Joe Borowski. But after a homer (Josh Phelps), a single (Posada), a walk (Damon), a single (Jeter) and another single (Abreu), the score is 6-5, and A-Rod is up. Everybody knows what's about to happen, but that just makes it even more special. A-Rod comes through in the clutch and hits a three-run bomb to right-center. Yankee Stadium goes berserk, and so do I. Every other day of my life, I hate the Yankees. But I've never felt so much like I had been a part of something special.

2. August 8, 2007: my roommate catches a foul ball at the Reds-Dodgers game. Andre Ethier slices a foul over our heads. It bounces off the façade overhead and lands somewhere near us. My roommate, Jonathon, lifts up his hot dogs, and the ball is right there in his lap. I think I actually bounced in my seat. I should have been mad; I've been to dozens of baseball games and haven't even come close to catching a ball. My roommate -- who only came along to take advantage of $1 Hot Dog Day – catches a foul ball at his first major league game.

3. January 2009: this is my top non-baseball experience. I stop in at a Barnes & Noble in New York City without realizing that Jimmy Carter is there to sign his new book. I buy the book and stand in a line that stretches around the block. It was about 20 degrees and windy. My eyes were too frozen to read, so after an hour or so, I turned around to talk to the chatty blonde behind me. It was Renee Zellweger. I got to chat with Renee Zellweger for an hour. Apparently, though, I didn’t make much of an impression. Renee (I can call her that now) mentioned her Jimmy Carter experience in a USA Today interview and listed all the people she got to talk to in line . . . except for me. Ow.

I've got something of a passion for listing and ranking things (I am a baseball fan), so I had to figure out which of these experiences was the biggest for me. All things considered, I should go with #3, right? When else am I going to meet a president and a movie star on the same night?

But to be totally honest, none of the three events listed above top my list. It's event #4.

4. On two separate occasions, I got to run around the bases at the Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati.

How does a trip around the bases of a six-year old park rival the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet a Nobel Prize-winner and an Oscar-winner on the same night? Because, somehow, getting that close to baseball meant more to me than getting even closer to a former President. As much as I may have crushed on Renee "Roxie Hart" Zellweger in the past, it can't compare to the way I've felt about baseball since I was four years old. No, the most amazing that that's happened to me in recent years was that I, a common, ordinary fan and undistinguished internet blogger, got to reach out and touch baseball.

And unfortunately, that experience seems more distant and improbable now than my evening with Jimmy and Renee.

In my role as internet blogger, I spend a lot of time writing about what is wrong with baseball. But several times I've asked myself this hypothetical question: what one thing, more than anything else, is wrong with baseball? I could never come up with just one answer. Oh, I could come up with a few things, such as drug use and publicly-funded stadiums and the DHL Hometown Heroes. But I couldn't come up with anything big enough to answer such a big question. But the answer was there. I just needed to reflect on my time on a Cincinnati baseball diamond to put it into words.

Baseball has lost the common touch.

That's it. That's what really bothers me. The "giddy" baseball experience is becoming a thing of the past. What I mean is that sometime during the last half-century, when the MLB's business was booming, it started to lose the ability to make a legitimate connection with its fans. It's very hard to pin down a specific cause or a specific date when things went wrong, but you can see its effects all around us in the modern sports world.

The easiest place to see this is right there on TV. Baseball's problems with television have been well-documented by people with a better understanding of the business than I. Still, think about how manufactured and distant the TV product has become in recent years. As for an example, I don't know where to start: graphic designs copied directly from football without recognizing the fundamental difference between the sports, announcers who have become so bland and inane that even the casual fan is forced to mute, or maybe just the sense that what you're being shown is just a well-funded ad campaign with little or no sincerity. Some fans would point to the MLB's attempt to put the Spiderman logo on the bases as a tipping point. I'm more annoyed by the WebMD Injury Update, which uses 21st-century medical imaging technology to show me a "sore knee."

That's why I miss Skip and Pete -- that is, Skip Caray and Pete van Wieren. It was a sad day for me, a lifelong Braves fan, to watch TBS cancel an old favorite and replace it with the most generic baseball broadcast in recent memory. Gone was the familiarity, the coziness and the sincerity of a guy like Skip, my favorite announcer. My favorite Skip moment came during a game in the late 90's, when the Braves exploded for a ten-run inning. Skip asked when the Braves had last put ten runs across in one inning, and was told (I believe) that it was sometime in the late 80's. To which he responded, "Back then we didn't score ten runs in a week."

But it's unfair to focus the blame on television; it's merely a symptom of a wider problem. Ballparks today are built and priced for the upper-middle class, leaving a crowd of rich white people wondering why African-Americans are choosing to play basketball and football. The lyrical and inventive sports writing of Rice, Lardner and Runyon has been bequeathed to a narrow-minded and insecure minority, bent on opposing the few progressive voices that do emerge on the national scene.

Outside of a lucky chance for an autograph, the fans aren't getting that sincere experience from the players. They're not getting it from the owners or executives (where is Bill Veeck or Larry MacPhail when you really need them?). And they're especially not getting it from the Player's Union. Don Fehr seems like a very capable man, but his recent endeavors as the public face of the MLBPA have been disastrous.

In tough economic times, baseball needs to realize (and we need to remind them) what it is about the sport that makes it special to us. We need to tell them what we get from baseball that we just can't get anywhere else. It's not gone yet. Stand outside Wrigley Field and ask the fans. Go to the blogs and ask the writers. Pick up a book and learn from the historians. Make the effort; it's in your best economic interests.

Until that happens, I guess those few moments I have listed above are the only hope I can cling to that we can still find joy in the basic baseball experience and, as fans, demand more of it from the powers that be. It doesn't have to make me giddy. Maybe it could just make me happy. And maybe the next time I write about the subject, I'll have a top ten list instead of a top four list.

As for Skip, Harry, Ernie, Ring, Damon, Yogi, Casey, Bill Veeck and all the rest: I think they would have wanted it that way.

Baseball Book Review: Forever Blue by Michael D'Antonio

2009-05-24T23:10:00.001-04:00

If any baseball figure represents pure evil in the hearts of longtime fans, it isn't Barry Bonds. Nor Alex Rodriguez, Pete Rose, Ty Cobb, or even the Chicago Black Sox. No, for many people, especially traditionalists, the most evil figure in baseball history is Walter O'Malley, who owned and operated the Dodgers for more than thirty years. What possible transgression could the owner of a baseball team commit that would surpass the damage done by the players listed above?

Simple. He moved the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.

It is this one act that has defined him -- and damned him -- for many, many years. But O'Malley's true impact on the game of baseball was quite vast and covered many different aspects of the game. In Forever Blue: The True Story of Walter O'Malley, Michael D'Antonio gets to the bottom of this familiar myth and tries to reveal the truthbehind it. Yes, O'Malley did, as owner of the Dodgers, make the decision to move the team to Los Angeles. However, the characterization of him as an evil manipulator who broke the hearts of a neighborhood and ripped a civic institution away from a passionate community is the utter fiction. That the myth has survived so long proves the persistence of true hatred, especially when it comes to baseball.

For the most part, Michael D'Antonio does a fine job with his biography of O'Malley. He offers a concise view of the years leading up to his involvement with the Dodgers, astutely noting the most relevant stories and putting them together to create a realistic image of this now-mythical man. Granted, the end leaves much to be desired, but I'll get to that later.

Walter O'Malley came to own the Dodgers in a very roundabout way. As part of his job with the Brooklyn Trust Company, O'Malley was assigned to keep close tabs on one of the bank's biggest debtors: the Brooklyn Dodgers. The "Daffiness Boys" of the 1930's were rarely winners, but they always entertained the fans and soon became a part of the Brooklyn cultural identity. Unfortunately, the Dodger "daffiness" also applied to the team's business dealings off the field. The team's financial affairs were a mess. Not only that, but decision-making at the executive levels was thwarted by squabbling among the heirs of the team's previous owners. It's hard to imagine a more hopeless situation for a young, inexperienced lawyer such as Walter O'Malley.

But the situation was not hopeless, and that is thanks chiefly to two men. One is Branch Rickey, baseball's "Mahatma," hired away from the Cardinals to recreate the formula of small-budget success that had worked so well in St. Louis.

The work of Branch Rickey in rejuvenating the Dodgers has been well-documented. He is noted not only for signing Jackie Robinson and breaking baseball's color barrier, but for creating a true dynasty out of the Dodgers, which would win four pennants with him as the team's General Manager.

But the role of Walter O'Malley in the Dodgers' turn-around has gone virtually unnoticed. If Rickey's greatest accomplishments came with putting talent on the field and building up a farm system, O'Malley (who finally bought out the squabbling heirs) managed to turn the once-laughable franchise into a profit-making enterprise. He was helped not just by the club's on-field success, but by the nationwide baseball boom that came after World War II.

The relationship between Rickey and O'Malley was thorny, undoubtedly. But despite rumors of a deep hatred, the two men managed to work with each other remarkably well. What ultimately brought about Rickey's departure from Brooklyn was not personal animus, but the Mahatma's princely salary. Rickey left to run the Pirates while O'Malley became the unquestioned leader of the Dodgers.

In Rickey's absence, the team managed to do the unthinkable: win a World Series. Having lost the fall classic to the Yankees in 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952, and 1953, the baseball world was understandably shocked when the 1955 Dodgers defeated the hated Yanks in an exciting, seven-game thriller.

The success of 1955 was undercut, however, by persistent reports that O'Malley was considering moving the team to Los Angeles. O'Malley asserted that he was committed to keeping the Dodgers in Brooklyn. But the Dodger faithful's worst fear was realized after the 1957 season, when the team confirmed the rumors that it would be moving to Los Angeles for 1958.

This decision has been the central factor of the O'Malley biography ever since. In the standard version of the story, O'Malley is evil, scheming owner, with the slicked-back hair and the big cigar. He became the symbol for all power-hungry business owners who would sacrifice anything for money.

D'Antonio devotes the bulk of Forever Blue to debunking this myth, with great success. It would be impossible to list here all the evidence offered in the book to counter the prevailing sentiment, but suffice to say that O'Malley was not the evil man of myth. On the contrary, he went to great extremes to keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn, including: sounding out prominent architects (including Buckminster Fuller) to design a new, domed stadium; offering to pay for the stadium entirely with private money; and even considering a compromise location in Queens (where Shea Stadium would eventually be built). We can never know exactly how devoted he was to staying in Brooklyn, but O'Malley was absolutely right when he said that he had tried everything to keep the team in Brooklyn.

O'Malley's sticking point was that he needed a new stadium, and to get a new stadium he obviously needed a place to put it. And there he ran into an insurmountable obstacle: Robert Moses, head of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority. Far from a lowly bureaucrat, Moses was quite simply the most powerful figure in city government. His rise to power (and his abuse of such) is chronicled in the tome The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro. O'Malley needed Moses to condemn a sizable area so that the Dodgers could construct their new, domed stadium. Moses refused.

In this, perhaps, we have found the true villain in this affair. Moses sabotaged the city committee to develop a plan for a new stadium and often set outrageous conditions which he knew full well O'Malley couldn't accept. After the Dodgers left, it was Moses (with the help of poison-pen baseball writers Dick Young and Arthur Daley) who cast O'Malley in the role of the evil businessman.

This is the account that has survived, more or less, to the present day. But it is simply not supported by the facts. Despite the league-wide boom in baseball attendance, the Dodgers actually saw their attendance decrease steadily from its peak in the late 40's. In 1955, the year they won the World Series, the team barely drew one million fans (The 1948 club drew nearly 1.4 million, despite finishing 3rd). If Brooklyn fans were hopelessly devoted to the team, they weren't too eager to watch them play.

O'Malley keenly recognized the trend and feared that it would only get worse. Ebbetts Field was falling apart. The "white flight" was on, as Dodger fans fled to the suburbs were replaced by lower-income fans, often immigrants, with less disposable income. This change in the racial and social climate of the neighborhood also made whites reluctant to attend games there, especially since there were laughably few parking spots around the ballpark.

On the other coast, gangs of public figures and civic groups were positively clamoring to bring baseball to California. They painted idyllic pictures of baseball in the sunshine and promised numerous economic and practical benefits in order to entice a major league team. Most importantly, though, is that the California boosters weren't committed to the Dodgers. If O'Malley didn't move to L.A., someone else would -- and soon. If O'Malley was beaten to the punch by Cal Griffith (who was desperate to move his Senators), then he'd have lost a chance at great glory and even greater profit.

Put in this light, it's hard to imagine what else O'Malley could have done to keep the team in Brooklyn. Was he self-interested? Sure. Was he hungry for profits? Absolutely. But Brooklyn's devotion to the Dodgers has been exaggerated with time. Time has also revealed that O'Malley wasn't alone; all business owners are profit-seekers, even baseball owners. People like Dick Young did not want to see baseball as a business, but that didn't change the fact that it was a business. Walter O'Malley was the first to publicly embrace the idea, and his image has suffered for it ever since. So Michael D'Antonio has attempted to set the record straight.

I have only two complaints with the book. The first is its strong tendency to interpret events in a light most favorable to O'Malley. It's troubling to read a biography detailing a number of disputes and disagreements where the subject is almost never at fault. I'm not arguing with the author's facts, per se, but rather his disarming tendency to take O'Malley at his word and ignore any interpretation that might suggest that he was either lying or telling the truth for selfish ends. O'Malley is depicted as an ambitious businessman with a keen ability for politics, but one with honest intentions and a devotion to do what was right by his employees. But there are many cases where that depiction of O'Malley rings quite false.

This brings me to my second problem: O'Malley's later years, after the team's move to Los Angeles, are given short shrift. Walter O'Malley is an important baseball figure for many reasons. It's not just the Dodgers' move to California that makes biography important to our understanding of baseball.

D'Antonio account of this period is troubling, mainly because it's confined to the last 20 pages of a 321-page book. Forever Blue devotes almost 95% of the book to O'Malley's life from birth to the construction of Dodger Stadium in 1962. The years 1963-1979 occupy about 6% of the text, and even then they're sharing space with the author's final thoughts and conclusions, not to mention a full-page anecdote about going on safaris.. O'Malley's role as the most powerful man in baseball during the development of the player's union and the arrival of free agency is discussed only in passing. That's a terrible shame.

And even then, D'Antonio makes O'Malley sound like a hero. D'Antonio admits to O'Malley's power over the other owners, but in an utterly harmless manner that suggests that O'Malley was king simply because he was the best and the brightest in baseball, not because of any backroom manipulation. He goes so far as to depict O'Malley as a genuine friend of the labor union and its leader, Marvin Miller. At no time does he suggest that O'Malley's attitude was paternalistic or calculated, despite a great deal of evidence to the contrary.

So we're left with a book that only partly succeeds in its mission. As "The True Story of Walter O'Malley," Forever Blue does an admirable job of talking about O'Malley's rise to power and his experience moving the Dodgers to Los Angeles. This puts O'Malley in a much more favorable light than is generally accepted, but D'Antonio does so with sound reasoning that effectively illuminates O'Malley's decision-making.

As to the rest of O'Malley's life, we're left unfulfilled. While the facts and quotes D'Antonio cites may be the true story, they are in no way the whole story. His decision to consign O'Malley's later career to the final chapter of footnotes and anecdotes is puzzling and leaves a very pivotal period of his life - and baseball history - unexplored.

So I have to say that Forever Blue is a book worth reading, but only to a certain point. If you're looking for the inside story on Walter O'Malley and the Dodgers' move to Los Angeles, then this is the best account I've come across. But if you really want the whole story about Walter O'Malley, I'm afraid this book does not suffice.

The 15 Greatest Baseball Books

2009-05-11T16:59:00.009-04:00

I recently had a reader ask for my list of the best baseball books ever written. Keeping in mind that there are many important books that I haven't read, I was still excited to be able to share some of my favorites. Summer reading season is approaching, and what better way is there to show your commitment to baseball than to haul a 600-page statisical tome to the beach. Sure, the people around you reading 150-page light romance novels may think you're a big geek. But as someone who likes to write lists of his favorite baseball books, I've come to terms with my geekiness.

The reason that this is a Top 15 list is that I started with a Top 10 list but couldn't bear to exclude any more books. Even so, I'm going to include a small list of "recommended reading" for some books that still didn't make the cut.

Before I get into specific books, I want to talk about a few staples of the baseball library that don't really belong on the list, for various reasons:

Baseball Encyclopedias. Baseball encyclopedias used to be an essential part of any fan's library. But with the emergence of the internet -- especially retrosheet.org and the online baseball eden known as baseball-reference.com -- fans can get most of the stats in the encyclopedias for free online. There's also a Sabermetric Baseball Encyclopedia developed by Lee Sinins and sold as a computer program. I bought my last real baseball encyclopedia in 2003 (picking up the last edition of the Total Baseball series), but recently bought Sinins' program, which offers more options than your average website.

Annuals, or Season Previews: These are often fantastic and invaluable sources of information. But if I included them on the Top 15 list, they'd take up 5 spots. And an annual's value obviously isn't as timeless as that of any other book. Some exceptions would be the Bill James Baseball Abstracts published in the late 70's and early 80's. Now, the premier baseball annuals are those published by Baseball Prospectus every February. You can also get a great deal of info and analysis from The Hardball Times, which published two books this offseason: a recap of the 2008 season and a preview of the 2009 season.

Magazines/Journals/Periodicals: I'll admit that my experience with baseball as a scholarly enterprise is new, so I have very little experience with journals. I do keep some old periodicals, not just for nostalgia but also if there's a particularly interesting article in it. And I do have a few newspapers from notable days in baseball history, as well.

And with that said, on to the books!

15. Eight Men Out
by Eliot Asinof

This book has earned its status as one of the most celebrated sports books of all time. Asinof does an admirable job of playing the detective and bringing a fascinating group of people from different places into one coherent timeline.
Even 90 years after the fact, there are still many aspects of the Black Sox scandal that are quite controversial. Some challenge Asinof's account, which is valid in some instances, but I would point out that Asinof is pretty honest about the murkiness of certain parts of the story.
This was turned into an excellent film by John Sayles that does a fairly good job of representing Asinof's book. The key to the film is not just the tight screenplay but an impressive list of actors, including John Cusack, Charlie Sheen, D.B. Sweeney, Bill Irwin, Studs Terkel, Sayles himself, Christopher Lloyd, Michael Lerner and an excellent David Strathairn.

14. The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics
by Alan Schwarz

Schwarz says that he wrote this book because he had always wanted to read it. His effort shows in his ability to take the pioneers of baseball statistics and examine their passion for the game as well as their understanding of it. Schwarz looks at great baseball insiders (and outsiders) and illustrates how their work paved the way for future generations and changed the way we view the game.
Schwarz's readable style makes some pretty abstract concepts accessible to the reader. Casual baseball fans shouldn't shy away from this book. If you're uncomfortable with ultra-modern stats but know your way around the back of a baseball card, you can understand this book.
The only drawback is that sometimes Schwarz is a little too casual in his approach. His efforts to humanize his subjects results in a sentence like this, which opens up Chapter 4:
"The Georgian Bay off Lake Huron lay peaceful and still, tall trees standing sentry over the scene's verdant tranquility."
Alan Schwarz may not be Wordsworth, but he is a good author. Check out the book.

#13: The Pitch that Killed
by Mike Sowell

Perhaps no other season in baseball was as much of a turning point as 1920. Interest in the game was booming following the end of World War I, the spitball was about to be outlawed, Babe Ruth joined the Yankees and hit an earth-shattering 54 home runs, baseball hired its first commissioner, rumors about a crooked World Series would result in the banning of eight baseball players in the middle of the pennant race, and en executive decision to use cleaner, whiter, and fresher baseballs helped usher in an offensive renaissance. The latter change was largely the result of the titular killer pitch.
Sowell does a good job of bringing together all of these disparate trends into his story, which mainly follows the Indians through their season, which hinged around the tragic death of shortstop Ray Chapman. My only problem is that Sowell spends a great deal of time talking about game stories. A certain number of them are necessary, but there were 154 of them in the 1920 season, and it's hard to get excited about all of them.

#12: Mind Game: How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart, Won a World Series and Created a New Blueprint for Winning
by Steve Goldman & the Baseball Prospectus Team of Writers

This is the first book (not counting the annuals) written as a team effort by the staff of BaseballProspectus.com. And in my opinion, it's still the best. The book consists of a series of essays and studies looking at different aspects of the 2004 Red Sox, including how they got where they were and what made them so good. It is pretty stat-heavy, though, so those uncomfortable with VORP and EQA might want to think twice before diving in.
However, my favorite chapter has very little to do with statistics at all. It argues that the racism that was endemic to the club for nearly 50 years was as much a factor in their failures as any "curse."

#11: Weaver on Strategy
by Earl Weaver with Terry Pluto

There are surprisingly few managing manifestos written by Hall-of-Fame managers. Perhaps it's because managers are paranoid about sharing secrets. This makes some sense, since it's not uncommon for a "retired" manager to become un-retired. So we should treasure what we have here: a guide to managerial strategy by one of the greatest. Weaver goes through everything, from how to run a Spring Training camp to how to argue with an umpire (he had some experience in that area).
I'm a bit biased here in that Weaver's views on managing are consistent with what modern performance analysis has told us. When Bill James came along in the 70's, or when Moneyball came along in the 00's, most baseball traditionalists said that these were impractical ideas thought up by outsiders and robots who didn't know the first thing about inside baseball. Of course, if those nay-sayers had done their homework (homework is for robots!), they would have realized that many of the theories these new statistical tools were telling us weren't new at all. Not only that, but some of their top champions, including Earl Weaver, were as "inside" baseball as you can be.
Weaver famously believed in pitching, defense and the three-run homer. More specifically, though, he liked players who could take a walk (Weaver's Orioles always drew their walks) and hit home runs (Weaver loved the homer in an era when it was falling out of style). He didn't reject incomplete players or those with a glaring weakness; he focused on what they could do and used an innovative approach to get as much as he could from each member of his roster. Also, Weaver wasn't afraid of the unorthodox (keeping the four-man rotation) or the downright heretical (he hated the hit-and-run and thought too much bunting was counter-productive). Any coach, fan, or analyst would do well to listen to what Earl has to say. Especially if you are a manager, whether it's in the Little League or the Major Leagues.

#10: Only the Ball Was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams
by Robert Peterson

This book was first published in 1970, and yet it's still the best book I've come across to introduce new audiences to the Negro Leagues. Peterson effectively covers the main points of interest in the history of all-black baseball, from the injustices faced by "Fleet" Walker to the great energy and acumen of Andrew "Rube" Foster, to the amazing feats of Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, "Pop" Lloyd and Oscar Charleston.
There has been a great deal of research done in recent years to fill the historical gaps in Peterson's book. Our anecdotal and statistical knowledge has helped flesh out the existing knowledge of many unjustly forgotten stars. Even so, the books that have been released in the years since haven't surpassed Peterson's work in offering such a valuable and accessible view of this unheralded portion of baseball history.

#9: Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Blunders
by Rob Neyer

This is the second of the three "Big Books" released by Neyer so far. Rob Neyer's column on ESPN.com has long been a favorite of those interested in performance analysis, not just for his sharp understanding of the subject but because of his great wit and gift for storytelling. He combines all three in this book.
Most fans will be familiar with most or all of these stories, and thus we're interested to hear Neyer's take on what was (or was not) a real blunder. Neyer defines a "blunder" as not just a mistake, but a mistake of choice (not just an on-field error or mental mess-up) where the poor consequences should have been evident from the beginning. For example: nobody really expected Curt Schilling to be a Hall-of-Famer, so we can't really pin the "blunder" label on the teams that traded him. But trading a 30-year-old Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas? That's a blunder.
Most of these stories are stories of front office executives or managers with a big, glowing "What Were They Thinking" sign hanging over their heads. Since blunders require forethought and decision-making, they're rarely made by players on the field. Unless, of course, you're caught stealing to end the World Series.

#8: Bang the Drum Slowly
by Mark Harris

This is the only fiction book on the entire list. There's not a wholt lot of baseball fiction out there, but there are some pretty notably books, namely: The Natural by Bernard Malamud, Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella and The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant by Douglas Wallop. I confess that I've read neither Malamud's nor Kinsella's book (I liked Wallop's book, which was the basis for Damn Yankees, but it didn't make the cut). I have very little inclination to read sentamentalist baseball literature.I don't intend to make "sentamentalist" sound like an insult; that genre just isn't my cup of tea. That's also why you won't find The Boys of Summer mentioned here, despite it's presence on nearly every other comparable list.
Keeping that in mind, you should be doubly surprised to see Mark Harris' book about a catcher dying of cancer on my list. It's hard to describe why this appealed to me so much. I think it's mainly because of the narrator, Henry Wiggin. Wiggin, nicknamed "Author" by his teammates, is the ace pitcher for the New York Mammoths. He's a very unique character in baseball fiction; he has an incredibly dry sense of humor as well as a very strong sense of detachment. This makes him a great observer of other people, in particular ballplayers, coaches and managers. And Harris gives Wiggin plenty to see and comment on (TEGWAR!).
And yet, Wiggin's closest friend on the team is quiet, slow-witted backup catcher Bruce Pearson. Pearson is a laid-back southern boy; he's not very intelligent, but he cares very much about hunting, fishing, his parents, and a prostitute that he keeps proposing to. Wiggin's relationship to Bruce (which is the heart of the book's development) is amazing. He sacrifices a great deal to make sure that the team doesn't find out about the cancer. As a player, Bruce is a scrub; if the team knew about the disease, he'd be replaced. The title refers to an Old West song, the poignance of which is not lost on Wiggin, or the reader.
This was made into a TV film in 1956 starring Paul Newman, and then remade as a theatrical release in 1973 starring Michael Moriarty as Wiggin and Robert DeNiro as Pearson. The film is good enough, but it loses a lot when we don't have Wiggin's voice guiding us through.
(Having expressed my personal dislike for baseball fiction I should note, as a postscript, that I haven't read the classic works of famed baseball scribes Ring Lardner and Damon Runyon. I'm looking to remedy that soon.)

#7: Cobb: A Biography
by Al Stump

My brother and I are both especially fascinated by Ty Cobb. We're intrigued by the player and the man, but moreso the man. So we both felt that, going into this book, nothing could possibly make us think worse of Ty Cobb than we already did.
We were wrong.
The book is the story of Stump's attempt to ghost-write Cobb's autobiography in the superstar's fading years. Stump's time with Cobb is beyond description. He basically claims (without exaggeration) that Cobb was a psychopath, and Stump had a higher opinion of Cobb than most.
Famed baseball writer Roger Kahn, author of The Boys of Summer, says that the book is "[t]he most powerful baseball biography I have read." I absolutely agree. The only reason I don't rate this book any higher is that it's hard to issue a glowing recommendation for a book that was in many respects very unpleasant to read.

#6: Veeck -- as in "Wreck"
by Bill Veeck & Ed Linn

In a sport that's teeming with eccentrics and compelling characters, Bill Veeck still manages to stand out. He's most famous for his wild publicity stunts, but he was also an innovator, an iconoclast and a winner.
Veeck is one of the game's great storytellers. Part of that reputation is that he tended to favor entertainment value rather over accuracy. But he's no bald-faced liar -- at least no more than any other baseball legend writing autobiography.
The most controversial (and fascinating) story in Veeck's book is his claim that, when baseball was still segregated, he tried to buy the hapless Philadelphia Phillies with the intention of stocking them with Negro League All-Stars. Veeck claims that he made the mistake of telling Commissioner Landis, and soon after that the team was sold right out from under him. However, there's never been any shred of proof uncovered to back up this story. Is Veeck telling the truth? I don't really know. But it's a great story.
Even more than storytelling, Veeck's greatest skill was as a crowd-pleaser, whether that crowd was in the bleacher seats, in the press box or in the courtroom. The only people he never pleased -- the ones that utterly detested him -- were his fellow owners. And the stories of his dealings with fellow owners are quite fascinating.
So come for the stories -- stories about his pennant-winning Go-Go White Sox, his integration of the American League and the subsequent World Championship won as owner of the Indians in 1948, and best of all, stories about the terrible St. Louis Browns, including the midget Eddie Gaedel, the tightrope walker and "Grandstand Manager" night.

#5: The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (2003 Edition)
by Bill James

James's new abstract is a make-over of his original Historical Baseball Abstract, published in 1986. The biggest difference in the new version is the use of James's new all-inclusive statistic: Win Shares. James uses Win Shares to update his rankings of the all-time 100 greatest players at each position. I've heard from several people that they prefer the 1986 edition, at least in part because they're not sold on Win Shares. Still, I very much enjoy the new edition, and the '86 version is out of print.
James' position-by-position ranking of the all-time greatest players is fuel for some serious arguing. Any attempt to re-examine history using statistics as a tool is going to seriously change our understanding of it. Even among those who do favor statistics, James' arguments remain hotly debated to this day. Was Darrell Evans really a Hall-of-Famer? Was Jeff Bagwell really the fourth-best first baseman of all time? Are Tinker, Evers, and Chance overrated simply because they were the subject of a poem? You simply have to read this book to find out the answer, and deal with even more questions.
Whether you agree with James or not, you have to respect his opinion as well as the evidence he backs it up with. You'll love the historical research done on a great many aspects of the game's evolution, as well as Bill's great sense of humor.

