May 04, 2003
Chass Issues
Murray Chass covers four interesting topics in his Inside Baseball column in the NY Times today. The first is the Astros and Julio Lugo. The Astros have designated him for assignment after he was charged with domestic violence.
The decision to jettison the 27-year-old Lugo, a Brooklyn resident who was in his fourth season with the Astros, was not wholly a result of the alleged assault of his wife, Mabel, Hunsicker said. But barely three hours before the Astros made the move, they issued a statement on domestic violence without mentioning Lugo.
"The Astros organization is acutely aware of the issues surrounding domestic violence, and we completely support the steps necessary to deal with it," the statement said. "We disapprove of any violence; it is unacceptable. We are a family game with family values. The Astros family represents honesty, integrity and family values. We have no tolerance or acceptance for anything outside those values."
Lugo, of course, has not been convicted of punching his wife in the face and slamming her head against a car, as she has alleged. (The couple are said to be divorcing.) "He's been arraigned, tried and convicted in the last 24 hours," a lawyer who represents players said.
But the Astros linked Lugo's dismissal to their problems on the field, which have been considerable for a team some picked to win the division.
Lugo, it might be noted, has a higher OBA than Craig Biggio, who has been a disaster in the leadoff spot (.338 for Lugo, .311 for Biggio). I'm pretty sure that Biggio is washed up. His numbers are worse than they actually look, due to the effect of "The Park Formerly Know as Enron."
| Biggio, 2002-2003 | Home | Away |
|---|
| Batting Average | .274 | .229 |
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| On Base Average | .346 | .306 |
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| Batting Average | .429 | .382 |
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Biggio is a class act, and I don't expect the Astros to just release him. I do, however, expect him to pull a Mike Schmidt and realize that he's just not being a productive ballplayer and leave the game.
Next, with attendance down, baseball does what it does so well; go into hiding:
The early-season attendance is down for the second successive season, plummeting 14.4 percent over two seasons. This year's drop was 4.95 percent.
Officials have apparently become sensitive to the decline. Missing from the daily major league attendance report available to the news media are figures from last season.
Fortunately, there are other sources.
Attendance, through same period |
2003 | 2002 |
|---|
| Games | 444 | 438
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| Attendance | 25198 | 26416 |
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I'll try to make this a daily feature.
And once again, MLB is talking about expanding the playoffs. Of course, that means they'll have to move the World Series to a neutral site where they can be sure of warm weather, or they can start the season on St. Patrick's Day and hope global warming is for real.
Finally, looks at why Frank Robinson returned to the Expos:
Once it was determined that the Expos would stay alive, Robinson returned for two reasons.
"No. 1 they asked me to come back," he said. "The second thing is I thought about it and thought I'd like to come back. The way the players played last year, the attitude and the effort they gave me and what we were successful in doing, having a winning season for the first time since '96 and finishing in second place, just the work habits and the enthusiasm, I felt something special was going to happen here and I wanted to be a part of it. This job was only half-finished last year. This club is going to be in existence for a few years to come. I just wanted to be part of it this year."
Posted by David Pinto at
08:00 AM
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