#4: Total Ballclubs
by Donald Dewey & Nicholas Acocella

Total Ballclubs looks at every major league ballclub in history, even those who were only around for a couple of years (or a couple of months). It focuses mainly on the activity behind the scenes of these franchises, and as such it constitutes an invaluable resource of information about the off-field history of each major league franchise and league.
Dewey and Acocella have compiled an excellent history of each major league franchise. Want to hear the story behind the rise (and fall) of all the big dynasties? Looking to find out how the best (and worst) teams of all time were created? This book is your answer, exhaustively researched with the background on every major move in the history of your favorite team, not to mention many more you never heard of.This would rank even higher except that I have two significant problems with the book. One, they provide no index. There are thousands of names, places and key phrases mentioned in a book like this, and it is infinitely tiresome to go flipping through several hundred pages looking for a single anecdote.
Two, there are no footnotes or endnotes. This is an even bigger problem, because it means that we have no idea where the authors are getting these quotes and this information. This is an even bigger headache for researchers, who are helpless to further explore the quotes and stories.Even with those two caveats, I would recommend Total Ballclubs in a heartbeat to any baseball aficionado. The serious fans can start at the beginning and dive in, and the more casual fans can skip the history of big-league ball in Altoona and just read about their favorite clubs.

#3: Ball Four
by Jim Bouton & Leonard Schechter

Ball Four was once SO popular that it has since generated something of a backlash. In the years after its release, it became a central part of the American sports experience, so much so that David Halberstam unleashed his hyperbole by declaring it, "A book deep in the American vein, so deep in fact it is by no means a sports book."
But if you pick up Ball Four as nothing more than a book (a sports book, despite what Halberstam says), I guarantee that you will not be disappointed. The book is famous for its shock and scandal, but it 2009 there is very little here that will take the reader aback (except, perhaps, for "beaver-shooting"). What makes the book such a thrill is its fresh view of baseball and its sense of humor. In a humorous way, Bouton is like a sane man in an insane world, and his observations are insightful even today. It's this unique viewpoint and "outsider" perspective that made the book so popular while also contributing to the demonization of Bouton after the book was released.
Baseball culture at the time was very insular; what went on in the locker room (and on the road, away from the wives) was not meant for outsiders. Bouton put a huge dent in that notion by injecting his book with a refreshing honesty. After years of being told that Mickey Mantle was an all-American boy who drank his milk and ate his Wheaties, the public was finally let in on the truth. And they did not enjoy the revelation that they'd been lied to for years upon years by a generation of sportswriters who might as well have been on the company payroll.
It's easier to understand this perspective when you consider that Ball Four was published in 1970, when a lot of other venerated American institutions were being challenged by both outsiders and insiders. One year later, another insider in the American establishment would publish a much more devastating expose, collectively known as the Pentagon Papers. Now, nothing written in a baseball book could ever be as groundbreaking as the information Daniel Ellsberg leaked to the press. But the situations are similar. Viewed in this light, Bouton's book wasn't just an expose, it was seen by many people (if not the author himself, exactly) as another shot fired in the culture wars. Halberstam's quote might seem hyperbolic today, but at the time, this book was seen as far more than just a collection of humorous anecdotes.
To me, though, that's the best way to enjoy the book. The culture wars of the 1970's have died down, but Ball Four survives as a humorous and insightful personal memoir.

#2: Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
by Michael Lewis

If Jim Bouton stuck a firecracker up the ass of the baseball establishment, then Michael Lewis at least gave it a scorching hot-foot. Moneyball didn't ignite a culture war as heated as the Ball Four fracas, but it came close. And just like Ball Four, readers in the years to come will read the book and wonder what all the damn fuss was about.
Upon its release, though, Moneyball was very controversial. Lewis, allowed access behind the scenes of the Oakland A's front office for an entire season, brought to light the revolutionary, iconoclastic and wildly successful tactics utilized by General Manager Billy Beane to build the A's into a perennial contender on a tight budget. The basic plot of the book is Beane (and his staff) looking for cheap talent, or, in financial jargon, "undervalued assets." They soon realized that the most undervalued asset was a player's ability to get on base, or to not make an out. That sounds very simple, and indeed it is the most important thing a hitter can do. Even more amazing, though, is how ignorant most baseball teams were to this very basic fact.
Lewis used the book as a chance to explore the great dichotomy between, on one hand, the A's: believers in OBP, stats and revolutionary thinkers such as Bill James, Pete Palmer and John Thorn, George Lindsay, Allen Roth and Eric Walker. And on the other hand, you have the baseball establishment: beholden to tradition, subjective analysis, the "five-tool player," the power of "intangibles," and the nobility of scouting.
It's no surprise that Lewis angered so many people, since his quest was to annihilate the basic conventional wisdom of baseball. Using the work of sabermetricians such as Bill James to back him up, Lewis supported the A's philosophy that, for example: OBP and home runs are underrated; a pitchers wins and losses are overrated; fielding is completely misunderstood; traditional scouting methods are incredibly flawed, and perhaps most importantly, that the concept of "intangibles" and "makeup" aren't quite as important as the beat reporters claim.
The hot-foot thus set off was immediately effective. Players, managers, announcers and executives rushed to fervently denounce Billy Beane, Moneyball, the A's and everything they stood for. (Oddly enough, Michael Lewis himself remained relatively uninvolved in the debate, due to a mistaken notion that Beane himself had written the book.)
It seemed as though there might be a baseball civil war approaching, and there were certainly many on the stats-friendly side who fought fire with fire. But the venom of the establishment turned out to be the last gasp of baseball's flat-earth movement. With a new generation of sportswriters and analysts given voice by the internet, the argument for statistical analysis won the battle -- if you could even call it a battle.
Because most of the theories put forth in Moneyball were essentially accurate and effective, they became adopted to a certain degree by almost every major league franchise. In fact, the arguments within Moneyball itself are fast becoming dated. On-base percentage is no longer underrated, pitchers don't get nearly as much credit for wins nor blame for losses as they used to, and the discipline of baseball scouting has incorporated (for the most part) statistical analysis, marrying the objective with the subjective, resulting in a much more effective hybrid model.
Moneyball has therefore receded into the past. Performance analysts have gained their own platform for expression, and they've also moved past the errors and mistakes of the book. The establishment's fear of the sky falling has been put to rest; no one wants to replace scouts with computers, and there's still room for them to argue on behalf of intangibles. Not only that, but some of the ideas (and figures) mentioned in the book helped the Boston Red Sox end the Curse of the Bambino in 2004. After that, even the deep wounds started to heal.
I guess the greatest success of Moneyball is that it helped fuel the very movement of baseball analysis and research that made the book largely obsolete in less than ten years.

#1: Lords of the Realm: The Real History of Baseball
by John Helyar

If I took every I've learned from every baseball book I've ever read and combined it, it might add up to what I learned reading Lords of the Realm. The book is quite simply monumental; it's absolutely unequalled in the pantheon of baseball literature. In fact, the book is full of so many details and so many vibrant stories at the very heart of the business of baseball that you start wondering why the hell you hadn't heard any of this before.
Okay, that may be an exaggeration. Its details aren't all relevatory. Although the book is a history of baseball owners and executives since the game's inception, the vast majority of the book deals with the free agent era of the 1970's and 1980's. Those who lived through the era and read the papers religiously may be less surprised than I was by the stories Helyar uncovers. Even so, I bet they'd still be drawn in by Helyar's expertise at recreating the many conflicts of the baseball era, or the great insight offered by bringing these events together, each in its proper place.
The author has a great journalist's talent for telling a story. Despite the incredibly dense and detailed ground he has to cover, Helyar keeps it entertaining by making it the human story of those involved; the book is so full of hilarious, insightful and pithy quotes that you simply can't keep track. His account of the free-for-all that ensued when Catfish Hunter was declared a free agent in 1974 is amazing reading.
But the most important section of this book, in my opinion, concerns the Collusion scandal of the mid-80's. It's the most important because it's the least-publicized and least-remembered. If the actions of the owners during the Collusion era were subjected to even a fraction of the moralizing focused on individual players (and the player's union) now, it would change most any fan's perception of the game, and not for the better.
It's for stories like these that baseball books need to be written. And for that, we have Lords of the Realm to thank.

Additional recommended reading:
Clearing the Bases by Allen Barra; Baseball Prospectus 2009 by The BP Team of Experts; The Juice by Will Carroll; The Black Prince of Baseball by Dewey & Acocella; Game of Shadows by Mark Fainaru-Wada & Lance Williams; Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame? by Bill James; The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers by Bill James; The Head Game by Roger Kahn; Sandy Koufax by Jane Leavy; Feeding the Monster by Seth Mnookin; I Was Right on Time by Buck O'Neil; Maybe I'll Pitcher Forever by "Satchel" Paige as told to David Lipman; Branch Rickey's Little Blue Book by Branch Rickey; The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter; I Never Had It Made by Jackie Robinson; The SABR Baseball List & Record Book by SABR; Baseball's Great Experiment by Jules Tygiel; Past Time by Jules Tygiel, and many more.

If you have a favorite baseball book that I didn't mention, please let me know. I have to get started reading some of the great baseball books that just came out this year . . .

When a Six-Run Inning Isn't the Pitcher's Fault

2009-05-11T00:22:00.004-04:00

In Saturday's game versus the Rays, Jon Lester got off to a pretty good start. After giving up a two-run homer to Evan Longoria in the 1st, Lester regained his form and threw three scoreless innings. Until the 5th inning, that is, when everything fell apart. When the bleeding stopped, the Rays had scored six runs and had taken an 8-1 lead. The funny thing is, those six runs weren't really Lester's fault.
How can a pitcher give up six runs and not take most or all of the blame? You have to fault the defense, right? Nope, not their fault either. The Sox didn't commit an error in the inning, and they only made one little mistake that could be called a defensive "miscue". If not the defense, then, who was responsible for those six runs?
Luck.

Very few people are aware of the great role that randomness plays in baseball. Players and sportscasters like to pretend that every hit, homer, strikeout and double play is a function of skill, or at least 95% so. Sure, there are a few exceptions, but "luck evens out." So says the old cliche.
Well, no, luck doesn't always even out. Yes, the longer the season goes on, the less likely it is that someone is just lucky. It's easier to get lucky for 20 games than 162. But there's no magical point in the season where all luck disappears from the baseball stats. Some players have been able to maintain their performance based mainly on luck for a whole season, in fact.
Separating luck from skill has long been an obsession of baseball performance analysts. If a pitcher has a bad game, was it bad luck or was it a poor pitching performance? If a hitter goes on an 0-12 streak, does it mean anything? Is Emilio Bonifacio for real (well, okay, we know the answer to that one)?
A great leap forward in the study of randomness in baseball was made by amateur sabermetrician Voros McCracken, who proved that -- statistically speaking -- a pitcher has no ability to prevent hits on balls in play.
If you've never come across McCracken's theory, it could shatter your basic understanding of the game . Don't misunderstand; McCracken isn't saying that all pitching is random. He's saying that a pitcher's actual skills rely almost exclusively on strikeouts, walks, and keeping the ball in the ballpark. But if the ball is in play -- that is, put into fair territory without leaving the park -- the odds of a ball being a hit or an out are pretty even. Conclusion: A pitcher has almost no ability to limit hits on balls in play; it's almost all luck.
In the years since McCracken's discovery, some caveats have been added to his theory. It was found that knuckleballers have more of an effect on balls in play than do other pitchers. And pitchers do, as previously believed, have certain tendencies toward allowing more groundballs than flyballs, or vice-versa. However, whether you give up groundballs or flyballs, you still can't control where they're hit -- the rules still apply.
This knowledge was a great help in assessing which pitchers are really good and which ones are lucky. Pitchers who have a very low ERA, despite poor walk, strikeout and home run numbers, are almost guaranteed to see their luck run out. No one knows when; their luck may last for a season or just for a few weeks. But it will end. Many pitchers who "take a step forward" actually just get lucky one season, much to the chagrin of the team that drops a big free agent deal in their lap.
Another bit of baseball wisdom confirmed by McCracken's theory was that the best pitchers are those who get strikeouts. Limiting walks and homers helps as well. If you want to see a list of the greatest pitchers in the league at any given moment, take a look at the strikeout leaderboard; it's the most informative simple pitching statistic out there (better than wins and even ERA).

Now a lot of people think this theory is hogwash. They will start naming lots of people who succeeded with control and command rather than strikeouts -- and Greg Maddux is usually at the top of the list. Maddux wasn't a strikeout king, was he? No, but he struck out more people than anyone remembers. Maddux topped 200 strikeouts once (1998) and struck out more than 150 batters in eleven seasons. People have a hard time accepting this argument, but if you've got the Baseball Encyclopedia with you, you'll win the discussion in no time.
Granted, you don't have to strike out 300 guys a year like Randy Johnson to be effective; but it's almost impossible to succeed as a pitcher with a below-average strikeout rate. Look at all of the great pitchers in history; even if they didn't lead the league in K's, they almost definitely struck out more than the league average.
This new theory of pitching also helps explain some of the great fluke seasons of modern times. Famous flukes like Greg Hibbard, Dave Fleming, Randy Jones and 1970 NL Rookie of the Year Carl Morton can now explain their flash in the pan as the cost of pitching with an unsustainably low strikeout rate. Such problems inevitably come back to haunt you (witness the downfall of Carlos Silva).
But there is a time, as I mentioned before, when neither pitching nor defense can explain a pitcher's failure to prevent runs. This is randomness; by that, I mean that it reflects the inconsistencies of baseball. A time, for example, when a player does everything right but gets a negative result. Examples include: a screaming line drive hit right at a fielder ("atom balls"), a perfect breaking ball on the outside corner that the hitter somehow punches into the hole, any play involving a bad hop or wet grass or Astroturf, "seeing-eye singles," a lazy 320-foot fly ball that lands in the "short porch" for a home run, or the 390-foot can o' corn hit to the deepest part of the ballpark.
We could probably think of a dozen more cases where the skill of the players involved is superseded by bad (or good) luck. True, it is rare that you'll have a lot of these happen to you in a row. But if you play 162 games a year, you're going to see some freaky things. All you can do is hope that the breaks go your way more often than not.
In other words, hope that you're not Jon Lester . . .

... back to the game. It's the top of the 5th inning, and Tampa Bay is leading Boston 2-1. Still, Jon Lester is doing a pretty good job. The 5th shouldn't be too difficult. First up is Akinori Iwamura. Iwamura takes a 2-1 fastball and grounds it up the middle for a base hit. Next up, Dioner Navarro punches a single through the hole on the left side, moving Iwamura to second. Shortstop Julio Lugo gets a glove on it, but just barely. It's ruled a hit, but could have gone either way. Still, this is not a huge crisis. Except for falling behind both hitters, Lester hasn't really done anything wrong. Both grounders just found holes.
The next batter, B.J. Upton, lays down a bunt. Lester takes a little too long getting there, and Upton is called safe on a close play at first. That's not a pitching mistake, but rather a defensive mistake.
Carl Crawford comes up and sends yet another ball past a diving Lugo into left field. Iwamura scores, making it 3-1.
Next up is Evan Longoria, who hits a towering fly ball to left field. It bounces high off the monster and plates two, with Longoria ending up at second.
The Rays lead 5-1, but how much can we blame on Lester? Longoria's fly was high but not very deep; by the time it hit the wall, the ball was coming almost straight down. With another ten feet of space in front of the wall, that ball lands cleanly in Jason Bay's glove. Similarly, if Longoria hits the same ball to right field (where the fence is much deeper), there's no way it's a double. Rocco Baldelli catches it and the Rays settle for a sac fly (if that; Dioner Navarro doesn't have much raw footspeed at third). Next, Carlos Pena comes up, and Lester finally records the first out with a three-pitch strikeout.
If you've read this far in the article, you can probably guess what happens to poor Jon Lester next. He induces another groundball (off the bat of Pat Burrell) and watches again as it rolls between the shortstop and third baseman into right field for a hit. Crawford and Longoria score, making it 7-1.
Next, in what can only be described as an ungodly coincidence, Jason Bartlett singles through the left side of the infield, moving Burrell to second. You can almost see the path being worn down on the infield grass by the flock of baseballs rolling by.
At this point, Terry Francona takes Lester out of the game and brings in Hunter Jones. The first batter Jones faces is Gabe Kapler who -- that's right, fans -- hits a grounder through the hole into left field. This loads the bases and proves that whatever deity Jon Lester pissed off is also mad at Hunter Jones.
Next, Aki Iwamura steps up for the second time in the inning and, as if you hadn't already guessed, hits the ball on the ground. By some miracle, though, this one is actually hit at a fielder, Julio Lugo. Lugo throws to second for the force out, but they can't turn the double play. So Burrell scores on the fielder's choice, making it 8-1 (all eight runs are earned and charged to Lester).
The misery ends for the Sox when Dioner Navarro pops out to short.

Let's recap this fifth inning:
HITS: 8 (Seven on the ground, one off the Monster)
HITS ON BALLS LOW IN THE ZONE: 4!
HITS ON BALLS OUT OF THE ZONE: 1 (Crawford)
HITS ON BALLS UP IN THE ZONE: 3 (1 on a bunt, 1 off the Monster)
WALKS: 0
STRIKEOUTS: 1
POP-OUTS: 1
LINE DRIVES: 0!
TOTAL BATTERS: 11
BALLS HIT ON THE GROUND: 9
RUNS ALLOWED: 6
RUNS ALLOWED ON GROUNDERS THRU THE INFIELD: 5
RUNS ALLOWED ON HIGH FLIES OFF THE MONSTER: 1
RUNS THAT CAN BE BLAMED SPECIFICALLY ON LESTER: 0?
That's not to say that Lester was perfect. He did leave some balls up, so there's that. And he did fall behind to the first two hitters he faced, which is especially bad when they're the #8 and #9 hitters in the order.
But other than that, didn't Lester do exactly what a pitcher is supposed to do? He got one strikeout and one pop-up. He also allowed a fluke double that would have been a fly out to the left fielder in any of the 29 other big-league ballparks. Other than that, he kept the ball on the ground. That's exactly what you want from a pitcher in this situation. It's what every commentator says a pitcher should do with runners on base. He got ground ball after ground ball; he just couldn't control where the ground balls went. He also couldn't pick the fielders behind him. Replace Julio Lugo with Adam Everett and maybe some of those grounders don't make it to the outfield.
No losing pitcher should ever face the media and say, "It wasn't my fault!" But you know, I really couldn't blame Lester if he did.

The larger lesson to be learned here is, I think, that we have to be very careful when we start making assumptions based on just a box score. It's something we statheads are often accused of, but everyone is guilty of it from time to time. Instead, start considering the randomness factor when you look at the game reports. Just because a pitcher wins the game (capital "W") doesn't mean he pitched well; it simply means that he was on the mound when the team took the lead for good. The same goes for the losing pitcher (capital "L"); a loss doesn't necessarily mean a bad game, it just means that he allowed what turned out to be the deciding run. In fact, wins and losses have such a loose connection with a pitcher's actual performance that I've all but given up on them. They're not utterly irrelevant, but there's nothing a win-loss record can tell you that another stat can't tell you with more clarity and accuracy.
Also, keep in mind that all of those warnings about luck also apply to ERA. ERA is a much better measure of a pitcher's performance than wins or losses, but it still isn't perfect. This is especially true this early in the season, when we're trying to judge a pitcher's skill by just eight or nine starts.
Although Voros McCracken's theory wasn't as absolute as it sounds, the basic idea is still as true as ever: if you want to learn about a pitcher, look at walks, strikeouts and home runs. If you look at those numbers and put them in context based on the situation, they'll tell you 80% of what you need to know about a pitcher's performance.
And here's the perfect example:
J. Lester (L): 4.1 IP, 1 BB, 6 K, 1 HR. This tells you how well Lester pitched. The 10 H and 8 ER, on the other hand, are a reflection on the defense and the luck as much as Lester. Something to remember the next time you're browsing the box scores.

Manny Ramirez Suspended 50 Games by MLB

2009-05-11T00:20:00.001-04:00

Manny Ramirez, the popular but mercurial slugger for the Los Angeles Dodgers, has been suspended 50 games for violating Major League Baseball's Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program.
The suspension was announced Thursday afternoon. A statement from Manny Ramirez claims that he received the substance in question from a physician in Florida. He claims that his use was not recreational, and that he was unaware that the drug was banned.
Early reports indicated that Manny would appeal the suspension, and there were even arrangements made for a hearing to be scheduled in Los Angeles. According to ESPN's Peter Gammons, though, Manny backed off at the last minute and declined to appeal. Ramirez has taken public responsibility for using the substance, saying: "LA is a special place to me and I know everybody is disappointed. So am I. I'm sorry about this whole situation. "
There has been no official word on what the substance was that triggered the suspension. But ESPN writers T.J. Quinn and Mark Fainaru-Wada -- famous for writing the Barry Bonds/BALCO expose Game of Shadows -- are reporting that it was hCG, a women's fertility drug. According to the American Pregnancy Association's website, hCG is produced during pregnancy by cells that form the placenta. WebMD states that hCG levels can be tested to determine pergnancy but may also be affected by tumors.
That sounds innocent enough, but it fails to explain what an otherwise healthy adult male such as Ramirez would need them for. T.J. Quinn, speaking on an ESPNews broadcast, states that despite its uses as a female fertility drug, hCG is used almost exclusively by steroid users. hCG helps renew the body's ability to make testosterone. This is made necessary when steroid users have been doping for a certain period of time, inhibiting their body's ability to produce testosterone naturally. Not only does hCG seem to indicate steroid abuse in the vast majority of cases, but the substance itself is banned under baseball's drug policy, since it does enhance the body's testosterone levels.
Despite an official statement both from Ramirez and the MLB, there is some confusion as to how the substance was detected. It may or may not have come as part of baseball's random drug testing. Quinn reports that the hCG wasn't actually detected at first; his sources report that the only abnormality that registered was elevated levels of testosterone. This led investigators to determine what was responsible for the high levels of testosterone, and the use of hCG was indicated, reportedly, through documents uncovered during the process. It was this lack of a smoking gun, so to speak, that fueled speculation that Ramirez would lodge an appeal. His last-minute decision not to has raised some questions, with some speculating that Ramirez feared further incrimination during the appeals process. By declining an appeal, the matter is settled as far as the MLB is concerned.
This revelation has produced an instant outcry from the sports media. Peter Gammons tells us Ramirez's side of the story (in a manner that makes him sound more like Ramirez's agent than a journalist), whereas Fox Sports contributor Ken Rosenthal has nothing but contempt for Manny, not only for using but for getting caught at a time when a player's bodily fluids are under incredible supervision.
Ramirez's suspension casts a harsh shadow over a Dodgers team whose 21-8 record is the best in baseball. Not only that, but the Dodgers recently set a new record by notching 13 straight wins at home to begin a season. They've won seven straight and sit a comfortable 6.5 games ahead of the second-place Giants. Ramirez was the engine behind the Los Angeles offense, hitting .348 with 6 homers, 20 RBI and an incredible .492 on-base percentage. The bulk of the playing time in left field will likely go to Juan Pierre, a prospect that should send a cold chill up the back of Dodger fans.
There are still many unanswered questions surrounding this story. We'll have to keep looking to learn more and get some confirmation of the early reports coming from ESPN and T.J. Quinn. Either way, though, it looks like "Mannywood" will be out of action for nearly two months.

Shut the f*** up about HGH

2009-05-10T20:04:00.005-04:00

"There is no evidence that steroid use has altered home run hitting and those who argue otherwise are profoundly ignorant of the statistics of home runs, the physics of baseball, and of the physiological effects of steroids." -- Professor Arthur DeVany, "Steroids, Home Runs and the Law of Genius"

Quoted on http://steroids-and-baseball.com/actual-effects.shtml

"A review of clinical studies among healthy, normally aging individuals found that hGH supplementation does not significantly increase muscle strength or aerobic exercise capacity." --http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080617160837.htm ( American Medical Association )
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_48/b3961105.htm

(http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080320132224.htm), Stanford Medical School

The Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, Australia(http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080617113743.htm)or

The Mayo Clinic: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/growth-hormone/HA00030

Slate.com: http://www.slate.com/id/2162473/nav/tap1/

J.C. Bradbury: http://www.sabernomics.com/sabernomics/index.php/2007/04/i-dont-worry-about-hgh-in-baseball-and-neither-should-you/

Bradbury's follow-up: http://dberri.wordpress.com/2007/04/24/rumors-experts-and-human-growth-hormone/

Annals of Internal Medicine: http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/0000605-200805200-00215v1?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=athletic+performance&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT

MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23677433/

ABC NEWS: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/06/04/1941168.htm

First-hand comments: http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=6916111

Reaction to Newsday article no longer online: http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/newsstand/discussion/newsday_doctors_hgh_alone_doesnt_help_athletes/

Where's the on-field proof that they actually work ... : http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/22/opinion/22cole.html?_r=1&ex=1356066000&en=38ae29f2075786cc&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

... for pitchers?: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/29/AR2006042901195.html

And the New England Freakin' Journal of Medicine (http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/348/9/779).

Pretty much every website that says HGH works is trying to sell it to you.

You better be damn sure about something before you stick a needle in someone's arm.

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. --Max Planck

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. --John Kenneth Galbraith

Major h/t to Eric Walker

Know When to Move 'Em

2009-05-06T19:41:00.002-04:00

This past Saturday, I got a chance to watch my Braves maul the Reds to the tune of a 10-2 loss. I managed to get good seats to the ballgame, right down the left field line. As I sat there baking in the afternoon sun, I got a close look at the Cincinnati ballclub. Unfortunately, getting a close look at Reds baseball is a mixed blessing.
Case in point: third baseman Edwin Encarnacion. Encarnacion is a 26-year-old, good-hitting fellow whose biggest problem is a tendency to throw the ball not quite close enough to the big fellow with a glove standing at first base. Currently in his fifth major league season, Encarnacion has none the less committed 77 errors in his big league career. He’s the only player in the league who gets his defense recorded on a spray chart.
His erratic arm is a serious problem, but I didn’t realize how serious it was until I got a new statistical take on it. John Dewan, with the help of Baseball Info Solutions, has developed a new method of rating defense: the plus-minus ratings. It’s much more accurate than simple fielding percentage, but is still simple enough for even a casual fan to understand. A player’s plus-minus rating is the number of plays the player makes that an average player at that position would not normally make (a positive number is good, zero is average, negative numbers are bad). The newest set of plus-minus ratings were published in The Fielding Bible: Volume II, the sequel to Dewan’s groundbreaking 2006 book The Fielding Bible. Simply put, Encarnacion doesn’t look good.
According to Dewan’s system, Encarnacion was the worst full-time defensive third baseman in baseball in 2008, with a plus-minus rating of -21. The next-worst was Melvin Mora, at -13. Encarnacion is also the worst in the MLB over the last three seasons; his rating of -51 is worse than Garrett Atkins (-42) and ex-third baseman Miguel Cabrera (-40). Dewan’s listings only go back to 2003, and it should be said that Encarnacion isn’t considered the worst defensive third baseman over that period (2003-2008); he’s the second-worst (Ty Wigginton’s -75 is far worse than Encarnacion’s -46).
His defense is so bad that it seriously counteracts what good he does at the plate. Even though he does hit in a hitter-friendly park, Encarnacion is a decent hitter; he compensates for a low batting average (.261 career) by drawing some walks (career .343 on-base percentage) and hitting some homers (career .445 slugging percentage). The problem is that, in order to stay at a key position with such poor defense, you have to hit like Derek Jeter. Needless to say, Edwin does not, making him a big drag on the Reds.
What I wonder, though, is what the Reds are waiting for. When he first came to the majors and was wild, that was understandable; he was in his early 20’s and was still getting a hang of his admittedly strong arm. But it’s four years later, and Edwin hasn’t shown any signs of improving at all. If a player is still this bad at age 26, there’s no use in waiting around for divine intervention. Sure, he might get better over time, but the Reds just don’t have the luxury of losing that much defense every year hoping for a miracle.
Now, Encarnacion is one of the better hitters the Reds have (although that’s not saying much these days), so they don’t need to get rid of him. They can simply move him to the outfield. There’s no one blocking him in left field (Chris Dickerson and Darnell McDonald are stop-gaps at best), so he can move out there and give third base over to someone who won’t do as much damage. Granted, we can’t be certain he’ll be that good in left field, either, but we can be certain that he will do less damage there. The Reds could stand to learn from what the Brewers did with Ryan Braun.
So why in the world don’t they move him? That’s a fantastic question, and I don’t really have the answer. They didn’t move him last year because he was blocked by Adam Dunn in left and Jay Bruce in right. Now that left field is open, why aren’t the Reds rushing to take advantage of an opportunity to limit the damage Encarnacion can do to them?
I think there are two main reasons, one of them understandable and the other not. The understandable reason is that Encarnacion’s bat doesn’t play nearly as well in left field as it does at third. A career 261/343/445 batting line is good for a third baseman, but for a left fielder it’s sub-par. But even this is faulty reasoning. The Reds can only play with the players they have, and right now they don’t have a good left fielder; the best they have is Edwin Encarnacion. Dusty Baker can only make out a lineup with the 25 players GM Walt Jocketty gives him, and right now that’s a poor bunch of hitters.
An even worse reason to explain the Reds’ inaction is a misunderstanding of team defense. The reason that guys like Chris Dickerson end up holding a bat in their hands at all is that they’re good defensive outfielders. More specifically, they are fast. Encarnacion is not particularly fast, so he doesn’t fit the mold of a left fielder. So Dusty Baker (the NL Central’s poster-boy for faulty reasoning) will keep playing the Dickersons and McDonalds of the world until someone forces him to stop. Witness his work in Chicago with the likes of Tony Womack and Corey Patterson. Baker doesn’t look at team defense in the sense of fitting the right man to the right spot regardless of their “type.” Just the opposite, really. Baker prefers type over substance. He puts fast players in the outfield even if they can’t hit, and he puts a strong-armed guy like Edwin at third, even if his throwing is woefully inaccurate. Dusty constructs his lineup in the same way, putting fast, hit-and-run guys in the #1 and #2 spots, even if they get on base slightly less often than the re-animated corpse of Ted Williams. But that’s another story.
I think the Reds just don’t understand the best way to construct a team defense, which is especially problematic if you’re a small-market team that has to do everything right in order to contend. But Baker is only somewhat to blame, since Jocketty’s off-season solution to the Reds’ outfield problems was to sign Willy Taveras, adding another center fielder to a team that already had four of them. Offseason rumors that the team might pursue Rocco Baldelli, or some other legitimate corner bat, proved unfounded. This was a shame, especially considering that corner outfielders are a very cheap commodity in the current market.
My guess is that the Reds release Encarnacion or just let him walk away rather than do a better job of utilizing him. He’s not a star on the level of Ryan Braun, so there’s no pressure on them to keep him in the lineup. But he is, unfortunately, one of their best assets. The only three hitters the Reds have that are better than Encarnacion are Joey Votto, Jay Bruce and Brandon Phillips. The Reds don’t have a guy like Ryan Braun, which is why they simply have to settle for the likes of Encarnacion until somebody else comes along. And if they think that putting three or four clones of Tony Womack in the lineup will help them contend, they’re very mistaken.
A question for the readers: is there anyone else in baseball that you think is trapped at the wrong position? I’m not talking about expensive veterans like Jeter or now-former shortstop Michael Young, whose very status (and inexplicable Gold Gloves) stand in the way of a position shift. Instead, I’m thinking of young players who still have time to develop and thrive in a new role. The only one I can really think of is Rickie Weeks in Milwaukee, but I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

Sunday MLB Recap: No Need to Panic

2009-04-22T13:50:00.002-04:00

There's a scene in King Kong vs. Godzilla where Godzilla appears over the horizon and attacks a train, knocking it to pieces. Of course, as the travellers are mobbing the exits, there's a train conductor standing in the middle of them, yelling, "Please! Don't panic!" I felt like that conductor this week as I watched baseball columnists and Yankee fans wailing and gnashing their teeth at the horrors that befell the team in its opening homestand. You'd never have known that the Yankees, instead of being eaten by Godzilla, went 2-2 against a pretty good team, the Indians. Granted, there's no good way to spin a 22-4 loss, and this could be a sign that the pitching (especially Chien-Ming Wang) isn't as good as we thought. But the new Yankee Stadium is a sturdy piece of architecture; it can withstand worse.
With that in mind, here's a recap of some busy Sunday action with a look at what this means for the coming season.

Yankees 7, Indians 3: Carl Pavano silenced more than a few critics with six solid innings of work with just one run allowed. A.J. Burnett, on the other hand, issued seven walks (!) in six innings, yet somehow only gave up three runs.But the real story of the game was a two-run, pinch-hit homer by Jorge Posada. We got to see the first instant replay review of the season. The umpires did, in my opinion, make the right call. It was very doubtful that Trevor Crowe would have caught the ball, even if the fans hadn't reached for it. And it wasn't clear that the fans were reaching onto the field of play. So that's a homer, which led to the Yankee victory. Good news for the Bombers, especially if Posada can provide more of the same.My biggest problem with the play had nothing to do with the umpires. I just got sick and damn tired of hearing TBS announcers Thom Brennaman and Ron Darling discuss it non-stop for the rest of the game. Instead of getting commentary on the Yankees' big comeback against the Cleveland 'pen, we got 995 replays of the homer (from the same 3 angles, of course) and a short history of contested home runs and instant replay. It's times like this I wish I had an SAP button on my TV, and I don't even know much Spanish.
Blue Jays 1, Athletics 0: Two good pitchers and two weak offenses give us a heck of a pitchers' duel. Win or lose, both teams have to be thrilled to get such good starts out of their young hurlers (Ricky Romero for Toronto, Dallas Braden for Oakland).
Brewers 4, Mets 2: The Brewers enjoy a rare good start from Jeff Suppan, aided by the fact that the Mets were starting Nelson Figueroa. It's also worth noting that Todd Coffey threw 2.2 innings of scoreless relief, using just 30 pitches. It's nice to see Ken Macha thinking outside the box in the absence of Trevor Hoffman. Here's hoping he keeps an open mind when Hoffman returns.
Braves 11, Pirates 1: Javier Vazquez made another strong start, and this time the offense supported him. I think Vazquez will really enjoy the shift to Atlanta. As for the Pirates, hey, Andy LaRoche got another hit!
Red Sox 2, Orioles 1: Jon Lester throws a gem, and Takashi Saito makes the Boston front office look good. The good news for Baltimore is that Koji Uehara pitched quite well (7 IP, 2 ER, 1 BB, 5 K). It would be more comforting for Boston fans, though, to see somebody in the lineup besides Kevin Youkilis catch fire.
Marlins 7, Nationals 4: Neither team is as good (Marlins) or as bad (Nationals) as they've looked so far. With everyone rushing to congratulate the Florida pitchers, I must point out that ten games isn't much of a test for a group with so much trouble staying healthy. The good news for the Nats is ... uh, Elijah Dukes is hitting well!
Phillies 5, Padres 4: After suffering from a rare blown save by Brad Lidge, the Phils returned the favor on Sunday with a late-inning rally capped off by a walk-off homer by Raul Ibanez. For Padres fans ... well, you'd better get used to this.
White Sox 12, Rays 2: The Rays continue to struggle. On Sunday it was Matt Garza getting hammered, for 7 ER in 5.2 IP. Granted, his five walks allowed didn't help. The Sox looked good, and goodness knows they need more starts like this from Gavin Floyd.
Reds 4, Astros 2: The Astros recently re-upped manager Cecil Cooper for another year. I haven't a clue what could happen in 11 games to convince them one way or another. To be fair, though, Cooper can only work with the roster that's given to him. No one expected Felipe Paulino to out-pitch Edinson Volquez, but he did; then the Houston bullpen blew it. It was another high-stress outing for Volquez, who threw 104 pitches in six innings, striking out seven but walking five. Volquez and Cueto both need to be more efficient on the mound if the Reds want to contend.
Twins 3, Angels 1: Glen Perkins was masterful on the mound for Minnesota, needing just 84 pitches to get through 8 IP, allowing just four hits and one walk. The Twins will live and die by their pitching (and Joe Mauer's health), so Sunday's game is encouraging.
Rangers 6, Royals 5: Kyle Davies, like Volquez, labored his way to a quality start. Davies threw 111 pitches through six innings, striking out eight against five walks. But the Royals bullpen blew it, letting the Rangers tie it in the 8th and win it in the 9th on a walk-off home run by Michael Young. Kyle Farnsworth, to no one's surprise, took the loss. One wonders what in the $%*& manager Trey Hillman was thinking to send Farnsworth out there with the game on the line.
Giants 2, Diamondbacks 0: Randy Johnson's early work had the Giants very worried. Then, on Sunday, the unit returned to form, striking out seven and only allowing one hit through seven. He had a no-hitter going into the 7th inning. This was win #296 for Johnson.
Dodgers 14, Rockies 2: Apparently the Dodgers don't need to go to Coors to beat the Rockies by 12. It was all good for L.A., who got two homers from Matt Kemp to push their record to 10-3. The only downside was that starter Jason McDonald went just 4.1 innings despite throwing 96 pitches. That's not a good way to win a spot in the rotation. As for the Rockies, the closer's role is still up in the air between Huston Street (9.64 ERA) and Manny Corpas (6.75). For the sake of the fans, the Rockies might have to bring in a third candidate just to stop the bleeding.
Tigers 8, Mariners 2: Seeing Carlos Silva struggle in Seattle was no surprise. But the Tigers have to be thrilled to see top prospect Rick Porcello go seven strong innings, with only a solo homer by Ronny Cedeno counting against him.
Cubs vs. Cardinals: Rained out.

I saw an article recently that said that walk rates in baseball were pretty high so far this season. I'm not sure if that's just a fluke, and I'm not sure what it means if it's not. What I do know is that Sunday's games offer an object lesson on the dangers of too many walks. Even among some of the winners, we saw some pitchers getting by despite issuing a lot of free passes. That means reaching 90 or 100 pitches in the 5th or 6th inning, which is bad news for the rest of the team, especially if they've got bullpen problems.
Here's hoping that next Sunday has better weather. The bad weather knocked out the power to my house yesterday. But the utility company came right out to work on it. I don't know much about electricity, but when the utility guys are up there working on the box, and you hear a boom so loud it falls somewhere between a really big gun and a really small cannon, it means what they're trying isn't working.
Just FYI.

FAIL @ Men's Journal

2009-04-19T16:29:00.003-04:00

I'm amazed that a seemingly respectable magazine would actually print this. This is terrible on every possible judgment of the "terrible" meter. It's the sort of article a drunken moron would piss out after a bad day at Yankee Stadium. There is no fact in this article, not nearly enough to justify the anger. The writer's utter cluelessness and ignorance about the game of baseball and, apparently, life, is enough to make me optimistic about a career in baseball writing. I sure as hell can't do any worse than that, an article for which Matt Taibbi was presumably paid good American currency.

Yeesh.

(h/t Shysterball)

Blast from the Past: 2006

2009-04-13T02:51:00.001-04:00

I know that advertisers are finding new ways to horn in on MLB TV. They're not just buying awards, they're trying to sponsor every segment or every pause.
The worst is the WebMD injury report. Now, this doesn't sound that bad at first. It's flagrant ad-placement, yes, but hey, it's nice to explain to a fan just where the ACL is or what the oblique muscle does. It could be useful.
Instead, WebMD used their CGI 3-d rendering of a human body's musculature to illustrate, for the viewers at home: a sore wrist. I'm not f***ing kidding. How inconceviably DUMB do you have to be to need a TV animation to explain to you what a SORE WRIST is?!

"Phyllis, I've got an ouch."
"Where is your ouch, dear."
"On this part of my body right here (pointing)."
"Where, dear? I can't see you; I'm in the kitchen."
"It's not my hand, and it's not my arm. It's where my hand becomes my arm."
"Oh, your wrist."
"(Pensively) Wrist."
"And does it hurt?"
"It ouches."
"How does it ouch, Willie?"
"It's kind of a slow ouch, but all the time."
"Oh, that means it's sore."
"(Never heard the word before) Sore?"
"Here look, dear, on TV. See the sore wrist?"
"I finally get it now! A wrist -- a sore wrist! That there on TV is a sore wrist!"
"And how do you know it's sore?"
"Because they colored it red!"
"Good, honey. Finish your Spaghetti-Ohs."

By the way, they later used the same animation to explain Scott Rolen's injury. Rolen's injury? "Shoulder fatigue." I don't even want to imagine what poor Willie had to go through to wrap his provincial brain around that one

Final 2009 Predictions

2009-04-05T18:26:00.003-04:00

American League

NL East
New York Yankees (98-64)
Boston Red Sox* (93-69)
Tampa Bay Rays (87-75)
Toronto Blue Jays (79-83)
Baltimore Orioles (73-89)
* -- denotes Wild Card

NL Central
Cleveland Indians (88-74)
Minnesota Twins (84-78)
Chicago White Sox (79-83)
Detroit Tigers (78-84)
Kansas City Royals (72-90)

NL West
Los Angeles Angels (85-77)
Oakland Athletics (84-78)
Texas Rangers (78-84)
Seattle Mariners (70-92)

ALCS: Yankees over Indians

World Series: Dodgers over Yankees

AL MVP: Mark Teixeira, Yankees

AL Cy Young: Josh Beckett, Red Sox

AL Rookie of the Year: Matt Wieters, Orioles

National League

NL East
New York Mets (95-67)
Philadelphia Phillies* (89-73)
Atlanta Braves (87-75)
Florida Marlins (76-86)
Washington Nationals (65-97)

NL Central
Chicago Cubs (91-71)
St. Louis Cardinals (84-78)
Milwaukee Brewers (80-82)
Cincinnati Reds (78-84)
Houston Astros (67-95)
Pittsburgh Pirates (66-96)

NL West
Los Angeles Dodgers (93-69)
Arizona Diamondbacks (87-75)
San Francisco Giants (78-84)
Colorado Rockies (76-86)
San Diego Padres (62-100)

NLCS: Dodgers over Cubs

World Series: Dodgers over Yankees

NL MVP: David Wright, Mets

NL Cy Young: Johan Santana, Mets

NL Rookie of the Year: Kenshin Kawakami, Braves

NL West Preview: Manny to the Rescue

2009-04-05T03:57:00.006-04:00

Prediction
1 – Los Angeles Dodgers
2 – Arizona Diamondbacks
3 – San Francisco Giants
4 – Colorado Rockies
5 – San Diego Padres

Los Angeles Dodgers
Last year's NL West race came down to the final week of the season, with L.A. just edging out the Diamondbacks. This year's race looks about the same, with the Dodgers and 'Backs pacing the division. What really separates the two is L.A.'s great opportunity for improvement; they've got the young talent to take the division by storm.

It starts in the rotation with ace Chad Billingsley. The Dodgers will miss Derek Lowe, but Billingsley should be able to step up and do just as well, if not better. Last year, Billingsley posted a 3.14 ERA and struck out 201 batters in 200.2 innings. The only concern here is the big increase in innings pitched in 2008 (65.1 more than in 2007, including the postseason) as well as his 80 walks allowed. The other young stud in the L.A. stable is Clayton Kershaw. Long-term, Kershaw's ceiling may be higher than Billingsley's, but he's still quite young; he just turned 21. But while he may not top 200 innings, Kershaw looked pretty sharp as a 20-year-old rookie last year, managing a 4.26 ERA with 100 K in 107.2 IP.
These young aces are backed up by the capable Hiroki Kuroda, who had a fine 2008, and Randy Wolf, added as a free agent for a modest cost. The #5 slot will probably go to young James McDonald, who proved himself capable in the role last year. The only problem will be if the Dodgers insist on starting Jason "Walking Wounded" Schmidt in an attempt to salvage something from his woeful contract.
The Dodgers are taking a hit in the bullpen with the loss of closer Takashi Saito, but they have a fine replacement on hand in Jonathan Broxton. And behind Broxton, they've got reliable arms such as Hong-Chi Kuo, Cory Wade and perhaps McDonald if Schmidt ends up starting.
The lineup isn't such a sure thing, although it did receive a tremendous boost with the return of Manny Ramirez. Manny won't hit like he did down the stretch last year (396/489/743* with L.A.), but he's a huge upgrade over Juan Pierre (who isn't?). Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier round out a group that may not be very strong defensively, but has the potential to be the best-hitting outfield in the league.
* -- Slash stats indicate (Batting Average/ On-Base Percentage/ Slugging Percentage)

The Dodgers have a star behind the plate in Russell Martin, but they will need to resist the temptation to overwork him. Martin played in 155 games in 2008, a staggering number that took a toll on his offense as the year went on. Joe Torre will have to find more opportunities to rest his young star, although it would be nice to have a better backup than Brad Ausmus.
The infield is problematic, but still pretty strong. Rafael Furcal and Orlando Hudson provide great defense up the middle, even if both are starting to show signs of age. James Loney is an All-Star waiting to break out at first, and the only non-star is Casey Blake at third. The Dodgers signed Blake to a silly contract in the offseason, but considering the lineup depth around him, it shouldn't hurt them too much (although they'll regret trading away these guys to get Blake). Any gaps in the middle infield can be filled immediately by prospects Chin-Lung Hu and Ivan DeJesus, Jr.
There's still a lot here that can go wrong: injuries, personality clashes, as well as a stronger NL West than we've seen in a while. But the Dodgers are well-positioned to ride their young talent to another postseason berth.

Arizona Diamondbacks
The Diamondbacks, like the Dodgers, are a team that's relying on its young guns to lead the charge into October. The difference is mainly one of depth; the D-Backs have more holes than the Dodgers, with little help coming up from the farm. But there's still a lot of unfulfilled potential on the club, which could lead to some surprises.
The D-Backs begin and end with their 1-2 dynamic pitching duo of Brandon Webb and Dan Haren. Webb is one of the best and most consistent pitchers in the entire league, and Haren isn't far behind them. The only question is what kind of support they'll get along the way. The way things look right now, it will be Doug Davis, Jon Garland and Max Scherzer backing up the big two. Scherzer is young but has great potential. The trouble is with Davis, who is reliable if unexceptional, and Garland, who's just unexceptional. The big drop-off in talent after Webb and Haren means that Arizona relies on them more than ever; if one of them goes down for any real length of time, the team's October hopes go down with them.
The great untapped potential – and thus the great hope – lies in the lineup. Arizona has potential All-Stars playing at least four positions, and no one on the team is an easy out. But getting any sort of consistency from their young stars has been a real struggle. The poster boy for this problem is Justin Upton. Upton has as much potential as any young player in baseball; consider that he has two big-league seasons under his belt and is still just 21. The frustrating thing is what he's done in those seasons, which isn't a whole lot. He took a step forward last year after a forgettable rookie campaign, hitting 250/353/463, but he's capable of much more. The big problem is his 121 strikeouts in just 356 at bats. If Upton can improve his plate discipline, he'll hit for a better average and be better able to take advantage of his power.
Equally frustrating has been center fielder Chris Young. Young has a great deal of raw power, but his plate approach tends to be all-or-nothing. Young struck out 165 times last year and hit just .248. He did notch 22 homers and 42 doubles, but even that isn't enough to compensate for a .315 on-base percentage. Even a small improvement would go a long way toward making Young a star, especially since his speed makes him a real asset in center field.
The veteran of the group is left fielder Conor Jackson. Jackson was moved to left to accommodate the return of Chad Tracy, who was forced off of third base by Mark Reynolds. Both Tracy (durability) and Reynolds (204 strikeouts) have their faults, but Jackson turned in a pretty impressive 2008, hitting 300/376/446. But while he's a good contact hitter with a keen batting eye, Jackson just doesn't have the power associated with a left fielder. He hit 12 HR last year, and his career high is just 15.
And then there's the infield, where the only sure thing is shortstop Stephen Drew. Drew took a big step forward in 2008, but has yet to become the all-around star the D-Backs drafted. I mentioned the problems with Tracy and Reynolds above, and second baseman Felipe Lopez is only has a job because of a lucky 43 games with the Cardinals last year.
The potential is there for this team to win 90+ games and play in the postseason. But you can't count on another step forward from so many prospects in one year. It doesn’t look like the D-Backs can compete with the Dodgers, which leaves them hoping for a Wild Card berth.

San Francisco Giants
Giants GM Brian Sabean is finally getting it. For years, he neglected the draft and threw money at aging free agents, hoping to make one last run to the World Series before Barry Bonds retired. Well, Bonds is gone now, and Sabean seems to have learned his lesson. The 2008-2009 offseason saw no contracts to rival the hideous deals handed out to Barry Zito, Aaron Rowand, Randy Winn, Dave Roberts, Omar Vizquel, Matt Morris, and Armando Benitez in years past. Instead, Sabean plugged a hole at shortstop with Edgar Renteria and made the best deal of the offseason by snagging Randy Johnson for a bare $8 million. This, along with the arrival of some amazing young pitchers, actually has the Giants creeping onto the scene as contenders, despite the millions in bad contracts still on the balance sheet.
We start, naturally, with the pitching staff. There's not much else you can say about Tim Lincecum, who won the Cy Young Award last year and became the first Giant to lead the league in strikeouts (ponder that). He's also the first real pitching star the team has developed since . . . John Burkett? Bob Knepper? Mike McCormick? Or do we have to go all the way back to Gaylord Perry? The only thing that will keep Lincecum from stardom is if his arm breaks down under the pressure (227 IP in '08; led NL in Pitcher Abuse Points).
Backing up Lincecum is Matt Cain, who's an excellent youngster in his own right, and Jonathan Sanchez, a promising arm who was much better last year than last season's 5.01 ERA would indicate. Adding Randy Johnson to the mix makes this a pretty scary starting rotation. And the Johnson contract is no nostalgia trip by the Giants. The big lefty may not hold up for 35 starts, but he made 30 last year with Arizona and was still pretty impressive. This leaves Barry Zito as the #5 starter, which may be a painful thought given his salary, but it's where he ranks on this deep staff. Noah Lowry, returning from injury, gives the Giants a pretty nice back-up. The only thing Giants fans should really worry about, pitching-wise, is how their mediocre bullpen is able to support these stars.
The Giants are blessed with the best bad lineup in all of baseball. That may not sound like much of a compliment, but if you look at what they've had to work with, it's pretty impressive. Other than Rowand and Winn, it's a remarkably cheap bunch, but with some real upside. Fred Lewis has finally gotten a chance to play every day in the outfield and has acquitted himself well; well enough that the team released Dave Roberts. And Bengie Molina has aged remarkably well for a full-time catcher who's not going to make the cover of Muscle & Fitness anytime soon.
At the infield corners, the Giants are going with homegrown players. Travis Ishikawa will take over at first, and Pablo Sandoval will man third. Ishikawa doesn't have a whole lot of power, and he's not going to hit for much of a batting average, but he can take a walk and has a good glove. Sandoval hits for a great average, but he's short on power, too, and has terrible plate discipline. As this graph shows, Sandoval swung at pitches out of the strike zone more often than any other hitter in 2008. As if that weren't worrisome enough, he's a converted catcher who's still learning third base. With him at third and Renteria at shortstop, the Giants will suffer from poor infield defense on the left side.
Even with all these concerns, the Giants are in better shape than they've been since Bonds left town. Not only that, but they've reinvigorated their farm system and cut down on wasteful spending at the major league level. Credit the San Francisco brain trust for their willingness to admit their mistakes and start over.

Colorado Rockies
The Rockies' 2007 NL pennant was in tatters by the end of the 2008 season. The hitters took a step back, and the pitching staff fell apart, dropping the team to a disappointing 74-88 finish. As if that weren't enough, the team traded their best hitter (Matt Holliday) to Oakland and lost their best pitcher (Jeff Francis) to injury.
And yet there is still a lot left from that 2007 team to inspire some hope. Another October appearance is a long shot, but if the Rockies can just get their young players back on track, they can be competitive again as soon as this year.
This begins and ends with the pitching staff. Aaron Cook returns as the veteran staff leader, and Ubaldo Jimenez is coming off a strong 2008 (albeit with a troubling 103 walks allowed). It's after that that the challenge awaits. Getting Franklin Morales back where he was in late 2007 would be a great start. And the team sees a lot of potential in reclamation project Jorge de la Rosa. But that still leaves one spot open, and the Rockies will come to regret reserving it for highly hittable pitchers like Jason Marquis and Greg Smith.
The team's best hope is its offense. Getting Todd Helton and Troy Tulowitzki back and (relatively) healthy would give the lineup a big boost. Adding in Ryan Spilborghs as the starting center fielder gives them a decent leadoff man. Catcher Chris Iannetta arrived as a star in 2008, and the hole left by Holliday won't be a total loss, with Seth Smith and/or Carlos Gonzalez filling in. Mix in solid hitters Brad Hawpe and Garrett Atkins, and this could be a surprisingly potent lineup.
But it doesn't come without questions, specifically about Helton's health and the ability of several players to step into full-time roles. Together with their battered pitching staff, this makes the Rockies a real long shot in '09.

San Diego Padres
The state of the Padres is so bad that they've become a surrealist metaphor. This is the baseball team Salvador Dali would paint, except without the melting clocks. With previous owner John Moores going through a tough divorce, the team was forced into cost-cutting mode. This meant that fan favorite Trevor Hoffman was shown the door. Ace Jake Peavy nearly followed him, except that the Padrespainted themselves into a corner with their public negotiations. Even before the fire sale, this was a team that had gotten by on a few canny trades, some low-level free agents, and a lot of luck. The only real hope is that they don't totally embarrass themselves in 2009.
Okay, focusing on the positive: Manager Bud Black still has his two best hitters in the lineup, Brian Giles and Adrian Gonzalez. But apart from disappointing prospects Kevin Kouzmanoff and Chase Headley, that's all the team has in the lineup. Giles will be trade bait in August, and for all I know, any other veteran on the roster will be, too.
That puts the focus on Peavy. The Peavy negotiations were almost instantly narrowed down to Atlanta and Chicago, removing (at least publicly) a lot of room for maneuvering by GM Kevin Towers. The central problem was that neither Atlanta nor Chicago really needed Peavy. The Braves settled on Derek Lowe as Plan B, and the Cubs decided that they had a damn good rotation as it was. This isn't to say that the trade won't still happen; word is that Towers was eventually able to reach out to some other clubs, but there's nothing on that front yet. Unless new owner Jeff Moores reverses course and decides to keep his ace, you have to figure that this will be Peavy's last season in San Diego.
Chris Young, the Padres' #2, is a good pitcher, but one who keeps going down with injury. He also has a lot of trouble away from roomy Petco Park; his 2008 ERA at home was 2.35. On the road, it was 5.27. In 2007, those numbers were 1.69 and 4.52, respectively, so this isn't really news. And with little money left to spend, the Padres will fill out the rest of the rotation with whatever players they can scavenge. Granted, this is a team good at scavenging, but that's a strategy best reserved for the #5 spot in the rotation rather than the #3 spot.
Basically, this is a transition year for the Padres, who have to rebuild their thin farm system and start from the bottom of the heap again under Moores. The management team has shown itself capable of meeting challenges before, but this one is a real doozy.

Conclusion
The Dodgers and Diamondbacks aren't too far apart on talent level, but there's just so much less risk with L.A., not to mention much more depth. The race should come down to these two, although the Giants and maybe even the Rockies could stay in the Wild Card race into September. But my guess is that Manny & Joe Torre get to raise another NL West Championship banner together.

NL Central Preview: Can the Cubs Three-Peat?

2009-04-03T04:32:00.004-04:00

My Prediction:
1 – Chicago Cubs
2 – St. Louis Cardinals
3 – Milwaukee Brewers
4 – Cincinnati Reds
5 – Houston Astros
6 – Pittsburgh Pirates

Chicago Cubs
The Cubs are strong favorites in the NL Central once again. They’ve kept together most of the key players from 2008, while other teams in the division are either taking a step back or just struggling to stay in place.
The team is returning its top four starters in Ryan Dempster, Carlos Zambrano, Ted Lilly and Rich Harden. It’s a strong group, although there are concerns about Harden’s ability to make 20 starts, let alone 30. The team also took a big step back at closer, losing Kerry Wood to free agency and replacing him with trade acquisition Kevin Gregg. The Cubs have clearly overrated Gregg, due to his status as a Proven Closer. They’ve still got a great safety net in Carlos Marmol, but the Cubs will see a big difference between Gregg and the departed Wood.
Chicago has a unique depth to their offense.

Last year the Cubs led the league in runs scored, despite the fact that no one on the team received (or deserved) strong MVP support. In other words, nobody on the team was great, but a lot of people were good. The 2008 team remains mostly intact, adding in right fielder Milton Bradley. Bradley is a fine hitter, but there’s some concern about keeping him in the lineup, particularly as he won’t have the option of DH-ing like he had with Texas in 2008. And of course, there's his prickly personality, which has created problems with umpires, announcers and team management throughout his career. The Bradley contract is a calculated risk, but the potential reward is significant.

The biggest worry facing Chicago this year is that they’ve lost a good deal of their depth. The damage was done with the trade that sent Mark DeRosa to Cleveland. Not only was DeRosa a better second base option than anyone the Cubs have now, he was a great insurance policy all over the diamond. He would have been especially valuable for the Cubs this year given Bradley’s injury history. If Bradley were injured, DeRosa could shift to the outfield without the team losing a lot of offense. As it is, the Cubs will be stretched if injuries hit, either in the outfield or the infield.

Right now the team is planning a center field platoon of Reed Johnson and Kosuke Fukudome. That’s not bad, but the team is exposed if either man has to play full-time. Especially since their backup outfielder is Joey Gathright, whose acquisition has to be considered a significant mistake. Bradley and Alfonso Soriano have to carry the outfield offense, because the alternatives aren't very promising.

In 2008, Jim Hendry and Lou Pineilla did a fine job of putting together a great offense with quantity rather than quality. This gave Pineilla a free hand to platoon players, cover injuries and assemble lineups according to matchups. A great deal of that freedom will be gone in 2009, as the team’s backup plans aren’t what they were last year.

Luckily, the NL Central isn’t what it was last year. It’s hard to say that any team has really improved, which gives the Cubs extra breathing room. If they fail to win the division, it will be one hell of a story.

St. Louis Cardinals
If anyone has a real chance to dethrone the Cubs, it’s St. Louis. They’ve got a solid offensive punch, good starting pitching depth, and two good, young closer options. It will be difficult to get it all together, but then the Cards overcame a lot of difficulty last year to win 86 games.

The Cards' average of 4.81 runs per game was fourth-best in the NL. Just staying at that level would be fine, but it won't come easily. Ryan Ludwick needs to prove that his 2008 campaign (299/375/591)* wasn't just an outlier. And the team needs Rick Ankiel (264/337/506) to stay healthy and productive and maybe even add something to his raw power. The third outfield spot isn't set in stone. The best bet may be for the Cards to elevate top prospect Colby Rasmus, who may be ready to break out in the big leagues. Chris Duncan will get some playing time, but with the uncertain status of his bionic neck, it's just guesswork to say how much.
* -- Slash stats indicate (Batting Average/ On-Base Percentage/ Slugging Percentage)

The heart of the St. Louis offense comes from the infield corners. Albert Pujols is great, obviously. Troy Glaus does a good job at third – that challenge trade for Scott Rolen really worked in the Cards' favor – but word is now that he'll be missing the first two months of the season to injury. In his absence, most of the at-bats will probably go to David Freese, who's shown some decent work in the minors but won't likely replace Glaus' offense.

GM Jon Mozeliak tried to improve the middle infield by trading for Padres shortstop Khalil Greene. Greene should enjoy moving out of roomy Petco Park, as power is his main calling card. The problem is that that's about all he has; Greene is good when he hits 20+ homers, but when he doesn't, it gets ugly (like in 2008: 10 HR and a 213/260/339 batting line). At second, the Cards will try converted outfield Skip Schumaker. Schumaker's bat plays much better in the middle infield, but his defense is a work in progress.
Speaking of which, defense could be the team's downfall. Ankiel is solid in center and Yadier Molina is golden

behind the plate, but the only other plus defender they have is Pujols. This could be, as I said, the team's deciding factor, because their pitching staff is going to need all the help it can get.
It seems like pitching coach Dave Duncan can turn straw into gold. Granted, the work done by Todd Wellemeyer, Kyle Lohse, Joel Pineiro and Braden Looper (now with Milwaukee) may not be considered "gold," but so far they've defied the most optimistic expectations. The trouble there is that now they have to prove that the Duncan magic has staying power.

Lohse is the most durable of the bunch, taking the ball every turn, but his 3.78 ERA last season was more than a little lucky. And while Wellemeyer did a masterful job of handling nearly 200 innings after years of short relief work is amazing, can we really count on another 190+ innings of sub-4.00 ERA pitching?
These guys are the core of the pitching staff, along with Adam Wainwright, who should be back and effective after making just 20 starts last year. But the real difference-maker is Chris Carpenter. With a healthy Carpenter, the Cardinals might well have won the Wild Card in 2008. The same holds true for 2009, although it's uncertain what the still-healing ace will bring to the table. He's already ahead of where the Cards expected him to be, and if he can provide just 25 starts it could get the club into October. But will he be as effective as he was in 2005 and 2006? Early signs from Florida are good, but it's hard for me to expect him back at ace level after sitting out for two years in his mid-30's.

The Cards stand as good a chance as anybody of being the surprise team of 2009. But it will take a Herculean effort from the medical staff to keep Carpenter, Glaus & Co. healthy and productive. Add in a bullpen short on depth and a suspect defense, and I think the Cardinals will have to settle for second place.

Milwaukee Brewers
The Brewers had an amazing season in 2008. This was a city and a franchise that needed to see October baseball again, and it was a great ride, even if it was derailed prematurely in the NLDS. It seems like a tough act to follow, and when you look closely at what the Brewers have lost, it seems like a really tough act to follow.

The Brewers enter 2009 trying to replace C.C. Sabathia's 130.2 IP (1.65 ERA, 128 K) as well as Ben Sheets' 198.1 IP (3.09 ERA, 158 K). It took two starting pitchers throwing the best ball of their lives for the Brewers to make the playoffs in 2009. Without them, the team doesn't stand much of a chance.

However, they'll get some of that production back with a healthy Yovani Gallardo. Gallardo, who has ace potential, could pick up the ace mantle left by Sabathia. But it's hard to see him throwing a lot of innings, with age and a lost 2008 both playing a part in that.

Backing up Gallardo is mostly the same disappointing rotation that prompted the trade for Sabathia in 2008. The Jeff Suppan contract is already looking like a bust, which shows what happens when a "pitch-to-contact" guy gets stuck with the Brewers' defense behind him (4.96 ERA). Dave Bush is a solid #3, and the team could see some good work put in by Manny Parra, but this is the team's big weakness heading into 2009. Adding Braden Looper (4.16 ERA in 33 starts in 2008) will help – but not heal – this ailing rotation.

In the bullpen, the team dealt with the premature retirement of Salomon Torres by signing all-time saves leader Trevor Hoffman. The Brewers knew that Hoffman was near the end of the line, but they may not have realized just how near. Hoffman has benefited from the friendly confines of Petco Park, and the move to Miller Park won't help much. Plus, the 2008 version of Hoffman just wasn't fooling batters like he used to and didn't have much margin for error. As if that weren't bad enough, he'll be starting the season on the DL, exposing the Brewers' lack of bullpen depth.

The lineup is still as potent as it was last year, with Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun leading the way. But the team needs to see improvement from shortstop J.J. Hardy and right fielder Corey Hart if they're going to offset the damage done to the pitching staff. And Rickie Weeks . . . well, there's really nothing left to say about Weeks, except that if he doesn't make a breakthrough this year he could either be moved to center field or moved out of town.

The Brewers had their magic moment in 2008, but it will have to last for a while. Because until the team gets better pitching to back up Gallardo, they're not going to keep up in the NL Central.

Cincinnati Reds
I've noticed many writers picking the Reds as a potential breakout team in 2009. I can see why. They've got an impressive starting rotation and two young studs, Jay Bruce and Joey Votto, filling out the lineup. The reason I'm not so positive about the Reds is that they've lost Adam Dunn and Ken Griffey, Jr., and they're giving that pitching over to Dusty "The Mangler" Baker.

The Reds' lineup got considerably thinner when they traded away Dunn and Griffey. Bruce can help by improving upon his rookie season (254/314/453), but the outfield just isn't the same. The team signed Willy Taveras to play center under the misguided notion that he's a leadoff man (career .331 OBP). True, he stole 68 bases last year, but he's never stolen more than 34 in any other season, and his offense is actually even worse than you'd think just looking at his OBP (his career SLG of .337 is criminal for someone calling themselves an outfielder). The left field spot will probably be a shared responsibility, but none of the candidates (Chris Dickerson, Jerry Hairston, Jonny Gomes) are likely to make the Queen City fans forget Dunn.

The starting rotation is good, but in Baker's hands, health concerns abound. Giving young pitchers to Dusty Baker is like giving your collection of rare books to Edward Scissorhands. Of all the starting pitchers in baseball, the Reds had three of their starters rank in the top 20 in Pitcher Abuse Points last year. Bronson Arroyo, at least, has shown he can hold up under this kind of stress. Aaron Harang, too, is a bit of an iron man, although even he was no match for the Dust-inator after this outing.

But there is no excuse at all for Dusty putting Edinson Volquez through the wringer. At least in 2003, Dusty was killing Mark Prior and Kerry Wood so the Cubs could win a pennant. In 2008, Volquez threw at least 110 pitches in six of his last ten starts (and an unconscionable 121 pitches once), despite the fact that the Reds were already out of the race, and that Volquez was just 24 years old. 22-year-old Johnny Cueto fared little better; he ranked 16th in the NL in PAP (Volquez was 11th). Cueto also had a 120-pitch outing, a torturous six-inning no-decision against the Padres in late July. Both Volquez and Cueto got worse as the season wore on, with Volquez especially suffering. We often talk about a manager getting the most out of his pitchers. But that doesn't mean we want a manager who keeps bending them until they break.

If the Reds' pitchers can handle the stress, they could end up with a winning record in 2009. But even if they do, they'll have to do it with a lineup where Bruce and Votto's only real support comes from Brandon Phillips and Edwin Encarnacion. Stranger things have happened, albeit not often.

Houston Astros
The Astros won 86 games and finished 3rd in 2008, surprising by finishing in third place for the Wild Card. But the team is deluding itself if they think they can keep this up; they were extremely lucky in 2008 and are going to get worse before they get better.

The Astros are built upon Lance Berkman, Carlos Lee and Roy Oswalt. Everything else is filler, except for a couple of decent bats in the lineup. This is a problem that has been looming for years; even when they won the pennant in 2005, they did it with a team that had a big gap in talent between the superstars (Berkman, Ensberg, Oswalt, Clemens, Pettitte) and everybody else.

Backing up Oswalt in the rotation will be (likely) Wandy Rodriguez, Brian Moehler, Mike Hampton and Russ Ortiz. The only person here who is likely to be healthy and effective at the same time for any great stretch is Rodriguez, who finally managed a decent season last year at age 29. Moehler is just barely hanging on, and Hampton is so brittle that he might as well come with peanuts. And poor Russ Ortiz hasn't been anything but awful since 2004. The presence of a surprisingly good bullpen (Jose Valverde, LaTroy Hawkins, and Doug Brocail) isn't much help, since they won't be given very many leads to save.

The lineup is only somewhat more promising. Berkman and Lee will get an assist from Hunter Pence, who had a decent 2008 (269/318/466) but is going to have to make better contact if he wants to succeed. Miguel Tejada isn't anything like his old self, but he proved in 2008 that he could still hold down an everyday job (283/314/415). Having Kaz Matsui at second base isn't a total loss. But having Geoff Blum at third and Michael Bourn in center field pretty much is a total loss.

The Astros have quietly been one of the most successful franchises in baseball since the 1980's. But that era has come to an end. And considering present ownership, reform isn't on the agenda. The Astros will have to fight just to stay out of last place.

Pittsburgh Pirates
The Pirates are pretty hopeless, yes, but they're getting better all the time. And, miracle of miracles, they're actually working under some semblance of a plan for the first time in a decade. The results are already showing in the minor leagues, but it will take some time to make over the troubled big league roster.

There's something to like about starting pitchers Paul Maholm, Ian Snell and Tom Gorzellany. If only the Pirates could get all three pitching well at the same time. Even if they did, though, no one's ceiling is higher than "pretty good." Backing them up will be Ross Ohlendorf, Jeff Karstens, Zach Duke and Sean Burnett. That's not much to inspire confidence in Pirates fans, but look on the bright side: none of them is Russ Ortiz.

The Pirates' lineup could be decent, but that comes a lot of "ifs," "buts" and "maybes." Middle infielders Freddy Sanchez and Jack Wilson are fan favorites for their style of play and solid defense. But Wilson offers little outside of that defense, and Sanchez is a guy who needs to bat .300 to be worthwhile. The corners will be manned by the LaRoche brothers. First baseman Adam is reliably inconsistent; he will get off to a terrible start before roaring back in the late summer, finishing with decent numbers (270/341/500 last year). Third baseman Andy has a higher ceiling but is less of a sure thing; he was supposed to be ready for the majors when he came over from Los Angeles, but in 49 games with the Pirates, he hit a miserable 152/227/232. I guess the good news is that he can only get better.

Center fielder Nate McLouth was the only one left standing in the outfield after the Pirates traded away Jason Bay and Xavier Nady last year. He has to prove that his 26 HR are the real thing; otherwise, he's just a fourth outfielder. McLouth did win a Gold Glove last year, which can only be considered a poor attempt at a joke by the voters.

But lest you despair, Pirate fans, consider how much better the future looks now. The team's General Manager, Neal Huntington, is a clever man who knows that rebuilding requires going through some tough years. Gone are the days when the Pirates would spend their money on mid-level free agents, win 70 games, and then start all over again while the farm system decayed. Now Pirate fans can get excited about the future of Jose Tabata, Pedro Alvarez, Andrew McCutchen and Bryan Morris. It's not a lot, but it's a start. And a few years down the road, they just might start looking like the Pirates of old.

Conclusion
The Cardinals might be able to surprise everybody if they can get their players back healthy. The Brewers could surprise if they add some pitching, and the Reds might be able to ride their starting rotation to a surprise victory. But really, this is the Cubs' division to lose. With their depth as well as their ability to upgrade, nobody else can match them.

NL East Preview: The Good, the Bad and the Utley

2009-03-30T10:07:00.006-04:00

My Prediction:
1 – New York Mets
2 – Philadelphia Phillies
3 – Atlanta Braves
4 – Florida Marlins
5 – Washington Nationals

New York Mets
I'd like to put away any discussion of "choking," first of all, mainly because I don't really believe in it. Choking is a way for fans of other teams to make fun of their rivals, and it's a way for lazy commentators to turn a complex baseball season into a narrative. Yes, the Mets did a terrible job in September, both last year and in 2007. But it was due to normal, everyday baseball reasons. It's possible that there's some personality flaw that plagues the Mets and prevents them from performing well in tight situations, but that's a little far-fetched to me.
No, the main problem for the Mets was that their bullpen was ruining what good work the rest of the roster was doing. So it's no surprise that overhauling it was the team's top priority going into 2009. GM Omar Minaya responded to the challenge quite well. First, he signed ex-Angels closer Francisco Rodriguez to a three-year deal worth $37 million. This is a far cry from the 5 years and $60 million that K-Rod was supposed to get a year after setting a new single-season saves record. But the market correctly saw K-Rod's saves as largely irrelevant and was more concerned with his loss in velocity. Therefore, Minaya was able to sign him to a much more reasonable deal.
But Minaya went on to add yet another closer to the team when he traded for Seattle's J.J. Putz. Putz, 32, is older than K-Rod and has a troubling health record. But, on a game-by-game basis, he's actually the better pitcher. The trade was a three-team affair; the Mets sent Endy Chavez, troubled reliever Aaron Heilman and three prospects to Seattle and threw reliever Joe Smith in to go to Cleveland. In return, the Mets got not only Putz, but reliever Sean Green and spare outfielder Jeremy Reed. The addition of Putz, Green and Rodriguez will turn what was once an unreliable bullpen into one of the league's best.
Minaya's other offseason quest was to improve the starting rotation, and here he didn't fare so well. He was able to re-sign free agent Oliver Perez, but that still left the team with an unreliable back of the rotation. Behind Santana and the inconsistent Perez are Mike Pelfrey, who pitched well last year but will have trouble repeating those numbers, and John Maine, who is constantly beset by injury problems. The Mets have several guys competing for the #5 spot, but none of them inspire a lot of confidence.
Minaya did put a lot of effort into pursuing other free agent pitchers, particularly Derek Lowe. But he fell short when the Braves added another year onto their contract offer to the former Dodger. Lowe would have been great for New York, but Met fans should understand Minaya's hesitance to go that extra year. He added a year onto Pedro Martinez's free agent contract to win the bidding, and that resulted in $12 million and a 5.61 ERA in 2008.
But there was one other area of improvement that Minaya really failed to address in the offseason: depth in the lineup. The Mets do have some legitimate studs: the combo of David Wright, Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes is better than any other NL team's top three players. First baseman Carlos Delgado was a stud last year, but it's a lot to ask for him to repeat t that in 2009 at age 37.
The problem is that there's a big drop-off in quality between the studs and the rest of the Met lineup. The team is stuck with Luis Castillo at second, who offense and defense have both been sapped by injuries, making him a very expensive liability for the next three years. Catcher Brian Schneider is adequate at best, but then he's really the team's best option for the moment.
In the outfield corners, however, there's no good excuse for Minaya's inaction. The Mets are lacking in left and right field, and the free agent market was flooded with high-offense corner outfielders available for a relative pittance. Couldn't the Mets have spared $4 million to bring in Bobby Abreu? What about Pat Burrell, who got a two-year contract in Tampa? Or what about Adam Dunn, who fits the Mets' needs so perfectly it's hard to see why they didn't pursue him.
Here's how Dunn would fit so well, but first let me explain what the Mets' plan is as is. They've got Carlos Beltran in center (fabulous). They've got Ryan Church in right, which is okay except that there are still some questions about Church's post-concussion recovery. In left field, the Mets are planning to platoon Fernando Tatis and Daniel Murphy. Asking Tatis to take on a full-time role is a big risk, but at least he is the short half of the platoon, batting right-handed. Murphy was a fine hitter for a second baseman, but the bar is set much higher for a left fielder.
Here's how adding Dunn helps: He takes the place of the platoon split in left field. Tatis goes to the bunch as your top righty pinch hitter who can play all four corners, and Murphy either spends time spotting the recovering Church or adjusting to left field in Triple-A. Even better, Dunn provides a built-in backup in case Delgado's career goes off the tracks. And he can step right in at first base after the season when Delgado leaves as a free agent.
That's just one theory, sure. There are several creative ways the team could have improved their outfield. But they didn't. And since the Mets have been kept out of the playoffs by just one game these past two years, they should be looking for any edge to add to their competitive advantage. Because if they blow it in September again, there will be war in Queens, choke or no choke.

Philadelphia Phillies
The Phillies are defending champs, and as such, all eyes are on them to hold up under the pressure and carry on. As World Series Champions, the Phillies had a lot of things go right for them. But they won't get as many breaks this year, and more importantly, they didn't improve their team over the offseason. That's why I think the Mets can – and will – pass them by.
The thing that should scare the Phillies more than anything is injuries. They're already dealing with an injury to Chase Utley, and nobody's sure just how much it will affect his production. And despite the prevailing wisdom, Utley is the best and most valuable Phillie. Fans should also be concerned about Cole Hamels. His performance last year did a lot to remove the doubts surrounding his health and durability, but it will still take a lot for him just to match the great work he put forth in 2008.
Speaking of a tough act to follow, how about Brad Lidge? Lidge posted a 1.95 ERA and went 41/41 in saves, striking out 92 batters in 69.1 innings. We know that this is the real Lidge, because we've seen him before in Houston. But a 1.95 ERA? Zero blown saves? These aren't things Lidge can reasonably be expected to do on a yearly basis.
The rest of the offense is solid, but they're troubled by gaping holes at third base and at catcher. So in the offseason, the team decided to address these problems . . . OK, they didn't do anything. As if that weren't enough, they actually took a small step back in left field. They let Pat Burrell go without offering him arbitration, so that when he signed a reasonable deal (2 yrs./$16 MM) with Tampa Bay, it meant to free draft pick for Philly. So they targeted a player five years older than Burrell who only marginally better defensively and offensively. Worst of all, he's more expensive, coming in at 3 years and $31.5 million. And, because the Mariners are smart, they did offer him arbitration, so the Phillies will be losing their draft pick. The generous way to look at this, I guess, is to give GM Ruben Amaro, Jr. a mulligan on his first off-season running the team.
The Phillies still have a good chance to win the division, and we've seen what happens when we give the Mets the benefit of the doubt. And even if they don't win it, I'd peg them as the best bet to win the Wild Card.

Atlanta Braves
The Braves have a solid bunch of young ballplayers supplemented by a couple of key veterans and a great deal of young talent in the farm system. Usually, that means that the team will be contenders in 2010 or 2011. But the Braves suddenly got impatient for some reason. After a couple of years of playing with the hand they'd been dealt and resigning themselves to a finish in the middle of the division, in 2009, the team decided not to wait for the rookies; they were going for it in 2009. And while that's a bold policy, there's some debate as to whether it's the right one.
The team's offense begins and ends with Chipper Jones. The future Hall-of-Famer is hitting as well as he ever has, taking home a batting championship last year with a .364 mark to go with 22 homers and an other-worldly .470 OBP. If only he'd played more than 128 games. But that's Chipper's m.o. these days; he hits like crazy while some minor ailment keeps him out of the lineup just long enough for it to really matter. I've been screaming for years that the club should move him to first base, if only to ease the physical burden. Instead, the club has decided to go with Casey Kotchman (if only to salvage something from the Mark Teixeira Experiment). Kotchman is a good defender and, at his best, is a doubles-and-walks sort of hitter in the vein of Lyle Overbay. Problem is, Kotchman has only been at his best once in the majors, in 2007. He's not a bad guy, but he also shouldn't be blocking a good replacement if it comes along.
The rest of the infield is remarkably good. Brian McCann might be the most underrated player in baseball, a catcher who really hits, plays good defense and makes a modest salary. Keystone combo Yunel Escobar and Kelly Johnson have their problems, but if you can bring along a tandem this good from your own system on the cheap, you've done well.
If only the Braves had an outfield. According to this year's Athlon baseball annual, all Braves outfielders combined for 27 home runs. That's all Braves outfielders. And while I admit that they've got some good ones down on the farm, I just can't see this team contending without getting an injection of offense into the outfield – and signing Garret Anderson doesn't count.
The team successfully filled one hole this offseason by nabbing free agent Derek Lowe. They assumed a lot of risk by adding that fourth year to his contract, but with ace Tim Hudson out until the All-Star break at least, they needed someone to prop up their makeshift rotation. The Braves did succeed in getting an innings-eater in Javier Vazquez (but at what cost?) and rolled the dice on Kenshin Kawakami. This gives the team added depth, which will hopefully keep Buddy Carlyle in the bullpen.
If Chipper Jones can stay healthy and Tim Hudson can return, then this team will be a winner. But with a terrible outfield and a makeshift bullpen, I can't see them making that magical return to October. When Tommy Hanson, Jordan Schafer and Jason Heyward make it to the bigs, then we'll talk.

Florida Marlins
The Marlins spent the offseason shedding salary. Furthermore, the Pope is Catholic.
Seriously, though, the team was willing and able to trade anyone outside of the middle infield who was making more than the league minimum. And the good news is that they came out on top in most deals. They took advantage of the Royals' delusions about Mike Jacobs and got nifty reliever Leo Nunez. They also sent an average, 31-year-old closer (Kevin Gregg) to the Cubs for a very promising 22-year-old closer prospect (Jose Ceda). It's still uncertain what the hell the Cubs were thinking.
On the negative side, the team traded a decent starter (Scott Olsen) and a decent outfielder (Josh Willingham) to the Washington Nationals for Emilio Bonifacio, a utility infielder who's really stretched in an everyday job. This was a naked salary dump like the ones above, except that the Marlins didn't get much return for it.
So although the team is cost-cutting, they're not doing too poorly. They finished at 84-77 last year and have the potential to do nearly as well this year. Projecting them beyond the 80-85 win range, however, is a real stretch. And if the injury dominos start falling again, look out below.
The aforementioned dominos hit the starting staff hardest. Apart from new ace Ricky Nolasco, the team has its fingers crossed about the rest of the starting rotation. Josh Johnson has shown flashes of strong pitching, but they've just been flashes. He's young, yes, but he's also made just 18 starts over the past two seasons. Anibal Sanchez had one intense flash of brilliance when he hurled a no-hitter back in 2006. Then his arm went ker-plunk, and he's made just 16 starts since. Injuries may not be the problem with Andrew Miller, one of the "prizes" taken in the Miguel Cabrera/Dontrelle Willis trade, it's just that he was rushed to the majors and the team is now trying to undo the damage and recapture the star he had as a Detroit prospect.
If the pitching staff starts crowding the trainer's room, the pressure will fall on the offense, which actually did a fine job last year. The Marlins were 5th in the NL in runs scored, despite the lack of any star power beyond Hanley Ramirez and Dan Uggla. They were fueled almost completely by the home run; they finished 2008 with 208, just six behind the Phillies for tops in the NL. By contrast, their batting average was a pedestrian .254, and their .326 OBP ranked them 9th in the league.
The lineup should be pretty similar this year, but with fewer homers. And yes, that's as ominous as it sounds. Gone are Mike Jacobs' 32 bombs and Josh Willingham's 15 taters. Jorge Cantu, despite the delusions of some, is not actually this good. Expect him to revert to his form, where he hit just 14 HRs with a dreadful .295 OBP.
With all that offense going away, what will make up the difference? Not much, but there is some hope. Toolsy center field prospect Cameron Maybin has a ton of potential, but he could easily suffer some growing pains in his rookie year, as he continues the transition from athlete to baseball player. Other than that, there's not a lot of room for improvement. Young John Baker should be able to top the modest offense provided by Matt Treanor last year. And you can always hope for the long-awaited breakout by Jeremy Hermida.
Realistically speaking, though, that's just not likely. The Marlins are clever enough to scrape together a .500 team on the barest of resources. But you can't win like that unless you've got an overstocked farm system, which the Marlins do not. Their only hope is that their new ballpark convinces ownership to loosen its vice-like grip on the purse strings.

Washington Nationals
As you may have heard, I'm not sanguine about the chances of the Nationals. Their front office is in transition. Stan Kasten has stepped in as interim General Manager, although he's so interim that he won't even call himself interim. We don't know when the team will hire a new GM or how things will function with Kasten at the helm. This is sad, because if any team needs bold leadership, it's this one.
In my series on the Nationals, I chronicled their startling inability to draft and develop good pitching and their apparent unwillingness to pay for it on the open market. 2009 will be no different. John Lannan will be the de facto ace. Lannan's not a bad pitcher, but if he's the best you've got, you're in trouble. Scott Olsen, acquired from Florida, has strong potential, but also carries some other baggage. The Nats are finally seeing some prospects creep up from the minors. Colin Balester and Ross Detwiler would provide a great boost to the staff, and Jordan Zimmerman may even make it to the majors in 2009. But talking about these guys and their effect on the rotation is best reserved for 2010; there's little they can do to stop the bleeding this year.
Offensively, the Nationals stand to see great improvement with the addition of Adam Dunn. Dunn is the first legitimate slugger the team has had since . . . wow, Vladimir Guerrero. He's working on a two-year deal for a reasonable salary and will be a huge help. The only question is why the Nats want to invest $20 million in a player who will most likely make no difference in any postseason race. Don't rule out former GM Jim Bowden's obsession with former Cincinnati Reds.
Another place where the lineup could take a step forward is with the continued development of Lastings Milledge and Elijah Dukes. That optimism has to be tempered, especially in the case of Dukes, but it's also pretty exciting to think about what an outfield of Dunn-Milledge-Dukes could do offensively.
As for the infield, things aren't so pretty. First baseman Nick Johnson is back, but he's baseball's version of Brigadoon; you know in advance that he's not going to be there all the time, so just enjoy him while you can. Ryan Zimmerman is hoping for a comeback year, because if he doesn't get one, people will start wondering if he'll ever break out. And, sad to say, the Nats have just punted the second base position; it looks like Anderson Hernandez will get it in what was the least exciting Spring Training position battle.
Things aren't all bad, though; this is a team on the way up. But that's because they started off so far down.

Conclusion
The Mets and Phillies will battle it out once again, with the loser likely bringing home the Wild Card. The Mets get the edge, though, because they did a much better job of improving their team in the offseason. I don't see the Braves really making a run at the division title, but they should be good enough to stay in the race into September. But then I picked the Mets to win the past two seasons. Take that for what it's worth.

Does Willis really have anxiety?

2009-03-30T09:58:00.008-04:00

Detroit Tigers pitcher Dontrelle Willis was placed on the team DL Sunday. The stated reason for disabling him was "anxiety disorder."
This was news, mainly because there had never been any report before that Willis suffered from the disorder or even any speculation on the subject. However, it's certainly possible for someone with anxiety to conceal it, or for it to be mistaken for something else.
I've suffered from generalized anxiety disorder for a number of years now. It's not a stretch to say that it is "disabling." At its worst, the anxiety becomes so intense that it interferes with your ability to function on basic levels: to take care of yourself, to go outside, to interact with friends, to keep a steady job, to form a romantic relationship, as well as many other things.
But here's the most baffling part of the Dontrelle Willis story: Willis doesn't report having any symptoms of anxiety. This article in the Detroit Free Press quotes him as saying that this is "not something where I'm too amped up, I don't know where I'm at, and I'm running sprints up and down the parking lot ... (The doctors) see something in my blood that they don't like."
Let me say now that I am not a doctor or psychiatrist or anyone qualified to issue a medical diagnosis. My opinions are just that, influenced as they are by years of dealing with the disorder myself.
Having said that, Willis' statement troubles me to no end. I'm amazed — and shocked — that Willis has been diagnosed with the disorder despite the fact that he seems to report no symptoms at all. Now, I admit that I don't know everything Dontrelle said to the reporters, just what was quoted. But I've looked through every version of this story that I can find on the internet and haven't found any mention by Dontrelle or a team doctor that he's suffered any symptoms of anxiety disorder.
This means that the sole reason for Willis' diagnosis was the blood test. But according to mlb.com, "Research online suggests there's no lab tests to diagnose anxiety disorder, but such tests can be used to look for physical causes and symptoms." This goes along with my own prior experience. Anxiety doesn't show up in your blood like a virus. It's a mood disorder; its very existence is based on the fact that you have the symptoms and suffer from them. I'm no doctor, but this man is, and the article seems to address the anxiety test question. The New York Times has a more recent guide to medical help for anxiety sufferers.
The criteria for diagnosing anxiety is also out there. The criteria are published in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th Ed.), commonly known as the DSM-IV. The criteria are entirely behavioral; that is, it is all based upon the individual's behavior and thought processes.
Again I'm no psychiatrist — but everything I know and have read on the subject says that anxiety disorder isn't really anxiety disorder if you don't have any symptoms. I've never heard of any sort of mood disorder that involved no symptoms. And if it has no symptoms, then how can it be a mood disorder?
For the sake of argument, let's say that Willis does have the disorder without actually having symptoms. Then why disable him? If he has no symptoms, then he is not — technically — disabled from pitching. The only symptom would be his inability to actually pitch. And unless the DSM-V came out and nobody told me, that's not good enough to count in itself as a symptom of anxiety.
I may be wrong, but the only conclusion I can come to is this: the Tigers are looking for any excuse to get Willis off of their ball club, even if it means a false diagnosis for an all-too-real medical condition.
The timing of the Tigers' decision is telling — and strong circumstantial evidence that they're lying. It is beyond coincidental that Willis would be diagnosed with anxiety at such an opportune time for Detroit. Willis has had trouble pitching for over a year now. He's lost control to the point that he's not only uneffective, but also so wild that it's questionable whether he'll ever pitch again. So why disable him now — when it's clear that he hasn't been pitching effectively since he came to town?
Not only do the Tigers need to free up a spot on their roster (which sending him to the DL would do), they need to do something about his contract. When the Tigers traded for Willis, they signed him — sight unseen — to a contract extension worth $29 million over three years. So Willis is due $22 million for 2009 and 2010, money for which the Tigers may not get any pitching at all.
The Tigers would love to make that money go away. And how can they do that? Insurance! Most teams carry insurance on player contracts, recouping the team some money if the player is disabled. Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski declined to comment on Willis' insurance situation, but it's fair to guess that they have coverage. And it ought to be good coverage, too — before he came to Detroit, Willis had a fine health record.
So unless I'm very wrong here — and God, I hope I am — the Tigers are falsifying an injury and perhaps defrauding an insurance company so they can save themselves $22 million. Instead of admitting their mistake and releasing Willis, the Tigers are going to try and con their way out of the situation. That is the most despicable thing I've heard of any team doing in years — and that's saying something.
If this is a fake (and I still say if), is it insurance fraud? Have the Tigers knowingly falsified medical information? I'm not privy to the blood tests, and I can only assume that the Tigers must have some actual medical evidence if they're going to send this to the insurance company. Even if all they've faked is the diagnosis, is that still fraud? If there are any lawyers in the crowd, let me know if you can shed some light.
I didn't think I was capable of feeling moral outrage toward baseball anymore. I guess I was wrong. Damn you, Dave Dombrowski. And damn you to any other Detroit personnel involved in this sham. I don't appreciate having my disease exploited to bail you out of your own stupid mistakes.
More details will come out in the days to come. I do mean it when I say that I hope I'm wrong. And if you have any expertise in psychiatry, mood disorders, neurotransmitters, or insurance fraud, please share your thoughts and/or correct my mistakes.

UPDATES (updated periodically):

The Detroit News asks some doctors who agree that anxiety can't be diagnosed by blood test.
FoxSports.com's Ben Maller quotes the above story and adds:
"I smell a rat. Hope Dontrelle returns to form but I'm not buying what the
Tigers are selling with the anxiety claims from a blood test."

BIG NEWS! I just got a response to an emergency e-mail sent to Baseball Prospectus injury guru Will Carroll. I'll just say that it's encouraging.

From Jayson Stark's espn.com chat today:

All I can tell you is that people I've talked to are very skeptical of this. As I've mentioned a few times, I keep forgetting to go to medical school. So I never like to second-guess anybody's diagnosis. But this one is s a head-scratcher. No doubt about it. Their only probable alternative, if Willis didn't go on the DL, was to release him. And that would have looked awful after the money they commited to him. So this was a way out for everybody, on every level.

Shilling for Schilling

2009-03-25T01:10:00.005-04:00

Curt Schilling recently announced his retirement from baseball. Schilling missed 2008 due to injury, and it was looking less and less likely that he would be able to return in 2009. So at the age of 42, he's hanging it up. I personally think Curt is a future Hall-of-Famer, but the thing that's most interesting to me about his career, isn't the bloody sock, of the 2001 World Series. It's the strange way it unfolded.
Not many future Hall-of-Famers were included as throw-ins in three separate trades. If you're considered that expendable, it's usually for a reason. By the time Curt Schilling became a star, he was pitching for his fourth major league organization. After being drafted by the Red Sox in 1986, he spent the next few years as a promising but flawed pitching prospect whose commitment to excellence was called into question. He certainly wasn't unique. There have been countless pitchers like that, who had enough talent, but for a variety of reasons just never fully committed themselves. Those guys end up as relief pitchers or minor leaguers or just high school coaches.
But Curt Schilling was unique. It may have taken him a while, but he became not just a good pitcher, but a great one. Part of that talent was always there, just waiting for him to activate it. But it also took a new work ethic and a commitment to excellence to push Schilling into elite company.
It's ironic that the first team to give up on Schilling was the Red Sox, where he would later put the final touches on his brilliant career. The Sox drafted Schilling in the 2nd round of the 1986 draft. Schilling got off to a good start in the minors, but in 1988 the Sox were in the postseason hunt and sent Schilling (and Brady Anderson) to the Orioles for veteran Mike Boddicker. Boddicker pitched brilliantly down the stretch and helped the Sox win the division by just one game over Detroit. The Orioles, on the other hand, were on their way to a 54-107 season.
Schilling showed good numbers, but the O's had several promising young starters at the time, and they decided (unfortunately) that Schilling was expendable; they were coveting slugging Astros first baseman Glenn Davis. But Davis was coming off a season where he'd hit just 22 HR in 93 games. And he was about to turn 30. But the Orioles traded for him anyway, giving up Schilling, Steve Finley, and Pete Harnisch. That's one of the most unbalanced trades in recent years, especially since Davis tanked in Baltimore and never hit well again. And Schilling and Harnisch both would perform better than the young pitchers the Orioles decided to keep (Ben McDonald, Bob Milacki, John Mitchell, Anthony Telford, and Jeff Ballard wouldn't make any All-Star teams. Schilling made six, and Harnisch made one).
Schilling pitched well in Houston, but the Astros were using him as a reliever. He was 24 years old and had pitched well as a starter in the minors, but the Astros kept him in the bullpen despite the fact that Harnisch was the only starter on the team who had a good year in '91. So the perpetually taken-for-granted Schilling was traded again, this time to the Phillies for the immortal Jason Grimsley.
Schilling thrived when given the chance to start. The Phillies finally decided to put him back in the rotation, and Schilling broke through in 1992, winning 14 games with a 2.35 ERA in 26 starts and 16 relief appearances.
Schilling took a step back in 1993, as his ERA shot up to 4.02, although he set a new career high in strikeouts at 186. But the real story in Philadelphia wasn't Schilling, but a hardscrabble young team that beat the odds and won the pennant for the first time in ten years. The NLCS MVP was none other than Schilling himself, who made two starts against the favored Braves and posted a 1.69 ERA, notching 19 strikeouts in 16 IP.
The Phillies lost the World Series (as you may have heard) and never recaptured the spirit of the '93 team. Schilling pitched with some injuries in the mid-90's, and his performance from 1994-1996 was good but uninspiring. It looked like the flashes of brilliance he'd shown would never turn him from a good pitcher into a great one.
I don't know what happened to Curt Schilling in 1997. He was 30 years old and coming off injury trouble. I don't know much about pitching mechanics, or psychology, or whatever. But Schilling went to a level in his 30's that is pretty unprecedented in baseball history.
In 1997, Schilling won 17 games. That's not great, but the Phillies finished last that year, at 68-94. Schilling threw 254.1 innings, third in the league. His 2.97 ERA was very good, but just 8th-best in the NL. No, what really set the 1997 Curt Schilling apart was his 319 strikeouts. Schilling led the league in K's, becoming the first NL hurler to K 300 since Mike Scott in 1986. His previous career high was 186, and he had topped that by a full 133. I don't know of any other pitcher in recent years who added so many strikeouts to his record without pitching a lot more innings. Schilling was an All-Star and finished 4th in the NL Cy Young race (Montreal's Pedro Martinez took the award with his 305 strikeouts and 1.90 ERA).
To prove that '97 was anything but a career year, Schilling struck out 300 more batters in 1998. To put that in perspective, here's a list of the pitchers who have notched 300 or more strikeouts in back-to-back years (since 1901):

Rube Waddell 1903-1904

Sandy Koufax 1965-1966

Nolan Ryan 1972-1973, 1973-1974, 1976-1977

J.R. Richard 1978-1979

That's it. Waddell, Koufax, and Ryan are Hall-of-Famers. Richard well could have been, but he suffered a stroke at age 30 that ended his career.
Schilling was injured again in 1999, and his total strikeouts and his strikeout rate both suffered. Schilling started off well in 2000, but he was pitching more like the above-average guy from 1993 rather than the 1997-98 superstar. Schilling was eligible for free agency after the season, and the sad-sack Phillies weren't planning on making a major investment in the 33-year-old. But money wasn't an object for the Arizona Diamondbacks, who acquired Schilling for the 2000 stretch run. They gave up pitchers Omar Daal, Nelson Figueroa and Vicente Padilla as well as top prospect Travis Lee.
Schilling made the trade worthwhile even before Travis Lee flamed out. Arizona failed to make the playoffs in 2000, despite Schilling's good work. But the team decided to keep him with a new contract. And he rewarded them in 2001 by pitching better than he ever had.
Schilling went 22-6 with a 2.98 ERA. His strikeout total went back up to 293, in 256.2 IP. What made Schilling even better in 2001 was that his walk rate dropped to an impossible low level. He allowed only 39 walks to go with those K's. Back in 1997 and 1998, Schilling walked 58 and 61 batters, respectively, while striking out 300 batters. The 2001 version of Schilling had finally reached his superstar potential.
Schilling teamed with Randy Johnson to carry the Arizona rotation, literally. Only two other pitchers on the team pitched as many as 100 innings. Schilling and Johnson played a modern-day Koufax and Drysdale as they carried a bare pitching staff and an aging offense into the postseason, where they blew past the Cardinals and Braves before fighting off the Yankees in a classic World Series. Johnson and Schilling were named co-MVPs of the World Series, and the honor has never been more appropriate. Schilling threw 48.1 innings in the 2001 postseason, allowing just 6 runs with 56 strikeouts. In the World Series, he started three games and posted a 1.69 ERA.
Schilling and Johnson repeated their mastery in the 2002 regular season. The D-Backs went 98-64, with 47 of those wins coming from the twin aces. Schilling's ERA rose slightly to 3.23, but he topped 300 strikeouts for the third time in his career, finishing with 316 against just 33 walks for a superhuman strikeout-to-walk ratio of nearly ten-to-one. The 'Backs were favored to win again in 2002, but were stunned by the Cardinals with an NLDS sweep. Johnson got hammered in Game 1, and Schilling was outpitched by Chuck Finley in Game 2. The Cards just had to top Miguel Batista in Game 3 to win the series.
What Schilling and Johnson did in 2001 and 2002 was on par with the best performances by Koufax and Drysdale; perhaps even better. The 1960's Dodgers had great pitching depth behind their big two; the Diamondbacks had nothing. The 1966 Dodgers backed up Koufax and Drysdale with Don Sutton, Claude Osteen, Johnny Podres, Phil Regan, Ron Perranoski, and other fine relievers. The 2001 Diamondbacks had Byung-Hyun Kim, Miguel Batista, Brian Anderson, Erik Sabel, Greg Swindell and Albie Lopez. Looked at in that context, Schilling and Johnson were more important to their teams than Drysdale and Koufax were to theirs.
Both Johnson and Schilling were injured in 2003, and Arizona fell to third place. In the 2003-2004 offseason, the Diamondbacks were looking to cut costs. The great spending spree leading up to their 2001 title had caught up to them, and Curt Schilling's $12 million salary made him fair game. And so Schilling was traded to (and got a contract extension from) to the Red Sox. Boston gave up Casey Fossum, Brandon Lyon, Jorge de la Rosa and Michael Goss. Just as Schilling had come to Arizona in a salary dump, so too had he departed.
In Boston, Schilling once again defied age (he was 37) and expectations by returning from injury to go 21-6 with a 3.26 ERA. It was in the postseason, though, that he truly forged his legend.
In the ALDS, Schilling shut down the Angels in Game 1, but felt like he'd injured his ankle. After the Sox won the ALDS, Schilling pitched in Game 1 of the ALCS against the Yankees and got hammered. He was obviously hurting and left the game after three innings and six earned runs.
But as we all know, Schilling was determined to make a comeback. Jon Lieber outpitched Pedro Martinez to win Game 2, and the Sox suffered a humiliating 19-8 loss at Fenway Park to put them down 3-0 in the Series. Schilling was determined to come back and take his turn in the rotation, so he and team doctor William Morgan devised a makeshift surgical fix. It boiled down to Morgan just stitching Schilling's right tendon down. It wasn't a permanent fix; it was just so he could get back on the mound. And get back on the mound he did.
After winning Game 4 and Game 5, the Sox sent Schilling to the mound in a must-win Game 6. He pitched like his old self, allowing just one run in seven innings. The Sox took home the 4-2 win, and Schilling took home a souvenir. Schilling went on to win Game 2 of the World Series against the Cardinals, throwing six innings without allowing an earned run. The Sox won in a sweep.
Injuries limited Schilling to just eleven starts in 2005, although he did make 21 relief appearances down the stretch. Schilling didn't pitch in the ALDS, as Boston got swept by the White Sox.
Schilling had one more remarkable comeback left in him, as he defied injuries to return to the mound as a full-time starter in 2006 at age 39. He made 31 starts with a 3.97 ERA and posted a magnificent 183:28 K:BB ratio. He finally wound down, though, in 2007. He started 24 games and managed a 3.87 ERA in 151 IP. In the postseason, Schilling won his only start in Boston's ALDS win over the Angels, but got knocked around in two ALCS starts. Still, the Sox went on to the Series, and Schilling won his only start, lasting 5.1 innings in a Game 2 victory over the Rockies. That would turn out to be Schilling's last major league game. All the sweeter, then, that he got to celebrate when the Sox swept the Rockies to win the World Series.
Schilling signed a one-year deal to return to the Sox for the 2008 season, but he was never healthy enough to take the mound. He publicly speculated about returning to some team in mid-2009, but decided instead to retire.
Now, I've stated my belief in Schilling's Hall of Fame case, but I do admit that he's on the bubble with many people. Because he was a late bloomer, Schilling didn't accrue a lot of big totals in counting stats. His 216 wins are very good, but they're no ticket to Cooperstown. David Wells retired with 239 wins, and Kevin Brown finished at 211. Neither player is likely to get the 75% of votes needed for induction.
What makes the difference with Schilling, though, is that he was a better pitcher than wins alone would indicate. Just looking at a pitcher's win total can be deceiving; was Don Sutton (324) really better than Tom Seaver (311)? No. You have to look deeper.
Two things are required to make a Hall of Fame case: Quality and quantity. Quality means that, at their best, the candidate played at an elite level. This usually means winning the Cy Young or MVP, although that's not necessary for induction. Quantity means you have to keep up your level of production for a great period of time. If quality were all it took to make it to the Hall, then Dwight Gooden, Orel Hershiser, Sam McDowell and Roger Maris would all be in. You have to sustain quality over a great number of years. That's where the counting stats like hits, wins, home runs and strikeouts come in. But quantity alone can be deceiving. Refer to the Sutton/Seaver comparison above; Seaver was a great pitcher for a long time, but Sutton was a very good pitcher for a very long time. You have to balance the two.
Let's start with quality. How often did Schilling lead the league, and how many awards did he win? Schilling never won the Cy Young Award, and this is something that may be held against him. But the only reason Schilling didn't win a Cy is because he was stuck in the same league (and on the same team) with a guy pitching even better than he was. Schilling shouldn't be punished for being second-best to Randy Johnson, any more than you should punish Don Drysdale or Lou Gehrig.
Schilling made the All-Star team six times and started the game twice. He led the league in wins twice and finished in the top ten 10 times. He never led the league in ERA, but finished in the top 10 nine times. He led the league in innings pitched twice, twice in strikeouts and four times in complete games. It should also be noted that he led the league in strikeout-to-walk ratio five times, and he was the leader among all active pitchers when he retired.
Schilling's career ERA is 3.46. That's good, but where does it rank historically? Well, if you look at the best ERAs in history, you're going to get a bunch of players from the 19th century or the deadball era.
Enter ERA+. ERA+ shows ERA as compared to the rest of the league, and it also accounts for a pitcher's home ballpark. Schilling's ERA+ is 127; that means that his ERA was 27% better than league average, with adjustment for his home ballparks. Schilling's ERA+ ties him for 43rd all-time. That doesn't sound impressive until you consider that there are about 64 pitchers in the Hall of Fame. So Schilling seems to make the grade. Plus, the leader list referred to includes several relief pitchers who didn't log the innings Schilling did. Among just starting pitchers, Schilling is tied for 33rd all-time. BUT WAIT -- the list also includes several young, active players like Johan Santana, whose ERA+ is only going to decline as they get older. Excluding those active players brings Schilling up to a 28th-place tie. According to ERA+, Schilling is not only a Hall-of-Famer, but is in the top half of Hall-of-Famers.
Okay, Schilling is pretty solid on quality; he was indeed an elite pitcher and established himself on that level. What about quantity? Schilling's 3261 career innings ranks 95th all-time. But this, again, is misleading, because the field is populated almost entirely by pre-war pitchers. We can't blame Curt Schilling for the changing face of pitcher usage in this sport. So, again, let's compare him to his contemporaries. I counted up the players who threw most of their innings in the 80's, 90's and 00's, and among them, Schilling shoots all the way up to 18th. He's just behind guys like John Smoltz, Dennis Eckersley and Kenny Rogers and just ahead of Kevin Brown, Chuck Finley and Orel Hershiser. Schilling's innings total isn't great, but it's not as much of a weakness as you'd think at first glance. (Using a similar method to look at the Games Started leader board, he ranks 19th among his peers).
Schilling ranks 15th on the all-time strikeout list with 3,116. Everyone ahead of him either is a Hall-of-Famer or (as listed) likely to be one: Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens, Bert Blyleven, Greg Maddux and Pedro Martinez. (This is debatable; Blyleven's Veterans Committee votes make me think he'll get in eventually. Clemens is a whole other story, but that's unrelated to his quality of play).
When you put Schilling's career into perspective, it looks pretty good. But is he still on the bubble? What -- if anything -- separates him from Kevin Brown, David Wells, Chuck Finley, David Cone and the other starting pitchers from this era with similar records?
To me, Schilling ranks above those guys as is. But if you need a tiebreaker, look no further than the postseason. Schilling is 11-2 in postseason competition, with a 2.23 ERA and 120 strikeouts in 133.1 IP. In the World Series, he is 4-1 with a 2.06 ERA and 43 K in 48 IP. He has an NLCS MVP and a World Series co-MVP award, and three World Championship rings.
If you take Curt Schilling's career, add 130+ brilliant postseason innings and three rings, what you are left with is a Hall-of-Famer.

AL West Preview: Angels and Demons

2009-03-25T01:06:00.005-04:00

My Prediction:
1st: Los Angeles Angels
2nd: Oakland Athletics
3rd: Texas Rangers
4th: Seattle Mariners

Los Angeles Angels

The only team that needed Mark Teixeira more than the Yankees was the Angels. With the injuries to Vladimir Guerrero, the Angels just don't have an impact bat anymore – period. They finished 10th in the AL in runs scored last year, and that was with half a season of Teixeira hitting 358/449/632*. Their 100-62 record in 2008 disguised a roster whose Pythagorean record was a disappointing 88-74. Stuck in a division with two of the best farm systems – Oakland and Texas – churning out prospects left and right, there's no room for disappointment.
* -- Slash stats indicate (Batting Average/ On-base percentage/ Slugging Percentage)
If the Angels are to improve their offense in 2009, it will have to come from their young infield. Both Howie Kendrick and Brandon Wood have stellar minor league resumes and they came to L.A. looking like future All-Stars. But it seems that they left their offense somewhere in the minors. Kendrick has hit well enough (306/333/430 career), but not up to his potential, and his defense has been problematic. Wood hasn't hit well at all (191/212/317 in 68 games), as big-league pitchers have consistently rung him up for strikeouts, to the tune of 55 in 150 at bats, against a mere 4 walks. The Angels will also need help from Teixeira's replacement at first, Kendry Morales. The Cuban import has potential, but has hit just 249/302/408 in three seasons of part-time play.
The saving grace for the Halos has always been their pitching and defense, and 2008 was no different, as they finished third in the league in fewest runs allowed. They should be able to keep that up in 2009, but not without some challenges. Aces John Lackey and Ervin Santana are the best 1-2 punch in the division, but there are doubts about Joe Saunders. Saunders is a popular guy, but he's also a lucky guy who cut a full run off his ERA in 2008, despite allowing 21 homers with a criminally low strikeout rate (103 K in 198 IP). Look for those lost runs to come back to haunt him in 2009.
The team's bullpen looks fine. The team was smart enough not to get too worked up over K-Rod's record-breaking save total and decided to sign free agent Brian Fuentes, who won't be much worse and comes with a cheaper price tag. Their middle relief corps is as solid as ever.
There are a lot of questions surrounding this Los Angeles team, and in most years it would be enough to knock them out of contention. Luckily for them they're in a division that, for now at least, doesn't have any team that looks like a sure-fire 90-game winner.

Oakland Athletics

Just when everyone expects Billy Beane to zig, he zags. The problem is that the shortest distance to the postseason isn't a zigzag.
A year ago, the A's were in full rebuilding mode. They traded away Dan Haren, Joe Blanton, Rich Harden, Chad Gaudin, Marco Scutaro and Mark Kotsay. The return helped revitalize their farm system, setting them up to contend starting in 2010 or 2011.
Then, all of a sudden, the team changed course. They picked up slugger Matt Holliday, despite the fact that he'll be a free agent at season's end. They signed Jason Giambi, Orlando Cabrera, Nomar Garciaparra and Russ Springer to one-year deals. Just like that, the team had switched gears from giving up on 2009 to going all-out to contend.
But if they really wanted to contend this year, why did they trade everybody away last year? Can they really succeed in having it both ways? I don't think they can, but I guess you can't fault them for trying.
The A's have busted their butts to make a run at the Angels, but their starting rotation is still a bunch of question marks, led by oft-injured ace Justin Duchscherer. The A's have a lot of hope in Dana Eveland, but the portly portsider still has to bring down his walk rate and prove he can stick as a starter. The team is also optimistic about Sean Gallagher, acquired from the Cubs in the Rich Harden deal, but while he has potential, Gallagher too has yet to break through at the major league level. And behind these guys are pitchers with even less major league experience; guys like Gio Gonzalez and Dallas Braden. They've got promise, but in my opinion, the A's are making a mistake by banking on these guys to produce.
The A's gave up closer Huston Street to the Rockies in the Holliday trade, but that wasn't such a loss. Street was a good closer, but not a great one, and relief pitchers aren't worth throwing big bucks at unless they're stars. Street becomes Colorado's problem; whereas the A's already have Brad Ziegler and Joey Devine to replace him.
The A's dismal offense will certainly be bolstered by the addition of Holliday and Giambi, but they've still got several trouble spots. Playing alongside Holliday in the outfield will (probably) be Ryan Sweeney and Travis Buck. The two couldn't be any more different; Sweeney is a scrappy guy who lives by his batting average, whereas Buck relies on walks, strikeouts and homers. What they have in common, though, is a poor showing in 2008. Buck has the potential to be a quality player if you don't mind his defense, but it looks doubtful that Sweeney will develop into much more than a fourth outfielder.
The A's added Jason Giambi to an infield that limped through 2008 with gimpiness aplenty. Mark Ellis is a great defensive second baseman with decent pop, but he just can't seem to stay healthy. Bobby Crosby can't stay healthy either, which is a shame since he hasn't hit well in years. He lost his job this off-season to glove man Orlando Cabrera.
But the real tragedy of the infield is Eric Chavez. You can set your watch by Chavez's injuries, and he hasn't been an All-Star player in five years. Even worse for the A's is that his de facto replacements, Jack Hannahan and Nomar Garciaparra, offer little reassurance.
The A's are certainly better off now than they were last year, but with all the problems they're facing, it's tough to see them making it to the postseason. Was it worth it, then, to acquire Holliday and spend a few million bringing in temporary fixes if the team goes nowhere? They can always trade Holliday at the deadline, but if you acquire a player just to trade him, you haven't come out ahead.
The A's farm system has them well-set for the near future, but few of those prospects will be able to make a real impact in 2009. And that leaves us wondering what Billy Beane was thinking when he made this particular zag.

Texas Rangers

When I was talking about how bad the A's starting rotation was, I didn't mean, of course, that it was as bad as the Rangers'. The Rangers are continuing their proud tradition of fielding some of the worst pitching staffs in modern history. The good news is that their offense is fine; they led the league in runs scored last year. The bad news is that if you finish 79-83 with the league's best offense, is there any hope for you at all?
The Rangers' ship of fools – er, starting rotation – is headed by Kevin Millwood. The Rangers signed Millwood to a boneheaded contract before the 2006 season, perhaps just to celebrate the similarly boneheaded contract they gave Chan Ho Park before the 2002 season. Just to illustrate how poorly they'd learned their lesson, the Rangers made more less-than-wise investments by signing the likes of Vicente Padilla and Jason Jennings to multi-million dollar contracts. The Rangers had nine pitchers – count 'em, nine – start at least five games last season. All of them were well below-average.
They've set new highs (lows?) in the bullpen as well. They stuck marginal reliever C.J. Wilson in the closer's role last year and saw him compile 24 saves. This is surely a testament to the irrelevance of the save statistic, since Wilson's ERA was 6.02.
Is there hope on the horizon? Most certainly. The Rangers have a slew of exciting pitching prospects coming up from the minors. This is encouraging, except that the team has shown a rather poor ability to incorporate their pitching prospects into the major league team. As an example, compare the number of ex-Ranger farmhands currently pitching well for other teams: John Danks (White Sox), Edinson Volquez (Reds), Armando Galarraga (Tigers) and Chris Young (Padres), to those currently pitching well for the Rangers: Zero. Pitching prospects are wonderful, but here's hoping that this time -- when they turn into major league pitchers -- they're a) pitching well, and b) pitching well for the Rangers.
The team's offense is still strong, but not as potent as it was in '08. The team's best pure hitter, Milton Bradley, is gone to the Cubs as a free agent. The Rangers will enjoy a full season from first base prospect Chris Davis, which is good news, but they also have to find a way to keep Ian Kinsler healthy for a full year and hope they can surround Josh Hamilton with better support in the outfield. It should still be a fearsome lineup, but it will probably fall off a bit from its 2008 performance. And with the pitching staff where it is, there's just no room for that.
Lest this entry come off sounding too negative, I have to profess admiration for what GM Jon Daniels and his staff have done with their farm system. The only good pitcher the Rangers developed in the 35 years or so before Daniels arrived was Kevin Brown, who unfortunately didn't become an elite pitcher until after he had left the team. Now Daniels has seeded the farm system with a number of prospects who may not be as good as Brown, but are probably going to turn out better than the likes of Rick Helling and Jose Guzman.
But we can't just admire Daniels' work in the abstract; we have to admit that it hasn't yet translated into on-field success. The potential is there, certainly. But even if it does blossom in the majors, it will almost certainly be after 2009.

Seattle Mariners

Last year's Mariners made history, and not in a jolly sort of way. They became the first team with a $100 million-plus payroll to lose at least 100 games in a season. This was a group effort, to be sure, but most of the blame lies at the feet of former General Manager Bill Bavasi. Bavasi handled the team as if his job were on the line with every move he made (which it was). Some of his moves were short-sighted, and others simply made no sense at all (installing Jose Vidro as DH falls into the latter category).
But Seattle finally fired Bavasi in the middle of 2008. His replacement, Jack Zduriencik, came over from Milwaukee, where he had overseen the regeneration of the Brewers' farm system. It soon became clear that Zduriencik knew what he had inherited, and he quickly set out to revamp the roster.
He let Raul Ibanez, Jose Vidro and Willie Bloomquist walk as free agents. He picked up Ken Griffey, Jr. to supplement the outfield corps (and sell some tickets), and he traded closer J.J. Putz to the Mariners for a bunch of young talent.
As for the pitching staff, Zduriencik was wise enough to avoid the Bavasi pitfall of overspending on marginal starting pitchers. The team is still suffering through the contracts given to Jarrod Washburn, Miguel Batista and Carlos Silva. But even with that weight, management is focusing its efforts on promoting starters from within, giving prospects like Brandon Morrow and Ryan Rowland-Smith a chance to succeed alongside ace Felix Hernandez. Bavasi's trade for Erik Bedard may have been ill-advised, but the lefty could still offer something to the M's in 2009, even if only as trade bait.
The bullpen will be more of a work in progress with Putz and middle man Sean Green gone to the Mets. The closer spot is fairly open; it could go to Mark Lowe, or the team could convert starter Miguel Batista, who will likely be pushed out of the rotation anyhow.
Pitching is a big priority. The M's allowed 5.01 runs per game in 2008, an unacceptable total. But a large part of that was a sorry defense, which ranked the team last in the league in Defense Efficiency Ratio (DER). The outfield defense should improve this year, with the addition of Franklin Gutierrez and Endy Chavez, and with Griffey hopefully spending more time with a bat than a glove.
The infield defense is still dicey. Adrian Beltre is great at third, but the club has dealt with maddening inconsistency from their middle infielders. Jose Lopez has developed into a good, but not great hitter; he hit 297/322/443 in 159 games last year. His previously spotty defense improved to a more acceptable level in 2008 (depending on which defensive metric you prefer). At shortstop, though, Yuniesky Betancourt is still an enigma. Offense was never supposed to be his strong suit, and indeed it is not (career 282/305/400 hitter). He was supposed to be a glove man, but it hasn't worked out like that. He did a fair job in 2006 and 2007, but defensively, he was one of the worst everyday shortstops in the league in 2008.
The Seattle outfield looks better, as I discussed previously in this article. They're hampered behind the plate by the big contract given to the struggling Kenji Johjima. First base and DH will be handled by some combination of Jeff Clement, Russell Branyan, Mike Sweeney and Chris Shelton. That gives manager Don Wakamatsu a lot of options, although Clement is the only really good one. A nominal catcher whose defensive future may be elsewhere, Clement is one of the keys to the franchise's future. It's imperative that he gets the chance to develop in 2009, even if he is shuttling between positions.
The Mariners are in flux more than any other team in the American League. They're still trying to recover from the disastrous mistakes of the previous management team, but they've got a good enough talent base that there probably won't be a long, drawn-out rebuilding period. In a soft division, this team is capable of finishing over .500. But that would require a lot of luck, maybe just too much to hope for.

Conclusion

The 100-win Angels have fallen right back into the fray, with four teams all trying to construct a roster that can win the 85-90 games necessary to take home the division title. The Angels' elite talent gives them the edge, but if they want to repeat as division champions, they've got a fight on their hands.

AL Central Preview: Anybody's Game

2009-03-25T00:56:00.003-04:00

Over the past three years, four of the five teams in the AL Central have gone to the postseason. Each year, one team takes a step forward and then stumbles back. Is this the year that somebody finally dominates? Or will it be another photo finish?

My Predictions:
1st: Minnesota Twins
2nd: Cleveland Indians
3rd: Chicago White Sox
4th: Detroit Tigers
5th: Kansas City Royals

Minnesota Twins

The Twins made a valiant effort in 2008, finishing the season tied with the White Sox for the AL Central title. They lost a one-game playoff for the division crown, but none the less they made a great effort.
Still, when you have such a close call, you have to look for those opportunities you missed to improve your team. With the Twins, these were pretty clear. They left Francisco Liriano in the minors far longer than was necessary, with Livan Hernandez wreaking havoc in his place. More importantly, they utterly failed to improve the left half of their infield, even though they've had the same problem for years. If the Twins had been willing to spend just a moderate amount of money to acquire a decent third baseman a few years ago, they may have made it to the World Series, after failing to get there with postseason appearances in 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2006.
Have the Twins learned their lesson and added that last piece or two to make their team complete? Not at all. Even when the cost of a replacement was relatively low, the Twins failed to sign Joe Crede, trade for Adrian Beltre, or otherwise make a move to upgrade at third base, their most vulnerable position. The problem has been compounded by a farm system that failed to produce even decent hitters for nearly a decade, and even now is trying to build some sort of support for Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau.
Despite these problems, the Twins finished third in the AL in scoring last year. This is reason for optimism. I don't think the Twins' offense will be that good again in 2009, but they are starting to get good (if not great) supporting efforts from Denard Span, Alexi Casilla, and Jason Kubel. Young Carlos Gomez is a defensive whiz in center, but has so far failed to turn his offensive tools into performance (258/296/360* in '08). * — Slash stats indicate (Batting Average/ On-Base Percentage/ Slugging Percentage)
In addition, the Twins should have one of the league's best pitching staffs in 2009. There's significant room for improvement here, most notably from ace Francisco Liriano, who threw just 76 innings in 2008. The Twins have a fine set of young arms to back him up, and an ace closer in Joe Nathan. If they can get better support from their middle relief, they should have one of the best pitching staffs in baseball.

I put the Twins in first place with some trepidation. They will need to evaluate and address on-field problems as the season continues. Over the past few years, they have been terribly slow in addressing these issues, if at all. Last year's mistake was the choice to leave Liriano languishing in the minors while tolerating Livan Hernandez. In 2007, it was the use of Ramon Ortiz and Sidney Ponson in the rotation, when better options were readily available. In short, if the Twins can't or won't address their most pressing problems in-season, they're a lot less likely to win. And in a division this competitive, they can't afford to come even one game short because of their own mistakes.

Cleveland Indians
This team just can't catch a break. One year, it's the lineup. Another year, it's the bullpen. Last year, it was fighting off injuries and battling slumps. In each of the past five seasons, I've picked the Indians to win the AL Central. They only succeeded in doing so in 2007. Was I wrong? Yes and no. The Indians looked like division-winners on paper every year. But for a wide variety of reasons, they weren't able to capitalize. The Indians could very well win the division in 2009. But they're not overwhelming favorites, and until they are, I'm not going out on a limb and predicting that everything goes right for them this year.
On paper, the Indians have a fearsome lineup. They've got two impact players in Grady Sizemore and Victor Martinez, as well as a potential impact player in Travis Hafner. They also have strong support for their superstars, with players like Mark DeRosa, Jhonny Peralta, and Asdrubal Cabrera. While they don't have a hole in their lineup; the weakest spot is probably left field, where the Indians are counting on young Ben Francisco to improve upon his 2007 numbers (266/332/438).
But, as usual for Cleveland, there are many ways this could go wrong. The 2008 team had to deal with poor production from first baseman Ryan Garko, Hafner, Cabrera, and Martinez. Only one or two Cleveland regulars actually played up to their abilities in 2008. It's basically inevitable that things will improve in 2009, but the terrible year in 2008 is still worrisome. Hafner, who's still got a lot of money left on his contract, may actually be reaching the end of the line. Cleveland insiders are saying that Hafner's 2008 troubles were just caused by injury. For their sake, I hope they're right.
The Indians also changed up their infield by adding Mark DeRosa to play third base. Picking up DeRosa from the Cubs was a great steal, but it also creates a unique opportunity for the club to improve their infield defense. As it is, DeRosa is slated to play third, with Peralta at shortstop and Cabrera at second. But DeRosa is better at second base. And that's great, because Cabrera is a fine shortstop, and Peralta is not; his arm strength makes him better suited for third. But as of yet, the Indians haven't pulled this bold infield switcheroo. It may end up not making a difference, but in a division this close, you have to look for the edges where you can.
But the main reason I'm not picking the Indians to win the division is because of their starting rotation. As it stands, the rotation should include some combination of Cliff Lee, Fausto Carmona, Anthony Reyes, Aaron Laffey and Carl Pavano. It looks good to see Cliff Lee up there, but consider that Lee has never pitched remotely as well as he did in 2008 (22-3, 2.54 ERA). Even if he does retain some of the brilliance he discovered as a 29-year-old last year, his ERA will likely bump up by a full run or so. Fausto Carmona represents the opposite case. It's highly unlikely that he'll be as bad as he was in '08 (5.44 ERA, 70 walks, 58 strikeouts in 120 2/3 IP). But we can't just forget last year and expect him to magically reprise his excellent 2007 campaign.
Even worse is that the Indians are relying heavily on cast-offs like Reyes and Pavano. That's not to say that there isn't any upside there, and it's worth pointing out that they came cheaply. But you can't really run that risk with your #3 and #4 starter and count on contending in the American League.The Indians have the ability to win the AL Central, no question. But they're surrounded by too many questions, and this is a team that can't seem to answer their questions in time for October.

Chicago White Sox
It seems like the White Sox are always on their last legs. Their key contributors are getting older, and their farm system is pretty thin. Then, GM Kenny Williams comes in, makes some moves and somehow adds another year to the team's life. This is great strategy in the short run, but eventually you have to stop patching and start building. And with an aging lineup and several holes to fill, the Sox don't have much time to waste.
Chicago's best hitters — Jim Thome, Jermaine Dye, and Paul Konerko — are the same guys who have been carrying this lineup since 2006. The Sox have added Alexei Ramirez, who has achieved hero status on the South Side despite his propensity for swinging at pitches in other time zones. Other fill-ins, such as Jerry Owens and Josh Fields, may be able to handle the job, but neither has much upside.
Chicago's farm system is getting better, but as it is, they're still far too reliant on their older hitters. If just one of them goes down or struggles, they're going to need a heroic effort from their pitching staff just to contend.
The problem there is that the pitching staff isn't likely to do as well as it did last year. The Sox have a great 1-2 punch in Mark Buehrle and John Danks, but things get pretty thin after that. Sure, Gavin Floyd turned heads by winning 17 games last year, But not only has Floyd never been this good before, he was amazingly hit-lucky in 2008 and allowed 30 home runs in what was nominally a good year. Don't get fooled by the wins on this one.
Not only that, but their rotation depth took a hit in the offseason when they traded Javier Vazquez to Atlanta for prospects. It's not a bad move in the abstract, but how does it help you win this year to lose consistency in your rotation? The in-house replacements for Vazquez aren't too attractive, and the Bartolo Colon experiment probably won't result in anything but a new series of creative expletives from manager Ozzie Guillen.
The White Sox are win-now team whose window of opportunity may have already closed. This year's squad should be competitive, but if they want to return to the postseason, they'll probably have to wait for prospects Gordon Beckham, Tyler Flowers, and Aaron Poreda to arrive.

Detroit Tigers
The second-highest payroll in all of baseball ($138 million) earned the Tigers a last-place finish in 2008. Are they really that bad? Not really. But like the White Sox, they're an old team with a barren farm system, and that's not the formula for a big comeback.
It's the starting rotation, more than anything else, that has dragged the Tigers down to the bottom of the division. Justin Verlander should bounce back from a poor 2008, but who else do the Tigers have? Nate Robertson also had a dreadful '08, but he has a lot less margin for error than Verlander. And while rookie Armando Galarraga did well when thrust into the limelight, he's not your ideal #2. As for Jeremy Bonderman, there's absolutely no telling what this maddeningly inconsistent pitcher will do next. The team did address their pitching problems by trading for Edwin Jackson, but Jackson is no sure thing either. He won 14 games for the Rays last year, but did so with a dismal ERA (4.42) and a bare 108 strikeouts in 183 1/3 innings pitched. He's got great stuff, but the "big step forward" he took last year was largely illusory.
The Tigers' best hope is that they can wring some more value out of the aging hitters in their lineup. Magglio Ordonez (317/376/494) and Placido Polanco (307/350/417) looked good last year , so they're pretty safe bets. Carlos Guillen hit well last year while being jerked across the infield, but he'll be moving to left field in 2009, where his numbers don't look nearly as potent. And the Tigers are just the latest team to find out what a joy Gary Sheffield is, especially in the last year of his contract. Sheff hit just 225/326/400 as DH last year and isn't likely to improve at age 40. If nothing else, I guess the team can sell tickets to the impending Sheffield .vs. Leyland grudge match.
Detroit does have two reliable young studs in Curtis Granderson and Miguel Cabrera, but their offense isn't nearly as deep as you'd think. GM Dave Dombrowski did sign free agent Adam Everett to man shortstop. Everett is one of the best defenders in baseball, but even that isn't enough if you hit as poorly as he does (213/278/323 with the Twins in '08). Dombrowski also traded for Texas catcher Gerald Laird. But of all the catchers in the Rangers' arsenal, Laird has the least upside and is really a place-holder.
If you look at the Detroit roster, you have to admit that any team with this many good players is a threat to compete. But few of those good players are pitchers, and the hitters are getting older every year. The team traded away the fruits of its farm system to get Cabrera and the horror show also known as Dontrelle Willis (35 walks and 18 strikeouts in 24 IP last season). Their win-now philosophy got them as far as the World Series in 2006, but it looks like that will be as high as they go.

Kansas City Royals
You have to wonder sometimes if the Royals are run by Dr. Henry Jekyll. One day, Dr. Jekyll will make a public statement about the value of on-base percentage. Then he transforms into Mr. Hyde and trades away a good relief pitcher to acquire a slugging first baseman, Mike Jacobs, with a terrible OBP (.299 mark last year). This despite the fact that they already had a few slugging first basemen on the roster (Billy Butler, Ryan Shealy, Kila Ka'aihue). As if that weren't bad enough, Hyde then goes out and signs free agent Willie Bloomquist — a career 263/322/324 hitter — to a two-year free agent deal. Bloomquist, who Rob Neyer once said resembles a hitter about as much as he resembles a fire truck, is a problem because his popularity earns him far more playing time than he merits. If the Royals wanted to sign a clubhouse sparkplug, they could at least have signed one who can hit.
But then Dr. Jekyll reappears and makes a smart move, like signing Zach Greinke to a contract extension. Greinke's deal, which runs for four years and $38 million, rewards one of the league's most underrated hurlers at a below-market price (thanks to Cot's Baseball Contracts for the contract info).
With Greinke and Gil Meche, the Royals have a potentially solid starting rotation. But until they get a third or a fourth decent starter on the team, their success will remain potential. Luke Hochevar has more promise than anyone else in the back of the rotation, but he's coming off a terrible 2008 and may not be able to turn things around quickly. Kyle Davies seemed to be getting the hang of things late last season, but he needs to show better strikeout numbers before we can give him the benefit of the doubt. And the fact that Horacio Ramirez is on the team — and that the Royals went out of their way to get him — is another one of those Mr. Hyde moments that just defies belief. GM Dayton Moore has brought over several former Braves since taking over the team, but shouldn't you draw the line somewhere?
If there is good news here, it's that the Royals bullpen is much more productive. Closer Joakim Soria has quietly made a name for himself as one of the best closers in baseball; so good in fact, that many teams wonder what he would look like as a starter. The team will miss Ramon Ramirez and Leo Nunez, traded away in the offseason, but they still have some promising arms in Ron Mahay and John Bale. Less promising is the free agent deal given to Kyle Farnsworth — 2 years and $9.25 million. It's always cringe-worthy when a last-place team spends nearly eight figures on a middle reliever. And not just any middle reliever, but one who alternates periods of good pitching with periods of spontaneous combustion. Mr. Hyde strikes again.
The silver lining is that the team has the makings of a decent offense. Free agent signee Coco Crisp is a pretty good leadoff man, and Mike Aviles turned in a surprisingly good rookie season at shortstop. Moving Mark Teahen to second base will help the offense, although the infield defense will be bowling-shoe ugly for a while.
But more than anything else the Royals need two players to step forward: Billy Butler and Alex Gordon. Both are highly-touted products of the farm system who have so far failed even to approach their potential. Accepting these guys as anything but stars is not an option; to a great extent, the future success of the club rides on their shoulders.
There's a lot of room for hope in Kansas City, but there's an equal amount of fear. You never really know what's going to happen next. The only thing you can do, I guess, is hope Dr. Jekyll comes back and keeps Mr. Hyde from signing any more contracts.

Conclusion
The AL Central looks to be the most wide-open division in the league. First place is there for the taking, which is why more than ever teams should look to get that extra edge and avoid making all those little mistakes. Because when October comes, it's just going to be a matter of a few mistakes and a few lucky breaks that separates first place from last place.

2009 AL East Preview

2009-03-17T22:52:00.003-04:00

The time had come for a change in Yankee-ville, and the Bronx Bombers were more than ready to seize the day. They started out by signing ace starter CC Sabathia (7 yrs., $161 MM) and strikeout master A.J. Burnett (5 yrs., $82.5 MM). And to bolster their offense, they brought in 28-year-old Mark Teixeira (8 yrs., $180 MM) to play first. The changes gave the Yankees a huge boost and put the spotlight on them as the team to beat in the AL East.
But the story isn't that simple. The Rays are still there, and while they may be destined to take a step back from the 2008 brilliance, that's no guarantee. The Red Sox spent the offseason adding spare parts like Josh Bard, John Smoltz and Ramon Ramirez, but they still feel confident that their core producers can compete with anyone, rich or poor.
It's tough to choose a winner out of three significant contenders. But here's how I see it happening ...

2009 Prediction
1st — New York Yankees
2nd — Boston Red Sox
3rd — Tampa Bay Rays
4th — Toronto Blue Jays
5th — Baltimore Orioles

New York Yankees

Not only have the Yankees added a significant upgrade at three positions (two starters and a first baseman), they also have a lot of room for improvement from within.
The most important improvement is an outfield with a great deal of depth, which should allow manager Joe Girardi to platoon or play match-ups as he sees fit. Johnny Damon, coming off a fine offensive year, should get the start in left field. Right field will likely be split between Xavier Nady and Nick Swisher. Swisher looks to be the super-sub, and is well-qualified offensively. He should bounce back from a down year even as Nady fades following a career year. Center field is still an open question and will likely be the team's biggest weakness. The Yankees are hoping that Brett Gardner is ready, mainly because they really, really want him to be ready. On the plus side, the team does have guys like Damon and Swisher who can handle center if the Gardner/Melky Cabrera experiment fails dramatically.
The Yanks can also expect a pretty big bounceback from their middle infield. Derek Jeter had a disappointing 2008; even a modest increase to the Jeter of old would be a big help. Second baseman Robinson Cano had an even tougher time than Jeter, hitting .271 with a woeful .305 OBP despite showing some power. Cano doesn't have Jeter's track record, so it's hard to say how much he will be able to improve in '09. If he doesn't show signs of improvement, he could see his time at second base come to an abrupt end.
A lot has been said about the team's starting rotation (and rightfully so), it's worth pointing out what good work Girardi got out of the team's bullpen in 2008. Despite the rough circumstances, the bullpen overachieved. This marked a change from recent Yankee teams, and it's no coincidence. In the past, the Yanks have tried to patch up their middle relief with expensive and risky free agents. And they either blew up (Kyle Farnsworth) or just got pushed to the limit by former manager Joe Torre (Tom Gordon, Scott Proctor), leaving them out of gas in October.
This time, the Yankees looked for creative ways to acquire undervalued, useful players. This meant giving a lot of work to Jose Veras and Edwar Ramirez, which turned out fine for the team. Neither man is a household name, but they're a lot better than the big names, not to mention much cheaper.
If I had to pick one gaping hole on the team, it would be catcher. This isn't meant as an insult to Jorge Posada, a borderline Hall-of-Famer who hits as well as any catcher when he's healthy. The problem is that he wasn't healthy in 2008, and the Yankees have done an abysmal job of picking backup catchers over the years. This meant that when Posada went down, the Yankees went from hero-to-zero behind the plate.
Jose Molina was left to pick up the slack. Molina is a defensive whiz, which almost makes up for the fact that the man couldn't hit water if he fell out of a boat. He'll be 34 next year and is a career .237/.276/.339 hitter (slash stats indicate "batting average /on-base percentage/ slugging percentage"). Nobody knows just how many games they're going to get out of Posada in 2009, and when you know that in advance, you need to find a better insurance policy than Molina.
The Yankees enter 2009 as favorites to win the AL East, although it's no guarantee. The starting rotation relies a lot on A.J. Burnett, who's no kind of iron man, and Andy Pettite, who will be 37 this year. The offense is improved with the addition of Teixeira, but it's still an old group that's not strong on defense. A lot of things would have to go wrong for the 2009 Yankees to miss the playoffs, but then a lot of people said that about the 2008 Yankees. Sometimes you just can't spend your way out of a problem.
Not that they won't stop trying.

The Boston Red Sox

The Red Sox have the potential to pass the Yankees and finish first in the division. Their offense may get even better, if David Ortiz returns to form and Jed Lowrie succeeds at shortstop. And their pitching staff is packed with numerous insurance policies, most notably some extremely talented young pitchers (Clay Buchholz, Michael Bowden) who have some tremendous upside. And if somebody gets injured or loses their edge, the Sox can replace them with Brad Penny, John Smoltz, or Justin Masterson and not lose much in the exchange. Few teams can afford to carry eight or nine starters, but the Red Sox do, and as unpredictable as pitchers are, it pays off.
Problems in the bullpen? The Sox are very good at patching bullpen problems; they picked up an underrated late-innings arm in Ramon Ramirez and even signed Takashi Saito as an insurance policy. Saito's injury problems will limit his availability, but when you look at how good he was as the Dodgers' closer, it's worth rolling the dice on him.
All of this sounds wonderful. But while the Red Sox have (arguably) the best upside in the AL East, they've got a pretty scary downside, too. There are a lot of "ifs" surrounding this team, and even if they have given themselves a ridiculous amount of redundancy in the pitching department, it won't be worth much if their big hitters don't take a step forward in 2009.
It's great that Kevin Youkilis and Dustin Pedroia both contended for the MVP last year, but it means that both of them (especially Youkilis) will probably take a step back down to earth in 2009. The outfield is a problem, as only Jason Bay can be counted on for strong, consistent production. Right fielder J.D. Drew is strong but maddeningly inconsistent. He's actually been one of the team's best hitters since signing his free agent deal; the problem is that he hasn't been around all that much to enjoy it. Center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury is the opposite: durable and reliable as ever, but just not all that good. Ellsbury isn't bad, by any means, but his offense hasn't come along like people expected. The Sox are hoping that he'll do better this year than he did in 2008, when he hit an empty .280, a poor offensive performance only slightly offset by a 50/61 performance in steals. It should be noted, though, that the Sox' pick-up of Rocco Baldelli as a fourth outfielder gives them a pretty good insurance policy.
The catching situation is just as wretched as it was last year. The Sox ended up keeping Jason Varitek at discount prices, but it's hard to call that much of a victory when you consider where Tek's offense is now. I know he's supposed to be the Magical Genie of making his pitchers better; I just haven't seen any proof that his magical effect outweighs the damage he does at the plate.
If I had to guess how many wins the Sox would manage in 2009, I could guess anything from 75 to 95, just based on how the wind blows and which way the tides of offense and defense turn for them. They have every chance of winning the division. But it's just as likely that they finish 3rd, maybe even 4th. If nothing else, it will certainly be exciting to see which way it goes.

The Tampa Bay Rays

The Rays have the satisfaction of entering 2009 as postseason contenders with none of the mammoth expectations faced by the Yankees and Red Sox. The good thing about being overachievers is that everyone expects you to fail, or at least to return to normal. If the Rays can manage just 90 wins on their payroll, they can call their season a success. Especially if they can do it while bringing along more young stars like David Price and Wade Davis.
The Rays' offense during the 2008 regular season wasn't nearly as good as it looked in the postseason, with B.J. Upton and Evan Longoria playing an in-game version of home run derby. The team finished 9th in the AL in runs scored, which isn't very encouraging at first. But there are several areas where the Rays should see strong improvement this year. The first is with Upton, who hit a poor .273/.383/.401 during the season, then went crazy and hit .321/.394/.786 in the ALCS. A .786 slugging percentage may not be a reasonable goal, but the truth is that the guy you saw in the postseason is the B.J. Upton most likely to lead the team in 2009.
Two other positions primed to improve are left field and DH. Carl Crawford returns as the Rays' left fielder, but after a season that he himself considered a big disappointment. Crawford doesn't have a whole lot of tools, but he's very good at getting on base and then stealing them. So when your batting average drops to .273 and your OBP is .319, you've pretty much failed at your basic goal. Crawford is still very young (he'll just be 27 this year) and should easily regain his old form.
At DH, the Rays picked up free agent Pat Burrell for 2 years and $16 million. Burrell was spurned by the Phillies, who decided to sign an older, more expensive left fielder in Raul Ibanez. This was good news for the Rays, who were able to get the better, younger player at a more affordable price. The move to DH is great for Burrell, who is no asset in the field. He should be far more durable than last year's DH Cliff Floyd and is coming off a year where he hit .250/.367/.507.
As far as pitching goes, the Rays have a killer starting rotation that costs them about as much as a month of Alex Rodriguez. Ace Scott Kazmir is hampered by pitch-count issues that limit his endurance, but he's got strong support from the rest of the starting staff and from the bullpen. The Rays' depth of strong, young starters was put on display in the postseason, and it wasn't a mirage. If they can keep Kazmir, James Shields, Matt Garza, Andy Sonnanstine, and (fingers crossed) David Price healthy and intact, their starting rotation will be fabulous. Even more important, it's very young and very cheap, a combination that enables them to pursue mid-level free agents such as Burrell.
My two biggest concerns for the Rays are the two places where they saw the most improvement in 2008: the bullpen and the defense. Relief pitching is a really funny thing, and one year's star bullpen can look pretty shabby the next (see: 2005 White Sox, 2006 Cardinals). The Rays are hampered by their lack of a legit closer; Troy Percival is a good arm to have, but they're fooling themselves if they think he's going to do much better than he did last year. This is an even bigger problem in a division where your top two competitors have Mariano Rivera and Jonathan Papelbon closing out games.
As for the defense, the 2008 Rays saw a defensive improvement unheralded in baseball history. Their 2007 defense was among the worst in modern baseball history. The 2008 club, on the other hand, led the league in Defensive Efficiency (DER)*. The truth is somewhere in the middle, although the team has made tangible improvements in defense. I just don't expect them all to carry over to 2009.* — For more info on what DER is and why it's the best tool to measure fielding, click here.
It's unfortunate that the Rays are such longshots; they're stuck in a division where you have to keep moving forward just to stay in the same place. The Rays won 97 games a year ago, but without significant improvements — and with the Yankees speeding by them — they're a tough bet to make the postseason. Never the less, the simple fact that they've made it this far on such a small payroll is a testament to the new competitive balance and the power of smart baseball management. And it must really piss off Yankees fans.

The Toronto Blue Jays

The Blue Jays had almost everything go right last year. Since then, almost everything has gone wrong.
The Jays had an amazing starting rotation, led by ace Roy "Doc" Halladay. He was backed up by strikeout leader A.J. Burnett, Jesse Litsch, Shaun Marcum, and Dustin McGowan. One year later, Burnett is gone to free agency, Shaun Marcum is out for the season following Tommy John surgery, and Marcum isn't scheduled to return from the DL until May. The Jays do have some good pitchers (David Purcey) to fill the gaps, but you just can't lose a huge chunk of your starting rotation like that and expect it to be just as good as it was. The 2008 Jays were great at preventing runs; their rotation was great, their bullpen was solid and their defense was second only to the Rays. 2008 really was the best this team could do. So don't count on a repeat in 2009.
The Jays could pick up the slack with their offense. Is there any chance that the Jays will score more runs to compensate for the losses to their pitching staff? It's very doubtful. Years of conservative drafting have left the team without a true impact player, a handful of really useful players, and several dozen utility guys.
Vernon Wells was supposed to be the cornerstone of their offense when they signed him to a big seven-year, $126 million contract extension after the 2006 season. They were hoping that Wells, whose offense had gone up and down, could finally step up and be the all-around star they were hoping for.
That hasn't happened yet. Wells had a dreadful year in 2007 (.245/.304/.402) although he bounced back with a pretty good line in 2008 (.300/.343/.496) despite playing in only 108 games. The lesson to learn from this is that it's a bad idea to pay a good player like a great player and just hope that he changes.
Well, there's always Alex Rios. He was supposed to be an impact player, but he's not there yet. He has good power and hits for a decent average, but he's often humbled by the strike zone. And if you're going to go through life with a career .338 on-base percentage, you just have to hit more home runs than this (Rios' career high is 24 in 2007; it's the only time he's topped 20). Now Rios does turn 29 this year, and I guess there's still a chance that he can refine his raw skills. But remember what I said about hoping a good player becomes a great one.
The Jays do have legitimate offensive stars and power threats in homegrown mashers Adam Lind and Travis Snider. But while both should turn out to be good hitters, they probably won't be great hitters, and both men are defensively limited to the outfield corners or DH.
Years of poor drafting and a conservative approach to player acquisition left the Jays with a good team that had little or no chance of becoming great. And even though the team is trying a more aggressive to drafting and spending more money, it may be too late for the roster as it is now. The Jays hit their peak in 2008, which is great unless you have to stick around and watch the inevitable fall.

The Baltimore Orioles

The Orioles are, unfortunately, one of the last sad-sack teams in baseball. Despite a mid-90s peak that saw the club make the postseason in back-to-back years (1996-7), the team hasn't won 80 games in eleven seasons. But fear not, Oriole fans, there is hope.
I can't say that everything has changed in Baltimore, but there are a lot of very promising signs. Andy MacPhail has come in to run the team and not only seems to be making good progress in building a solid foundation, but he appears to have the support of owner Peter Angelos, which is no small feat. MacPhail hasn't stopped bringing in free agents, but he's tried to make them at least moderately useful investments (no more Jay Paytons).
More importantly, the club is starting to see a very good return from their farm system. They've got talent the likes of which they haven't seen since Earl Weaver was manager. The club graduated Nick Markakis to the majors and saw him blossom into a great hitter and one of the most promising youngsters in the game. They recently signed him to a contract extension to keep him around Baltimore for a little longer.
Even more impressive is the #1 prospect in all of baseball, catcher Matt Wieters. Wieters spent 2008 making the minor leagues his bitch at the tender age of 22. It doesn't look like he's going to start the year in the majors, but he'll be behind the plate in Camden Yards before Memorial Day, most likely. His offensive potential is off the charts, and he is one of the biggest reasons for optimism for Oriole fans looking ahead.
MacPhail has also been willing to trade away excess talent to add depth to the farm system. He traded Miguel Tejada to Houston and while he didn't get back a huge return, he was able to rid himself of Tejada's contract and add pitching depth to the big-league roster by acquiring "Hey, Hey, Hey It's" Matt Albers, Troy Patton and reliever Dennis Sarfate. He traded ace Erik Bedard to Seattle in 2008 in exchange for the Mariners' top prospect, center fielder Adam Jones. Jones is still raw and has yet to break out at the major league level, but it's still exciting to picture a Baltimore outfield patrolled by Jones and Markakis.
The Orioles' biggest problem is pitching. In 2008, their starting rotation was Jeremy Guthrie and his Merry Band of Misfits. No team in baseball had worse depth in the starting rotation than Baltimore. But there's great news here, too, as the Orioles have several promising pitchers on their way to the majors. Chris Tillman could be a true ace; he'll be starting the season in Triple-A, but should pop up to the majors sometime in '09. Young Brian doesn't have the stuff that Tillman has, but he's young, has a short path to the majors, and should stick when he gets there. The club also has an enviable collection of young arms who may not end up as stars, but will add much-needed depth to the back of the rotation.
It's highly unlikely that the Orioles will contend in 2009. Most of their hope is still seasoning in the minors. But in the years to come, they should have a core of young talent able to return them to the postseason.

Conclusion

I'd give you 4-1 odds that the Wild Card comes out of the AL East this year, as no other division in the league has two teams capable of winning 95 games, let alone three. This is, without a doubt, the best division in baseball and it will be a thrill to watch the season unfold.

Mr. Selig Goes to Washington

2009-03-17T22:41:00.006-04:00

Bud Selig's master plan was for baseball to return to Washington. In the dying days of the Montreal Expos, Selig made clear his desire that the team move out of Quebec and into the nation's capital. There were rumors that other cities were being considered, sure, but few people took seriously the idea that major league baseball could succeed in Monterrey, Mexico. Washington had a baseball-ready stadium and, not so coincidentally, would put baseball in the back yard of the movers and shakers on Capitol Hill.
Well, it didn't work out that way.
The Nationals inherited a front office run on a shoestring budget, a fallow farm system, and a team that hadn't been interesting in ten years. In 2008, the team lost 102 games, the worst record in baseball, and the worst mark for the franchise since 1976. But on the bright side, at least the front office wasn't under investigation by the FBI.
Oops . . .
Over the past year, federal investigators have been investigating charges that a handful of baseball teams were skimming bonus money away from young Caribbean players. The Nationals were among the teams named, with GM Jim Bowden and special assistant Jose Rijo targeted by the investigation. Rijo was fired by the Nats a week ago, and the axe fell on Bowden on Sunday. He "resigned" days after word got out that the team was probably going to fire him.
Things weren't supposed to happen this way. But if you look at the situation realistically, we shouldn't be surprised. Well, the FBI investigation is surprising, but the team's overall failure was almost predictable given the circumstances.
There were three different problems that essentially "doomed" the Washington Nationals to this period of futility. They were: the city, the franchise, and the personnel. Each one played a part in bringing about the team's humiliating 2008-09 performance.

The City

One wonders why Major League Baseball was so anxious to move back to Washington. Two different major league franchises ended up leaving town because of attendance problems: the original Washington Senators in 1961 (who became the Minnesota Twins) and the expansion Washington Senators in 1971 (who became the Texas Rangers). Granted, this was because the Washington teams were terrible. But that's part of the point. Washington hadn't seen a consistently good baseball team since the late 1930s. Before the Nationals came to town, a Washington baseball team hadn't drawn a million fans since 1946. The last time they finished higher than 5th in attendance in the AL was 1945.
The question is why the MLB considered Washington to be a hotbed of baseball fever in 2005. The team hadn't had a baseball team in 34 years, and before that, hadn't drawn a decent crowd since the Truman Administration. This isn't a slight against Washington baseball fans or the city itself. But when baseball moved into Washington, they were moving into a city that had been burnt out on baseball for thirty years and then deprived of baseball for the next thirty.
Again, I'm not knocking Washington baseball fans, who have shown admirable support for their new team. But when baseball decided to move to Washington, they either ignored or were ignorant of the discouraging history of Washington baseball over the past sixty years. Or, perhaps, the owners were just more interested in regaining a foothold inside the Beltway than they were in baseball.

The Franchise

The Montreal Expos were one of the NL's best teams in the 1980s. They won at least 90 games twice in the decade, finished with a winning record in all but two seasons and made their only postseason appearance (in 1981). Tim Raines, Andre Dawson, Gary Carter, Steve Rogers, Al Oliver, and Dennis Martinez were some of the stars that made the Expos so competitive.
The trend continued in the early 90s. After a last-place finish in 1991, the team finished 2nd in the NL East in both 1992 and 1993. In 1994, the team reached its peak. When the baseball strike stopped the season, the Expos had the best record in baseball, at 74-40. They had one of the best outfields in recent memory, with Moises Alou, Marquis Grissom, and Larry Walker patrolling the turf. The pitching staff was led by underrated hurler Ken Hill and power closer John Wetteland. They also had a raw, 22-year-old right-hander named Pedro Martinez. None of these players were older than 27, meaning that the Expos had the chance to build a contending team that would last.
Instead, the Expos went into extreme cost-cutting mode. Alou and Walker were let go as soon as they were free agents. Grissom was traded to the Braves for three players who would never appear on a Wheaties box. Hill went to the Cardinals for three guys named Bullinger, Eversgerd and Stovall. Wetteland went to the Yankees for Fernando Seguignol and cash. Future All-Star reliever Jeff Shaw went to the White Sox for the remains of Jose DeLeon. The only one who really stuck around was Pedro Martinez, who would finish his tenure with the team in 1997 by winning the Cy Young Award. That made him too expensive for the Expos, so he was off to Boston as a free agent. (Thanks to Baseball-Reference.com for transaction information.)
The team was essentially stripped of its assets by owner Claude Brochu. The 1995 club finished last, and despite an encouraging second-place finish in 1996, the Expos were doomed to mediocrity thereafter, finishing in fourth place for four straight years before dropping to last.
If it seemed like things couldn't get any worse, they did in 2001 when art dealer Jeffrey Loria purchased the team. Loria stayed around long enough to scold the city for not agreeing to build a new stadium and scold the fans for not showing up. Loria blamed the 1994-1995 strike, which is odd, since attendance actually rose in 1996, when the team was contending.
The solution to Loria's problem involved a complicated three-way ownership change the likes of which hadn't been seen in baseball since the turn of the century. Loria was allowed to buy the Florida Marlins. He stripped them down like he did the Expos, and is currently using them in an elaborate protection racket perpetrated against the state of Florida; "give me a stadium or the team dies," in a sense. Marlins owner John Henry, as part of this agreement, was allowed to buy the ownerless Red Sox. As for the Expos? They would be owned and operated by the other 29 major league teams. Does anyone see a potential problem with this?
The owners ran the Expos on a shoestring budget. GM Omar Minaya once said that he had "29 owners but only six employees" (Dewey & Acocella, Total Baseball). The Expos were denied anything that could be classified as a "perk," giving them a huge financial disadvantage, which was quite likely by design. With the MLB literally controlling the Expos, they could talk openly about moving the team to Washington, Portland, or Monterrey. And then they had the gall to publicly ask why the Montreal fans were giving up on the team.
Amazingly, the Expos still managed to perform on the field. Their 83-79 finish in 2002 was striking in view of their numerous handicaps. They managed the same record in 2003. But 2003 was more impressive, because the MLB forced the Expos to play 22 of their "home" games in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
This was a horrifically cynical move by baseball. The games in Puerto Rico were great for the Puerto Rican fans, despite the fact that the park's capacity was a slim 19,000, which doesn't make for a big gate. The travel took a terrible toll on the team, which logged miles by the thousands shuttling between the east coast, the west coast, Canada and Puerto Rico.
Despite the fact that everyone knew it was coming, team officials didn't officially announce the move to Washington until September of 2004. The Montreal Expos were dead, killed off by a real-life Rachel Phelps.
Everyone blamed the death of the Expos on the Montreal fans. After all, they said, the attendance was so low in those last years in Montreal that they just "had" to move away, right? The reality is that fans stopped showing up after ownership stripped the team in the 1995-97 period. From 1997-2004, no one in the Expos' ownership showed any commitment to fielding a winning baseball team. Instead, they were either demanding money from the city of Montreal, moving home games across the continent, threatening to contract the team or openly speculating about moving away. Why should the fans care about the Expos when, quite obviously, no one else did?
And besides, the idea that Montreal could never be a baseball city is absurd. The Dodgers had their top minor league team in Montreal for years; Jackie Robinson integrated the minor leagues as a member of the Montreal team in 1946. The team's move to Olympic Stadium in 1977 saw attendance more than double, to 1.4 million, ranking them 6th in the NL. The Expos were never among the league leaders in the category, but they were consistently drawing crowds above the National League average. This didn't change until 1998, the year after Pedro Martinez left for free agency. With all the stars of the 1994 team now gone and no sign that management planned to replace them, the team finished last in the NL in attendance. The fans didn't kill baseball in Montreal; bad management and bad baseball teams did that.
The team that arrived in Washington for the 2005 season was a shambles. Their biggest stars were Jose Vidro, Brad Wilkerson, and Livan Hernandez. They were coming off a 67-95, last-place finish in 2004. Their farm system was more like a dust bowl. From 1997-2004, the best players taken in the draft by the Expos were Wilkerson, Brandon Phillips, Grady Sizemore, Cliff Lee, Jason Bay, Chad Cordero, Ryan Zimmerman, and current prospects Ross Detwiler and Chris Marrero. That's not a bad haul, but of all these future stars, four of them were traded away in woeful deals.
The worst came in 2002, when the Expos were desperate to get some help via trade. So Minaya acquired Bartolo Colon from Cleveland. Colon pitched well, but left after the season as a free agent. In exchange, the Expos gave up Cliff Lee, Grady Sizemore, Brandon Phillips and Lee Stevens for Colon and spare arm Tim Drew. It's easily one of the worst trades in recent history. In fact, it may turn out to be a record. If Grady Sizemore ever wins an MVP (and I think he will), then the Indians will become the first team ever (I think) to trade away a future MVP and a future Cy Young Award winner (Lee) in the same deal. As for Bay, current Red Sox hero, he was traded to the Mets in 2002 for Lou Collier, an utterly forgettable utility infielder. As if this weren't enough, the Nationals failed to sign their first-round draft pick in 2008 (Aaron Crow), because they were too cheap to meet his bonus demands.
So the Nationals were a poor team with an even poorer farm system. It would take a real genius to make a winner out of that combination. For that genius, the Nats turned to baseball's former boy wonder, who got the General Manager's job in Cincinnati at age 31 and sent his team to the playoffs in 1995.
But the Nats would get more than they bargained for in Jim Bowden . . .

The Personnel

In 1993, Jim Bowden took over as General Manager of the Cincinnati Reds. He was the youngest GM in major league history when he took the job, inheriting a team in transition. Owner Marge Schott had just become embroiled in another controversy over her positive remarks about Adolf Hitler. And while the franchise was in pretty good shape, just three years removed from a World Championship, they needed a fresh start.
But the core of the ballclub was still solid, and the team was back in contention in 1994. Veterans Barry Larkin and Jose Rijo anchored the club, but Bowden deserves credit for his work in shaping the team. He brought in shortstop Tony Fernandez and closer Jeff Brantley as free agents, and nabbed two underrated players from the Mariners: second baseman Bret Boone, and the troubled (but still talented) Kevin Mitchell. The team was in first place in the NL Central when the strike cancelled the season.
The team took up where it left off in 1995, with Bowden adding free agents Benito Santiago and Ron Gant. Despite a patchwork pitching staff, the offense was good enough to get the Reds into the postseason. But they got swept by the Braves in the NLCS. Still, Bowden was looking like a true boy wonder in the Queen City, guiding the club to back-to-back first-place finishes for the first time since the Big Red Machine was at its peak.
The Reds fell off in 1996, finishing at 81-81. One problem was that a lot of Bowden's free agent deals were for only one year; his penchant for short-term solutions left him filling the same holes every offseason. Plus, the team's patchwork pitching staff was starting to wear down. In 1997, the starting rotation completely tanked, as veteran patches such as Mike Morgan, Dave Burba, John Smiley, and Pete Schourek turned out not to be short- or long-term solutions.
1998 looked like a fresh start. Bowden sent Burba to the Indians for a polished first baseman named Sean Casey. He sent the aging Jeff Brantley to St. Louis for the powerful Dmitri Young. And he added some new faces to the rotation, including Pete Harnisch, Mike Remlinger, and Steve Parriss. The team looked good on paper, but ended up in fourth place, at 77-85.
In 1999, though, the team surged back into contention. Manager Jack McKeon compensated for the shaky starting rotation by riding ace relievers Danny Graves and Scott Sullivan hard; the two combined for 224.7 innings, a staggering total for relief pitchers. The lineup, supplemented by homegrown prospect Aaron Boone and trade acquisition Greg Vaughn, pushed the team to fourth in the league in runs scored. The Reds finished the season with a 96-67 record, tied with the Mets for the NL Wild Card. The Reds hosted the Mets in Cincinnati but lost the game; opposing pitcher Al Leiter shut out the potent Cincinnati offense.
The Reds' offense kept going in 2000, with help from new arrival Ken Griffey, Jr., but the pitching staff hit bottom. Bowden tried to stop the bleeding by getting ace Denny Neagle from the Braves (for Bret Boone and Mike Remlinger), but while Neagle pitched well, it wasn't enough. The Reds finished second.
The 2001 team dropped all the way to 66-96. An injury to Griffey left a gaping hole in the outfield. Pokey Reese's acrobatics at shortstop could no longer mask the fact that he absolutely could not hit. The struggling veterans in the starting rotation were replaced by struggling rookies. The 2002 team improved slightly, with hot prospects Adam Dunn and Austin Kearns manning the outfield corners, but the pitching staff was still a mess, with eight different pitchers making at least five starts.
In 2003, the Reds moved into Great American Ballpark. Desperate for some help, the Reds tried moving closer Danny Graves into the starting rotation. They also messed with Austin Kearns, sending him down to the minors and up again because of concerns about his "conditioning." Any hope that the brand-new ballpark would provide a grace period were dashed mid-season, when both Bowden and manager Bob Boone were fired. The team finished with a record of 69-93 and a team ERA of 5.47, only slightly ahead of Colorado for worst in the NL.
So what went wrong for Bowden? He did a pretty good job of fielding a competitive lineup, although his best fixes were temporary ones, like picking up Kevin Mitchell for a song or getting Greg Vaughn for one year. The only exception was the mega-deal that brought Griffey over from Seattle. And while it seemed like a good idea at the time, Griffey soon turned into an injury-prone albatross.
The only stability in the lineup came from Barry Larkin (whose career started winding down in 2001), Sean Casey (a good, but not great hitter) and Pokey Reese (great defense despite swinging a wet noodle at the plate). This changed with the arrival of two of Bowden's best drafts, Adam Dunn and Austin Kearns. But while Bowden could indeed swing some sweet deals and make quick fixes, he wasn't too good at looking at the big picture, rarely building from the bottom up.
The Reds' biggest problem — one Bowden never really addressed — was the starting rotation. Even the team that made the playoffs in '95 was led by the likes of an aging Jose Rijo, Pete Schourek, John Smiley, Mark Portugal and Kevin Jarvis. If you make it to the postseason with that rotation, then you need to count your lucky stars and prepare yourself for when the luck runs out.
Bowden never did. He never made strong moves to shore up the starting rotation, either by trading for pitching prospects or signing good free agents. The only big trade he made, for Denny Neagle, was negated when he turned around and sent him to the Yankees the following year. This could have been a blunder, except that Neagle imploded in the Bronx.
Bowden was great at getting that "extra guy" who could give your pitching staff an edge; but you can't build an entire pitching staff with "extra guys." When you try, you get guys like Rob Bell, Jimmy Haynes, Steve Parris, Ron Villone, and Paul Wilson taking the mound every fifth day.
Not only was pitching a problem, but Bowden's performance in the amateur draft speaks for itself. From 1993-2003, the Reds managed to draft and develop just one successful starting pitcher: Brett Tomko. And by successful, I mean just a few years spent in the majors. Tomko worked out well enough, especially as part of the package that brought Ken Griffey, Jr. to Cincinnati. But when you look at the team's drafts (and you can, thanks to Baseball-Reference.com), it's no wonder Bowden was scrambling to find somebody to take the ball every fifth day. If the best you can do in ten years is Brett Tomko, then you have a serious problem.
Offensively, Bowden can always point to the 1998 draft, when the Reds took Austin Kearns in the first round and Adam Dunn in the second. But the only other good hitters taken during Bowden's tenure were Aaron Boone in 1994 and Joey Votto in 2002.
So what was Bowden's great success in Cincinnati? He was good at a lot of the little things, but the big things seemed to evade him. He was better at forming a bullpen than a starting rotation, and he was better at trading for short-term lineup solutions rather than signing a legitimate building block.
Thus, when Bowden got the job as GM of the Washington Nationals, it was a surprise to many. Here was somebody whose biggest problem was building talent from the bottom-up, and yet that's exactly what he was asked to do with the Washington franchise.

The Result

The Montreal franchise came to Washington with the understanding that they had to have a new ballpark; outdated RFK Stadium would only be the temporary home for the Nationals. But the city council balked at the amount of public financing required to build a new stadium. Before any deal was struck, they wanted assurances that the Nationals would commit a significant amount of private money to the project.
This may not sound like a big setback. But Bud Selig wasn't used to this. After the Baltimore Orioles opened Camden Yards in 1992, Selig helped seal the deal for eighteen new ballparks across the nation, almost all of them financed with huge amounts of public money. The MLB not only asked that the taxpayers swallow a chunk of the new ballpark's cost, but also that the team be given numerous tax breaks and incentives. In the past, city leaders had given him all of this this and thanked him for it.
But now there was a lot of new research, most notably by Andrew Zimbalist, stating that the financial return a city gets from a major league ballpark doesn't come close to making up for the cost. Things were changing, and city councils were no longer bowing down before baseball. Not only that, but the sport was awash in new money and attendance was booming. Any claims that the owners were heading for the poorhouse were dubious at best.
This meant that the talks stalled, with Opening Day 2005 fast approaching. Should they go ahead and plan for baseball in DC? Or should they start coming up with an emergency backup plan? With all the practical issues involved in moving a major league franchise, any delays were bad news. In fact, the MLB shut down the Nationals' office (which was housed in a trailer) for a short while during the offseason, prompting fears that the deal wouldn't come off. Eventually, the city council caved, and the MLB proceeded to throw together a team as quickly as possible.
Jim Bowden didn't have much at his disposal. His bosses, the MLB, had other things on their mind besides the on-field quality of the team. But Bowden was allowed some leeway (and money) to make a splash and improve things.
Well, he did make a splash at least. He signed veteran Vinny Castilla to play third base, giving him $6 million over two years. But Bowden didn't look closely enough at Castilla's numbers. In 2004, Vinny hit .271 with 35 HR and 131 RBI. Sound good? It is good . . . unless you're at Coors Field, which turns decent hitters into MVPs. Forced to hit much closer to sea level, Castilla lost 23 HR in 2005 (finishing with just 12) and saw his RBI total cut in half. His SLG dropped by 132 points. In the end, he was just a decent third baseman.
But that wasn't the worst move Bowden made. He signed shortstop Cristian Guzman to a 4-year, $16 million deal. Guzman was a speedy guy who none the less got caught stealing far too much. Not only that, but his offense was so terrible. The year before the deal was signed, Guzman hit .274 with a dreadful .309 on-base percentage (OBP) and .384 slugging percentage (SLG). Baseball observers everywhere were mystified; why would Bowden give so many years to a guy whose skills weren't even really in demand? Was this really the best way to get things started in a new city?
Despite Bowden's free agent follies, the Nats' first season in Washington was a qualified success. They improved to an 81-81 record in a strong NL East and generated a lot of excitement. The offense was anchored by Jose Guillen, who became the first in a long line of ex-Reds that Bowden brought with him to DC. The lineup benefited from a full, healthy season by Nick Johnson and another strong year from center fielder Brad Wilkerson.
The rotation was led by veterans Livan Hernandez and Esteban Loaiza. Neither man had a great year, but they were durable and above-average, qualities Bowden had rarely seen in Cincinnati. The breakout star of the pitching staff, though, was closer Chad Cordero. Cordero saved 47 games and finished with a 1.82 ERA. The Nats also had good support in the bullpen from young hurlers Luis Ayala, Jon Rauch and Gary Majewski.
Bowden set out to build upon the team's decent showing in 2005, and he began by making a big splash on the trade market. He sent outfielders Brad Wilkerson and Terrmel Sledge, along with pitching prospect Armando Galarraga, to the Texas Rangers for slugger Alfonso Soriano. It was a bold move with serious repercussions for the franchise, not all of them good.
The first problem was that the Nationals wanted Soriano to move to left field. Soriano was a second baseman for the Rangers, although he was a serious defensive liability. Plus, the Nats already had a second baseman in Jose Vidro, and they wanted Soriano's good speed and power put to use patrolling the outfield. Soriano refused. Bowden didn't have long to savor the trade before Soriano insisted that he would not move to the outfield. This was an embarassment for the team, especially since the dispute arose after they'd already traded for him; they couldn't very well send him back. In the end, though, Soriano caved and moved to left field. He did all right while learning on the job, even if he was in the habit of turning a simply fly ball into an adventure.
The more serious question was whether or not the trade was worth it. Soriano was a much bigger star than Brad Wilkerson, the man he was replacing, but there was some question as to whether he was actually a better player. Wilkerson didn't have Soriano's power, but he also didn't have Soriano's maddening all-or-nothing swing, a swing that racked up 125 strikeouts and a .309 OBP for Texas in 2005. Wilkerson's OBP was .351, and he had swatted 32 homers in 2004. Soriano's edge in power was muted by playing in hitter-friendly Ameriquest Field in Texas, whereas Wilkerson slaved away in the wide-open confines of Olympic Stadium and RFK Stadium.
The good news for Bowden was that it all worked out in his favor. Despite moving to a pitcher's park, Soriano had a career year, hitting .277 with 46 HR and 41 stolen bases. Wilkerson, on the other hand, saw his power and his batting average disappear. He lost his job as an everyday player and has yet to regain it.
With Soriano a true success story, Bowden faced a decision critical to the future of the franchise. The Nationals weren't going anywhere in 2006; they finished dead last in the NL East with a 71-91 record. With Soriano due to become a free agent after the season, Bowden and his staff had a choice to make: trade Soriano while they could, or re-sign him to a contract extension. Given the state of the Nats' finances, and considering the money Soriano would command on the open market, the latter option was basically off the table. So the Nats had to trade Soriano. Or so it seemed.
What made it difficult for Bowden was that everybody knew that he had to trade Soriano. This gave him very little leverage in negotiations with potential suitors. Bowden kept insisting that he did not have to trade Soriano, remaining optimistic about the prospect of re-signing him. The other owners didn't budge; they knew he must be bluffing. As it turned out, though, he wasn't bluffing at all. He stayed in control of the situation and didn't temper his trade demands. And as a result, he was stuck with Soriano.
Bowden won a tactical victory by staring down his fellow owners, but unfortunately, it was a major strategic blunder. Bowden seemed to put saving face with the other owners above the best interests of the team. He wouldn't admit that he really did have to trade Soriano, whether he liked it or not. And his overtures about re-signing his star player to a contract extension were just so much talk. The Cubs left all other bidders in the dust when they gave the 30-year-old Soriano a mammoth eight-year, $136 million contract.
Still, the news wasn't all bad on the trading front. In mid-2006, Bowden called up his former team and made a deal that got him two key Reds for a relative pittance. On July 13, the Nationals got outfielder Austin Kearns and shortstop Felipe Lopez from Cincinnati. Both of them were starters, and both were just 26 years old. Kearns was hitting .274 with 16 HR so far on the season, and Lopez was hitting .268 with 23 steals. Neither man was a superstar, but both were significant upgrades over what the Nationals had.
In return, the Reds sent over the following: two good young relievers in Gary Majewski and Bill Bray; shortstop Royce Clayton, who wasn't as good as Lopez and was also significantly older; utility infielder Brendan Harris and pitching prospect Daryl Thompson. All told, Bowden gave up two relief pitchers and some warm bodies to get a good starting outfielder and a decent starting shortstop. It was a terrifically unbalanced trade. Bowden's reputation was as a scavenger, but he was also smart enough to know a sucker deal when he saw one.
Even considering the Kearns/Lopez trade, the best thing to happen to the franchise in 2006 was when it graduated its top prospect (some would say its only prospect) to the majors. Ryan Zimmerman was a star third baseman out of the University of Virginia that the Nats had taken in 2005 with their first pick of the draft. He was seen as a polished player with a short path to the big leagues, but he did even better than that when he made it to the majors just a few months after he was drafted. He made his full-season debut in 2006 and looked as good as promised. Not only was he a fine defensive third baseman, he hit .287 with 20 HR and 61 walks while playing in all but five of the team's games. The combination of solid defense and broad set of hitting skills made him the de facto face of the franchise.
Zimmerman anchored an offense that ranked 11th of 16 NL teams in runs scored. Considering their pitcher-friendly ballpark, it wasn't a bad job. In fact, by the OPS+ measure (which takes the park effect into account), the Nats had the sixth-best offense in the NL.
So how did the team finish 71-91? It was thanks to the worst pitching staff in the whole league. The Nationals allowed more runs than any other NL team, which is even worse when you consider how much their park helped suppress run totals. Five Washington pitchers started more than 10 games, and the lowest ERA among them all was Mike O'Connor's mark of 4.80. Not only did the Nats not have any good starters — they didn't even have an average starting pitcher. Old hands Tony Armas and Livan Hernandez were joined by failed reclamation projects Ramon Ortiz, Pedro Astacio, Billy Traber, Jay Bergmann and Ryan Drese, among others. The only thing saving the team from complete catastrophe was a strong bullpen led once again by Chad Cordero.
But with Zimmerman leading the way forward, Bowden set about putting the team on the winning path again in 2007. When first baseman Nick Johnson went down with an injury, Bowden took a chance on former Red Dmitri Young. Young's star had fallen tremendously after he moved to Detroit, where his production went down and his weight went up. He left the team under a cloud, and it looked like he was no longer an asset offensively. Young proved them all wrong, roaring back with a .320 average, a .378 on-base percentage (OBP) and a .491 slugging percentage (SLG) in '07.
Bowden wasn't done scavenging; he picked up Wily Mo Pena from the Red Sox, hoping that the powerful youngster would finally meet his potential. Pena did well as a part-timer in 2007, but spent 2008 at the Mendoza line, hitting .205 with just two home runs. Bowden got Robert Fick to give the team some versaility, but that's not really an asset when you hit .234. Ryan Langerhans came to town after the Braves gave up on him, only to show the Nats fans why when he hit .198 in 103 games.
Bowden faced the same problem in Washington that he had in Cincinnati. Picking up spare parts is great if you're adding supporting players to a solid core, but you can't build a lineup from scratch by filling your roster with long-shots like Fick and Langerhans.
And what did Bowden do to fix the league's worst pitching staff? Nothing, really. He even gave up on scavenging and turned things over to the makeshift pitching staff held together by pitching coach Randy St. Claire and a roll of scotch tape. In 2007, only three pitchers on the whole team logged more than 100 innings, and the Nats had no less than ten pitchers start at least five games. If you think it's hard to find ten good starting pitchers, then you're absolutely right; the Nats were scraping the bottom of the barrel with the likes of Jerome Williams and Jason Simontacchi.
The bullpen was, as usual, good but not great. Bowden started coming under more and more pressure to trade bullpen stalwarts Cordero and Rauch before they reached free agency. Relievers don't generally warrant the big raises they get in arbitration, and unless you've got Joe Nathan on your hands, it's not wise for a low-payroll team to invest a great amount in a reliever. But even as the offers came in, Bowden sat silent.
The team finished with only a moderate improvement over 2006, at 73-89. The free-falling Florida Marlins finished below them, marking the first time Washington finished out of the NL East cellar since 2003. In the offseason, Bowden was uncharacteristically silent. He may have been stifled by the team's $54 million payroll, the league's lowest save for the lowly Pirates and Marlins. It's hard to say.
He did do a little scavenging, picking up two talented outfielders in Lastings Milledge and Elijah Dukes. Milledge had worn out his welcome with the Mets but was still a solid prospect. Bowden had to give up Ryan Church to get him, but he also got the Mets to swallow Brian Schneider's inflated salary.
Dukes was a far different story. He possessed a tremendous amount of potential as a baseball player, but his misadventures off the field had long soured him with the Tampa Bay brass. The phrase "attitude problem" does not begin to describe Elijah Dukes; his violent and aggressive behavior has gotten him in trouble with both league officials and law enforcement. Still, a guy like that is crying out for a change of scenery, and Bowden wasn't going to get anyone nearly as young, cheap and talented as this anywhere else. So the Rays sent him to Washington for a low-level prospect.
Other than that, it was much the same Nationals team as in years past, which wasn't such good news. Bowden made two ill-advised decisions when he rewarded scavenged players Dmitri Young and Ron Belliard with contract extensions. He also picked up Aaron Boone, Paul Lo Duca, and Johnny Estrada off the scrap heap, with very little to show for it.
The good news was that the Nationals were finally moving into a new ballpark, after several public standoffs between the interested parties. Nationals Park opened for the 2008 season, and the Washington brass sat back and waited for the huge attendance boost that accompanies the opening of the new park.
The big boost never came. The Nats weren't even able to sell out the first series of the season, although they did manage to fill the park for Opening Day. That set the standard for the rest of the year, as the team fell drastically short of expectations. Attendance rose by 19% in 2008, pushing the team up from 14th place in NL attendance to just 13th. To put that in perspective, the Cincinnati Reds got a 27% boost in attendance from their new park in 2003, and the lowly Pittsburgh Pirates saw a huge 41% increase when they moved into PNC Park in 2001.
The change in economy certainly played a part in the Nats' troubles, especially when the bottom fell out of both the stock market and the team's win-loss record toward the end of the year. Washington finished at 59-102, the worst record in the National League and the worst mark for the franchise since the 1976 Expos went 55-107.
It was anything but a surprise. For one thing, Bowden's scavenging failed to stop the team's bleeding. But more troubling was the deterioration of the lineup's true assets. Since his arrival in Washington, Austin Kearns' offense had pulled a Houdini-esque disappearing act. His batting average dropped from .266 to .217 in 2008, and his home runs dropped from 16 to 7.
As if that weren't bad enough, Ryan "Face of the Franchise" Zimmerman had seen his offense fall off in 2007 and again in 2008. The team was hopeful that his numbers would perk up when they moved out of cavernous RFK Stadium, but it didn't happen. Zimmerman finished 2008 with a fairly empty .283 average, supported by just 14 HR and 31 walks. That's not bad, but it was seen as a major letdown from a player who'd been drawing comparisons to Brooks Robinson just three years earlier.
The pitching staff was disappointing as usual. Bowden's decision to keep Chad Cordero blew up in his face when the closer, in his last year before free agency, suffered a season-ending injury, thereby negating any trade value he had.
If that weren't bad enough, Bowden made a major PR mistake when he announced in the middle of July that the team would be letting Cordero go at the end of the season. Cordero was stunned, because this announcement came on a radio show. So not only did Bowden give Cordero the heave-ho in embarassing fashion, he showed his hand early and basically ruined any chance of trading or re-signing the hurler. It was also a not-so-subtle message to the fans that Bowden had already given up on 2008 and was already deciding who to cut before 2009. Moves such as this aren't very productive for a team that already has problems with attendance and fan approval.
So it was no surprise to see Bowden go. The only real surprise was that it wasn't due to his poor performance as GM, but rather due to the ongoing federal investigation. It was a similar tale that led to his departure from Cincinnati: short-term patches for a shoddy offense and the total neglect of a woeful pitching staff. The only difference was that in Cincinnati, Bowden inherited a ballclub with a solid core, so that the team's decline was steadier and more drawn out. He didn't have that luxury in Washington, so his mistakes were more immediate and more dramatic.
Bowden does have his supporters, and it can never be said that his performance was all bad. He made canny trades, nabbing a big star in Alfonso Soriano and two useful regulars in Austin Kearns and Felipe Lopez. He successfully picked up Dmitri Young, Elijah Dukes, and Lastings Milledge off of the scrap heap without giving up much at all.
And I would be remiss if I did not mention that Bowden got very little help from ownership. The change in ownership from the MLB to the Lerner group in 2006 gave the franchise a solid footing, but it didn't make the big difference fans were hoping for. Granted, throwing more money at the problem wouldn't have changed everything, but no one can build a contender by scavenging alone. By the time the team did chase a big fish — Mark Teixeira in the 2008-09 offseason — it no longer made sense to commit a huge chunk of the team's payroll to any one player.
So this is what remains of the MLB's quest to put baseball back in the nation's capital. A franchise shift pulled off at the last minute, an ownership group finally settled upon after years of waiting, and a ballpark born out of a contentious relationship with the city and its inhabitants.
Selig has the Nationals right where he wanted them, but you have to wonder if his enthusiasm hasn't mellowed in the years since. The Nats are still run on a shoestring, unable or unwilling to pursue free agents, draft aggressively or simply assemble some sort of plan to bring the franchise out of the depths. Not only that, but the cash-cow ballpark hasn't resulted in the flow of fans (and cash) that was anticipated.
So the Washington Nationals' story doesn't have that heartwarming, Frank Capra-ish quality. But it's early yet. It won't be easy, but the Nats still has a chance to dust themselves off and start over with a new sense of opportunity.
It's what Jimmy Stewart would have done.

The Salary Cap: Baseball's Enduring Straw Man

2009-02-25T08:57:00.003-05:00

I hate the Yankees.

In the interests of fairness, I should make this clear before I go on. I've been a fan of the Atlanta Braves since the days of Dale Murphy, Rick Mahler and Bob Horner. It was with great pride that I watched the Braves build themselves into a baseball dynasty.
And it was with great pain that I watched them go down, again and again, in October. Yes, they won it all in 1995, beating the Indians in six exciting games. But as good as it was to see that, it was with a crushing sense of pain and doom that I watched the Braves lose the series in 1996 to the Damn Yankees. I remember sitting about 8 inches from the TV screen as Mark Lemke popped out in the 9th inning. I tried to force the ball into the stands by sheer force of will, but it didn't work. Charlie Hayes caught it for the last out of the series. And so was born my hatred of the Yankees. It didn't get any better in 1999, when the Yankees swept the Braves out of the World Series. By then my hatred was festering.
I say all of this because what I'm about to say may sound like Yankee favoritism. Let me assure you that it is NOT. What I say I say as a baseball fan, pure and simple.
Baseball doesn't need a salary cap.
There's been a lot of noise this off-season reviving the idea of a salary cap in baseball. Many team owners have called for some sort of limit on payroll spending. And several fans, resentful of the fact that the Yankees seemed to have rigged the free agent process, are echoing those sentiments.
The owners have their own reasons. As for the fans, reporters, columnists, and talking heads calling for a salary cap, they have a reason of their own: They hate the Yankees.
This is a big generalization, I know. And there are exceptions. But for the most part, the calls for a salary cap have come from those who are spiteful that the Yankees spent so much money and want to see them punished. Believe me — I've been hating the Yankees for twelve years now; I think I can recognize my own kind. Is it a coincidence that the salary cap noise came in the same offseason that the Yankees spent $400 million-plus on players? If the Mets or the Dodgers had signed these players, would we be hearing even a fraction of these complaints? I doubt it.
We Yankee-haters are all afraid that the Yankees are just going to buy themselves a World Series. That's doubtful. If the Yankees could just buy a World Series, wouldn't they have done that at least once in the past eight seasons? The Yankees' 2009 payroll is actually projected to be about the same as their payroll was last year — when they missed the postseason entirely.But still, whether you're a Yankee-hater or not, what probably scares you the most about this offseason is the loss of competitive balance. Owners, fans, and talk radio hosts alike are warning that there will be no competitive balance in baseball unless we do something to stop the big-spenders; and by big-spenders, of course, we mean the Yankees, not the Red Sox or the Tigers (who had the second-highest MLB payroll last season, which was good enough for a last-place finish in the AL Central).
But those analysts who have actually looked at the bottom line have a different story to tell. After a 1990s decade that saw several mini-dynasties and several perennial losers, the 2000s have seen the fall of old dynasties, the rise of new ones, and several teams reversing long-running trends. Since the start of this decade, there have been nine World Series. Eight different teams have won those nine series. About one in four baseball teams have won the World Series in the past nine years. No other period in baseball history matches that.
And that parity extends to the postseason as a whole, too. Since 2000, 10 of 14 AL teams and 13 of 16 NL teams have reached the postseason at least once. So about 77% of all baseball teams have made the postseason in the past nine years. Extend the deadline back to 1995, and 26 of 30 (87%) MLB teams have reached the postseason at least once. Think this is a fluke? Since 2000, 57% of major league teams have reached the postseason more than once.What else can we do to create competitive balance? If we level the playing field much more, we'll just be giving everybody a guaranteed win and then handing out "Participation" ribbons at the end of the season.
Granted, I'm probably overstating the case. There has been a lot done in terms of revenue sharing in recent years, and I think it's important to continue these measures as an effective way of increasing parity. My point is that there is no crisis; the voices screaming out for action are yelling, "FIRE!" in an empty theater.

Plus, the owners have an ulterior motive in calling for a salary cap. A salary cap would, obviously, limit the salary inflation that's exploded in recent years and give owners a greater degree of cost certainty when budgeting for the future. It also removes the finances of free agency almost entirely from the realm of the free market, which is what the owners have wanted for years
Think about it: why else would the owner of the Red Sox, with cash spilling out of his pockets, suggest an "enlightened" salary cap? Isn't it striking to see the country's foremost capitalists putting on their Robin Hood hat and advocating socialism? I never would have mistaken Astros owner Drayton McLane or Brewers owner Mark Attanasio for a leveller.
I know that fans hate the huge salaries that players pull down, but you have to look at it this way: There's a ton of money in baseball revenue. It either goes to the players or the owners, so pick your poison. It's really that simple. And I think it was Jim Bouton who said that while the players don't deserve to make this much money, "the owners don't deserve it even more" (Ball Four).
I guess we're all free to grouse and moan, in our own way, about the small fortune handed out to Messrs. Sabathia, Burnett and Teixeira. The Yankees look like the best team on paper but, as the cliche goes, they don't play the games on paper. If the Yankees are the best, the Red Sox aren't far behind. And the Tampa Bay Rays will have a big part to play in this race, even if they are working with a relatively tiny payroll. The truth is that the Yankees' offseason activity has gotten people talking about baseball and the AL East more than ever. And we still can't say for sure who's going to win anything. That's the fun of it all. No one named Steinbrenner can take that away from us.

In closing, I'd like to address my fellow Yankee-haters: you can calm down now. You don't need to worry about all this money spent, and you don't need to agitate for a salary cap. Because I've got good news: in our quest to level the playing field and punish the Yankees, we've already succeeded.

"The Kid" Isn't a Kid Anymore

2009-02-25T08:52:00.004-05:00

Just yesterday, ESPN.com reported that the Seattle Mariners have signed Ken Griffey, Jr. to a one-year deal worth $2 million, with incentives that could make it worth as much as $4.5 million. The deal got good reviews from many reporters and columnists. As for me, it sent me off on a nostalgia trip.
A trip back to a simpler time. Back when my Braves were still lovable losers. Back when none of us had ever heard of a place called Iraq. Back when collecting baseball cards was still a young boy's hobby.

... 1989 ...

(Cue Paula Abdul ... or something a little more macho)

Back in my baseball card-collecting days, 1989 was a landmark year. Together with my Dad and my brother, we made it our duty to gather as many complete sets as possible. We came close, getting all but the new and expensive Upper Deck series.
Man, it's hard to believe that was 20 years ago. I still like to look back through the cards at times, especially 1989. Back in 1989, you could see a "Future Stars" card with Gary Sheffield pictured right next to Mike Harkey. It's always interesting to look at the ones who made it and the ones who didn't. It seems like everything was possible back then.
But there was one guy back in '89 who was too big to be considered just a rookie. He was a phenom who was supposed to arrive in the majors ready to play and ready to star. And his was the card you wanted to get, because you knew some day it would be worth a lot of money.
That phenom was Ken Griffey, Jr. He would prove to be just as good as everybody predicted, and he would help transform one of the worst franchises in baseball into a perennial contender in just a few years.
Yes, Griffey was quite something then. But that was a long time ago. Both Griffey and the Mariners are in very different places now. As good as it will feel to see Griffey in an M's uniform again, is bringing him back a good baseball decision?
Back to 2009.

(Cue ... whatever it is the kids listen to these days ...)

Just like Paula Abdul, the past 20 years have been hard on Ken Griffey, Jr. (Okay, so it's not exactly like Paula Abdul; not unless Griffey's a whole lot crazier than he looks in public). Griffey lived up to his promise in Seattle, but after signing a free agent contract with Cincinnati in 2000, his career hit the skids.

It started off well enough; he played in 145 games in 2000 and hit .271 to go with 40 HR and a .556 SLG (slugging percentage). But injuries to his knee and leg starting hitting him in 2001 and kept him off the field for most of the next four seasons. Griffey played well when he was healthy, but from 2001-2004, he averaged just 79 games a year. Plus, the injuries took a huge toll on his defense in center field and ended his days as a stolen-base threat. It looked like Griffey's career may have been tragically stopped in its tracks.
But Griffey rebounded to play 128 games in 2005, hitting .301 with 35 HR and a .576 SLG. He had an off year in 2006, but again worked through it and bounced back to have another solid year in 2007 (even though his declining defense had prompted a move to right field).
Still looking for that elusive World Series ring, Griffey accepted a trade to the White Sox in mid-2008. Miscast as a starting center fielder, he didn't fare well (.260 with just 3 HR in 41 games played). The Sox made the postseason, but lost to the Rays in the first round.
Now Griffey, age 39, will return to the city where it all started. Is it a good move for Griffey?

Probably so.

Is it a good move for the Mariners?

Probably not.

(Cut the music)

It would be a great story for Griffey to make a triumphant return to Seattle. It would make for a storybook ending to a Hall-of-Fame career. Unfortunately, Griffey just doesn't fit what Seattle needs right now.
If Griffey can hit like he did last season (.249 with 18 HR and a .353 on-base percentage with the Reds and White Sox), then he can certainly be valuable. But the truth is that his defense has gotten the point where he can barely handle the outfield corners and is better suited for DH. And the problem there is that the Mariners already have several guys who can play outfield and DH, and most of them are better and/or younger than Griffey.
Where does Griffey fit? Ichiro Suzuki is guaranteed a spot in the outfield, so that just leaves two spots open. One spot needs to go to young Wladimir Balentien. Balentien had a terrible year in 2008, but at age 24, he's still a top prospect. And unlike Griffey, he will be a part of the next winning Seattle team, and that probably won't happen in Griffey's time.

That leaves one outfield spot open. It should probably go to Franklin Gutierrez, whose defense is so good in center that he will probably push Ichiro back to right field. Gutierrez isn't the hitter Griffey is, but with his glove he makes up the difference. The Mariners could platoon Griffey and Gutierrez in center field. This would be great, since Griffey hits much better against righties. But it would also mean that Griffey would get most of the playing time (since most pitchers are righties). And if the Mariners want a platoon partner for Gutierrez, they've already got one in Endy Chavez, who would be much less of a defensive liability than Junior.
Well, what about DH? There's a spot that was created for guys who don't fit into the defense. Well, there's a problem here, too, one entirely of Seattle's doing. The Mariners' top prospect, Jeff Clement, needs to get a starting job and a lot of playing time to keep developing. He, like Balentien, is one of the building blocks for the future. Clement is usually a catcher, but the Seattle front office screwed up the whole situation when they re-signed incumbent catcher Kenji Johjima to a 3-year, $24 million contract extension. This despite the fact that Johjima is going to be 33 this year (old for a catcher) and hit an empty .227 in 2008. With no place to put Johjima but at catcher, this makes Clement the de facto DH and leaves Griffey on the bench. The only hope is that one of these guys ends up at first base, which is a team weakness, or that the team admits its mistake and releases Johjima. (The latter is unlikely, because teams usually wait at least a year before dumping their boneheaded contracts).
Well, so what if Griffey ends up on the bench? He'd be a fine pinch-hitter, he would spend less time in the field, and the extra rest would be good for him, right? The problem is that a) Griffey probably doesn't want to be a pinch hitter, b) if the fans buy a ticket to see Griffey, they want to make sure they're actually going to see him, and c) $2.5-$4.5 million is a lot to pay for just 200 at bats — especially with the salary market being what it is.
My fear is not so much that Griffey won't get enough playing time. My fear is that he will, and it will come at the expense of rising stars like Balentien and Clement. The pressure from the public to play Griffey will be immense, and the team may end up sacrificing their long-term goals just to give Ken Griffey one last go-round. And that would undermine a lot of the good work done this offseason by new GM Jack Zduriencik, who has focused on making the team younger and making rebuilding the club's top priority.

So which will it be? Will the team give Griffey his spot as a part-timer or bench player and risk the fan outcry? Or will they force him into the lineup and put nostalgia ahead of the team's future?
I prefer the former, but fear the latter. Griffey still has something to offer on a big-league diamond, but not as an everyday center fielder. Not anymore. If Seattle wanted a big bat to fill the outfield/DH role, they could have gotten someone better than Griffey without spending a whole lot more. Griffey's contract won't pay for itself — as some people claim — because as much as Griffey is being touted as a gate attraction, fans want to see winners much more than they want to see stars. In fact, the best choice might have been not to spend significant money on any aging player who will be long gone by the time the team starts winning again. Nostalgia trips in baseball are overrated. (Ask the Braves how that Tom Glavine reunion tour is workin' out for 'em.)

But whatever ends up happening, we shouldn't cry for Griffey. It would be great to choose how you get to go out, sure. But he'll always have the past. And in six or seven years, he'll have a nice plaque on the wall in Cooperstown to comfort him.

(Cue "Glory Days" by Bruce Springsteen ... )

Integrity? What Integrity?

2009-02-18T08:23:00.004-05:00

This article was first published at blogcritics.org. I'm going to be a contributor there under the Sports section, so look for my column there.
The integrity of baseball is not at risk. This may seem like a rash thing to say these days, when pretty much everyone else is claiming the opposite. In the days since Alex Rodriguez's admission of the use of "banned substances," he has made the short list of the most hated baseball players of all time. He — along with Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds — have been publicly blasted for their admissions (and non-admissions) concerning their use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs*). And, in an unscientific poll taken by John Erardi of the Cincinnati Enquirer, none of the accused PED users would win induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
* — It's very important to make the distinction between "steroids" on one hand, and "PEDs," on the other. Steroids are a specific type of performance-enhancer. But not all PEDs are steroids. PEDs refer to any substance giving the user an "unfair" advantage. Most stories on this subject use "steroids" as a catch-all term when they should say PEDs or "banned substances," which refers specifically to those substances outlawed either by law or by the MLB. For the best information about PEDs and steroids as it relates to baseball, read The Juice by Will Carroll.
Baseball columnists everywhere are outraged. In the Detroit Free Press, Drew Sharp argues that you can't call baseball a sport anymore. Bill Madden of the New York Daily News says that the Yankees should just release A-Rod and eat the $270 million remaining on his contract.
The tone of the conversation in the sports media has generally been that A-Rod has forever tainted our most precious institutions and should be severely punished.
To this I say: Phooey.
At what point did our priorities become so out of whack that admitting the use of PEDs results in a bloody, public humiliation while offenses far worse than that go unnoticed or unpunished? Cheating is as American as baseball, apple pie, and . . . well, baseball. That's not to say that cheating is okay, but can we really be surprised when we catch people doing it? And in the scheme of things, aren't we holding them to an impossible standard when we publicly drag them through the mud?
I know the story. Steroids are a threat to the institutions of baseball because they constitute cheating, right? And cheating is fundamentally destructive to baseball. This is the argument quite often used by those angry at A-Rod, especially those who want to keep him, Clemens, McGwire, and Bonds out of the Hall of Fame. Any cheating that gives a player an unfair edge is wrong.
Our first problem is that there is no actual evidence that steroids improve the skills of a baseball player. That's right, folks, you've been snowed by an avalanche of circumstantial and anecdotal evidence. Yes, everyone "knows" that taking steroids buffs you up and makes you a better player — except that the truth is that we just don't know. Buffs you up, yeah. But if that's all it takes, wouldn't professional bodybuilders be the best baseball players out there? Is it possible that, despite what the media tells us, you may get some help out of a needle, but you can't get talent out of a needle?
In fact, for every player who is supposed to have gotten an "edge" from steroids, there are numerous other accused and admitted steroid users who got no apparent edge on the playing field. I hate to burst anyone's bubble, here, but for every Barry Bonds, there are about ten or twelve guys like Matt Herges or Gary Bennett, whose use didn't really do anything for them. Look at the names in the Mitchell Report again and then tell me how steroids are such a huge advantage to those that take them.
And even if you get down into the stats, it's hard to prove that anyone — even Bonds — got their boost in offense directly from steroids. "But," the devil's advocate says, "Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs in one year back in 2001! He must have been using." Well, it's true that Bonds broke the home run record back in '01. It's also true that he hit just 46 home runs the next year, in 2002. If he was using, how does that make sense? Did he stop juicing after seeing such good results? Or is it possible that freaky things just happen in baseball? In 1973, Davey Johnson hit 43 home runs. He never hit more than 18 in any other season of his career. Was he a juicer ahead of his time? Or is it possible that, in over a hundred years of player seasons, you're going to see some freaky numbers pop up from time to time?
Okay. But whether they work or not, steroid users are cheating, right? And surely those cheaters should be denied a place in Cooperstown (so the argument goes).
Here's the problem: we've already set a bad precedent. If cheaters aren't allowed in Cooperstown, then we'd have to take out Gaylord Perry, Don Drysdale, Don Sutton, Whitey Ford, and every other pitcher who ever threw a spitball, shine ball, scuff ball, etc. We'll have to throw out all the players from the 1970s and 1980s who used amphetamines, or "greenies" (that'll get rid of about six people). We'll have to get rid of Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker who, the evidence is pretty clear, were either involved in or aware of the fixing of a baseball game, and so are just as guilty as Joe Jackson. (see Dewey & Acocella's The Black Prince of Baseball). We'll have to throw out John McGraw and all the members of the old Baltimore Orioles, who made cheating their very legacy and whose very strategy was built on the unfair advantage. We'll have to throw out any member of the 1951 World Series Champion Giants (that means Willie Mays), who used a spotter to steal the signs of their opponents.
I've seen this argument made before, that taking steroids is cheating but not any worse than a spitball or a corked bat, but it's usually tossed aside. "Anyone chemically altering his body is doing something worse than spitting on the ball," they might say. How so? Who gets to decide what kind of cheating is okay (and even folksy if your name is Drysdale or Perry) and what kind of cheating isn't?
Is the worst kind of cheating the kind that most directly affects the game? That seems to be the accepted standard; the worst "cheaters" in baseball history are usually assumed to be the 1919 Black Sox, who threw the World Series. So the bigger the unfair edge, the bigger the cheater. Here's the problem with that argument: it's easy to show that spitballs and scuffballs help a pitcher, and are illegal. It's a lot harder to prove that steroids do the same (and most were not against baseball rules or even illegal until fairly recently). And even if they do, there's no reason to believe that they're nearly as helpful as the spitter. If it were, wouldn't Matt Herges be a superstar by now?
Here's my final verdict: cheating has always been an integral part of baseball and an integral part of the Hall of Fame (whose very location — Cooperstown, NY — is based upon the lie that baseball was created there). We may not like it, but we have to admit it and get on with our lives. If only the media would let us.
Mainstream baseball writers and columnists are the self-appoined standard-bearers of baseball, and they guard that title with ferocious jealousy. Throughout history, the standard is that those who came before were Gods, no matter what they did (McGraw, Cobb, Mantle, etc.). But those who live now will be held to the standards of heroes and will not be allowed to fail.
But people have stopped listening to those standard-bearers. Their tidings of impending doom — saturating the airwaves ever since 2002 — have fallen on deaf ears. And as time goes on, and the doom doesn't come, their cries become more and more difficult to believe.
But instead of just moving on, they will continue to spout bitterness until they are supplanted by a new generation of commentators. All we can hope is that they do a better job of bearing the standard.

8 Questions to Answer

2009-02-11T08:13:00.005-05:00

Before you do anything else, go over to espn.com and read this interview with former baseball union leader Marvin Miller. I don't agree with everything he says, but his insights into the controversy need to be given greater attention. If everyone had to interview Miller for this story, they'd at least come away wiser. And from what I've read so far, their learning curve is steep.

I mentioned yesterday William Saletan's article at slate.com that asks eight rhetorical questions designed to cast a shadow over A-Rod and his career. Instead of my short, highly critical response posted as a comment on the Slate website (and again on here yesterday), I'll take the opportunity to answer his questions in a more level-headed manner.

(Note: Saletan's article and my initial comment were written before A-Rod's admission of guilt in an ESPN interview with Peter Gammons. But I'll take A-Rod's story into account when answering these questions).

Question One: [A-Rod's] name is on the list of flunked players. As today's New York Times explains, "the players had agreed to the 2003 tests under the condition that their results would never be revealed." How many other tests have been taken and flunked but, under rules dictated by the players, never disclosed to the public?

Answer: According to sources in possession of the list, there are about 104 names on it. Take away A-Rod and (presumably) Barry Bonds, and that's 102 names left.
Under the earliest iterations of the drug policy, the first infraction did not result in the naming of the player. This was before Congress pressured the players' union to accept the 50-game suspension for first offenders currently in place.
There have been many rumors of players who have tested positive, but whose names have been withheld from the public. Rumors of a positive test by Roger Clemens were rampant in the days before Brian McNamee stepped forward. And the rumor persists that Albert Pujols tested positive. In addition, the more insidious version of that rumor is that one of Pujols' absences for injury was actually a mandated drug suspension that was covered up. While it is possible that Pujols is among those with a positive test, the conspiracy theory rings false. Treating a player in a way that violates the CBA would be actionable and, more importantly, hard to keep a secret.
So it's hard to say for sure how many unknown positives are out there, the 104 number is a good start.

Question Two: The Major League Baseball Players Association could have destroyed the results—and is now being denounced by baseball officials and pundits for not doing so.
How many test results has the players association destroyed?

Answer: None, because the union is well aware of the statute on obstruction of justice.
The reason the union failed to destroy these test results was either a) incompetence, or b) they were afraid that the test results were potentially evidence covered under a federal subpoena. While answer A is a possibility, there's every reason to believe that B is true.
Because these test were the only test results guaranteed anonymity, the union possessed the results and had the opportunity to destroy them. All subsequent testing has been done under the auspices of the MLB testing program, which would make the players' union legally liable if they destroyed them.
In short, there is absolutely no evidence of any other "secret" tests that the MLBPA would have even had the opportunity to destroy. This is the first instance of utterly groundless speculation by Saletan, leading less informed readers to picture a conspiracy in the MLBPA to obstruct justice.

Question Three: These results ended up in the government's hands through a bizarre series of legal flukes and errors.
How many other positive test results are still out there, unknown to the government?

Is this journalism, or an episode of Unsolved Mysteries?
Calling the process by which these tests became public "legal flukes and errors" is a bit misleading. The records were seized by agents looking to find Barry Bonds' name on a list of positive tests. As it happens, A-Rod's name was on the list seized. That may be a coincidence, but it does not imply incompetence at the investigative level that "flukes and errors" does.
With the seizure of the supposedly anonymous list of 2003 testees, it is my understanding that the government has knowledge of every positive test done under the MLB-approved testing program. You'd have to imagine a dark conspiracy to assume the existence of other positive tests, squirreled away in a massive cover-up. And imagination is what Saletan relies on, because he absolutely no proof of a secret cache of positive tests, despite what he implies.

(By the way, the hyperlink in the original story that shows up when you click "flukes and errors" isn't some secret news story backing up Saletan's claim, it's simply a link back to the original SI story about A-Rod's positive test.)

Question Four: The players association is asking courts to suppress the list on which Rodriguez appeared and is threatening legal consequences for anyone who even talks about it.
How many other lists have been obtained by the government but successfully suppressed?

A simple answer to Saletan's question would be: "None, and there's no credible evidence to believe otherwise."
Again, Saletan is assuming (with no evidence), the presence of other tests and dark, evil secrets hidden away. If he thinks other lists have been suppressed, then he must believe in some sort of secret court of law where such a proceeding would have passed without public notice.
And just to clarify, the players' association is asking for the suppression of the list on the grounds that it should be confidential as part of the CBA between the MLB and the MLBPA. They're threatening legal consequences to those speaking out about it because of the aforementioned confidentiality. Anyone violating the CBA would be subject to punitive action. Unfortunately, a subpoena in a criminal case trumps any private agreement of confidentiality. So long as the government can prove that the content of the list is relevant (and it is, if Bonds' name is on it), the confidentiality agreement is useless.
Which is more likely (and supported by the facts): that the MLBPA is protecting the confidentiality of its members, or that the MLBPA is trying to hide a vast conspiracy of positive tests and evildoing? The former is much more likely and supported by the evidence. But the latter is sexier and more interesting. And that seems to be Saletan's standard when he's asking these questions.

Question Five: A drug test doesn't show when you started using the drug. It shows when you got caught. How long was Rodriguez doping before this test? SI's Tom Verducci lays out additional grounds for suspicion, wondering how Rodriguez could be "so unlucky as to be caught the first and only time he tried something." Verducci asks:

Does it make any sense that somebody resisted steroids for eight years in places such as Seattle and Texas in the Wild West days when there was no drug testing or public pressure whatsoever, and then suddenly (and with the security of a $252 million contract in his pocket) choose to use them precisely when drug testing and the public pressure are put in place for the first time?

Answer: As for Saletan's question, we have no clue how long A-Rod was doping. He claims he started in 2001. There's no evidence here either way, and while I'm loathe to just take Rodriguez's word for it, on this question he has little reason to lie, unless he's a long-term user and doesn't want to admit it.
As for Verducci, he should be ashamed of himself for pretending he can climb inside A-Rod's head and claim what does and does not make sense for him to do.
Why did A-Rod start using? None of us f***ing know, and it's arrogant to pretend that we can guess. We like to condense a person's motives not into reality, but that which is most easily understood. "How could A-Rod be so unlucky to be caught the first and only time he tried something?" How unlucky is anybody to get caught? What is suspicious about unluckiness? But Verducci -- who knows exactly what makes sense for A-Rod to do -- wonders how he resisted using in the "Wild West" days (his chosen words for an arbitrary period of time that began and ends whenever he says it does). Maybe he didn't use because he was frickin' eighteen years old and didn't feel the need. Things change when you're a disliked, high-priced free agent on a last-place team (Seattle was winning back then, remember?).
Regardless, we have no basis for guessing why A-Rod started, so let's stop using those guesses to slander him.

Question Six: The steroid for which Rodriguez tested positive was Primobolan, a drug on which players allegedly relied to fool the 2003 drug tests. As SI explains, "Primobolan is detectable for a shorter period of time than the steroid previously favored by players, Deca-Durabolin."
If Rodriguez was using drugs calculated to evade detection, how many other tests did he and others beat this way? How many tests are they still beating?

Answer: Oh my God, people, the MLB drug tests are fallible! ROUND UP A POSSE! WARN THE CHILDREN! CUT 'EM OFF AT THE PASS!
If I were Saletan's editor, and he approached my desk with such a glob of naivete, I'd wave him back to his computer with a cursory glance.
And why is it, when someone is caught cheating or lying, the public is surprised that they tried to hide their cheating or lying? Think about that. Seriously. How f***ing stupid are we?

Question Seven: Three players reportedly told SI that the chief operating officer of the players asociation tipped Rodriguez about a 2004 drug test that was supposed to be a surprise. Their allegation echoes the 2007 Mitchell report. A tipped player can beat the test by flushing the forbidden drugs from his system or using other drugs to mask them.
How many times did Rodriguez and others escape detection thanks to tips?
In fact: Did Rodriguez flunk the 2003 test precisely because its results were never supposed to be disclosed—and therefore a tip was thought to be unnecessary?
And while we're at it, SI's Selena Roberts astutely asks: Why would the players association boss tip a clean player? Wouldn't you tip the guy you suspect might otherwise flunk?

Answer: This is the only substantive question Saletan raises, and it's quite a serious ones. There have been allegations (credible allegations, from several sources) that some players got tips as to when they were to be tested. This should be investigated fully -- and if I were Congress, I would put the union under the grill about this one.
Selena Roberts (who may or may not have stalked A-Rod; even if she didn't, her actions do seem, shall we say, irregular) wonders why the MLBPA would tip a clean player? First of all, that's a non-starter, because the MLBPA in 2003 doesn't KNOW who is clean and who is dirty (unless they're just nosy). And while the tip is suggestive it is, again, merely that; a suggestive explanation for events with no basis in fact.
But the question is presented in a manner as to suggest that there's no other credible explanation. Why would the MLBPA tip A-Rod to a drug test? Well, A-Rod is one of the game's marquee players making its top salary. They might give him a tip just in case he might be using. If you were an unscrupulous union worker, would you want to take a chance on something as potentially devastating as that?

Question Eight: What are the chances that the state of the art hasn't advanced in those six years? How many players are fooling today's tests? When, if ever, will we find out about it?

I call Saletan for cheating; he has simply restated Question Six. And really, as far as asking leading questions, he might as well be asking: "How many other alien autopsies have been performed? How many have the government hidden? Will we ever find out about them?" All that's missing is a creepy sci-fi theme and rolling credits. Except that Saletan finishes with this little gem:

Remember, none of this is conclusive evidence. These are just questions. Maybe Rodriguez never doped until the testing program began, and he was caught the first time he tried it. Maybe he was tipped just that one time and just as an innocent favor. Maybe it's pure coincidence that he chose Primobolan. Maybe the state of the art hasn't advanced, and every player on steroids is being caught. Maybe no other lists of failed test results have been destroyed, concealed, or legally suppressed.

And if you believe that, I've got a $275 million slugger to sell you.

Translation: "I don't have a thimbleful of evidence to back up my insinuations.
But if you don't believe me, you are SO, like, fucking naive (smirk) . . ."

And people wonder why I'm always pissed off . . .